Cook This: 3 festive recipes from Justine Cooks, including crusted sweet potatoes and pepitas

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Our cookbook of the week is Justine Cooks by Justine Doiron, a viral recipe developer known as Justine Snacks.

Jump to the recipes: crusted sweet potatoes and pepitas, ACV (apple cider vinegar) Brussels sprouts in toasted cornmeal and black pepper chai blondies.

Many people have their holiday traditions locked down. While giving the entire meal an overhaul for Christmas or New Year’s may be nonnegotiable, a fresh sweet treat and a side dish or two alongside established favourites can be a welcome change of pace.

Brooklyn-based author Justine Doiron comes from a small family of grazers. Having a cheese board and cookie plate to snack on is a must. “We have traditions, but the holidays are our time to chill, so we have four big dishes, and then everything else gets pulled together the last few days, and it’s very sides-heavy, very carbs-heavy. But our one big holiday thing is we are the people who will have food out before the big meal,” says the recipe developer and food stylist known as Justine Snacks on social media, where she has roughly 3.5 million followers across platforms.

Doiron suggested two platter meals from her New York Times best-selling cookbook debut, Justine Cooks (Clarkson Potter, 2024) — crusted sweet potatoes and pepitas and ACV (apple cider vinegar) Brussels sprouts in toasted cornmeal — and one fudgy dessert, black pepper chai blondies, perfect for serving at any holiday gathering.

“I’ve made the sweet potatoes for a few dinner parties. What I like is that you can make the paprika-honey oil and then keep it warm. Keep the sweet potatoes pretty warm, tented somewhere, while the oven gets used for other, more important things. Then, pour the warm oil on top of the sweet potatoes right before serving. They don’t take up space in your oven. They’re super delicious. The texture is really fun because you hand-tear them.

“Then, for the Brussels sprouts, the toasted cornmeal is like a savoury coffee cake crumble, which is rare. They’re really quick, and I like to pile them on a circular plate, (which is) easy for using salad tongs to pick up and put down on plates.”

Doiron’s holiday grazing mentality aligns with my introduction to her work, 2022’s viral butter board. Legions have since put their own spin on the trend, in which Doiron generously spread butter on a wax paper-lined board, scattered with flaky salt, lemon zest, edible flowers, fresh herbs, ground coriander and cardamom, drizzled with honey, and swiped with warm bread. She was inspired by a recipe for “herbed” butter in Portland, Oregon-based chef Joshua McFadden’s debut cookbook, Six Seasons (Artisan, 2017). It wasn’t the first time the book changed her life. As Doiron writes in Justine Cooks, McFadden’s Italian-style salsa verde sparked her passion for food.

A longtime cookbook lover, Doiron credits them for her culinary education. Over the past five years, cooking has evolved from a hobby to a full-time career. After studying hotel management at Cornell University, where she learned the foundations of cooking, Doiron worked in public relations for media companies, including Discovery. As part of her job, she started experimenting with TikTok in 2020. Her audience grew, and people started telling her she should write a cookbook of her own.

Various agents suggested Doiron hire a recipe developer and writer and simply put her name on it. “That felt so inauthentic to me, and I soured from that experience in 2021. I was like, ‘I don’t want to write a cookbook if it’s this cash grab and people are just buying my name.’ And so I tabled working on a cookbook for a long time, even though there was a lot of pressure.”

Nine months later, Doiron came up with the idea for Justine Cooks. She wrote the proposal in 10 days and found an agent she trusted within a month. “That’s when I knew I was ready because I finally had a book that I wanted to put into the world. It wasn’t just writing a book for the sake of writing a book.”

As someone who shares two to three recipe videos a week on social media, Doiron found it demanding to juggle writing a cookbook with the rest of her responsibilities. “My business’s core competency is video production. It’s where I shine,” she says. “The nature of the beast nowadays is that content creators don’t have the option to hole up for two months and do nothing but the book. So, balancing those two jobs was a super daunting challenge.”

Writing a cookbook enabled Doiron to flex different muscles than scripting a voice-over — to sit with her work and tweak it before she put it out into the world. Justine Cooks also allowed her to share recipes she wouldn’t usually produce for video. For example, her three-step and seven-ingredient crispy sage and fennel eggs would be too short for her social media channels. “But that made it in the book because I was like, ‘This is so delicious, and it’s a proper recipe, but it does take you 30 seconds.'”

Justine Cooks has a welcoming vibe, which is what Doiron intended. She set out to write a book that invited readers into cooking the way she wished she had been. Doiron’s family had a “small-frame mindset” about food. Cookbooks helped expand her viewpoint. “I wanted this cookbook to have that thesis throughout. Not overtly, but in recipes that will hopefully dip into ingredients that are less familiar than what we’re used to seeing all the time, which I think makes it a little fun.”

Each recipe has different techniques “baked in,” such as Doiron’s whole lemon-saffron couscous, which teaches how to caramelize lemon and bloom saffron threads. She fosters a curiosity about ingredients, and to ensure the recipes worked for her audience, Doiron had 30 members of her online community act as recipe testers (as well as hiring professional testers).

Doiron turns to cookbooks to learn and decompress, and she wanted Justine Cooks to be “highly comforting.” Understanding her audience helped her do just that. With one million followers on Instagram alone, Doiron has learned that what people view as “different” varies, depending on where they are in the world, what they have access to and their interest levels.

“The cookbooks I learned from challenged me, but my audience always pulls me back to what is realistic for the home cook. So, I’m getting feedback on both sides. I’m getting these super-ambitious chefs and teachers pushing me to flambé or pull out the blowtorch — to have that little bit of ambition. And then I also have to make recipes for people who are like, ‘It’s a Tuesday. I’m not going to do this on a Tuesday.’ I’ve been really lucky to learn in a way that has made my cooking, I think, both exciting and approachable, which is what I wanted the book to be, too.”

CRUSTED SWEET POTATOES & PEPITAS

Serves: 4

4 small sweet potatoes (6 oz/170 g each)
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp honey
Kosher salt
2 tbsp pumpkin seeds, coarsely chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup Sourdough Bread Crumbs (recipe follows)

Step 1

Position a rack in the centre of the oven and preheat it to 425F (220C).

Step 2

Pierce the sweet potatoes with a fork, then wrap each in aluminum foil and roast until soft and fork-tender, 40 to 45 minutes. Keep them wrapped but set them aside to cool. This makes them extra soft.

Step 3

Set a small pan over medium heat and combine 1/4 cup olive oil and the pepper flakes. Bring to a simmer, then add the cinnamon and paprika, swirl together, and immediately turn off the heat. Pour through a fine-mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl to strain out the pepper flakes. Whisk in the vinegar, honey, and a few pinches of salt.

Step 4

Wipe out any leftover pepper flakes from the pan and add the pumpkin seeds. Set the pan back over medium heat and toast, stirring occasionally, until they are a shade darker and fragrant, 3 to 4 minutes. Add 1/4 teaspoon black pepper and the bread crumbs, drizzle with olive oil, and cook until the bread crumbs are golden, another 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and season with salt.

Step 5

Tear (yes, tear! — we want the imperfect edges) the potatoes into big, rough chunks. Add these to a bowl and drizzle with the spicy oil, reserving a few teaspoons. Mix a few times to coat, then transfer to a serving dish. Sprinkle generously with the bread crumbs and spoon the reserved spicy oil over the top. A few more cracks of black pepper will live happily here.

SOURDOUGH BREAD CRUMBS, THE BIGGER KIND

Makes: just more than 2 cups

6 to 8 slices day-old sourdough bread (10 oz/285 g)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Step 1

Position a rack in the centre of the oven and preheat it to 350F (177C).

Step 2

Tear the bread into big chunks and spread the chunks on a sheet pan. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes to get the bread dry but not golden.

Step 3

Let it cool, then add the bread to a food processor and process until all the pieces are smaller than a lentil. Some pieces will be bigger and smaller than others, but that’s totally okay.

Step 4

These crumbs can be stored in an airtight bag in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Step 5

If you plan to use them right away, either prepare them according to your recipe’s instructions or use the following method: Place a medium pan over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil per 1 cup bread crumbs. Add the bread crumbs to the pan, season with a few pinches of salt, and toast for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the bread crumbs are a deep golden. Remove from the pan and use as preferred.

Note: With bread crumbs, there’s always room to layer flavour. For smokier bread crumbs, I add 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika per 1 cup crumbs. You can also swap in a chili oil for the olive oil or use brown butter instead of oil for an extra-toasty crumb.

ACV BRUSSELS SPROUTS IN TOASTED CORNMEAL

Serves: 4 to 6 as a side

1 1/2 lb (680 g) Brussels sprouts, trimmed, halved and thinly sliced
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal

Step 1

Equally stagger two racks in the oven and preheat it to 425F (220C).

Step 2

Toss the sprouts with 2 tablespoons olive oil, season with a pinch of salt and scatter on two sheet pans. Roast until the sprouts are tender and beginning to brown on the edges, 20 to 22 minutes.

Step 3

In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, honey and pepper flakes and season with a pinch of salt and a few cracks of black pepper.

Step 4

Set a large pan over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add the red onion, season with a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 8 minutes.

Step 5

Add the cornmeal and toast until it’s beginning to turn a deep golden brown, 7 to 8 minutes. Drizzle in 2 tablespoons of the vinegar mixture, turn off the heat, and shake the cornmeal into a crumble.

Step 6

When the sprouts are out of the oven, toss with the remaining vinegar mixture on the sheet pan. Transfer to a serving dish and scatter the cornmeal mixture over everything.

BLACK PEPPER CHAI BLONDIES

Makes: one 8-inch (20-cm) square pan

6 oz (170 g) white chocolate, chopped
8 tbsp (113 g) salted butter, cubed
1 tbsp (9 g) molasses
1/2 cup (100 g) packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 tbsp neutral oil, such as vegetable, canola or grapeseed
1 tbsp (7 g) vanilla extract
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup plus 2 tbsp (160 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Kosher salt

Step 1

Position a rack in the centre of the oven and preheat it to 350F (177C). Line the bottom and sides of an 8- by 8-inch (20- by 20-cm) pan with parchment paper.

Step 2

In a heatproof bowl that fits over the top of a medium pot to make a double boiler, combine the chocolate, butter, and molasses. Set the pot over medium heat and fill with 3 inches of water. Bring the water to a simmer, set the bowl over the top, and stir constantly to melt everything together. When everything is melted, move the bowl to the counter and add the brown sugar and whisk vigorously. The fat of the butter will start to separate, but that’s normal.

Step 3

In a small bowl, whisk together the whole egg, egg yolks, oil, vanilla, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Pouring very slowly and stirring constantly, gradually drizzle the egg mixture into the melted ingredients. It should seize up into a glossy batter. Add the flour, baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt and stir together with a spatula.

Step 4

Pour the batter into the lined pan. Tap the pan to evenly spread out the batter and top with a few cracks of black pepper. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes.

Step 5

It will look kind of cakey right out of the oven, so let it completely cool before serving. Throw it in the fridge for an hour or so before slicing for the ultimate blondie fudginess.

Eating tip, styling tip, or just a general tip: Brownies and blondies almost always look, slice and taste better after getting a rest in the fridge, whether a few hours or overnight. I know waiting on freshly baked blondies feels impossible, but if you have the willpower, it’s worth the time to see the difference. After the blondies have been allowed to fully chill, you can trim off the edges and then slice them into picture-perfect bars.

Recipes and images reprinted with permission from Justine Cooks: A Cookbook: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen by Justine Doiron. Copyright ?2024 by Justine Doiron. Photographs copyright ?2024 by Jim Henkens. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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