The Bitten Word

Cowboy Beans

Adapted from Food & Wine (July 2010)

We don't typically adapt the recipes we pull from our magazines, because we like to cook them as-is and then tell you how they turned out.

Sure, we add things now and again, like more spice here, or extra herbs there. But for the most part, we enjoy cooking the recipe that's given.

But this time, we did a little tinkering.

When we were looking for an accompaniment for Fig-Glazed Burgers with Red Onion Jam, we immediately thought of these Charro Beans -- or Cowboy Beans -- that we had seen featured in Food & Wine.

The recipe calls for pinto beans, but the photo in the magazine showed that they'd used black-eyed peas instead. We opted for that, because we loved the idea of a black-eyed pea spin on something akin to baked beans.

What we didn't love is how the recipe turned out. So we started tinkering even more.

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.

Fig-Glazed Burgers with Red Onion Jam

Southern Living (July 2010)

As we've noted several times before, we're always on the lookout for a great new spin on grilled burgers.

So we were extremely excited to see these Fig-Glazed Burgers with Red Onion Jam in the current issue of Southern Living. The promise of a tart onion jam touched with a hint of sweetness from the fig preserves, topped off with creamy, smooth Muenster cheese seemed like the perfect topping for a smoky grilled hamburger.

We did make one error, though, that nudged these burgers slightly toward the "Dessert" category.

The Vegetable Board: How We Stopped Wasting Food

 

One of our culinary resolutions for this year was simple: "Don't let food go to waste."

Like many people, we were buying too much food, letting it languish in the fridge and then throwing it out once it had gone bad.

This was especially true when it came to vegetables. Between a weekly trip to the farmers market and weekly deliveries from our CSA six months of the year, we're often faced with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to veggies.

But our biggest problem was that things would go into our fridge and we'd totally forget about them.  Rooting through our fridge presented a constant set of surprises. "OMG. Did you know there's a kohlrabi in here?"

So we needed a solution. Hence, The Vegetable Board.

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.)

Kansas City Barbecued Brisket

Cook's Country (July 2010)

This time of year, when the air is thick and muggy, and the temperatures inch sickeningly close to triple digits, we don't normally think about brisket. Slow-roasting a hunk of meat for hours in a hot oven? It just seems more like a cold-weather meal to us.

But this Kansas City Barbecued Brisket has shown us the error of our ways! It's sweet, smoky and melt-in-your-mouth tender. And it's perfect for summer, thanks in part to one super-smart innovation: Cooking it for half of the time on the grill.

Smoked Salmon with Black Pepper Potato Chips and Lemon Crème Fraîche

Bon Appétit (May 2010)

You know in old sitcoms, when the husband comes home from work, frantic, because the boss and his wife are unexpectedly coming over for dinner?  And the wife (unless she's Samantha Stevens) flips out, because how can she possibly plan and cook a dinner with no notice? Especially one that'll impress the boss and help her husband land that big promotion he's up for!

These hors d'oeuvres are worth keeping up your sleeve for just such an occasion.

The little bites use all store-bought ingredients (unless you want to make your own crème fraîche, which actually is incredibly easy) and can be assembled in seconds.

They sound impressive, they look delectable and they're a snap to throw together at the last minute. Your hubby's boss will be wowed!

There's just one little problem: They don't taste all that great.

Compost Cookies with Cereal-Milk Panna Cotta

Clay had a birthday recently! Yay!

We celebrated by having our friends Drew and Ralph over for a nice dinner at home. You may recall the parade of great dishes we made for Clay's b-day last year. This year, we kept things simple, with a grilled Kansas City brisket (which we'll post about soon!) and fresh summer veggies.

But Zach wanted to do something really special as a surprise for dessert. It took him about 3 seconds to decide on Compost Cookies with Cereal-Milk Panna Cotta.

Breakfast Burrito from Top Chef's Spike Mendelsohn

Food & Wine (July 2010)

Our nation's capital is, quite understandably, a little "Top Chef"-obsessed right now.

The new season is well under way and takes place here in D.C. And since the episode has already aired, we can now share with you our "Top Chef" sob story.

You see, we got invited to the party for the first challenge of the season. And, sad but true, we couldn't go. So we missed out on our chance for all of you to see the corner of one of our elbows over Padma's shoulder as she was eating an olive oil bon bon. Tragedy!

But we didn't feel that bad about not going, because we were sure that we'd get invited to a second taping. But then a second invite never came and now we're "Top Chef" cameo-less. We can feel your sympathy from here.

Anyway, the current season isn't the only reason the District is "Top Chef" crazy right now.

Former cheftestant Carla Hall, who we met last summer, is out and about town. Bryan Voltaggio's Volt, out in Maryland, is getting raves. And Mike Isabella just announced he's leaving Zatinya to open his own restaurant.

But Spike Mendelsohn may be the most visible "Top Chef" alum running around the city.

Spike's Good Stuff Eatery, a Bitten Word favorite, has been serving delicious burgers for well over two years now. He has a brand new cookbook available. And in just over a week, he'll open a new pizza place in D.C. called We, The Pizza (a few previews are available here, here, and here).

Spike also turns up in this month's Food & Wine, where he showcases his healthy takes on pizzas, burgers and burritos. We wish we could say that we made these breakfast burritos because we're huge Spike fans, but that's not the case. We don't have anything against Spike, but the truth is we made these burritos because we're huge breakfast fans. 

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!