The Bitten Word

New England Brown Bread

Saveur (March 2012)

In August 2009, we were staying with our friends Dan and Wendy in Belfast, Maine. That Saturday, they suggested that the four of us drive up to Bangor for the annual American Folk Festival. 

Mere moments after we arrived at the outdoor festival, the skies opened up. A Nor'easter socked Bangor for the entire day, drenching everything in sheets of freezing rain. The two of us Southern boys were essentially wearing every article of clothing we'd brought with us (how could it be this cold in August?!), and we were ready to pack it in and head back to the house. Dan and Wendy are made of hardier stuff, however, and we stayed for the day, teeth chattering and rain pouring down our necks. (It wasn't a total bust: We saw a nifty maple syrup demo, and we heard a very cool Quebecois vocal group.)

By the end of the day, we were frozen to the core and soaked to the bone. We headed back to Belfast, lit a fire in the potbelly stove, and hung our clothes to dry. 

Suddenly Wendy had an inspiration: We'd make brown bread for dinner. The two of us had never heard of it, but she assured us it was a New England specialty. Dark and dense and subtly sweet, a slice of warm brown bread slathered in butter, Wendy said, would be just the thing to restore our souls.

Reader, brown bread saved our lives.

More Photos from New Orleans + A Message for Email Subscribers

Before we get to the rest of our New Orleans scrapbook, a bit of housekeeping for those of you who receive the blog via email: Our email delivery service stopped working a week ago, so you've missed a few posts. We think it's back up and running as of today (fingers crossed). Come visit the blog to read all about the posts you've missed, including Fluffy Diner-Style Omelets, Chicken and Walnut Stew, Our Five Favorite Meals in New Orleans, and New England Style Baked Beans. 

And now, to photos! 

New England-Style Baked Beans

Saveur (March 2012)

You know that old saw about how, if you're trying to sell your house, you should always have a batch of cookies baking in the oven when you show the place? Supposedly, the familiar aroma of fresh-baked cookies puts would-be buyers at ease and gives them a sense of comfort.

Forget that. Ditch the cookies and simmer a pot of these New England-Style Baked Beans for six hours. The darkly sweet aroma coming from the oven is the most enticing, comforting thing you can imagine.

Five Restaurants You Need to Visit in New Orleans

Sitting at the cafe tables on a warm, breezy afternoon in the middle of January, you find yourself not much caring if Cafe Du Monde is a tourist trap or not.

Nestled at the base of the French Quarter, and the first stop in every New Orleans guidebook on the planet, the cafe is undoubtedly filled with tourists. But we were happy to be among them. The coffee is dark, the beignets are sweet, and the powdered sugar is literally flying through the air. Everyone -- and everything -- in the cafe seems to have a fine dusting of sweetness. It's a beautiful place to watch the world pass by.  

We had the opportunity to spend four nights in New Orleans back in January, and we've been meaning to tell you about our trip ever since. Zach was traveling there to write a story for his day job, and Clay decided to tag along. We both used it as an excuse to eat up all the Louisiana we could handle. 

We thought you might enjoy hearing about some of our dining adventures. Our meals skewed a little more upscale-foodie-New-Orleans as opposed to, you know, cajun/crawfish/jambalaya/po' boy/divey/Abita-in-a-shack-in-the-bayou. But if you want recommendations for those kinds of places, we can give them to you. 

Our list is also not jackets-for-dinner/Commander's Palace/jazz-with-potted-palms/old-school-places-you'd-probably-go-with-your-parents. But we can recommend places for that, too. (And ours is also not hurricanes/Pat O'Briens/Mardi-Gras-beads. If you want recommendations for that, well, we can't really help you.)

But here are are a few meals we had and loved. Word of warning: You're going to want to schedule a trip to New Orleans this year. 

Chicken and Walnut Stew (Khoresht-e Fesenjan)

Saveur (March 2012)

We tweeted about this when it arrived in our mailbox, but we are really loving the March issue of Saveur. It's extremely enjoyable cover-to-cover, from a decadent feature on Southern layer cakes (including a touching coming-out story by the author, Ben Mims), to a delectable tour of Venetian bar bites (called cicheti), to a very cool story on the food of Transylvania (insert blood joke here).

Oh, and on p. 18, there's a screenshot of our very own The Bitten Word, encouraging readers to nominate blogs for Saveur's annual Best Food Blog Awards, one of which we won last year.

But it was the issue's feature on the food of Iran, titled "The Land of Bread and Spice," that drew our eye. It includes a host of wonderful, exotic dishes -- a noodle soup, herb meatballs in a tomato-plum sauce, a dish of lima beans with eggs and dill.

More than anything, though, we wanted to make this Chicken and Walnut Stew. With its mix of walnuts and pomegranate molasses, and the promise of "sweet, sour and bitter notes," it sounded unlike anything we'd ever tried before.