The Bitten Word

Spiced Salmon Kebabs

Bon Appétit (June 2013)

So, to be honest, we don't really "get" kebabs.

We never really have. To us, it seems like an awful lot of work to cut everything and carefully thread it on a skewer, only to have to take it all off the skewer before you can eat it. And while we like the idea of flavor combinations you can create on a kebab -- say, lamb and cherry tomatoes and mint and zucchini -- it's not as if the flavors actually meld or combine while on the skewer. They're just...adjacent.

Personally, we're much more inclined to just throw everything in a grill basket and sear it that way.

Still, we zeroed in on these kebabs the moment we saw them in the June Bon Appétit. They look so fresh and light and summery.

We decided to set aside our prejudices and get to kebabbin'.

Baby Kale and Steak Salad

Food & Wine (May 2013)
 

Do you have go-to late night food?

We live in a neighborhood with a stretch of very busy nightlife. On weekend nights, there are lines of people snaking all up and down the street.

And there's an established post-bar ritual. After the kids (yes, we're calling them kids) leave the bars, they queue up for Jumbo Slice Pizza. 

What, pray tell, is Jumbo Slice Pizza? It is, by most accounts, the biggest piece of pizza you will ever be served for five dollars. It's huge, greasy, and when you've overindulged, it is phenomenal. (Word of advice: never, ever eat the Jumbo Slice in daytime hours. It is not up to sober food standards. Believe us, we have tried.) 

Our Jumbo Slice days are behind us. Mostly.

On a much classier note, Food & Wine's May issue has a beautiful, dark spread about late-night chef food. The chef is question is Paul Qui, the nicest-seeming Top Chef winner ever. The magazine features Paul and his fiancee cooking late-night dinners after they get home from his restaurant in Austin. 

Needless to say, Paul's not returning home to fire up the oven and make a Jumbo Slice. Instead, he makes thingd like this Baby Kale and Steak Salad. 

Mussels in Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Broth

Cooking Light (April 2013)

The truth is we've never really met a flavor of mussels (by which we mean the broth poured over them) that we didn't like.

White wine with garlic; fennel with chorizo; Thai spices and peanuts -- you name it, we've enjoyed it. 

So we definitely wanted to try out these Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Mussels from Cooking Light.

Barbecue Turkey Meatballs

Cooking Light (April 2013)

We try to pack our lunch nearly every day of the week.

It's part budget, part health and part being-tired-of-lunch-options-near-our-offices. 

Our regular cast of lunch characters includes various takes on tuna salads, turkey meatloaf, and endless variations of chicken and vegetables. And of course, leftovers. Lots of leftovers. 

We chose to make these Barbecue Turkey Meatballs precisely because we thought they would be a perfect addition to our lunch line-up. 

So we bought enough of the ingredients to make a triple batch of meatballs and got to work. 

Let's call it a lunch audition. 

Fluffy Omelets with Asparagus and Ramps

Cook's Illustrated (April 2013)

As the write-up accompanying this Cook's Illustrated recipe says, there are basically three kinds of omelets.

There's the French omelet, with its uniform, creamy crepe-like texture and sparse accoutrements.

There's the American diner omelet, with its thicker texture and slightly scorched exterior bursting with cheese and other fillings.

And then there's the fluffy omelet. It's light and delicate and ethereal.

Well, we've tried French omelets. And we've tried diner omelets.

It was time for us to round out the trifecta.

 

Chicken Tikka Masala at Home

Bon Appétit (April 2013)

Do you ever go to a restaurant intent on trying something new? But you end up ordering the same thing you always get, powerless to select any other item from the menu, even though you really want to branch out?

For us, the answer's yes. And Chicken Tikka Masala is Exhibit A.

Every time we go to an Indian restaurant, one of us ends up ordering the dish, with its sweet tomato sauce that's screaming for a garlic naan to be dunked into it. 

When we first spied this recipe in the current issue of Bon Appétit, we thought about doing one of our Delivery vs. Homemade Challenges, like we've done before for Pad Thai and General Tso's Chicken. 

But let's do the math for this Chicken Tikka Masala:

               17 ingredients
            + a four- to six-hour marinating time for the chicken
            + another hour plus or so to cook the chicken
            ---------------------------------------------------------------
            Without a doubt: Takeout was going to smoke homemade in cost and speed.

 

How would this recipe stand up against delivery in terms of taste? We have a hunch.

Oil-Poached Tuna with Fennel and Orange

Food & Wine (April 2013)

We really didn't want to like this dish.

Well, wait, let's back up. Of course we originally wanted to like this dish, which is why we selected it from the most recent Food & Wine. The first time we oil-poached fish had yielded mixed results, so we wanted to try it a second time. Plus, the fennel and orange sounded like a delicious complement to the tuna.

But once we got into the prep, we quickly fell out of love.

Broccoli Rabe with Sausage

Food & Wine (April 2013)

Here are some things we like right now:

• Temperatures are up. Goodbye, winter coats! 

• Mad Men is back! Though we're sad to say that you're breaking our hearts, Don Draper....

• Our garden is starting to show signs of life. Little bits of green are peeking up through the dirt. Let's hope they're not weeds. More on that next week.

• The Cherry Blossoms hit their peak in our nation's capital this week. Yesterday, before work, we biked down to see them. We're so fortunate to live in such a beautiful city. 

Yes, spring is here, and we couldn't be happer about it. 

But here's something we don't like quite as much: We've both been incredibly busy at work as of late. And work, she takes up a lot of time. Between that and our thirst for more time outside, it means less time in the kitchen. 

We're still cooking dinner at home most nights of the week. But during the work week, we need meals that we can throw together in a short amount of time, with little thinking required. 

We need meals like this Broccoli Rabe with Sausage. 

Bo Ssam with Ssam Sauce and Garlic-Scallion Sauce

Momofuku, via The New York Times

There was a time when the thought of serving dinner for 16 would have scared the daylights out of us.

But that's just the challenge we faced last weekend, when through a series of circumstances we ended up hosting a large group of our friends for dinner (well, part of a dinner, but more on that below).

We needed a dish that would easily serve a group on a Saturday night, and we didn't want to spend all day in the kitchen.

We decided to go with this Bo Ssam served with two sauces, a Ssam Sauce and a Garlic-Scallion Sauce.

Bittens, are you sitting down?

We hope so, because this dish is about to BLOW. YOUR. MINDS.

This dish is, in a word, epic.

Sardine Salad Sandwich

Food Network Magazine (April 2013)

We've mentioned before how much we enjoy tuna salad, whether it's a Dijon-Cilantro version, a lighter Mediterranean salad, or our go-to recipe, which includes some combination of red onion, sweet relish mustard and a hefty dose of curry powder.

But it had never, ever dawned on us that you could make a similar salad using other seafood -- especially sardines. Food Network Magazine's recipe for Sardine Salad Sandwiches to send us scrambling to the canned seafood aisle.