Recipes: The Kismet Cookbook
The award-winning LA restaurant just released its first cookbook, and you get a special sneak peek! Sharing two recipes that feature Kismet's signature fresh, bright, Mediterranean-inspired flavors
These recipes were first featured in Downtime’s Weekend Recs #47.
I dined at Kismet in LA about two years ago and remember loving every dish we ordered. The menu is pretty simple, but don’t let that fool you: everything is packed with vibrant flavor and creativity. The Mediterranean-inspired, bright, zingy dishes were all executed perfectly within a casual, cool environment. If you have a chance, please go check it out! The marinated feta, fried cauliflower, Persian crispy rice, and all their dips stand out as my favorite dishes.
Lucky for us non-Angelenos who want a taste of Kismet, co-chefs Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer just released their first cookbook, ‘Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes.’ The book features more than 100 recipes that capture the casual, super-fresh, vegetable-forward cooking that their award-winning Los Angeles restaurants are known for. The photography is beautiful and just as vibrant as their dishes. I’m sharing a brief Q&A and two recipes from the cookbook, below.
You can purchase ‘Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes’ on Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your local bookstore.
Q&A with the Authors
What inspired the cookbook?
The cookbook was inspired by our last decade of work in restaurants together. There’s just been so much that we’ve developed together, and we wanted to share that by using our own voices to tell our story. At the same time, we wanted to make our restaurant Kismet accessible to the home cook, and reach a broader audience. We knew the Kismet ethos and approach to food would translate really well to tailoring it to the home kitchen. We were really excited by the challenge.
How are you enjoying spending your downtime these days?
Sarah Hymanson: We are about to go on our book tour and so I'm trying to make sure I get my garden going so that when I get back my plants are grown in and happy and producing fruit. I’m really hoping to come back in a few weeks to some little baby cucumbers! I've also been doing some sewing recently. It's something I've done off and on for a long time, but I always forget how good it feels to focus all day and end up with a new pair of pants!
Sara Kramer: We’re both big into our gardens, so that’ll be a little redundant. The grass and morning glory vines creep in quickly if I don’t stay on top of weeding them out, which is more relaxing than it sounds. Getting dirty on a beautiful day, listening to Sharon Von Etten, and ripping up weeds to make space for the plants and trees I cherish is honestly what I’d call “living.” Otherwise, you’ll find me forever in search of my forehand on the tennis court.
Recipes excerpted below, exclusively for Downtime paid subscribers:
Beans on Beans
An Unlikely Shrimp Salad
Recipe: Beans on Beans
What’s better than beans? The answer: more beans. Here, we give you the fine duo of grilled green beans and canned butter beans in a creamy tahini vinaigrette—a keep-it-simple, beans-on-beans dish. It makes a happy addition to a potluck or holiday, and it definitely delivers as a satisfyingly quick weeknight meal, paired with an egg and a piece of toast. If you’re feeling ambitious, you could very easily add even more beans and really run with the prompt. Romano beans, chickpeas, fresh favas, peas—you simply cannot go wrong pairing beans with more beans.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Tahini Vinaigrette
½ cup tahini
2 teaspoons honey
1 tablespoon kosher salt
½ garlic clove, grated on a Microplane
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 (15-ounce) can butter beans, drained and rinsed
Grilled Green Beans
1½ pounds green beans
2 tablespoons neutral oil, such as canola or sunflower
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Make the tahini vinaigrette: In a medium bowl, whisk together the tahini, honey, salt, and grated garlic. Add ⅓ cup water and the vinegar and whisk until smooth. Toss in the butter beans and, using a spoon, gently stir into the vinaigrette.
Grill the green beans: Preheat a grill, grill pan, or cast-iron griddle to medium-high.
In a bowl, toss the green beans with the neutral oil and salt. Grill/griddle them until lightly charred, about 5 minutes. (If cooking on a grill, use a grill basket, or even a wide mesh metal sieve, so the beans don’t fall through the grates, tossing frequently.)
Transfer the cooked beans to a serving dish and spoon the beany tahini vinaigrette over the top. Top with the olive oil and serve.
Recipe: An Unlikely Shrimp Salad
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