The Bitten Word

Freezing Fresh Basil and Other Herbs

After a summer of growing fresh herbs like basil, thyme, rosemary and mint, there's nothing more dispiriting than needing some for a recipe in the winter and being forced to buy a sad little (pricey!) container of herbs at the supermarket. 

Over the last few years, we've learned to preserve some of our herbs before the frost gets them, using very simple methods that keep the herbs recipe-ready in our freezer. 

Recently, our basil plants -- much like 70's-era Aerosmith, or, come to think of it, current-day Aerosmith -- were in a serious need of a trim. We took the shears to them, used our usual method and stowed them in the freezer.  

Here's what we did: 

Cooking with Bacon Grease + Late-Summer Succotash

A Bitten Word Recipe 

Now that we're in high summer, there's nothing we love more than grabbing some vegetables from our CSA or the farmers market, tossing them in a hot skillet and giving them a quick sauté.

This time of year, you can really throw just about any vegetables together in a skillet and it'll taste good. Tomatoes, corn and okra? Zucchini, eggplant and peppers? Summer squash, green beans and onions? You really can't go wrong.

But there's one key ingredient we're always sure to include no matter what summer veggies we throw in the pan. Even just a little bit of it can elevate any vegetables this time of year. It's essentially free, and we'll bet you already have it (or the makings of it) in your kitchen.

We call it summer's secret weapon.

What is this magic ingredient? We'll give you a hint: It's in that photo above of some summer vegetables we sautéed this weekend. See it?  No?

Want another hint?

Well, let's put it this way: Vegetarians can probably skip the rest of this post.

Overnight Iced Coffee at Home

Picture it: Summer 2008. The first Sex and the City movie was in theaters, Michael Phelps was swimming in obscurity, and Sarah Palin was a mostly unknown governor up in Alaska.

And we fell in love with Cold Brewed Iced Coffee -- and wrote about it here on the blog.

It's a simple idea: Put coffee grounds in a jar, fill that jar with water, and then place the jar in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, you have a jar full of strong but refreshing coffee. It instantly became a staple in our house during hot summer months.  

Since then, iced coffee has definitely been the blog item we've made most often in our own home (although sometimes we wish this cake held that distinction). When it's warm outside, we're brewing at least one batch of cold coffee each night. Sometimes we brew two batches.

But in browsing that old post a few weeks ago, we realized that we no longer make our iced coffee the same way we described back then. In 2008, we were brewing the coffee in jars, and then straining it through coffee filters. It was a messy affair that too often led to a mess on our countertops. Also: double straining, as we recommended then? For the birds!

So we took the suggestions of a reader and learned how to make better iced coffee at home. And we've never looked back. 

The Leftovers | Magazines From Other Lands, Salsa Lizano, 97 Orchard and More

Here are a few items that sparked our interests over the last month.

Magazines From Other Lands:  Donna Hay

We were so glad to hear from an employee at Donna Hay Magazine, a popular food magazine based in Australia, who reached out earlier this year and asked if we would be interested in checking out their February/March summer issue. 

It arrived in the mail while it was still cold here, and we nearly fainted from jealousy while looking at the beautiful popsicles they featured on their summer cover. 

We had never before read an issue of the magazine, though we have seen it occasionally in bookstores. We love what we've seen so far in this first issue. The photography is bright and the food looks like it's incredibly fresh.

If you aren't familiar with Donna Hay, she's like the Australian Martha Stewart. As you can see at the bottom of this cover image, Donna hosted and directed the welcome party for Oprah when she visited Australia this past winter.

Since the issue we read was a summer issue, the recipes are focused on grilling, salads and warm-weather produce. Many of the recipes in this issue also seem to have an Asian bent, like a Peppered Lamb with Ginger and Chili Noodles. (Or maybe Australian cuisine just tilts a little more Asian, given the proximity?)

We haven't yet cooked anything from the magazine. But now that it's grilling weather, we definitely will soon. If you want to check out Donna Hay for yourself, you can generally find it at larger bookstores with the other food magazines. You can also subscribe, but be warned, it's pricey for U.S. residents.

 

97 Orchard

One of the coolest museums (and maybe the least well-known) that we've seen in New York City is the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. In a former immigrant tenement house, the museum painstakingly and accurately recreates the apartments of three of the different immigrant families who lived there over the course of several decades. Focusing on just a single address -- 97 Orchard Street -- it's an amazing window on the rapidly changing face of New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

If you're in New York, definitely add the Tenement Museum to your itinerary.

In the meantime, though, you have got to read this book, called 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement. It was published in June 2010, Zach's mom and stepdad gave it to us for Christmas, and Zach finally picked it up last month.

Author Jane Zeigelman uses Census records, diary notes, newspaper accounts and even some interviews with family descendents to describe the foodways of these different families -- German Protestant, Italian, Irish, and two Jewish families, one from Russia and one from Germany. It is a fascinating account of the ingredients and recipes these families relied on, where and how they shopped for food, and the role that cuisine played in their cultures.

What's even more intriguing are the ways American cuisine at large was shaped by these different waves of immigrant cuisine. You'll find out why we owe our restaurant culture to the Germans, why we can thank Jewish immigrants for our sandwich meats, and just how much Irish immigrants relied on potatoes (seriously, they ate a lot of potatoes).

It's a wonderful read!

 

Salsa Lizano

Salsa Lizano was featured in the April Fine Cooking and we were excited to see it there. Several years ago, when our friends Regi and Kate travelled to Costa Rica, they brought us back a bottle of this "brown vegetable-based sauce" (worst description ever?). Never fear, it's sweet and spicy and smoky -- and we loved using it in our kitchen!

If you can find a bottle at your supermarket in the International aisle, it's worth picking up and trying. (We have yet to find it in our nation's capital.) You can also order it online.

Best Easter Brunch Ideas

With Easter coming up this Sunday, food magazines are full of lunch and brunch ideas to fit the occasion. We're actually having some friends over for brunch on Sunday, and we're excited because Zach's mom is sending us an Easter ham from the Loveless Cafe in Nashville!

Here are some of our favorite recipes for an Easter brunch. Whether you're planning more of a breakfast-y brunch or a lunch-y brunch (or some combination of both), we think you'll love these dishes!

Have any of your own faves?  Let us know in the comments!

If you want a breakfast-y brunch...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Best Blueberry Muffins
• Bacon with Citrus Glaze
• Crusty Buttermilk Biscuits
• Granny Ragland's Chocolate Gravy
• Eggs with Ramps and Asparagus
• Strawberry Scones
• Breakfast Buttercups
• Classic Eggs Benedict
• Kentucky Mimosas

If you want a lunch-y brunch...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Shaved Raw Asparagus with Parmesan Dressing
• Bourbon Mint Tea
• Sugar Snap Pea and Radish Salad
• Pineapple-Mustard Glazed Ham
• Spring Shells and Cheese
• Butterflied, Rolled and Roasted Leg of Lamb with Fresh Mint Sauce
• Popovers
• Perfect Carrot Cake
• Tres Cocoas Leches Cake

 

 

 

 

25 New Uses for Kitchen Scissors

When we moved into our first apartment together, Clay may have brought a collection of food magazines, but Zach brought the scissors. 

In what was a new concept for Clay, Zach and his family use kitchen scissors constantly, to achieve all kinds of tasks. 

Well, it stuck. We now have five pairs, and they're almost always dirty because we use them so often. Some are nice, while others are cheapies. The best pair we have are Wustoff Pull-Apart Shears ($19 on Amazon.com), which we love because they're sharp and they clean easily.  

So what are we using these scissors for?  Well, all sorts of things. For several months now, we've been keeping a list.  So here are 25 ways we use kitchen scissors at home. 

Test-Driving Cookbooks

Our names are Zach and Clay, and we're cookbookaholics.

Well, actually, that's not true. Clay is the cookbookaholic. Zach just has to live with the scores of cookbooks overflowing our bookshelves.

It's gotten to the point that we have far too many. In fact, some of them we've never even used in the kitchen. Yet.

Heck, we even resolved this year to either familiarize ourselves with our collection or purge the books -- a resolution borne both out of a lack of space, but also the sheer guilt of the unread books, staring longingly at us from shelf.

But athough we already have too many books, our situation has gotten better of late.  And here's why.

The Vegetable Board: How We Stopped Wasting Food

 

One of our culinary resolutions for this year was simple: "Don't let food go to waste."

Like many people, we were buying too much food, letting it languish in the fridge and then throwing it out once it had gone bad.

This was especially true when it came to vegetables. Between a weekly trip to the farmers market and weekly deliveries from our CSA six months of the year, we're often faced with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to veggies.

But our biggest problem was that things would go into our fridge and we'd totally forget about them.  Rooting through our fridge presented a constant set of surprises. "OMG. Did you know there's a kohlrabi in here?"

So we needed a solution. Hence, The Vegetable Board.

Send Us Your Thanksgiving Photos! Plus: Our Last-Minute Tips

If you're making a dish out of a food magazine this year, we'd love to hear about it! Send us a picture of your dish and a few sentences about how it turned out and we'll feature a collection of reader submissions here on the blog. 

With the big day upon us, there's no shortage of Thanksgiving advice.  Magazines are giving it, your coworkers are giving it, and your mother-in-law is definitely giving it.

Regardless, here are a few things we find useful in putting together a big meal that hopefully can be of help to you, too.

Kitchen Tip: Mincing Garlic

:: Cue Infomercial Theme Song ::

Are you tired of working for hours mincing garlic into tiny pieces? 

Can't stand your stinky hands after a day of hacking away at those cloves? 

Do you ever find yourself thinking, "There must be an easier way"???

Look no further!

We met a TV food personality (revealed below) earlier this summer who imparted to us several pieces of wisdom. But there's one that we've used pretty much every week since meeting her.  

Rather than using a knife to mince garlic for dishes, she uses a Microplane. It's a trick she picked up from lauded DC chef Michel Richard, and as she said, "If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me."  Us too!

If you don't have one, a Microplane is a handy tool in the kitchen. It makes zesting fruits an absolute breeze and is a fantastic device for grating cheese.

We have two kinds.  The first is a Microplane Grater/Zester ($11.95 at Amazon.com) that we use mostly for mincing garlic and for zesting fruit. The second is a Microplane Course Grater ($13.95 at Amazon.com) that we use primarily for shredding cheese, but can also be used for cutting garlic into larger pieces.

Microplaning garlic is an easy shortcut that doesn't diminish the garlic flavor.  Of course, there are still dishes where we want larger pieces of garlic, and for that we pull out a knife, but in most day-to-day cooking, the Microplane does the trick.

So what chef taught this kitchen trick to us?