Pasta With Brown-Buttered Brussels Sprouts & Other Recipes We’re Cooking This Week

Welcome to What We’re Cooking This Week, a weekly love letter from our recipe developer Emma Laperruque, all about what the Food52 team is cooking and craving off-hours (with a few snacks for thought, too).

I stumbled upon a Thanksgiving recipe that I can’t stop thinking about: ice cream pumpkin pie (or pumpkin ice cream pie, whichever name floats your boat). It comes by way of Food52 veteran Brette Warshaw, whose newsletter What’s the Difference? you should 100% sign up for if you haven’t already.

It is a pumpkin pie for people who don’t want pumpkin pie, aka me and my mom. We try to avoid it every November, making pumpkin mousse, frozen pumpkin mousse, pumpkin cheesecake, mini pumpkin cheesecakes, etc, etc. While it’s extremely popular, pumpkin pie is, to us, extremely blah (not that anyone asked). Which is funny because I think pumpkin custard (basically pumpkin pie filling before the pie goes in the oven) is delicious.

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Pumpkin ice cream is a happy middle ground. Unbaked, the squashy flavor is more sure of itself, and the orange color is splashier. And you don’t have to worry about baking a pie just right. That’s nice, too.

So maybe for Thanksgiving this year, we’ll eat ice cream pumpkin pie—or some other dessert recipe that I cross paths with in the next couple weeks.

What dessert can you not stop thinking about? Let’s talk about it over dinner.

Pasta With Brown Butter & Brussels Sprouts

I’ve never tried an EmilyC recipe I didn’t want to make soon tomorrow immediately and this pasta with brown butter and Brussels sprouts is no different. If I had you at “pasta” or “brown butter,” well, good—go forth. If you’re still ho-humming, then I should probably tell you about the black sesame seeds, the Parmesan, the chile flakes, the lemon, the episode of Modern Love you’ll watch, the pajamas you’ll wear, the cat that will hop in your lap and purr, purr, then fall asleep.

Kale Salad

This Genius kale salad has been the talk of the town since—let’s see here—2012. Which means I should basically be fired for not having made it myself yet (though, in my defense, I have eaten it with gusto several times at work parties). It has tender-roasted butternut squash, chunky almonds, crumbly cheddar, and shards of pecorino. The second cheese is “optional,” but what we actually mean by that is: Add the pecorino or else. There isn’t time to waste. I’ll be making it for dinner one night this week with my pumpkin husband. Hang out with us on Instagram and BYO glass of whatever you like to drink.

Spiced Sweet Potato Salad

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More fall salads! you say? I’m all over it. Our customer care operations manager Erin Sanders made the spiced sweet potato salad from Deliciously Ella the other night. “It’s one of my favorites from the book,” she told me. “The radicchio adds great crunch and bitterness. I find the two tablespoons of maple syrup a little too much for my taste (with the sweetness of the sweet potatoes and dates), so I cut it back to ½ tablespoon.” Right on, Erin. Right on.

More Sweet Potatoes

If you are craving some sweet potato sweeties, I give you: sweet potato cinnamon buns with brown butter cream cheese glaze. They’re fresh out of The Joys of Baking by Samantha Seneviratne, whom I’ve been lucky enough to get to know through her beautiful food styling and writing and recipe developing. Our senior editor Eric Kim can’t wait to make these some weekend this fall: “I’m not much of a baker, but when I decide to bake something, I bake something. I love making a project out of it,” he said. “Sam’s book is so beautifully written that it’s made everyone on the team (including me!) cry.” It’s true.

Braised Onion Sauce: An Honorable Mention

Both our executive editor Joanna Sciarrino and managing editor Brinda Ayer are planning to make more pasta with braised onion sauce, because after you make it once, things can never go back to the way they were. Both in the sense that you are changed, deeply, forever, and that your kitchen is perfumed with alliums, maybe forever. “It really did make my house stink of onions,” Joanna noted. This is a nice thing, right? Right.

Let’s strike a deal: I’ll tell you what’s on my reading list if you tell me what’s on yours.

1. I’m just finishing up The 100 Most Jewish Foods by Alana Newhouse…
2. …and I’m about to start Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan for next month’s book club.
3. Not that I’m feeling bad, but it’s always nice to feel…less bad? Enter: “This Tom Hanks Story Will Help You Feel Less Bad” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

Okay, your turn.

Talk soon,
Emma