The Bitten Word

Roast Pork Tenderloin with Carrot Romesco

Bon Appétit (April 2014)

Another day, another carrot recipe from the April issue of Bon Appétit ... but with a very different result. 

Let's back up. See, ever since we got the first hint of spring sunshine, we've been ravenous for salads. Our kingdom for some good arugula! But with our unusually long winter, we haven't quite gotten the garden up and running, and our Sundays have been a bit lazier than usual, so we haven't been venturing down to the farmers market. 

In the interim, we've been going to town on carrots. Lots of carrots. Roasted. Raw. Pickled. Mashed. Stir-fried. You name it, we're eating them.

As expected, the food magazines have ample carrots this month, in all forms. We initially dismissed this recipe from Bon Appétit. Really, do we need to do another pork loin on this blog? We've done at least eight already (if our recipe index is to be trusted). 

 

But the carrot romesco sold us. We love the idea of taking a classic dish or sauce -- in this case, a romesco, which is traditionally made with red peppers -- and shaking things up by swapping in a different ingredient. 

And lord knows we do love a pork tenderloin.

So why didn't we love this dish?

Spring Salad with Carrots Three Ways

adapted from Bon Appétit (April 2014)

The April issue of Bon Appétit is all about "cooking like a pro." The issue includes tons of notes from restaurant chefs about how to take your food to the next level. There are lots of chef profiles, restaurant entrees, and tips for cooking restaurant-style food in your own home (apparently we should all be brining our fish).

But is there anything cheffy-er than serving something "three ways"? "Duck Three Ways," or "Mushrooms Three Ways," or "Chocolate Three Ways." One ingredient, three preparations: it's always going to look impressive on a menu.

Serving something "three ways" at home is a way to show your guests that you seriously have your act together. "What, this old salad? Oh, I just threw it together to highlight the bounty of the season. I mean, I guess you could say it's like three dishes in one, and I guess that's super impressive, if you think about it. But it really hadn't even occurred to me. More Sav Blanc?"

Traditional Swedish Gravlax with Mustard Sauce

 

The real reason we wanted to make gravlax actually goes back to New Year's Eve a few years ago.

Picture it: Dec. 31, 2011. Rhinebeck, N.Y. We had driven up to ring in the new year with our friends Ingela and Anders -- and half a dozen other folks -- at Ingela's parents' house in the beautiful upstate town of Rhinebeck.

As you might not be surprised to learn, given their names, both Ingela and Anders hail from Swedish stock. And they like to celebrate New Year's with a full-on traditional smörgåsbord. That means herring, boiled potatoes and pickled vegetables. It means sharp cheeses and sausages. It means made-from-scratch meatballs in a warm, creamy gravy.

And it means gravlax. (It also means many, many shots of akvavit accompanied by rounds of traditional Swedish songs. Of course we didn't know any of the words, but the akvavit made us not seem to mind.)

The gravlax was a highlight, the perfect balance of salty and sweet, shot through with that great, bracing dill flavor and served with a tangy mustard sauce.

It was an epic night. Here's a photo of us vamping with Ingela at some point in the evening:

Anyway, when we had our disappointing gravlax experience last week, we knew just who to call to set us straight with a traditional Sweish recipe for gravlax. 

We set up a phone date with Ingela's mom, Paula.

 

We're Back!

Oh, Bittens, how we've missed you!  Typepad, our blog-hosting platform, was the target of several denial-of-service attacks over the past week.  So our site -- along with hundreds of other blogs -- has been down for much of the past several days.

But we're back online now, and we'll be up with a new post in just a bit!

Kitchen Fail: Gravlax

Food Network Magazine (April 2014)

 

Bittens, would you like a little foreign-language lesson? Let's learn a new word together, shall we?

The word is katastrof. It's Swedish for "disaster" or (obviously) "catastrophe." 

And it's important for this little story about making gravlax.

Because the first time we tried this, we ended up with a sizable katastrof on our hands.

Carla Hall's Last Supper Buttered Tarragon Peas

Carla's Comfort Foods

Is Carla Hall the most flat-out enjoyable person in the food world right now?

In our book: Yes.

A friend invited Clay to join him to see Carla discuss her new book, Carla's Comfort Foods, here in DC last week. The Top Chef competitor, co-host of The Chew and District of Columbia resident utterly charmed the crowd with her Padma Lakshmi impressions, tales of cooking under pressure and just overall Carla-ness (Hootie hoo!).

But it was the disucssion of peas that grabbed Clay's interest. Peas are one of Carla's favorite foods (ours too, Carla, call us!). She told the crowd that a recipe she'd made on Top Chef, for Buttered Tarragon Peas, was left out of her first cookbook. Since then, it's been the most requested recipe she gets from fans of the show. 

With a new book out, it was time for Carla to fix the peas omission.

We love the idea of serving these peas for an Easter brunch or lunch, so we thought we'd give them a spin.  

Veal Meatballs with Mustard Greens

Food & Wine (April 2014)

Meatballs are regularly on the menu at casa Bitten Word. 

We don't typically use any specific recipe. We just buy a ground meat that looks good to us (typically turkey, chicken or pork), spice it up in a way that sounds good to us and go for it, cranking out (on our best days) enough meatballs for a meal as well as enough to store in the freezer for another lazy day. 

For years, we've been big fans of Trader Joe's Turkey Meatballs. They easy to throw together for a quick meal with some sauce. We've likely eaten dozens of bags of them, and you can almost always count on finding some in our freezer.

This recipe for Veal Meatballs with Mustard Greens -- from chef Hugh Acheson in the latest Food & Wine -- makes for a nice upgrade from the freezer aisle.

Edamame-Miso Tuna Salad Sandwiches

Saveur (April 2014)

Does your pantry ever surprise you?

Ours does. We remember fondly the first time, years ago, when we were able to make dinner entirely using foods we already had in our pantry. We were shocked! After years of living in tiny apartments, we'd grown accustomed to buying only the foods we were about to cook. But when we moved in together (and upgraded to a slightly larger kitchen), we started amassing pantry staples and frozen basics until one day -- boom! -- we could make whole meals from our pantry without having to buy a single thing.

Of course, in the six years of writing this blog, our pantry has grown a little ridiculous. We have more exotic spices than we know what to do with  (rogan josh, anyone?), and our freezer overfloweth. (Sometimes, things have gotten so crowded that we've had to made a conscious effort to eat only from our cupboards.)

But our pantry can still surprise us. That was the case with these Edamame-Miso Tuna Salad Sandwiches from Saveur. We dog-eared the recipe, and then it dawned on us that even though this was a slightly exotic take on tuna salad, we already had every single ingredient on hand.

And yes, before you say anything, white miso is, in fact, a pantry staple around our house.

New Orleans–Style BBQ Shrimp

Fine Cooking (April 2014)

On the heels of our trip to New Orleans, we were desperate to get back to cooking. So we hit the stack of April's food magazines.

We had no plans to cook anything that came close to what we'd eaten in New Orleans (and we had eaten so, so much), but in the pages of Fine Cooking were thrilled to see this recipe for New Orleans-Style BBQ Shrimp from a bona fide Louisianan, Miss Poppy Tooker. (Can we just agree that hers is one of the best names ever?)

We keep running across Poppy Tooker in various publications, but most recently heard her on The Splendid Table discussing calas, a beignet-like New Orleans confection that's made with cooked rice. We still haven't made (or eaten) calas, but it has piqued our interest and we've filed it away for another time. 

So now Poppy was back, this time with a recipe for New Orleans-Style BBQ Shrimp.

Okay, okay. Just one last New Orleans indulgence... 

5 Nights in New Orleans: Eating and Drinking Around the French Quarter

 

It wasn't hard to convince us to return to New Orleans. 

When Mason called more than year ago to say he and Kristen were engaged, we were thrilled both for them and, honestly, for ourselves, because we knew it meant we'd be returning to New Orleans. 

It had been two years since we last visited New Orleans and it that was two years too long. So in late March, we made the flight down, got in a cab driven by a man named Beauchant (like something out of central casting)  and were speedily deposited in the French Quarter, where we planned to stay for four nights (which later becomes five nights, but that's a different story). 

We had decided to add some extra days on to the trip, since much of the weekend would be spent at wedding festivities. And we had only one item on our agenda: eating. So we sketched out a plan for where to eat, made few reservations, and got to it. 

Here are the meals we loved on this visit to New Orleans, along with a list at the bottom of our full New Orleans recommendations from over the years. All the photos are quick iPhone pics we snapped at meals.

Be warned: this is a caloric ride. 

Galatoire's lunch: our starting place for New Orleans dining

We started our New Orleans visit at the famous Galatoire's Friday lunch (we're convinced 99% of this restaurant's popularity is that Southern people just love saying the name). As advertised it was loud, bustling and fun on a Friday afternoon, with a dining room full of locals and tourists. We ordered a trio of Shrimp Remoulade, Crabmeat Maison and Oysters en Brochette (pictured left above), and followed it with a fish topped with Crabmeat Yvonne (a mix of crab, mushrooms and artichoke). As an aside, the new Saveur features the restaurant's recipe for Remoulade Blanc if you want to try it at home.