Cooking Light (April 2013)
The truth is we've never really met a flavor of mussels (by which we mean the broth poured over them) that we didn't like.
White wine with garlic; fennel with chorizo; Thai spices and peanuts -- you name it, we've enjoyed it.
So we definitely wanted to try out these Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Mussels from Cooking Light.
Continue reading "Mussels in Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Broth" »
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Cooking Light (April 2013)
We try to pack our lunch nearly every day of the week.
It's part budget, part health and part being-tired-of-lunch-options-near-our-offices.
Our regular cast of lunch characters includes various takes on tuna salads, turkey meatloaf, and endless variations of chicken and vegetables. And of course, leftovers. Lots of leftovers.
We chose to make these Barbecue Turkey Meatballs precisely because we thought they would be a perfect addition to our lunch line-up.
So we bought enough of the ingredients to make a triple batch of meatballs and got to work.
Let's call it a lunch audition.
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Cooking Light (May 2013)
Here's an idea that we genuinely want to love: thin slices of sweet potato, sprinkled with salt and rosemary, and microwaved briefly until they're crisp.
And for the most part, we do love it. They're salty. They're sweet. They're crunchy. They're, well, heaven.
The only problem is, we can't for the life of us figure out how to reliably cook these chips without half of them burning.
Perhaps you can help.
Here's the problem.
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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.
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Cooking Light (February 2013)
We've been eating a lot of broccoli in the past few months. And why not? It's packed with good nutrients, it's cheap, and it's just about the quickest vegetable side you can make.
If we've got a little time, we'll chop the florets, toss them in olive oil and roast them in the oven. (That takes about 25 minutes.) If we're in a hurry, we'll chop the florets, steam them over some boiling water, and add a squeeze of lemon. (That takes about 4 minutes.)
But somewhere along the way, we asked ourselves a question. "Hey, selves," we said. "Why are we only using a third of each bunch of broccoli?"
And that's when we started eating broccoli stalks.
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Now that you're all set on the Thanksgiving trends for 2012, it's time to start planning your menu in earnest.
As we've done for the past few years, we've gathered all the different Thanksgiving recipes from several different food magazines. This year's index features a full 239 recipes from 11 food magazines: Bon Appetit, Cook's Illustrated, Cooking Light, Everyday Food, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, Food Network Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Southern Living and Whole Living. And believe us, they are absolutely packed with great ideas for Thanksgiving.
We hosted our annual Fakesgiving this past Sunday. As you might remember, that's our yearly meal where we invite a bunch of friends to test-drive several Thanksgiving recipes. This year we had 20 friends and family to sample 19 different dishes, from a pre-dinner snack all the way through to dessert. We'll be posting about the dishes we tried over the next three weeks, in the run-up to Turkey Day.
So dig into our Thanksgiving 2012 Recipe Index! But first, we'll share a few photos from our Fakesgiving meal.
Continue reading "Thanksgiving 2012 Recipe Index: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending" »
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It's 22 days till Thanksgiving. Do you know where your turkey is?
We're only half-joking. Yes, there are three weeks to Thanksgiving, with plenty of time to pull it all together. But if you're hosting a Thanksgiving meal this year, it's also time to start planning.
We try to avoid getting caught up in food hype, but we can't help ourselves at Thanksgiving. We pore through the magazines. We try out a bunch of the dishes. We invite friends over for Fakesgiving (more on this year's event tomorrow).
And each year, we're enamored with the Thanksgiving trends that we see across the spectrum of food magazines we receive. This year, we've closely studied 11 of those magazines, charting their Turkey Day recommendations. As we have in previous years, tomorrow we'll be publishing the 2012 Thanksgiving Index -- a round-up of all the dishes recommended this year by all 11 of those magazines.
But first, here's what we're seeing in this year's trends.
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Cooking Light (October 2012)
Earlier this week, we invited our friends Trevor and Owen over for dinner. They just got married a few weeks ago here in D.C. (We were honored to get to participate -- Clay stood up with Trevor, and Zach sang a song during the ceremony.) It was a beautiful event.
Right after the wedding, T&O took off for a honeymoon in Hawaii. They just got back this past weekend, and we wanted to catch up and hear about their trip. So we invited them to swing by for dinner on Monday night.
The previous night, on Sunday, we had thrown a dinner party for 8, which we'll write about soon, after the Super Awesome Cover-to-Cover project. The Sunday night dinner ended up being a fairly lengthy affair, with plenty of wine consumed by the group.
The next day, the evidence remained -- empty wine bottles and wine-streaked glasses still stood on the dining room table. And at 7 pm on Monday, they were still there. Trevor and Owen were due to show up at 7:30.
Mission 1: Clean up from the previous night's dinner.
Mission 2: Get cooking.
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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.
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Cooking Light (March 2012)
This probably won't be a shock to you, coming from two boys reared in the South. But until this week, we've never had matzo ball soup.
We've seen it on menus countless times, in delis and restaurants in D.C. and New York. But for us it's been one of those dishes relegated to pop culture (Carrie Bradshaw ducking into a deli to order a bowl, after getting caught in a downpour) and appearances in food writing that we like (in one of our all-time favorite Frank Bruni reviews in the New York Times, he went to eat matzo ball soup at the Second Avenue Deli with Nora Ephron, Ed Koch, and Laura Shapiro).
And Chicken-Matzo Ball Soup is a staple of food magazines this time of year. In March, Cooking Light features this recipe, while in April Bon Appétit touts a take on the dish using matzo gnocchi. And in breaking matzo news, today's New York Times has a big Passover seder feature that includes matzo ball soup.
We've seen recipes like these for years, but we'd always passed them up. It's high time that we get our matzo on, don't you agree?
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