The Bitten Word

Chocolate Truffles

Martha Stewart Living (February 2010)

When you hear "chocolate truffles," you probably think of perfect little orbs of chocolate, lightly dusted with cocoa -- decadent little treats the chef would deliver to your table in a brightly colored box, which you would applaud over before popping one into your mouth, rolling your eyes, and tittering, "Oh, Jacques, how you spoil me!"

No?  Just us?

Well, anyway, chocolate truffles have always seemed to us to be an impossibly heady indulgence, something reserved for candlelit Valentine's Day dinners. And, appropriately, these truffles appeared in the February issue of Martha Stewart Living.

So we decided to try them out (a month late, but still).

And we quickly learned that truffles -- ours, at least -- are far from perfect little spheres of chocolate. These things were a mess!

Tunisian-Inspired Braised Short Ribs

Fine Cooking (February/March 2010)

Fine Cooking has what has become our favorite magazine feature over the past few months with its "Cooking Without Recipes" column.

It's an excellent blueprint for a dish, in which a basic recipe is presented and the reader is left to choose add-ins, flavorings and spices.

We first used it back in July, when the column featured David Leibovitz's guide on how to make ice cream, which we used to make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. 

Since then the magazine has done guides for multiple topics, including how to make Creamy Vegetable Soups, Chocolate Truffles, and a host of other topics.  The column in the April/May issue, which just arrived, features Cheesecake.  We like the features themselves, but we especially love that the magazine offers online interactive versions of these columns on their website that spits out the recipe you've created after walking you through each step.

We sat up and took notice when the February/March issue of the magazine arrived and "Cooking Without Recipes" featured Short Ribs. 

Make your own short ribs recipe?  Twist our arms!

Fennel and Celery Salad with Pumpkin Seeds

Bon Appétit (March 2010)

Fennel is one of those vegetables that we never know quite what to do with. We've really liked it the few times we've cooked with it, either in a Fennel-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin or in Baked Chicken with Fennel and Apples. 

But it's never the kind of vegetable we're likely to just pick up in the produce aisle.

This salad just may change that. It's delicious and fresh, but still hearty and substantial. And best of all, it taught us that you don't have to bake or braise fennel -- it's extremely delicious served raw.

Lemon and Rosemary Chicken (Pollo Arrosto)

Saveur (March 2010)

Dear Saveur Magazine:

Okay, okay -- we give up! We'll begin planning a trip to Los Angeles ASAP.

It's almost as if you knew, in planning your special Los Angeles issue, that L.A. has been on our "long weekend trip" list for well over a year and that we're overdue to visit friends, see the sights, and eat at that magical Kogi truck.

Plus, a recipe from Good Food's Evan Kleiman? You had us at roast chicken. See you in L.A.!

-- Zach & Clay 

Seriously -- we need to get ourselves to Los Angeles.

If we needed any convincing at all, it was taken care of by Saveur's excellent issue on the city (with its stunningly gorgeous cover photo), chronicling what seems to be just about every aspect of eating and food culture in the City of Angels. 

And as if we needed any more convincing, we nearly ran to the kitchen to start cooking when we saw a recipe from Evan Kleiman, chef/owner of Angeli Cafe and host of KCRW's Good Food, which we podcast each week. We've sung the praises of Kleiman and her show before. If you're not listening, get to it. 

Now, she's not only the host of one of our favorite podcasts, but she's also the author of what may be our new favorite roast chicken recipe.

Popovers

Martha Stewart Living (January 2010)

We dream of baking perfect popovers. 

In these fantasies, we pull big, airy clouds of bread from the oven, and then slather them with butter or dunk them in soup. (Or both. After all, it's a dream.)

The popovers of our reality, however, never quite live up to the popovers of our dreams. They're always just okay.

There was our first outing, at Thanksgiving 2008, with popovers from BLT Steak. The gruyere topping was delicious, but they lacked the airy quality of those at the BLT restaurant.

Since that initial outing, we've taken some time off from popovers, but we've been back on the popover wagon this winter.

This is a tale of two (more) popover recipes -- a tale of triumph and tragedy.