About
The Kitchen | Deb | Husband | Site | Photos | You | Press | Contact
The Smitten Kitchen is 80 square feet of fourth-floor circa-1870 New York City walkup tenement building joy with a skylight on top. It has one counter, a small stove, a pot and pan rack we nabbed from a former apartment, a marginally obsessive spice rack and a grapefruit knife with actual grapefruits on the handle. My favorite things in it are a set of stainless steel measuring cups and spoons, the very first kitchen-related item I ever bought myself to cheer up a blah day, and a husband who picks at things as I chop them.
The Writer, Cook and Occasional Dishwasher
Deb is the kind of person you might innocently ask what the difference between summer and winter squash are and she’ll go on for about twenty minutes before coming up for air to a cleared room and you soundly snoring. It’s taken some time, but she’s finally realized that there are people out there that might forgive her for such food, cooking and ingredient-obsessed blathering and possibly, even come back for more.
When she’s not prattling on about galley and grub, Deb writes about geeky stuff for her day job.
Alex gets billing as assistant photographer, majority-part dishwasher, cheering section and sometimes editor of grammar and spelling. He’s a great cook on the too-rare occasion his wife lets him help with anything but reaching bowls on top shelves. He likes salt, shellfish, things wrapped, stuffed or balanced on bacon, steak frites, dried cranberries, milk chocolate, Bloody Marys, pretty much anything pickled, and Deb, although she is usually not.
The site is powered by Wordpress, a plethora of plugins, wine and 70% chocolate. The template was originally created by Sunaryo Hadi but heavily tweaked by Smitten Kitchen’s OCD editor. To give you a quick tour, there’s an RSS feed over here, a recipe index over here, some cooking tools and equivalents over here, and subscription via email available as well.
All text and photos © Smitten Kitchen 2006-2008 except where otherwise noted.
For those interested in detailed information on the approach, techniques and camera equipment we use to take photos in the Smitten Kitchen, we’ve written a post just for you.
You—your visits, comments, emails, experiments with these recipes at home and that you catch our endless spelling and typographical errors—make our day. If you’re on Facebook, you can find us there. If you use Flickr and you have made a recipe from or inspired by one on this site, we’d love to see it in our recipes pool.
Finally, as a matter of housekeeping really, if you ever leave a comment and it doesn’t show up (and you’re not, say, shamelessly plugging a product or a spambot) it has probably been caught by our at times overzealous spam catcher—if you drop us an email (address below) we’d be happy to go fish it out.
Press, Awards and Tasteless Braggery
- “The food-porn factor of this site nears illegal levels.” — CHOW.com, The Ten, Food Blog Heaven 5/19/08
- Smitten Kitchen “offers tempting recipes and photos of home-cooked meals.” — “Food Blogs Help Save Money,” U.S. News and World Report, March 4, 2008
- “An enthusiastic kitchen amateur chronicles her adventures, offering a mix of easy recipes, smart and witty commentary, and beautiful photos.” — Real Simple Magazine, March 2008.
- “Smitten Kitchen features mouthwatering photos and descriptions, as well as wry commentary about trying to cook in a tiny city apartment.” — Redbook Magazine, February 2008
- 2008 Weblogs Award (Bloggies) — Best Photography of a Weblog finalist
- “If the site were a restaurant, I would want to eat there.” — Profile of Smitten Kitchen in the Boston Globe 11/7/07. Deb’s family’s recipe for Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake accompanied the article.
- “Anyone with a computer, a camera and a fascination with the world’s most fascinating subject can compete with top food blogs such as Smitten Kitchen and Chocolate & Zucchini.” — LA Times 10/31/07
- “What makes this site great is Perelman’s thoughtful, entertaining and well-written commentary on the recipes she presents as well as the glorious food photography that accompanies each blog entry.” — Philadelphia Style Magazine, November 2007 (PDF)
- “Her enthusiasm is catching.” — St. Petersburg Times, 10/10/07
- “…superstar Deb at her incredible, edible website…” — Interview at Eat Drink One Woman, 10/5/07
- “Smitten Kitchen is a very cute web site.” — Martha Stewart, The Martha Stewart Show 9/18/07
- “Who at home is going to soak salt cod for a day, mash it up with some other ingredients and deep-fry it–coating the kitchen with a mist of oil–for what is essentially a bar snack? Jeffrey Steingarten or Deb at SmittenKitchen.com might bother, but that’s their problem.” — Amanda Hesser, New York Times Magazine 9/16/07
- “Even if you hadn’t been planning to cook something, the desire will inevitably kick in after staring at her vibrant photographs that smack your face right into the belly of a dish.” — Profiled on Serious Eats 7/13/07
- “Spirited chat about life and eating–the writer, Deb, blogs with Seinfeld-like humor…” — Fitness Magazine, April 2007
- “Magnificent food photos, a mesmerizing cooking blog and recipes that make you want to lick your computer screen.” — The Sacramento Bee
- “Smitten Kitchen displays a penchant for sweets and a fearless attitude toward baking, along with a wide-ranging repertoire…” — Culinate
- 2006 Food Blog Award Winner — Humor Category
- 2007 Weblogs Award (Bloggies) — Best Food Blog Finalist
- Seen on My Yahoo, Pick of the Day, Parents Magazine, blog of the month (5/08), Bon Appetit’s Editor’s Blog, The Guardian Unlimited’s Word of Mouth Blog, Epi-Log, Slashfood, Yumsugar, CHOW’s Grinder Blog, and has been Feedster’s feed of the day.
- Member of 9rules, a web design portal
