The Bitten Word

Porch Crawlers

A Bitten Word Recipe 

Ladies and gents, it has been a busy summer!

Zach traveled a lot for work, Clay started a new job, and we planned a wedding that's happening two weeks from Saturday (!).

There's a lot we're itching to blog about. There are, of course, recipes we're eager to share (including another eggplant dish we've found that we love and a pie that will make your head explode). We also want to tell you about our experience planting our first garden this summer (spoiler alert: we're not great gardeners). And we'll share a bit about our wedding plans and festivities.

But for the moment, we're heading to the beach for a week with our friends for some much needed down time.  We're packing four months of unread New Yorkers, a whole lot of sunscreen and a big stack of food magazines.

And while we're there, we may just make Porch Crawlers.

Recipe Redux: An Update on Quinoa with Apricot, Pear, Red Onion and Cucumber

A Bitten Word Recipe 

There are a lot of things we love about writing The Bitten Word.  We've cooked recipes we never otherwise would have tackled; we've learned all sorts of new kitchen techniques; and we've gotten exposed to some terrific foods and ingredients we'd never tried before (gojujang, anyone?)

But by far the best part has been the interaction we've had with readers. We love hearing from you guys about what you're eating, and what you think about the recipes we feature.

And we really love getting tips from you!

Which brings us to this Quinoa with Apricot, Pear, Red Onion and Cucumber. When we first made it a couple weeks ago, it was flavorless and decidedly boring -- nothing like the original restaurant dish that had inspired it.

So we turned to you guys for help, for advice on what we'd done wrong and how we could make the dish better. And boy did you come through! Between your comments on the post and emails to us, you gave us some really terrific ideas for improving this quinoa.

So we saddled back up and tried it again.

Quinoa With Apricot, Pear, Red Onion and Cucumber

A Bitten Word Recipe 

[UPDATED: Check out the new recipe!]

A few weeks ago, Zach found himself in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for work. When he wasn't on the clock, he checked out some of the great stuff the city has to offer (Pikes Peak! Manitou Springs! Garden of the Gods!)

And he even managed to squeeze in a couple really good meals in the Springs. (Thanks, Yelp!)

The best meal was at Shuga's, a charming, unassuming restaurant in an old house on the south end of downtown Colorado Springs. It was casual and inviting, and the menu was perfect, filled with simple, excellent sandwiches, soups and salads. Zach had a sandwich that was sort of a grilled muffuletta -- salami, prosciutto, roasted red pepper, olive tapenade -- topped with warm goat cheese. It was delicious!

But what was really memorable was the special side dish that day: Quinoa with Apricot, Pear, Red Onion and Cucumber. Served cold, it was the perfect summer side. The apricot and pear gave the quinoa a nice sweetness, while the onion cut through with a welcome sharp note. And the cucumber kept everything light and summery.

So we decided to try re-creating the dish at home.

It didn't go so well.

Grilled Panzanella Salad

A Bitten Word Recipe 

Some meals are borne out of light-bulb inspiration moments, while others are borne out of necessity.

In the case of this Grilled Panzanella Salad, it was a little of both.

We were putzing around the house yesterday, with Clay doing some reading and Zach doing a bit of writing. Suddenly, we were famished. "I have got to eat something."

We were tempted to go and grab a sandwich. But we were also being taunted by our Vegetable Board, whose list seemed to be growing longer, not shorter, by the day.

A few weeks ago we had the idea of making a grilled version of a panzanella salad. Grilled anything is on our minds these days, and really, why not try a panzanella on the grill?

10-Second Sangria

As residents of Washington, D.C., we're always reminded this time of year that the District used to be considered a "hardship post" by foreign diplomats, meaning that statesmen posted here got extra pay for enduring the area's swampy humidity and triple-digit temps. Air-conditioning has made D.C. summers more tolerable, but they can still be nasty. This summer so far has been especially brutal, with unrelenting heat (we hit 110 degrees this past weekend) and punishingly thick, muggy air.

Which is why we've been chugging sangria like it's tap water.

Sangria is cool and refreshing -- like air-conditioning in a glass! -- but it's always been one of those things that, to us, worked better in theory than in practice. A traditional sangria recipe can be a lot of labor and requires patience: chopping all that fruit, plopping it in wine, chilling it for a couple hours, mixing it with seltzer.  (And we're personally a little turned off by a glass of wine with little bits and strands of fruit in it.)  It just always seems like more trouble than it's worth.

But this summer, we've become obsessed with a new spin on sangria that'll ensure you'll always have a nice, cool glass close at hand. It's super fast, ridiculously easy, and it's sure to be your new summer fave.

Ladies and gentleman: The 10-Second Sangria.

Charred Spring Onions with Mustard Cream Sauce

A Bitten Word Recipe 

We recently wrote about Zach's trip to the Bristol, a fantastic gastropub in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood, home of the Chocolate Sabayon With Sea Salt and Olive Oil, and Homemade Nutter Butters.

That dessert certainly stole the show, but there was another dish Zach had that night that was similarly delicious, and, like that Chocolate Sabayon, it was something we knew we wanted to try in our own kitchen: Charred Spring Onions with Mustard Cream Sauce.

We've been getting really delicious fresh spring onions from our CSA, so for a recent meal, we threw them on the grill, whipped up a mustard cream sauce, and chowed down. (The Bristol's dish included crispy goat belly, but our goat-belly purveyor is at the Shore for the summer. Alas, we were forced to make do with a hircine-free version.)

Grilled Pimento-Cheese Sandwiches

A Bitten Word Recipe

Fried chicken barely even registers as "Southern" anymore. Pit barbecue and grits jumped the Mason-Dixon line years ago. And you'll find mint juleps and bread pudding on menus from New York to L.A.

But there's one down-home delicacy that remains steadfastly stuck in the South: pimento cheese. Ask somebody outside the Southern U.S. about pimento cheese, and you're lucky if they've even heard of it. And it's almost a certainty they've never tried it.

We think that's a shame. After all, the basic pimento cheese recipe is just sharp cheddar, red peppers and mayo -- what's not to like about that?

We suspect part of the problem might be the reputation of store-bought pimento cheese: plastic tubs of slimy, fluorescent-orange goo studded with tasteless bits of red pepper.

But it doesn't have to be that way! Zach's mom, B., has refined a recipe for pimento cheese that uses simple, good-quality ingredients to make a blend that's fresh, sharp and piquant. We asked B. for her recipe and decided to dress it up with a couple touches of our own.

So we were determined to make pimento cheese sometime soon.

But then last week, as fate would have it, we came across a grilled-cheese innovation that was so mind-blowingly simple -- so forehead-slappingly perfect -- we couldn't believe we'd never of it before: actually grilled cheese sandwiches!

Chocolate Sabayon With Sea Salt and Olive Oil, and Homemade Nutter Butters

Last fall, our friends Drew and Ralph spent a weekend in Chicago. Drew and Ralph are both big-time foodies, and they asked us for any food recommendations in the Windy City. We had a few (Ann Sather, Rick Bayless' Frontera Grill). 

And we knew the perfect person to ask for more ideas: one of our readers, Rina. She'd sent us numerous great recipe ideas before, and we knew she was really plugged in to the Chicago food scene. Rina was happy (we hope!) to oblige, and she sent a terrific list of good restaurants for Drew and Ralph to try.

At the top of Rina's picks? The Bristol, a new gastropub in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood. Rina raved about its creativity and constantly changing menu. And when Drew and Ralph went there for brunch, they fell in love with the place.

All that brings us to this: When Zach was in Chicago for work a couple weeks ago, he knew he had to make time for dinner at the Bristol.

Dinner was outstanding: An appetizer of charred spring onions tossed with crispy goat belly, topped with a light mustard cream sauce. The entree was a crisp-skinned sea trout on a bed of fava beans and flageolets. Perfection!

But then it was time for dessert.

The server came over to tell Zach the three dessert options that evening. "First," she said, "we have a chocolate sabayon, sprinkled with a little sea salt and drizzled with olive oil, and that's served with a couple house-made Nutter Butter cookies. Second, we have--"

"I'm sorry," Zach interrupted. "I'm going to stop you there. There is absolutely no need for you to continue. I have to order that."

After eating the dessert and blacking out for a while over how good it was, Zach came to. And he had a singular mission: recreating this dessert at home.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote

A Bitten Word Recipe

CSA season has kicked off and we're loving it.

We're four weeks into the season of our CSA and the produce has been amazing. The sugar snap peas are like candy, the arugula is some of the spiciest we've ever had. Garlic scapes came this week and we even got a bunch of kohlrabi in the most recent share (not quite sure what we're going to do with all that kohlrabi....).

Rhubarb has turned up in our share as well, and we've also been seeing it in abundance at the farmers market. Plus, we've been buying strawberries and eating them like our lives depended on it, so we were itching to make a strawberry-rhubarb something.

This summer's May and June food magazines are full of strawberry and rhubarb ideas. We especially like the idea of this Grilled Rhubarb Brown Betty from Food Network Magazine and this classic Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble from Bon Appétit looks great. 

Though we love those ideas, we wanted a simple summer dessert for a Wednesday night. So we turned our rhubarb and strawberries into a compote. 

The Bitten Word: We're In a Cookbook!

Hey look -- we're in a cookbook! 

We're extremely excited to announce that we're featured in a new cookbook, 55 Knives. Edited by our buddy Nick at Macheesmo, it's a collection of essays and recipes from 55 food bloggers -- including us! The book contains more than 170 pages of short food stories and all kinds of great recipes.

And since it's an ebook, once you download it, it's saved on your computer for you to use whenever you want.  And that also means it's completely linkable and searchable -- you can find specific recipes (or even ingredients) quickly and easily. It's also a terrific way to get introduced to some food blogs that you may not be familiar with.

We're really grateful to Nick for creating this and putting it all together. And we're extremely proud to be included!  The book costs $19 -- but if you buy it before June 1, it's $14.

If you're interested, you can order 55 Knives through The Bitten Word (ordering it through our blog means part of that sale goes to us...which is, you know, nice for us).

Oh, and what's our contribution to the book?  It's a recipe we created for individual mini-Beef Wellingtons!  If you're a regular reader, you know that making Beef Wellingtons was one of our Culinary Resolutions for 2009, and was also discussed as part of our 2010 Resolutions. 

Anyhow, if you're interested, check out the book. And if you do, let us know what you think!