The Bitten Word

Grilled Turnips with Garlic

Food & Wine (July 2011)

As you no doubt know by now, we'll happily grill anything that shows up in our kitchen. Tofu? Sure. Salad? Sandwiches? Absolutely.

So to be honest, when we saw these Grilled Turnips with Garlic, our reaction wasn't as much wide-eyed excitement as it was a simple shrug and an, "Eh, why not?"

Turns out, we shouldn't have been so lackadaisical. These grilled turnips are dynamite!

Spicy Sriracha-Grilled Tofu

Bon Appétit (June 2011)

Tofu. 

If you're trying to de-emphasize meat in your diet, as we've tried to do this year, sooner or later you're going to find yourself eating tofu. We've actually been experimenting this spring with cooking lots of the stuff.

But here's the thing: It's usually pretty bland. 

"Yeah, yeah," you're saying. "Of course it's bland. Like potatoes or rice, tofu is an empty canvas, a culinary blank slate ready to take on whatever flavors you throw at it."

That's true, we guess. But we haven't had too much luck getting tofu to taste like much of anything. Like, say you're eating a yummy veggie tofu stir-fry. The vegetables are full of great flavors, but when you bite into a piece of tofu, it's like, "Oh, now I am eating the tofu part of this stir fry." It's not bad. You're just aware of this little bite of blandness in an otherwise flavorful dish.

Its lack of presence is just so ... present.

Anyway, forget all that. Because this Spicy Sriracha-Grilled Tofu is the hottest, spiciest thing we've eaten in ages.

Asparagus Ravioli with Brown Butter Sauce

Fine Cooking (April/May 2011)

Though we've tackled lots of culinary challenges here on The Bitten Word, we've never successfully made fresh pasta. The few times we've done it, it has turned out fine, but it's never knocked our socks off. We want to learn to do it well, but it just requires us making the time to practice. We haven't done that yet, so making fresh pasta perpetually remains on our list of culinary beasts to slay. But this is not a story about learning that skill.

When we first saw the photo for Asparagus Ravioli with Brown Butter Sauce in Fine Cooking, our first thought was, "That looks so good but we're not sure we're up for making fresh pasta."

The good news about this recipe:  You don't have to make fresh pasta. And it's awesome.

Garlic-Herb Pinwheels and Harissa-Sausage Pinwheels

Everyday Food (April 2011)

When you have guests over for dinner -- or any get-together, really -- it's always nice to have some snacks for them to nibble on. After all, depending on how the cooking is going, you may have some time to kill. We've served more than our fare share of late dinners while entertaining, so we're always sure to have some sort of snack on hand in case, you know, dinner actually ends up being served at 9 p.m.

And while crudités, crostini and a bowl of nuts are great, they can get a little tiresome, so it's always good to have a few other tricks up your sleeve. We love to serve something that's easy to make but also impressive on the plate, like pinwheels: pre-made dough filled with flavors of your choosing, rolled up, sliced and baked. 

For our book club meeting last week (where we also served Bagna Cauda Dip with Assorted Vegetables), we wanted something simple and tasty, so we were happy to see these Garlic-Herb Pinwheels in Everyday Food. And they inspired us to try our own version -- a Harissa-Sausage Pinwheel.

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.

Corn and Amaranth Griddlecakes with Spicy Black Beans

Fine Cooking (February 2011)

Quinoa, Amaranth, Teff and Farro may sound like they're the newest additions to the Jolie-Pitt clan.

But they're really just classic whole grains highlighted in a terrific feature in the February Fine Cooking. (The feature also includes Millet, but that would be a ridiculous name for a baby...)

The Go for the Grain feature includes recipes for a Quinoa Salad with Apples, Walnuts, Dried Cranberries, and Gouda, a Swiss Chard, Sweet Potato, and Feta Tart in a Teff Crust, and a mouthwatering Millet and Cheddar Polenta with Roasted Vegetables.

But it was this recipe for Corn and Amaranth Griddlecakes with Spicy Black Beans that really caught our attention. The zesty black beans and the hot, fried corn griddlecakes sounded like a perfect vegetarian supper (in keeping with our goal of de-emphasizing meat in our meals). And we were excited to try out a completely new ingredient -- amaranth flour -- which the recipe said would add a "peppery" note to the cakes.

Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash

Bon Appétit (February 2011)

One of our Culinary Resolutions for this year was to de-emphasize meat as a focus of our diet. We don't have any desire to go vegetarian, but there are lots of good reasons to scale back.

To our somewhat surprise, we've actually been doing really well on this resolution, and it hasn't even been that difficult. We've been doing more all-veggie meals, and when we do eat meat, it has not been as much of the star of the plate as it used to be. (Not surprisingly, those goes nicely hand-in-hand with our other resolution to buy higher quality meat closer to the source -- when you buy a $20 chicken, you want to make it last.)

We've been trying out veggie soups, winter salads and meatless pastas. (We've even been experimenting with cooking tofu! We literally had to ask a clerk at the grocery store where the tofu was.)

But the best vegetarian dish we've tried so far this year -- hands-down -- is this Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash.

Almost-Instant Masala Baked Beans

Food & Wine (December 2010)

We're always a little dubious when the ingredients list for a recipe like these Masala Baked Beans calls for two cans of baked beans.

Yeah, okay, maybe we have a knee-jerk aversion to anything that seems a little too semi-homemade. But also, we're just always a little skeptical about how much you can actually do to a dish when you start with 32 ounces of baked beans straight from the can. How much flavor can you really develop?

Still, we liked the notion of these Almost-Instant Masala Baked Beans.  The Indian Spiced Turkey Meatloaf with Spicy Indian Ketchup we made before the holidays had us jonesing for more classic American dishes with an Indian twist.

So we shoved our skepticism to the side and reached for a can-opener.

Potato Gratin with Rosemary Crust

Southern Living (December 2010)

The holidays call for show-stopper dishes.

We're thinking big beef tenderloins, glorious fresh-baked breads and towering cakes: the kinds of dishes that are brought out to the dining room "with quiet pride," as Nigella would say, to be met with oohs and ahhs.

What we're not thinking when we think about show-stoppers? 

Potatoes. 

We whip them, we bake them, we smash them. Sometimes, we arrange them all funny in a pan and bake them till their crispy, which is wonderful, but still isn't quite a show-stopper.

Well, get ready to see potatoes in a whole new light, because this Potato Gratin with Rosemary Crust is one of our new favorite dishes.

Pan-Roasted Sunchokes

A Bitten Word Recipe 

We mentioned again recently how fun it can be to cook with ingredients you've never tried before, like sweet potato greens.

Well, here's something else you might not be familiar with: sunchokes.

You may know them as "Jerusalem artichokes," but that name is falling out of favor, mostly because, well, they're neither from Jerusalem nor are they artichokes.

If you've never tried sunchokes, we're going to have you salivating by the end of this paragraph. They're one of our favorite "new" vegetables, and we absolutely love them for fall. They taste something like a cross between a potato and a rutebega, only richer, nuttier and sweeter. Pan-roasted with a little bit of butter and oil? Heaven.