The Bitten Word

Tomato Time Once Again

It's that time of year again -- tomato canning! 

Last Friday, we drove out to our CSA farm very early, picked more tomatoes than we ever thought possible, and then spent a big chunk of our weekend canning them.

We used the same canning method this year as we have for the past few years. That's all chronicled in a video we made three years ago.

This time, though, we had some special guests -- Zach's mom and stepdad were here, and they were excited to help out! (At least that's what we're telling ourselves.) Eight hands made the work much faster.

We thought you'd like to see some photos of our latest adventures in canning.

 

Like we said, it was early.

Cover to Cover -- The Assignments are Out!

If you signed up for the Cover to Cover Challenge, you should have received and email last night with all the details, as well as a link to a spreadsheet with your specific assigned recipe. (You may need to check your spam folder.) If you didn't get a chance to sign up by midnight last night, you'll have to wait until the next Cover to Cover Challenge.

We're so excited about this year's project -- nearly 500 Bittens are taking part!!

Email us if you have any questions.

Now, get cooking!

Grilled Thai Chicken and Eggplant with Basil

A recipe from The Bitten Word

Three things conspired the other day that led to us making this dish for dinner:

1. We were jonesing for some classic Thai flavors, especially basil, in which a dish is pack with so many pungent spices that it clears your sinuses.

2. It was crazy nice weather in D.C. Unheard of in August. We had even turned off our air-conditioning and opened our windows. As such, we didn't want to heat up the apartment by cooking over a hot stove.

3. We had uncooked chicken in our fridge, a couple of eggplants from our CSA, and an abundance of basil in our garden.

Voila! Grilled Thai Chicken, Eggplant and Basil!

Here We Go: The Bitten Word’s 2013 Cover to Cover Challenge!

This year, we’re doing Cover to Cover again, but this time we’re changing it up.

We loved reading the September issue of Bon Appétit. It’s their restaurant issue, and it includes a ton of dishes we were eager to try ourselves. Some of them are straightforward fare. Others are completely bonkers.

So this year, The Cover to Cover Challenge will focus on cooking every one of the 47 dishes in that issue. (Last year's "one recipe = one person" rule meant we had to leave people out. This way, everyone who wants to participate can join in!)

You need to join the challenge! Here’s how it will work.

Red Velvet Cake

The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

Last week was our friend Jim's birthday!  And our friends Tara and Brian had a really wonderful idea: Throw a surprise dinner party for Jim, totally themed around his favorite cookbook: The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. (Sidenote: How great an idea is that?? We're totally stealing that sometime.)

So that's just what we did. Fifteen friends secretly gathered at Jim's house in Baltimore while Tara took Jim to brunch. People came from far and wide: D.C., New York, Salt Lake City, North Carolina. Jim was genuinely surprised when he walked in to his house -- decorated with streamers and filled with his friends preparing an amazing dinner.

 

We had volunteered to take on dessert (a cunning ploy on our part that meant we got cook early and then show up at Jim's and sip on gin and tonics while other people scurried around preparing dinner). Brian and Tara were the leads on dinner itself. The meal started with Fried Green Tomatoes with a Buttermilk-Lime Dressing, followed by Macaroni and Cheese, Slab Bacon Grits, Succotash Salad, and Grilled Ham Steaks with Chow Chow.  

Everything was slap-your-mama delicious. 

But we need to talk about this cake.

We generally like a red velvet cake. It's got a nice, mild chocolate flavor and a sweet cream cheese frosting. It's totally Southern and a tad bit tacky -- in the best way possible. Our favorite description ever of a red velvet cake was from a New York Times story back in 2007: "The color, often enhanced by buckets of food coloring, becomes even more eye-catching set against clouds of snowy icing, like a slash of glossy lipstick framed by platinum blond curls." That feature also refers to red velvet as the "prom queen of the bakery case." 

But when it comes to this red velvet cake in particular, we have to say, we weren't really huge fans.

Cover to Cover Challenge 2013 -- It's Coming

Hello, Bittens!

It's been almost a year since our inaugural Cover to Cover Challenge. It was a huge, epic project -- and so much fun that we're doing it again!

This year's C2C is going to be a little different. (Coordinating more than 300 recipes and 300 different cooks cooking from 6 different magazines was a tad difficult for us. By which we mean we almost lost our marbles.) This time around, for sanity's sake, we're going to focus on cooking every recipe from a single issue of one magazine. 

We'll get all the details to you later this week! But if you're interested in participating, start sharpening your knives now!

~ Zach & Clay

UPDATED:  We'll give out info on how to sign up, etc., later this week. Stay tuned!

Garden Update: So Many Blossoms, So Few Squash

If it's remotely possible, we have finally become zen gardeners. 

In previous years, we fretted and stewed over every little change in the garden. Were the plants getting enough water? Are the squirrels eating too many tomatoes? Should arugula really be this spicy?

But this year, we're just rolling with the punches. Don't get us wrong -- our garden isn't without its problems. They're just not Olivia Pope-scale problems. The tomato plants are growing haphazardly. There are (no doubt) too many weeds. 

But there are enough plants thriving that we're counting this summer's garden as a win so far. 

Grilled Summer Vegetable and Quinoa Salad

A recipe from The Bitten Word

These are the crazy times.  

It's the time of year when produce is piling up all around us. We're getting more than we can handle from our CSA, and yet we're still buying more each week at the farmers market. We can't help it!  Everything is so good and abundant right now! (Our names are Zach and Clay, and we're addicted to vegetables.) 

As a result of our over-abundance of veggies, we've got to have a couple tricks up our sleeve for using up a bunch of different vegetables. 

One is called Throw Everything In a Skillet. It's a very complicated recipe in which we basically sauté everything in our fridge. Onions, corn, tomatoes, okra, zucchini, squash, whatever. Eggplant? Yes. Green beans? Sure. We sauté one group of veggies at a time (so each different kind of vegetable gets nicely sautéed), then throw it all back in the pan to combine. If we're feeling especially fancy, we'll throw in a handful of chopped fresh basil at the end.

Our other favorite recipe this time of year? Quinoa Salad.

Cucumber, Celery, and Gin Sorbet

Martha Stewart Living (July/August 2013)

Clay was in New York earlier this summer for work, and met up with our friend Ingela at Osteria Morini, an Italian restaurant in Nolita. (For you Bittens who happen to live in D.C., the restaurant will open a location down on the waterfront later this year).

Ingela and Clay both loved the meal, but when it came to dessert, they were torn. There were so many wonderful-sounding gelatos and sorbets: Pistachio, Rosemary-Violet, Vanilla, Dark Chocolate, Goat Cheese-Honey, Orange Blossom, Raspberry, and two others that have since escaped us. They debated which to choose and then calmly, resolutely uttered four words you should pretty much never say when you're at a restaurant:

"We'll have them all." 

And that's what they did. Nine flavors of sorbet and gelato. 

It was frozen bliss. (Don't judge!)

Cucumber, Celery and Gin sorbet wasn't among the options, but we're not sure that's such a terrible thing.

Peanut-Basil Relish

Southern Living (July 2013)

We haven't been grilling as much this summer as we wish.

Normally this time of year, we cook dinner on the grill most every night. But this year, for whatever reason -- busyness, bugginess -- we just aren't firing up the grill as much.

One definite reason we've scaled back is because we've been trying to eat a bit more healthfully this summer. We've cut back on a lot of what used to be grilling standards for us -- steak, burgers, sausage. We're eating more fish (which just isn't worth the hassle to grill as far as we're concerned) and more lean proteins like chicken and turkey and, occasionally, pork chops.

And when you grill things like chicken, turkey and pork chops, it can be easy to fall into a rut.

That's why recipes like this Peanut-Basil Relish are a godsend.