pizza beans (cookbook preview!)

Good morning! In less than one month (28 days, not that I’m nervously counting or anything), my second cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Every Day, will be ready to leave warehouses and head to you or your favorite bookstore. A book tour will be quickly under way (I hope we get to meet!). And all of this means that today, I get to share two more awesome things:

1. Early copies of the book have begun to arrive at warehouses! While the book will not be officially out until October 24th, we thought it would be fun to send a few of these out right now. To you. For free. Because maybe being the first of your friends to get the book comes with bragging rights. Because we hope it’s worth the wait, and that wait (4.92 years) has been long enough. My publishers are giving away 10 copies each to U.S. and Canadian residents; use the links below to submit your name for a chance to win.

US Residents: https://sweeps.penguinrandomhouse.com/enter/smitten-kitchen-every-day-early-copy-sweepstakes
Required legalese: No Purchase Necessary. Residents of the fifty United States + the District of Columbia, 18+. Ends October 6. See official rules here.

Canadian Residents: http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/win-early-copy-smitten-kitchen-every-day
Required legalese: No Purchase Necessary. Residents of Canada (excluding Quebec), 18+. Ends October 6.

2. I also get to share another video shot in my tiny kitchen by the very talented Ben Pliss. This is one of my favorite recipes from the book, one that has been particularly hard to keep to myself (seriously, check out these two comments from 2014, when I first made it and brought it to a potluck and then couldn’t tell you about it yet, rather rude, I know.)

Here’s the full story, excerpted from the book:

Most of us know the number one rule of cooking for a crowd: don’t make anything new or scary. Not the rack of lamb you’ve been eyeing, not the soufflé or anything else that’s going to send you into a vibe-ruining tizzy. This rule is probably doubly important if you’re invited to a potluck at a big-deal editor’s apartment with a dozen food writers you’re totally intimidated by, each of whom will arrive with his or her own signature dish. But this is not what I did. I’d like to pretend that it’s just because I’ve got an unshakable confidence in my cooking, or, at the least, kitchen, uh, “meatballs” of steel. Alas, it would be more accurate to say that I decided to make this dish you see here—a mash-up of a giant-beans-in-tomato-sauce dish from Greece and American-style baked ziti, with beans instead of noodles—because, well, it was really what I was in the mood to cook that day, and cravings trump rationality pretty much always around here, and especially when I am 6 months pregnant.

Before I left, I baked off a smaller amount for my husband and son for dinner, and my son — perhaps predictably for the then-kindergarten [now-3rd grade!] set — threw a fit. “I do not like beans.” “You’re going to love these.” “I won’t eat them.” “You should try them! You’ll see! There’s tomato sauce, and look at all of that cheese on top… It’s just like pizza.” “Pizza beans!!” (Do I even need to tell you that this did the trick?)

And thus this is the story of how I showed up to a potluck with a dish tagged “Tomato-Braised Gigante Bean Gratin,” but there isn’t a person there who will remember them (fondly, I hope) as anything but “Pizza Beans.”