The Bitten Word

Cucumber Salad with Buttermilk Dressing and Pickled Onion

Food & Wine (July 2015)

Looks like we need to get ourselves to Austin to eat at Olamaie.  

See, we usually try to cook recipes from all our different food magazines -- one from here, one from there, and so on. We try not to repeat a magazine too much in one month.

But we ended up flagging two gorgeous salads from the July Food & Wine that we wanted to make, that amazing Tomato Salad with Tomato Water Granita and this Cucumber Salad with Buttermilk Dressing and Pickled Onion.

Well, that's okay, we figured. They're both great-looking summer salads.

It wasn't until after we'd made this cucumber salad that we realized: Not only are both salads from the same magazine, they're both from the same chefs.

So attention, Chef Michael Fojtasek and Chef Grae Nonas: We're booking a flight to Austin and booking a table at your restaurant.

Tomato Salad with Tomato Water Granita

Food & Wine (July 2015)

 

Our Southern grannies would say this is a tomato salad that got above its raisin'. (In other words, it's putting on airs.)

"Tomato water granita"? Ice on a salad?!

Who needs all that fuss?

You do.

Trust us.

Grilled Chicken Thigh and Cucumber Salad

Food & Wine (June 2015)

 

Are we being Inception-ed by Food & Wine?

Leafing through their June issue, we stopped dead in our tracks when we spotted this Grilled Chicken Thigh and Cucumber Salad. It's like the summer dish of our dreams: crispy grilled chicken, tossed with lots of raw vegetables and herbs in a big, messy, delicious pile.

It's as if Food & Wine is making our dreams come true. 

We wasted no time in seeing if the reality of this dish matched up to our fantasies.

Jicama, Radish, and Pickled Plum Salad

Bon Appétit (June 2015) 

In college, Zach had a roommate for a few years named Mevan.

Mevan was from Sri Lanka and, though he was fairly worldly, he hadn't been to the United States until he arrived for freshman orientation. Thus began a rich cultural exchange. Mevan taught Zach about Buddhism and the Sri Lankan Civil War. Zach taught Mevan about "Friends" and how to shotgun a beer. 

And Mevan also taught Zach about mangos with chile salt.

Fresh mangos dusted with chile salt were Mevan's favorite snack. Zach had never tasted the pairing before. (It was East Tennessee in the '90s -- he'd barely had mangoes on their own.) But the cool, sweet mangos spiked with the heat of chile salt were revelatory.

When we saw this salad, which Bon Appétit says is inspired by chile salt-sprinkled mangos, we knew we wanted to try it. 

Well, at the risk of spoiling the ending here, we don't think Mevan would approve.

 

Arugula Salad with Dried Cherries and Pistachios

Fine Cooking (April/May 2015)

We're gonna go out on a limb and say that spring is the best time of year for salads. We know: BOLD.

Seriously, though, we can't get enough. After a long winter, even the simplest greens with the plainest dressing somehow taste amazing. And with fresh greens at the farmers market, in our CSA (which just started up again last week) and our own backyard garden (which we need to talk to you about soon!), it's high salad season.

This one from Fine Cooking is especially good, thanks to a few unexpected elements. 

Snap Pea Salad with Coconut Gremolata

Bon Appétit (May 2015) 

We are suckers for a crazy salad. We still think about that wacky Kohlrabi, Fennel and Blueberry Salad we made a few years ago. And we loved the Fattoush Salad we tried last summer.

Does this Snap Pea Salad count as "crazy"? Well, it's the only salad we've ever made with shaved coconut. And anything with pea shoots, lime, chives and fish sauce is at least slightly crazier than your standard iceberg-lettuce-and-tomato-with-vinaigrette.

As it turned out, though, this salad wasn't crazy enough.

Crunchy Asparagus Salad

Food & Wine (April 2015)

Spring!  We're so happy to finally -- finally! -- be hitting spring here in Washington, D.C. 

And for us there's probably no vegetable that quite sings "spring!" more than young, tender asparagus.

We're asparagus purists, especially when it's at the height of season. Lightly steam or sauté it, sprinkle it with the faintest whisper of salt, and eat. That's how we like it.

So what about this Crunchy Asparagus Salad full of Japanese flavors? Would it make the cut for our simple-is-best approach to spring asparagus?

Kale and Apple Salad with Garlicky Dressing

A Bitten Word Recipe

 

We know, we know. Kale Salad. It's ubiquitous. It's overdone. And we've already hit "peak kale."

But at our house, kale salad remains a staple. Sure, we're ardent kale fans, but really it's just the accessory here. 

This salad is all about the dressing: a potent garlicky concoction that makes kale salad an absolutely delight without having to add a bunch of salad toppings to hide the kale. 

The 10 Best Food Magazine Recipes We Made in 2014 -- Plus Our 5 Other Favorite Dishes

   

    

   

Happy New Year, Bittens!

We are so excited to start cooking in 2015!  But first let's take a quick look back at 2014.

In our ongoing quest to test-drive food magazine recipes, we tried out a lot of dishes last year. Some were good; some were duds. Here are the best things we made all year long, in chronological order. First up are our favorite food magazine recipes, followed by a few other favorites from last year.

 

The 10 Best Food Magazine Recipes from 2014...

1. Pork and Squash Stew with Chiles 
Tender bites of pork in a savory broth with a warm, comforting heat. It's the perfect dish for winter -- and, as we wrote back in February, an ideal make-ahead dish. 

 

2. Herbed Faux-tisserie Chicken and Potatoes
We have roasted a LOT of chickens in our day. This one is absolutely one of the top three ever.

 

3. New Orleans–Style BBQ Shrimp
Spicy and buttery and delicious. The next-best thing to actually going to New Orleans.

 

4. Edamame-Miso Tuna Salad Sandwiches
This is probably the one dish we've made the most since posting about it last year. The mix of miso, hot chile oil and edamame is a great new spin on tuna salad. We've made this (especially for lunch to take to work) more times than we can count.

 

5. Ayam Jeruk (Grilled Chicken and Toasted Coconut Salad)
We debated whether to include this dish in our year-end roundup, because we'd made so many substitutions in the recipe. But who cares? This dish was to die for, and we're sure it's even better if you can find fresh galangal. And shaved coconut. And candelnuts. And Asian shallots. And Balinese long peppers...

 

6. Asian Marinated Tomatoes 
These tomatoes are really more of an accompaniment or a condiment than a stand-alone dish. But they're marvelous. If we may quote our own post from last summer: "Imagine if a bowl of salsa spent a semester abroad in Thailand, and got really into meditation and mystic Buddhism and lemongrass, and then came home and hopped up on your grilled chicken." Who doesn't want that??

 

7. Spiced Lamb Burgers
Nothing we made last year was as drool-worthy as these lamb burgers. As we said back in July, "The lamb is flavorful and full of wonderful spice from the coriander, cumin and cinnamon. The fat from the lamb melts into the pitas, soaking them with flavor and making them crispy and amazing." If you're not salivating at that, there may be something wrong with you.

 

8. Vietnamese Pork Chops with Pickled Watermelon
In August, we solidly declared this the "DISH. OF. THE. SUMMER."  We stand by that. This salty/savory/sour/sweet/pungent/crispy/juicy dish is everything you want in a grilled entree.

 

9. The Barefoot Contessa's Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes
It's highly possible that no dish we've featured has ever elicited a greater response than these potatoes that we made for our Fakesgiving test-run of recipes. We heard from countless -- countless! -- friends and family and Bitten Word readers who made these for Thanksgiving. And just about everyone has told us these are the best mashed potatoes they've ever made.  

 

10. Maple Syrup Pie with Crème Fraîche
This delicious pie was the crowd favorite at our Fakesgiving meal this past year. We could eat it morning, noon and night. 

 

... Plus 5 More of Our Faves.

 

Roasted Sunchokes with Brown Butter-Cider Vinaigrette

Food & Wine (December 2014)

 

We have a confession to make: We breathe a little sigh of relief when our six-month CSA season ends every November.

 

Don't get us wrong, we love our CSA and the weekly joy of getting fresh, organic and truly wonderful vegetables. But after six months of pick-ups, we're ready for a break. It's awesome getting armfuls of greens and vegetables every week, but figuring out how to make use of all of it can be overwhelming.

 

Our CSA ended just before Thanksgiving. The shares at the end were predictably wintery: squash, some hearty greens, the remainder of the garlic. You get the picture.

 

But the season also ended with sunchokes. Lots and lots of sunchokes. By the end of the share, we had stowed at least 4 pounds of them in our crisper drawer. 

 

So it was a forgone conclusion that we'd make Food & Wine's Salad of the Month: Roasted Sunchokes with Brown Butter-Cider Vinaigrette.