The Bitten Word

Stir-Fried Asparagus with Shiitake Mushrooms

Cook's Illustrated (May 2013)

When asparagus arrives each spring, much heralded as a sign of great things to come, we gobble it up every chance we get, buying several pounds a week at our farmers market.

But we always feel a bit of pressure with the first asparagus of the season. It's a bit pricey at times and we want to use it way that really shows it off. Not, horror of horrors, overcooking it within an inch of its life. 

We grill it, roast it, steam it, eat it raw and stir fry it. All have had their triumphs and pitfalls in our kitchen. 

Cook's Illustrated has taken the guess work out of at least one of these methods. 

Ladies and gents, it's time to stir fry some asparagus. 

Rhubarb Fizz

We're coming to the end of the time in between -- that point in the year when spring has begun stretching into summer, but fresh fruits have yet to show up.

After a winter spent gorging on apples, they've quickly lost their appeal. The apples we're buying have become inconsistent, and we're tiring of carrying them to work, or snacking on them at night. We thank you for your service, apples, but you're dismissed. 

But it's too soon for strawberries -- hopefully, that may change this week -- and we're months away from the delicious stone fruits of August. 

Rhubarb, however, is here. Frankly, it's a fruit* for which we have no great affections. Its raw bitterness can be difficult to handle. To counteract that, most recipes that include rhubarb tend to go overboard on the sugar, and the result is a too-sweet dessert that doesn't really taste like fresh fruit at all.

Nonetheless, we find rhubarb a welcome sight in spring. Tall and red and green, rhubarb is the first fruit soldier to the spring front. 

But still, what to do with it?

Poach it and eat it as dessert?

Use a tiny bit raw or briefly simmered in a salad with a sweet vinaigrette? 

Make a rhubarb compote or jam? Maybe, once the strawberries have come in. 

Martha offers a nice suggestion this month, albeit one that requires ample amounts of sugar and, if you're into it, booze. 

This is a Rhubarb Fizz. 

Baby Kale and Steak Salad

Food & Wine (May 2013)
 

Do you have go-to late night food?

We live in a neighborhood with a stretch of very busy nightlife. On weekend nights, there are lines of people snaking all up and down the street.

And there's an established post-bar ritual. After the kids (yes, we're calling them kids) leave the bars, they queue up for Jumbo Slice Pizza. 

What, pray tell, is Jumbo Slice Pizza? It is, by most accounts, the biggest piece of pizza you will ever be served for five dollars. It's huge, greasy, and when you've overindulged, it is phenomenal. (Word of advice: never, ever eat the Jumbo Slice in daytime hours. It is not up to sober food standards. Believe us, we have tried.) 

Our Jumbo Slice days are behind us. Mostly.

On a much classier note, Food & Wine's May issue has a beautiful, dark spread about late-night chef food. The chef is question is Paul Qui, the nicest-seeming Top Chef winner ever. The magazine features Paul and his fiancee cooking late-night dinners after they get home from his restaurant in Austin. 

Needless to say, Paul's not returning home to fire up the oven and make a Jumbo Slice. Instead, he makes thingd like this Baby Kale and Steak Salad. 

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. 

Piquant Radish Soup with Crème Fraîche

Vegetarian Times (May 2013)

"Radish soup sounds like something Miss Hannigan would serve Little Orphan Annie."

These words were uttered in our kitchen halfway through making this Piquant Radish Soup with Crème Fraîche. 

It's true, right? Doesn't it sound a bit sad? Like something your grandparents had to eat during the depression? (Though we expect our grannies would have ditched the crème fraîche for a big ol' dollop of full fat sour cream.) 

Still, we were eager to try the recipe. After reading our first issue of Vegetarian Times, the first recipe we tried -- Miso-Glazed Cauliflower and Kale Salad -- was a huge success in our book. For the next recipe, we went for something a bit more unique. 

And radish soup sounded like just the kind of unique we wanted. Radishes are plentiful right now in our area, with nearly every vendor at the farmers market offering some variety of radishes. And though we've roasted radishes and used them all varieties of salads, we have not yet tried them in liquid form. 

So we purchased a few bunches of radishes, broke out the food processor and got to work. 

Miso-Glazed Cauliflower and Kale Salad

Vegetarian Times (May 2013)

Our friend Rachel, of Buffalo Chicken Dip fame, recently sent us a decidedly un-Buffalo-Chicken-Dip-like email:

I know you probably get suggestions like this all the time, but if you're looking for a food magazine to fill the EDF-shaped hole in your life, may I suggest Vegetarian Times. I bought a subscription a few months ago. I'm one issue in and totally hooked. Great classic vegetarian options plus if you want to get crazy, there are vegan and raw recipes as well. I made a veggie burger from lentils that was amazing (and oddly the consistency of ground beef. It also froze really well. I could go on.)

Rachel wasn't the first person to suggest we check out Vegetarian Times. Many readers have recommended it to us over the years. So we picked up a copy of the April/May issue when we were in a bookstore recently. (Kids, ask your parents what a bookstore was.)

What we found was a very enjoyable cooking magazine that just happens to not have any meat in it. Maybe it's partly because of the time of year -- it's full-on spring, and we've got fresh veggies on the brain -- but there are actually a host of dishes we'd be eager to make from the current issue. There's a feature on spring cooking in Ireland (from the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork), with a gorgeous-looking Pea and Coriander Soup and a simple Cabbage, Sultana and Fennel Salad that looks delicious.

There's a feature on cooking with fresh herbs that's truly packed with tips ("10 more ways to use basil...," "10 more ways to use rosemary...").

And there's a vegan-cooking piece from Mark Bittman (who is literally everywhere -- we have a working theory that he's some sort of vegan vampire), which has a vegan burger recipe we might even consider trying -- no small statement after our last attempt at homemade meatless burgers.

But for our inaugural recipe from Vegetarian Times, we decided to go whole hog (er, uh, whole tofu?). We picked something from the feature on raw foods.

 

Mussels in Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Broth

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.

Everything's Coming Up Green

Travails in Our Backyard Garden

Here's a short history of our gardening:

Year one: Disaster! We plant directly in the ground, learn that the bean seed packet means that the plants will grow to be not 6 to 8 inches tall, but 6 to 8 feet tall, and have beautiful plants but nearly no vegetables. But still, we love it, and are irrationally proud of our efforts. 

Year two: We get a bit smarter and actually read some gardening books. We switch to raised beds and attempt to start seeds inside our apartment during the winter months in preparation for spring. The garden starts strong, then struggles. Our yield improves, but our enthusiasm wanes. By end of summer, we're frankly glad it's over, after fretting for months about diseases, amount of sun, and how much water to give the plants. We go from being irrationally proud, to irrationally stressed out about the garden. 

Year three: We regain our resolve over the winter and go back into the garden. This time, we move our raised beds to improve the amount of light our plants will receive. We give up on growing seedlings indoors during the winter, and we order seedlings for delivery. The biggest change in year three: we buy a soaker hose and a water timer, which makes the whole thing much more zen. Trips to the garden become moments just to regard the plants, rather than obsessively water. We have carrots and tomatoes in spades. It is the year of lazy gardening. 

So here we are, year four. 

Barbecue Turkey Meatballs

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. 

Microwave Sweet Potato Chips

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.