The Bitten Word

Barbecue Turkey Meatballs

Cooking Light (April 2013)

We try to pack our lunch nearly every day of the week.

It's part budget, part health and part being-tired-of-lunch-options-near-our-offices. 

Our regular cast of lunch characters includes various takes on tuna salads, turkey meatloaf, and endless variations of chicken and vegetables. And of course, leftovers. Lots of leftovers. 

We chose to make these Barbecue Turkey Meatballs precisely because we thought they would be a perfect addition to our lunch line-up. 

So we bought enough of the ingredients to make a triple batch of meatballs and got to work. 

Let's call it a lunch audition. 

Microwave Sweet Potato Chips

Cooking Light (May 2013)

Here's an idea that we genuinely want to love: thin slices of sweet potato, sprinkled with salt and rosemary, and microwaved briefly until they're crisp.

And for the most part, we do love it. They're salty. They're sweet. They're crunchy. They're, well, heaven.

The only problem is, we can't for the life of us figure out how to reliably cook these chips without half of them burning.

Perhaps you can help.

Here's the problem.

Fluffy Omelets with Asparagus and Ramps

Cook's Illustrated (April 2013)

As the write-up accompanying this Cook's Illustrated recipe says, there are basically three kinds of omelets.

There's the French omelet, with its uniform, creamy crepe-like texture and sparse accoutrements.

There's the American diner omelet, with its thicker texture and slightly scorched exterior bursting with cheese and other fillings.

And then there's the fluffy omelet. It's light and delicate and ethereal.

Well, we've tried French omelets. And we've tried diner omelets.

It was time for us to round out the trifecta.

 

Photos from Early Spring

To round out this week, we thought we'd share a collection of photos we've snapped so far this spring. It's a bit of a rainy day here in DC, but a beautiful weekend is on the way. We hope it is wherever you are, too. 

Have an awesome weekend. Cook something delicious. And enjoy the photos!

~ Zach & Clay

 

Though this looks like a Washington, D.C. cherry blossom photo, it was actually snapped outside of 1892 East Restaurant in Huntsville, Alabama. We flew down there to meet Zach's family a few weeks ago, and spring had already arrived. We loved 1892 (our first visit) and have been thinking about their take on Shrimp and Grits -- a butterflied shrimp, stuffed with grits, then deep friend and served with a tomato dipping sauce. Needless to say: delicious. 

 

While we were visiting Zach's family (they live in Tennesee, but it's usually cheaper for us to fly into Huntsville), we went to a cookout hosted by one of Zach's mom's colleagues. He lives on a farm outside Lynchburg (home of Jack Daniel's). This shot of Clay from that cookout is about as Tennessee as it gets -- barn, beer and a chicken.

Chicken Tikka Masala at Home

Bon Appétit (April 2013)

Do you ever go to a restaurant intent on trying something new? But you end up ordering the same thing you always get, powerless to select any other item from the menu, even though you really want to branch out?

For us, the answer's yes. And Chicken Tikka Masala is Exhibit A.

Every time we go to an Indian restaurant, one of us ends up ordering the dish, with its sweet tomato sauce that's screaming for a garlic naan to be dunked into it. 

When we first spied this recipe in the current issue of Bon Appétit, we thought about doing one of our Delivery vs. Homemade Challenges, like we've done before for Pad Thai and General Tso's Chicken. 

But let's do the math for this Chicken Tikka Masala:

               17 ingredients
            + a four- to six-hour marinating time for the chicken
            + another hour plus or so to cook the chicken
            ---------------------------------------------------------------
            Without a doubt: Takeout was going to smoke homemade in cost and speed.

 

How would this recipe stand up against delivery in terms of taste? We have a hunch.

Oil-Poached Tuna with Fennel and Orange

Food & Wine (April 2013)

We really didn't want to like this dish.

Well, wait, let's back up. Of course we originally wanted to like this dish, which is why we selected it from the most recent Food & Wine. The first time we oil-poached fish had yielded mixed results, so we wanted to try it a second time. Plus, the fennel and orange sounded like a delicious complement to the tuna.

But once we got into the prep, we quickly fell out of love.

Broccoli Rabe with Sausage

Food & Wine (April 2013)

Here are some things we like right now:

• Temperatures are up. Goodbye, winter coats! 

• Mad Men is back! Though we're sad to say that you're breaking our hearts, Don Draper....

• Our garden is starting to show signs of life. Little bits of green are peeking up through the dirt. Let's hope they're not weeds. More on that next week.

• The Cherry Blossoms hit their peak in our nation's capital this week. Yesterday, before work, we biked down to see them. We're so fortunate to live in such a beautiful city. 

Yes, spring is here, and we couldn't be happer about it. 

But here's something we don't like quite as much: We've both been incredibly busy at work as of late. And work, she takes up a lot of time. Between that and our thirst for more time outside, it means less time in the kitchen. 

We're still cooking dinner at home most nights of the week. But during the work week, we need meals that we can throw together in a short amount of time, with little thinking required. 

We need meals like this Broccoli Rabe with Sausage. 

New York Sour

Bon Appétit (April 2013)

Sometimes you want a cocktail to take the edge off.

Sometimes you want one in order to try a new ingredient, or a new kind of alcohol.

And sometimes you want a cocktail just 'cause it looks really freaking cool.

Enter: the New York Sour. 

Bo Ssam with Ssam Sauce and Garlic-Scallion Sauce

Momofuku, via The New York Times

There was a time when the thought of serving dinner for 16 would have scared the daylights out of us.

But that's just the challenge we faced last weekend, when through a series of circumstances we ended up hosting a large group of our friends for dinner (well, part of a dinner, but more on that below).

We needed a dish that would easily serve a group on a Saturday night, and we didn't want to spend all day in the kitchen.

We decided to go with this Bo Ssam served with two sauces, a Ssam Sauce and a Garlic-Scallion Sauce.

Bittens, are you sitting down?

We hope so, because this dish is about to BLOW. YOUR. MINDS.

This dish is, in a word, epic.

Spicy Glazed Onions

Fine Cooking (April/May 2013)

When's the last time you put down your fork and said, "Gosh, those are good onions"?

Have you ever said that?

Onions tend to get relegated to "ingredient" rather than "side dish." Nearly every recipe we make, it seems, starts with a diced onion. But we almost never see onions as a featured star.

If you're looking to change that, start with these Spicy Glazed Onions.