The Bitten Word

Easy Microwave Chocolate Cake

Food Network Magazine (April 2011)

So here's the good news: You can make a chocolate cake in your microwave in less than five minutes!

And here's the bad news: You can make a chocolate cake in your microwave in less than five minutes. 

That's right.  

Got a craving for chocolate cake? Whip one up! It only takes a few minutes.

But if you're like us and need very little excuse to make yourself a treat, well, you should look away now. Because not only are these microwave chocolate cakes easy, they're also pretty darn good. 

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. 

Back Into the Garden

Our first attempt at gardening was a valiant effort, but also an utter failure. 

As we shared at the end of last summer, our beans struggled to produce and varmints stole our green tomatoes before they could ever mature. In the end, we harvested a few pounds of green beans and two tiny, tasteless tomatoes. 

Undaunted, we're going back into the garden! For one, we promised to. But also, we want to have at least one semi-successful garden under our belts so we can be those people who smugly talk how "OUR tomatoes" are so much better than what we can get at the supermarket. (Just kidding; we hope to never be those people.)

Anyway, Garden Project 2011 is in full swing.  Here's what we've done so far.

Mediterranean Chickpea Burgers

Everyday Food (March 2011)

Regular readers know we're usually not mean-spirited or snarky about recipes.

Sure, there have been some instances where a food mag recipe didn't turn out as tasty as we'd hoped (like with this Gingery Sweet Potato Soup or, more recently, with that Stovetop Chicken Pie). And there have certainly been plenty of times when we majorly goofed up and the result was disappointing (as with this Beet, Rhubarb and Orange Salad or the hilariously disastrous Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate-Peanut Butter Frosting and Peanut Butter Brittle). There have even been occasions where we realized there was an error in the recipe, like with these Coffee Crunch Bars.

But we typically stay upbeat and positive about it.

Not today, kiddies.

Ladies and gentlemen, these Mediterranean Chickpea Burgers are so bad -- so epically atrocious -- that we took one bite of them and knew one thing with absolutely certainty: These are the worst thing we've ever made on The Bitten Word.

Cookbook Winner! Plus an Interview with Zach and Clay

Thanks to all of you who entered this month's giveaway!  We loved reading your comments about the March magazine covers. Though all the magazines won praise, the two favorites were clearly Bon Appetit's mouthwatering mac 'n' cheese (in that adorable little crock!) and the beautiful produce on the cover of Martha Stewart Living. 

Before we announce the winner, you may be interested to read an interview with us over on the Gourmet Live site. It's a short Q&A that also includes a peek inside our refrigerator. (We know, we know: it's weird that we have three dozen eggs at the moment).

If you follow us on Facebook or on Twitter you may have seen us share a link to the interview last week. If you follow us on Facebook, we typically share links to all new posts from the blog, as well as a little bit of extra content.  Over on Twitter, we share a lot more about what we're up to, including everything from what we're watching to where we're traveling.

So who won this month's giveaway?

March Covers Gallery + Win a Copy of the Beat This! Cookbook

Can you feel it?

Spring is marching toward us and before you know it, grass will be green again, trees will be full and we'll be itching for the start of summer. You can see the approaching change of season on the cover of this month's magazines, which, for the most part, feature bright, vibrant dishes. 

Check out the gallery of magazine covers below, tell us which is your favorite, and you could win this month's giveaway! 

For March, we're giving away a copy of the BEAT THIS! COOKBOOK: Absolutely Unbeatable Knock-'em-Dead Recipes for the Very Best Dishes by Ann Hodgman. 

We love the premise of the book, in that Hodgman claims to have found the absolutely best recipe for a wide variety of dishes.  

There's everything from "'Nothing to Be Ashamed of' Artichoke Dip," to two kinds of fried chicken (one traditional, but another made with rum, ginger, soy sauce and lime), to our favoritely-named dish in the book, "Not-Controversial-At-All Apple Crisp, It Turns Out (former Very Controversial Apple Crisp)."

It also happens to be a very funny book, which goes a long way with us. 

Want a copy of Beat This!? Leave a comment telling us which of the magazine covers below is your favorite, and why. Comments will be accepted through midnight on Sunday, March 20, and we'll announce a winner early next week.

On to the gallery!

Steamed Pork Buns

Fine Cooking (February/March 2011) 

Growing up in the small-town South, our Chinese food options (at least in the 1980s and 90s) were pretty limited. The kinds of Chinese places in our hometowns were bland, strip-mall eateries with long buffets filled with steaming trays of overcooked brown noodles; limp, watery vegetables and greasy, fried egg rolls. (And because it was the South, you were just as likely to find trays of fried okra or mac 'n' cheese alongside the Beef Lo Mein and General Tso's.) 

It's not that those suburban Chinese buffets were bad food. It's just that they weren't really anything special.

But our entire notion of Chinese-American cuisine got turned on its ear about four years ago, the first time we ate at Shun Lee West on New York's Upper West Side. It's not that Shun Lee is the most authentic Chinese place in New York -- it's dozens of blocks from Chinatown, and the original Shun Lee Palace only opened in 1971. But it's the first time we ever realized that Chinese food could be upscale and made well, that Chinese cuisine could highlight fresh, great-tasting ingredients. (By the way, our other life-changing Chinese food experience was House of Nan King in San Francisco. Absolutely phenomenal.)

That's a long-winded way of saying that you need to make these pork buns, and you need to make them today.

Sweet Potato Doughnuts

Food & Wine (March 2011)

Many times over the past few years, we’ve considered making doughnuts.  But the timing was never right. Either we didn’t have enough time or the right occasion to go to the trouble. 

This past weekend, though, it was finally time to make the doughnuts.

We were having a lazy weekend at home, with few plans.  And these Sweet Potato Doughnuts from Food & Wine were calling out to us.  

First things first, though: If you want to make these doughnuts, you need to set your expectations. 

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.

Black Rice Risotto

Food Network Magazine (March 2011)

For us, risotto is a splurge food. 

We make it for special occasions, or when guests are coming to dinner.  

And there are recipes that we love, especially the Risotto with Butternut Squash and Sage that we made back in 2008. If you haven’t made that recipe, it’s really lovely, especially for this time of year, when there's still a bit of a nip in the air.  

Because we consider risotto a special occasion food, we expect it to be special when we make it. We want a risotto that blows us away, that rewards us for the constant stirring, and makes us want to grab a fork and dig right into the pan. 

This, sadly, ain't that kind of risotto.