The Bitten Word

Strawberry, Almond and Pea Salad

Bon Appétit (June 2013)

We spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about vinaigrettes.

Because we have so many salad greens at our disposal right now, from the garden and our CSA, almost every night we do the vinaigrette hokey-pokey: you put a little of this in a jar, a little of that in a jar, and then you shake it all about.

Our basic vinaigrette tip: Use a basic ratio of 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. If it doesn't taste good, just keep adding ingredients until it does. Eventually, you'll get there (or you'll need to find a bigger jar). 

With vinaigrette on the brain, we were very pleased with the one on this Strawberry, Almond and Pea Salad. It's a simple mix of white wine vinegar, whole grain mustard, poppy seeds, sugar and vegetable oil. It's unlike our typical vinaigrettes, which are darker and heavier. It's really a simple, sweet poppy seed dressing. (Normally, we're not huge poppy seed dressing fans. The store-bought varieties can tend to be off-puttingly sweet. But we adored this one. Perhaps because it's paired with such amazing flavors.)

 

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'.

Satan's Circus

Bon Appétit (May 2013)

Sometimes, we just can't help but make a dish just because of its name. 

This time, we've fallen for a cocktail called Satan's Circus, featured in Bon Appétit as part of a story about hotel bars. Satan's Circus comes from the NoMad Hotel's bar in New York City.  

(Incidentally, a book called Satan's Circus is about "a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway." Though NoMad isn't in Midtown, we're assuming the cocktail takes its name from that infamous neighborhood.) 

The drinks mixes rye, cherry liqueur, a chile-infused Aperol and lemon juice for a drink that has a wonderful heat. The spicy-bitter combination is really excellent.

We're not quite wishing you vice, sin, and depravity for your weekend ahead, but we recommend that you mix yourself a Satan's Circus and see where the weekend takes you. 

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.

New York Sour

Bon Appétit (April 2013)

Sometimes you want a cocktail to take the edge off.

Sometimes you want one in order to try a new ingredient, or a new kind of alcohol.

And sometimes you want a cocktail just 'cause it looks really freaking cool.

Enter: the New York Sour. 

Brown Sugar Banana Parfaits with Maple-Glazed Pecans

Bon Appétit (March 2013)

Today marks the official first day of spring, but you wouldn't know it here in D.C. We're still bundling up every morning for our commute, bracing for the cold weather. And even if a few daffodils have started opening up, the trees are still bare. 

We've been forcing the season, trying to will warmer days into being. We're thinking spring produce, grilling and ice cream. 

When Regi and Kate came over for dinner, we wanted to make a dessert that was special. (It's not every day that they can get a sitter for their three boys and spend a night catching up with friends.)

But we also wanted something that we could easily make ahead, so we could actually hang out with Regi and Kate instead of scurrying around trying to finish dessert.

We also wanted something springy and on the healthier end of the spectrum.

These Brown Sugar Banana Parfaits with Maple-Glazed Pecans seemed like they would fit the bill perfectly.

In actuality, they did -- with one major exception.

Warm Shrimp and Escarole Salad

Bon Appétit (February 2013)

We've been making lots of salads these days, mostly to atone for this, but also because in the crop of February magazines, it's the salad recipes that looked best to us.

Some are shaved salads; others make use of some unusual ingredients. But in this case -- a Warm Shrimp and Escarole Salad -- we loved the idea of a salad that won't chill your bones on a cold winter night. 

Red Quinoa with Pistachios

Bon Appétit (January 2013)

Are we on a diet? Are you?

'Tis the season, we guess -- New Year's resolutions are still ringing in everyone's ears. We're not band-waggoners, but the truth is, yes, we are on a diet of sorts. It's not an OMG-let's-only-eat-cayenne-pepper-and-maple-syrup-for-a-month sort of endeavor. It's more just been two weeks at the beginning of the year of "let's eat right and eat more at home."

We're eating a lot of protein and vegetables, packing lunch for work, no alcohol for Clay/less alcohol for Zach, less carbs, and just bringing an overall sanity to our diet. 

(Spoiler alert: These two weeks of clean living are about to be wrecked because we're heading to California later this week for what will no doubt be a mad dash of stuffing food in our faces every chance we get.) 

Bon Appetit has the same idea (the sanity, not the mad dash, though we suspect they'd be supportive of that, too). Here at the beginning of the year, as they've done before, the magazine is featuring the "Food Lover's Cleanse," two weeks of lighter but satisfying fare.

We're not doing the Cleanse, but we did happen to make one of the dishes from the January issue, Red Quinoa with Pistachios. 

Tofu Scramble

Bon Appétit (January 2013)

Back in July, we spent a wonderful July 4th week at the beach in Provincetown, Mass. As it turned out, we knew tons of other people vacationing in P-town that week, too. (The gays like to travel in herds, you know.)

Anyway, we spent the week biking to the beach, meeting friends for lunch and hopping around various house parties. It was all super fun.

One afternoon while we were there, our friends Sean and Nathan texted to invite us over for brunch the next day. "Sounds great!" we texted back. "See you then!"

Then the horror hit us: Sean and Nathan are vegans.

A vegan brunch? On vacation at the beach?

Were we being punished?

10 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of 2012

Plus Two Other Favorite Recipes

Happy New Year!

Before we get started looking forward, we thought we'd take a moment to look back at the past year of everything we cooked. It was a doozy of a year here at The Bitten Word and we did a lot of things that we're really proud of, from the Cupboard Cleanout to The Super Awesome Cover-to-Cover Challenge. And we took you along everywhere from our junk drawer to a wacky island in the Chesapeake and even all the way to China.

And in between we cooked and shared a lot of dishes that we just really loved. It was hard work narrowing it down to only 10 dishes. (If you want more, there's always the Recipe Index, which is fully updated as of today.) But narrow it down we did. Here are our 10 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of 2012, followed by a bit about each recipe -- plus two bonus dishes, 'cause like we said, narrowing is hard..  

 

[click images to visit the original posts and get the recipes]

Black Eyed Pea Salad from Saveur -- If you didn't get your black eyed peas for good luck yesterday, atone by making this spicy fresh salad. 

Spiced Lentils and Poached Eggs from Cooking Light -- Simple, soulful and satisfying. 

Spicy Korean Grilled Pork from Food & Wine -- It's all about the sauce, which we'd slather it on just about anything. 

Quinoa Salad with Asparagus, Edamame and Radish from Fine Cooking -- This dish inspired a hundred other quinoa salads at our house this year. 

Sweet Potatoes with Bourbon and Maple from Bon Appétit -- These potatoes rocked Thanksgiving, and they've already shown up a couple other times at our house. 

Grilled Okra with Red Curry-Lime Dressing from Food & Wine -- Forget about fried okra. We're addicted to this simple grilled okra tossed with red curry. 

Moroccan Carrot Salad with Spicy Lemon Dressing from Food & Wine -- We'll never look at carrots the same way again. 

Post-Grill Marinated Grilled Skirt Steak from Cook's Country -- It's more about the technique than the dish, but we fell hard for the idea of marinating meats after they've been cooked. 

New England-Style Baked Beans from Saveur -- Sometimes a pot of beans hit the spot like nothing else. And this is a great pot of beans. 

Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Greens from Martha Stewart Living -- Want to feel virtuous? Make this soup. 

 

And here are two additional recipes that we just couldn't stand to leave off the list. 

 

Chinese Style Eggplant -- We picked up this recipe in China. The eggplant lives up to the memory every time we make it. 

Salty Caramel Ice Cream from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams -- Jeni is the queen of ice cream, and we worship at her throne. 

 

That's it -- a dozen delicious tastes from 2012. Do you have a favorite recipe of the last year that you picked up somewhere? Let us know in the comments. 

 

Other Favorite Recipes:

10 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of 2010

11 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of 2011