The Bitten Word

Sugar Roasted Peaches

Fine Cooking (August/September 2012)

Fresh peach season is one of our absolute favorite times of year at the farmers market. But it's September now, which means fresh peaches are quickly dwindling from produce stands.

Depending on where you live, though, you might still be able to find a few stragglers from your favorite peach farmer. 

And you know what that means: Ruuuuuuuun!!! 

Heirloom Tomato Salad with Anchovy Vinaigrette

Food & Wine (August 2012)

The latest issue of Food & Wine has a little feature in the front, presented not as a recipe, but as a little tidbit, about how to make a traditional fish sauce. It goes something like this: Pack anchovies in a barrel, let them sit in the sun for a year, and voila! Fish sauce! (Don't worry, neighbors, we're not about to start fish sauce production in the backyard.)  

We suspect that we've already lost a good portion of readers with this headline, due to the presence of the dreaded anchovy in the recipe title. 

Are you team anchovy, or do you flee in horror at the mere sound of their name? 

If you're the latter, we think you should buck up and give this recipe a go. Here's why. 

Spicy Basil-Beef Salad

Cooking Light (July 2012) 

We very much enjoy reading chef memoirs. It's always interesting to see the factors that shaped well-known foodies, and there are usually several good tips and pieces of advice that you can carry into your own kitchen and your own life at large.

We recently both read Marcus Samuellson's new book "Yes, Chef."  It's a nice look into the background and mindset of a chef whose extraordinary life trajectory -- born in Ethiopia, adopted by Swedish parents and raised in Sweden, and now trying to remake the food scene in Harlem (anchored by his restaurant Red Rooster, where we actually had brunch several months back) -- has given him an extremely unique outlook on food. 

One of the ideas that Samuellson talks about is the notion that food isn't just something to be tasted. You have to think about presentation, about how the food looks on the plate. You have to think about color.

It's certainly not the first time we've ever thought about that idea. But we definitely had that idea in mind as we made this Spicy Basil-Beef Salad. 

Grilled Peach, Vidalia Onion and Bacon Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

Food & Wine (July 2012)

Let's be honest: You'd have to work pretty hard not to love a dish whose title includes bacon, grilled peaches and onions, and buttermilk dressing. You could pretty much throw all those ingredients in a bowl and satisfy just about everybody. 

And that's essentially what this salad is: Awesome ingredients, thrown together in a bowl. And you're gonna love it.

Grilled Kale Salad with Ricotta and Plums

Bon Appétit (July 2012)

We're definitely no strangers to grilled salads. There's a Grilled Caesar Salad we've been eating for years now, and we loved the Grilled Butter Lettuce with Buttermilk-Chive Dressing we made a while back.

And even the idea of grilled kale isn't that crazy: It's essentially the same as some Tuscan Kale Chips we tried about three years ago. 

But when we saw this Grilled Kale Salad with Ricotta and Plums in the July Bon Appétit, we immediately wanted to make it. For one thing, we had a ton of curly kale from our most recent CSA share. On top of that, the combination of the cheese, the grilled kale and the fresh fruit sounded refreshing and different. 

Quinoa Salad with Asparagus, Edamame and Radish

adapted from Fine Cooking (June 2012)

Our friend Jim just graduated from business school, and we invited him over for a celebratory dinner. Nothing fancy -- just a few friends for backyard cocktails and some food on the grill. (We did do one little thing to make it special. We made Jim's self-proclaimed all-time favorite cake.)

The biggest rule for the dinner? No indoor cooking. It was a steamy Saturday, and we didn't want to turn our apartment into a hotbox.

So we were very pleased to come across the feature in the June Fine Cooking on grain salads. The mag proclaims them "the new summer side," and we couldn't agree more.

Edamame Falafel with Spicy Coriander Sauce: A Story in Three Acts

adapted from Everyday Food

Act 1: Wednesday Night, 8:30 p.m.

We're hungry.

We've both had busy days at our jobs, and we forced ourselves to go to the gym afterwards. Now it's late, and we're ready to eat. Fortunately, we've planned ahead: Earlier in the week we purchased all the ingredients to make these Edamame Falafel with Spicy Coriander Sauce.

Three facts make us think this dish will be a home run: We love edamame; we aspire to eat more vegetarian meals; and this dish only takes 35 minutes.

It is firmly in our sweet spot. We are ready to cook.

So we get to work. The chickpeas have been soaking all day, so we pulse them with edamame, parsley, cumin and salt. Falafel are rolled into balls. Oil is heated. Coriander sauce (a mix of sour cream, mayo, coriander and cayenne) is made.

And this is what happens:

Spring Panzanella with Asparagus

Food & Wine (April 2012)

The farmers market can be confounding this time of year, at least in our neck of the woods on the East Coast. It's sunny and springlike outside, but most of the produce at the market is still last fall's root vegetables and fruits. Spring -- so tantalizingly close, yet so far away!

That all started to change this week. Walking through the Dupont Circle farmers market yesterday, we spied the surest sign that spring has sprung: bunches of asparagus.

Young, tender little green stalks, bunched together like small bouquets.

We just had to make this Spring Panzanella.

Radicchio and Cauliflower Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs

Fine Cooking (December 2011/January 2012) 

January is a cruel month for salads. Just when you're trying to eat better and more healthfully, good lettuce becomes hardest to find. The rest of the produce can be wan and unexciting, and you valiantly abstain from all the good stuff ("Oh, no blue cheese for me, thanks!", "Could I get that dressing on the side?").  

Every bite of a January salad can feel like choking down a resolution.

But there's good news.

This Radicchio and Cauliflower Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs is a welcome break from the sad iceberg lettuce of January. It's just the sort of New Year's salad we can get behind.

Thanksgiving 2011 Recipe Index: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

Our Fakesgiving + Our Favorite Holiday Dishes

A little more than a week ago, we had Thanksgiving.

Or really, we had Fakesgiving, our annual tradition with friends and family where we pack as many seats as possible into our apartment, make a bunch of new dishes from November food magazines, and see what everyone likes and dislikes. This year, there were 13 of us. Zach's mom and sister came and helped cook the day before (we literally could not have done it without them), and we made 17 new Thanksgiving dishes. 

(This year's Fakesgiving crowd, minus the two of us.)

Below, you'll see the initial list of recipes we started with: more than 250 Thanksgiving recipes from 10 magazines. To be included in the index, the recipes had to be part of the magazine's Thanksgiving coverage. So this is not meant to be comprehensive -- there are many more recipes in this month's magazines. If the recipe is hyperlinked, it is available online. If not, it's not there yet. 

In preparation for this year's Thanksgiving coverage, we've also created a page of Our Favorite Holiday Recipes. There, you'll find a collection of dishes from Thanksgivings, Fakesgivings and holiday dinner parties past. We'll be updating it as we introduce new content and recipes on the site.

Enjoy the index!