Boil & Bake Journal

A cooking journal

Recipes worth
standing at the
stove for.

Boil & Bake is a small cooking journal from Margot Halverson — a former pastry cook who left the line for the page. The recipes here are slow, tested, and written the way I'd talk you through them in your own kitchen.

Browse all recipes About the writer

A loaf of dark-crusted banana bread on parchment, sliced to show a tender amber crumb. — Latest · Breakfast & Brunch

Brown Butter Banana Bread

Browning the butter takes seven extra minutes and turns ordinary banana bread into something you keep going back to. The whole-wheat flour and a fat pinch of salt do the rest.

More from the kitchen

A fillet of salmon with a deeply caramelized miso glaze, plated over white coconut rice and scattered with sesame and scallion.

Mains

Miso-Glazed Salmon with Coconut Rice

A high-broiler trick that gets you the lacquered top of a restaurant glaze without the marinating-overnight song and dance. Coconut rice underneath catches every drip.

28 min · serves 4

A dark chocolate cake with a glossy crackled top, sprinkled with flaky salt and dusted with powdered sugar.

Desserts

Chocolate Olive Oil Cake with Flaky Salt

Dense, fudgy, dairy-free, and made with whatever decent olive oil you have on the counter. The flaky salt on top is the entire personality of the cake.

45 min · serves 1 9-inch cake

A whole roast chicken with crisp golden-brown skin in a cast iron pan, surrounded by halved potatoes and lemon wedges.

Mains

Lemon-Herb Roast Chicken with Schmaltz Potatoes

A dry-brined, high-heat roast chicken with potatoes cooked underneath in the rendered fat. The skin shatters; the potatoes are obscene.

90 min · serves 4

A rectangular puff pastry tart topped with deeply golden caramelized onions and melted gruyère, cut into squares.

Mains

Caramelized Onion & Gruyère Tart

Three pounds of yellow onions, an hour of slow heat, and a sheet of all-butter puff. With a green salad and a glass of cold white, it's dinner.

90 min · serves 6 as a starter

A stack of chocolate chip cookies with golden crisp edges, gooey chocolate centers, and flaky salt on top.

Desserts

Brown-Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brown butter, brown sugar, dark chocolate chunks, and a 24-hour rest in the fridge. Worth every minute of waiting.

34 min · serves 18 cookies

A thick slice of toasted sourdough piled with deep red roasted tomatoes and a torn ball of creamy burrata, finished with basil.

Snacks & Sides

Slow-Roasted Tomato & Burrata Toast

Cherry tomatoes spend ninety low-and-slow minutes in olive oil with garlic and a few branches of thyme. Pile them on charred sourdough with cold burrata; eat outside.

100 min · serves 4 generous toasts

From the kitchen

A working ledger,
not a magazine.

Every headnote is written the way I'd talk you through the dish in your own kitchen — what to watch for, what to skip, what to do if you don't have the right pan. Tested in a small Portland kitchen with a temperamental gas oven.

More about Margot →

Recipes published: 42
Avg. test runs: 4.6; per recipe
Most-cooked: Olive-oil cake, again
Pans broken in: 3; two cast iron, one copper