The Bitten Word

Sesame-Ginger Broccoli Soup

Vegetarian Times (February 2014) 

It's Valentine's Day, and, sadly, for those of you with a sweet tooth, we have no chocolate on offer.

We do, however, have broccoli -- obviously the most romantic of all the cruciferous vegetables. (Take that, bok choy!)

More germane to this recipe, this is a snowy Valentine's in our nation's capital. It's been a cold, wet, snowy winter so far. And that's had us in soup mode. Which is partly why we wanted to make this Sesame-Ginger Broccoli Soup from Vegetarian Times. 

It's Our 6th Blogiversary -- And You Could Win Dinner for 6!

This week marks the 6th anniversary of The Bitten Word. On a chilly day in February 2008, we wrote about a Pork Cheek and Black-Eyed Pea Chili, and we haven't looked back since. (Not true: We look back all the time. Mostly to see how unappealing our photos were that first year.)

For our 5th Blogiversary last year, we enumerated 50 Things We've Learned in 5 Years of Writing The Bitten Word. This year, we want to mark the occasion in a different way. 

To celebrate our 6th anniversary, we're offering you Dinner for 6. 

Here's how this works. Leave a comment on this post telling us why you'd like to have a Bitten Word dinner. At midnight Eastern on Sunday, Feb 16, we'll choose one comment at random. If your comment is chosen, you'll receive a Bitten Word dinner for yourself and 3 of your friends (plus the 2 of us = 6 people). 

If you live in the Washington, D.C. region (or are willing to travel here), we'll have you and your guests over to our apartment for dinner. We'll work with you to plan the menu, and you can even throw on an apron and cook with us if you want.

If you aren't able to come to D.C., we'll work with you on menu planning and then we'll Skype in to join you for dinner.  (As much as we would love to come cook for the winner wherever they live, our Bitten Word travel budget is, well, nonexistent.)

To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment.

• Please do not send us an email. We won't be able to consider those as entries. If you're reading via email, please visit the blog to post a comment. 
• Be sure to include your email address in the field marked email when you leave your comment. Without it we'll have no way to contact you if you win. (Your email address will not be published with the comment.)

We can't wait to have dinner with you!  

Thailand Trip -- Watch the Video!

Our December trip to Thailand already seems like a loooong time ago. (We're doing our best to channel the warm island breezes and spicy papaya salads as we slug through gray, 20-degree days.)

On our trip, we took hundreds of photos and shot a lot of videos. We thought might like to see some, to get a better feel for the country we loved exploring.

So we made this little video for you! If you've already been reading about our trip, you'll see some familiar things in here, like our trip to a Thai food market, and the cooking class we took in Chiang Mai. But you'll also see tons of new stuff.

We hope you enjoy it!

Salted Herbs

Food & Wine (February 2014)

We're looking for magic in the kitchen. The dish that surprises. The condiment that elevates meat. The new pairing of flavors that just rocks our socks.

And we're hoping to find that magic in food magazines.

As we leaf through the pages of each month's new magazines, we look for things that are different. Sometimes that means they're actually unusual. Other times, it's that a dish is of the sort we've never made before. And sometimes, we're just intrigued by the small, tucked away recipe in the back of a magazine, like these Salted Herbs, which were part of the same feature as Minute Steaks with Montreal Seasoning and Herbed Anchovy Butter.  

Billed as being "great on everything from steak to chicken, fish and vegetables, as well as in soups and stews," we had high hopes for these Salted Herbs, thinking they would be excellent with our everyday takes on fish and chicken that are a staple at our house. The idea is simple: lots of herbs and vegetables chopped in a food processor, tossed with salt and stowed in the fridge. 

This recipe, though, is not for us. There's something off in the flavor of batch we made. We've used it on fish and chicken (better on the fish, offputting on the chicken), and it's so salty that you can only use it very sparingly. (And you know how much we love salt!) No, there was just some element that didn't do it for us. Maybe the spinach? Maybe the chives?  

But still, we really like the idea of herb salt, and we may give it another whirl, adding more of the herbs and less of the salt. 

Alas, no magic to be found here. At least not for us.

But we're not sweating it. More recipes await.

Pork and Squash Stew with Chiles

Bon Appétit (February 2014)

We are firm believers in the mid-week dinner party.

Or rather: We're not scared of the mid-week dinner party. 

Here's why.

When life is ramped up and busy, it's easy to not see friends, relegating them to weekend time. And we, like you, we're sure, are staying plenty busy these days. But we love our friends, and want to prioritize spending time with them. And we love having people over for dinner rather than meeting friends at restaurants. And really, if we wait until the weekend to have people over for dinner, we'll spend the entire day getting ready for their arrival. We love to cook, but after a long week at our offices, we don't always want to spend the full weekend in the kitchen. 

As it turns out, mid-week dinner parties are totally doable, even on our busiest days when we don't get home from work and the gym until late, and have, say, only 30 minutes or so until the guests arrive. (In our younger, less prepared days, we thought nothing of inviting people over for dinner and have them arrive when the cooking had barely begun. Dinner would regularly hit the table after nine o'clock, but we always had plenty of wine and snacks to keep everyone sufficiently sated until showtime.)

But there's a catch, of course, to successfully being able to have friends over for dinner in the middle of the week: careful planning. All you need is the right mix of dishes, some of which can be prepped in part or full in advance. That's what we did last week, when we invited our friends Ken and Jeff over for dinner to debrief on Thailand (Jeff had given us lots of good recommendations for our trip) and talk about their upcoming nuptials (they're deep into wedding planning -- huzzah!). 

So we planned a three-course dinner that had a simple beginning and end, but we chose a more impressive entree that could be made well ahead of time. We started with a Kale, Black Radish and Walnut Salad. For dessert, we served bowls of simple, ginger-and-cinnamon-infused citrus (kind of a different take on Clementines in Cinnamon Syrup). The mix of grapefruits, blood oranges and naval oranges were bright and tasty. For the entree, we chose this Pork and Squash Stew with Chiles.

Here's why it works on a weeknight: The salad and dessert ingredients could be prepped in advance, then assembled as guests arrived. And the entree was nearly all done in advance; we just had to heat the dish and garnish it before serving.  

We got home at 7:30 -- they arrived at 8:00 -- and shortly after, we all fell in love with this Pork and Squash Stew with Chiles.