The Bitten Word

In Praise of Milquetoast: Cucumber Salad

Cooking Light (June 2013)

Cucumber salads come in a number of forms.

There's the incredibly bracing sort, so tart from vinegar and acid that your face puckers a bit. 

There's the cucumber salad that pits bracing against sweet in an epic battle to see if it will first pucker your face or rot your teeth (kind of our favorite, if we're choosing). 

And there's the bland, the watery, the "is there any dressing on this or did you just serve me a bowl of sliced cucumbers?" salad. 

We picked up a bunch of cucumbers at the farmers market recently, and while trying to figure out what to do with them, we ran across this recipe in Cooking Light. We've never featured a cucumber salad here on the blog, so we gave it a shot. There's nothing out of the ordinary about this recipe: sliced cucumbers and green and red peppers get tossed with oil, white wine, lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper, as well as some herbs. It's a pretty basic take on the dish. 

But here's the thing about this cucumber salad -- we find it to be perfectly balanced. It's not too sweet, not too tart. The dressing doesn't overpower the vegetables. There's no secret, star ingredient smuggled into the mix to set your taste buds on fire. It's a standard, very good, absolutely ordinary cucumber salad. And we loved it for that.

Creamy Onion Puree: A Reliable Stand-in For Mashed Potatoes?

Southern Living (May 2013)

Truth be told, it's probably been years since we had mashed potatoes.

Not only are they on the unhealthy, carb-heavy end of the spectrum, we just don't like them that much. Oh sure, we like butter, salt and gravy just as much as the next guys. But the actual potatoes? Eh.

So when we saw this recipe in Southern Living, we were intrigued -- and skeptical. Could an onion puree really be an improvement on mashed potatoes?

At first, we assumed this was meant as a healthier alternative to potatoes, but that isn't the intention here. The puree has plenty of fat to give it flavor -- there's three tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of olive oil. Thyme is also in the mix for additional flavor.

Turns out, it takes a whole lot of onions to get four small servings of Onion Puree. The recipe calls for six large onions. Slicing them, we thought that surely this would make a huge bowl of pureed onions. But then they cook down and down and down, into a relatively small side dish. 

But a side dish we loved. The finished dish is buttery and delicious, with a wonderful, rich flavor that's so much deeper and more interesting than plain ol' mashed potatoes. Since sweet onions are used, the onion flavor is not overpowering. In fact it's very smooth, balanced by the herbs and fat. 

Want to mix up your mashed potato routine?

Ditch the taters and reach for the onions. 

Stir-Fried Asparagus with Shiitake Mushrooms

Cook's Illustrated (May 2013)

When asparagus arrives each spring, much heralded as a sign of great things to come, we gobble it up every chance we get, buying several pounds a week at our farmers market.

But we always feel a bit of pressure with the first asparagus of the season. It's a bit pricey at times and we want to use it way that really shows it off. Not, horror of horrors, overcooking it within an inch of its life. 

We grill it, roast it, steam it, eat it raw and stir fry it. All have had their triumphs and pitfalls in our kitchen. 

Cook's Illustrated has taken the guess work out of at least one of these methods. 

Ladies and gents, it's time to stir fry some asparagus. 

Miso-Glazed Cauliflower and Kale Salad

Vegetarian Times (May 2013)

Our friend Rachel, of Buffalo Chicken Dip fame, recently sent us a decidedly un-Buffalo-Chicken-Dip-like email:

I know you probably get suggestions like this all the time, but if you're looking for a food magazine to fill the EDF-shaped hole in your life, may I suggest Vegetarian Times. I bought a subscription a few months ago. I'm one issue in and totally hooked. Great classic vegetarian options plus if you want to get crazy, there are vegan and raw recipes as well. I made a veggie burger from lentils that was amazing (and oddly the consistency of ground beef. It also froze really well. I could go on.)

Rachel wasn't the first person to suggest we check out Vegetarian Times. Many readers have recommended it to us over the years. So we picked up a copy of the April/May issue when we were in a bookstore recently. (Kids, ask your parents what a bookstore was.)

What we found was a very enjoyable cooking magazine that just happens to not have any meat in it. Maybe it's partly because of the time of year -- it's full-on spring, and we've got fresh veggies on the brain -- but there are actually a host of dishes we'd be eager to make from the current issue. There's a feature on spring cooking in Ireland (from the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork), with a gorgeous-looking Pea and Coriander Soup and a simple Cabbage, Sultana and Fennel Salad that looks delicious.

There's a feature on cooking with fresh herbs that's truly packed with tips ("10 more ways to use basil...," "10 more ways to use rosemary...").

And there's a vegan-cooking piece from Mark Bittman (who is literally everywhere -- we have a working theory that he's some sort of vegan vampire), which has a vegan burger recipe we might even consider trying -- no small statement after our last attempt at homemade meatless burgers.

But for our inaugural recipe from Vegetarian Times, we decided to go whole hog (er, uh, whole tofu?). We picked something from the feature on raw foods.

 

Spicy Glazed Onions

Fine Cooking (April/May 2013)

When's the last time you put down your fork and said, "Gosh, those are good onions"?

Have you ever said that?

Onions tend to get relegated to "ingredient" rather than "side dish." Nearly every recipe we make, it seems, starts with a diced onion. But we almost never see onions as a featured star.

If you're looking to change that, start with these Spicy Glazed Onions.

Honey-Roasted Radishes

Fine Cooking (April/May 2013)

We read somewhere recently that Americans waste up to 40 percent of the food we purchase -- nearly half the food in this country gets thrown in the garbage.

We like to think we're not that wasteful around the Bitten Word household (partly because we never met a leftover we didn't like, or wouldn't try to reinvent as a second dish).

Still, like everyone else, we go digging into the crisper occasionally only to find the remnants of bygone vegetables. Our Vegetable Board helps, especially in warmer months when the veggies are coming fast and furious from our CSA.  Those six months of the year are a bit of a vegetable gauntlet, as we race to use the vegetables before they spoil. (But don't worry, after too much winter, we're ready for the fresh produce onslaught. Bring. It. On.)

Radishes can seem especially challenging. We love them raw in salads, but rarely think to cook them as a side dish. Now, thanks to a feature in the April/May issue of Fine Cooking called "Radishes Can Take the Heat," we've got more than enough good ideas.

Chinese Long Beans with Cracked Black Pepper

Food & Wine (March 2013)

When we went to China a year and a half ago, we were a little obsessed with green beans. 

We ate them as side dishes at several different meals. Sometimes, they were cooked with Sichuan peppercorns, imparting the beans with a lemony, oddly pleasant mouth-numbing effect. Other times, they were prepared more simply, with plenty of black pepper.

These Chinese Long Beans with Cracked Black Pepper from Food & Wine are the latter -- no mouth-numbing here. Just a straight-up green bean dish that, as F&W puts it, uses pantry staples to amp up a simple vegetable dish.

Stewed Scallions and Tomatoes

Food Network Magazine (March 2013)

We both grew up eating a lot of dishes described as "stewed."

Stewed greens, stewed tomatoes, stewed potatoes, stewed apples, stewed prunes -- one of those managed to show up at every family reunion, church potluck or big Sunday dinner.

It always meant the same thing: something cooked in a liquid, and often, cooked within an inch of its life. Don't misunderstand: Those stewed dishes were delicious. Soft and creamy, like a braise without the dry-heat cooking. (But they could also be mushy and bland. What is it about some strains of old-school Southern cooking that take wonderful ingredients and then proceed to cook all the flavor right out of them?) 

We chose this recipe  -- Stewed Scallions and Tomatoes -- because we applaud Food Network Magazine for using the word "stewed" to describe a dish. Let's face it: It's not the world's most appetizing word.

The other reason we wanted to try this? It's an unusual use of scallions, to cook them whole, as an actual vegetable. We were eager to try it.

By the way, before we get to the dish: Did you know that stewed also means drunk? We're tooooootally going to start using this. "I have to go home, I'm stewed!"

Let's get stewed and chat about these scallions and tomatoes. 

Artichoke and Pea Sauté

Cooking Light (March 2013)

It's a snow day here in our nation's capital.

A winter storm is whipping its way through the area, so we're inside the house, still wearing pajamas, and dreaming about warmer days. And pancakes. But mostly warmer days. 

We've been troopers this winter -- not complaining about the cold (well, not complaining too much about the cold). But we're ready for change, for sun, for mornings that don't require four layers of clothing.

It's March. It's time. 

And with dreams of spring weather come dreams of spring foods. We're craving them. Earlier this week, in a moment of spring desperation, we bought a pound of fresh snap peas from our supermarket. Though the quality wasn't great (nothing like the peas we'll see at farmers markets come April and May), they were good enough for us, steamed, with a simple drizzle of citrus -- a literal taste of spring. 

Those same dreams of warmer days are what drew us to this Artichoke and Pea Sauté. It screams [use your best old timey voice here]: "Spring's a comin'!" 

And the best part? The ingredients come from the freezer section. 

Foolproof Soft Boiled Eggs

Cook's Illustrated (February 2013)

There's always a better way to cook something.

That could pretty much be the mantra of Cook's Illustrated, which is always on the hunt for the absolute best, most replicable, most consistent kitchen techniques. 

Take a soft-boiled egg. We all know how to make one, right? Drop a cold egg into boiling water for five minutes, remove it, wash under cold water, and crack open.

Cook's wasn't satisfied. That method is inconsistent at best, and if you want to cook two eggs, or four, or six, forget it. That method doesn't work anymore.

So Cook's set out to find a better way. 

The quest for the Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg is a perfect illustration of the exacting standards of Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen. In fact, developing a new method for the P.S.B.E. was a big part on a fascinating feature in the New York Times Sunday magazine last fall. Here's an excerpt:

I was at the meeting for the unveiling of the Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg. It’s one of those recipes that isolate the weird, wayward essence of the Cook’s Illustrated project, a seemingly boner-proof preparation that, when fixed with [Editor Christopher] Kimball’s unsparing eye, reveals itself to be fundamentally broken. And therein lies the narrative arc of the C.I. recipe — invariably it begins with the insuperable flaw, that through toil and experimentation is resolved in a sudden, improbable revelation that, in-house, is known as the aha moment. ...

The P.S.B.E. is slated for the January/February issue and falls to Andrea Geary, from the magazine’s stable of overeducated, underpaid editor/cooks who research, test and write the stories. While the 20ish editors around the table resemble bright children at a model U.N. convocation, Geary, a hale, wiry 46, is the one you want beside you aboard the helicopter when smoke begins to billow from the controls. Her mien expresses unfussy competence; before coming to the magazine, Geary cooked at an inn on the Scottish Highlands, roasting venison in a coal-burning stove for hunting parties of drunk Italians. Even among the high-strung editorial ranks at C.I., Geary is considered a little intense.

If you’re wondering what could be especially difficult about boiling an egg, you should have heard her. The Flaw — the unappetizing probability of either a chalky yolk or a runny white — occurs because the yolk gets cooked before the white, and the desired temperature window turns out to be harrowingly small, so the ideal preparation must set the white while leaving the yolk custardy, and not do it too rapidly. Oh, and tossing a fridge-temperature egg into boiling water will cause the air inside to expand and sometimes crack it, and apparently no two cooks can agree on exactly what simmering means, and third, the number of eggs must be compensated for by adjusting the amount of boiling water to keep cooking time constant. Geary recited further facts imperiling the P.S.B.E., and after a while the difficulty of boiling an egg at home with anything like success sounded to be on the order of a bone-marrow transplant. This appeared to please everyone, particularly Kimball, and the meeting moved on to Dressing Up Meatloaf.

“Most magazines don’t write about failure, but we do,” Kimball told me later. “Disaster in the kitchen puts the reader at ease, and that’s why we start our recipes with it.” 

We were sucked in by that story (you should read all of it!), and we couldn't wait to try the P.S.B.E. for ourselves when the issue finally arrived.