The Bitten Word

Seared Scallops with Grape-Mint Relish

Fine Cooking (October/November 2014)

 

Just last week, we found ourselves in a bit of a clean-out-the-fridge moment. We'd bought some tilapia fillets to cook for dinner, and we threw open the refrigerator to gain some inspiration from what we had on hand.

Our eyes settled on a mostly-eaten bag of red grapes. Huh, we thought. Grapes. With fish. That's a thing, right? We could do that, couldn't we?

We did. We threw a little olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary on the fish and grapes, and roasted them in the oven for 20 minutes or so. It turned out to be very tasty, and it was a terrific way to make use of some grapes that were about to be past their prime.

So we were excited -- and a little bit gratified -- when, just a few days later, we spied these Seared Scallops with Grape-Mint Relish in the latest Fine Cooking. 

Planning for the Chill: Fall Books

 

Thanks to some nice beach time and some less-nice work travel, we've been on a book tear over the past few months, reading like it's our job.

 

At the beginning of the summer, we shared a bunch of books we'd recently read and asked for your recommendations (which were awesome!). Here's what we've read over the past few months, and what we plan to read next. 

 

We'd love to hear your own list: What books do you love? What do you plan to read next? 

 

Here are ours: 

 

Big Little Lies. Our love affair with Liane Moriarty continues. In our next lives, we aspire to be wealthy women in Australia. This one is classic Moriarty...with a twist of murder! [Buy it.]

 

Two Boys Kissing. This gay teen novel had been highly recommended by our friend Sion. We adored it: It's a touching portrait of adolescents trying to find their way in the world. And you don't have to be gay or a teen to like it -- worth reading just for the innovative narrator. [Buy it.]

 

California: Zach read this debut novel by Eden Lepucki after seeing her interviewed on The Colbert Report (as part of Stephen Colbert's campaign against Amazon for freezing out Hachette). The plot may not have lived up to the intriguing premise -- one couple lives in back-to-the-land isolation following the economic collapse of Los Angeles -- but it was still a good read. [Buy it.]

 

The Bone Clocks: We both read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas a couple years ago and found it challenging, wondrous, frustrating, marvelous, epic and confusing. Reading it was like trying to remember a dream -- just as soon as you thought you understood it, the story fled away. But we were nonetheless eager to read Mitchell's follow-up, The Bone Clocks, when it came out earlier this month. (In fact, it's the very rare book we downloaded the very morning it dropped.) Bone Clocks is more straightforward than Cloud Atlas, but it's still got a rollicking fantasy subplot (supraplot?) that is off-the-charts insane. But it knows it's insane. It's weird. We liked it. A lot. We think.   [Buy it.]

 

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry: A sweetheart of a novel that's tailor-made for book lovers, The Storied Life follows bookseller A.J. Fikry as his life takes a major change in course. It's like dessert -- light, sweet and completely charming. (And yet it managed to leave Zach in heaving sobs when he finished it, which was awkward because he was on a plane at the time.) [Buy it.]

 

This Is Where I Leave You. We read the book in advance of the film's release and loved this portrait of a semi-estranged family coming together for a week to sit shiva for their deceased father. We can't vouch for the film, but the book is funny and filled with vivid characters. [Buy it.]

 

Me Before You. If we were the sort of people who used the word "chick-lit" to describe certain books, we'd use it here. This much loved and widely recommended JoJo Moyes book is candy, but a little on the sweet side for us. [Buy it.]

 

We Are Not Ourselves. We don't typically write here about books we've read that we did not enjoy, but this novel by first-time author Matthew Thomas seems to be on everybody's fall "must-read" lists, so we read it and want to chime in. The book follows a woman named Eileen through at least six decades of her life. We weren't fans. We never felt like we got to know who Eileen is. (Six decades is a looong time to not get to know someone.) And we kept waiting for any of the plot to matter. On top of that, the book is filled with incredibly depressing themes. It wasn't for us, but as we said, it's received lots of critical praise. What did we miss? [Buy it.]

 

What's Next On Our Lists?

 

Rosa’s Biscuits

Bon Appétit (September 2014)

Our Lives in Biscuits

Clay is eight. He notices for the first time that the two biscuit makers in his life -- his maternal grandfather and his paternal grandmother -- make very different sorts of biscuits. His grandfather's are thin, crispy affairs, and we pile on the gravy, sprinkling it with sugar before digging in. As if from another planet, his grandmother's biscuits are like little dinner rolls, fluffy and compact. 

Later, his working mom often makes biscuits as the morning meal. Clay loves to be the one to crack open the can from which they come -- the signature "pop" as the tubing comes apart is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.

Biscuits are butter and Smuckers and harried mornings before rushing off to school. 

--------

Zach is twelve. His grandmother makes fluffy, luxurious biscuits, using a beautiful wooden biscuit cutter to make them perfectly round. He tells her that he loves her biscuits. She tells him her secret: it's the recipe from the side of the bag of White Lily flour.

Later, in his twenties, when Zach has started to cook more, his grandmother sends him a short stack of recipes. Most are hand-written, on recipe cards that bear her name. But one stands out: a perfect little recipe card, on which the clipped White Lily recipe has been affixed. It hangs on the side of our refrigerator. 

Before It's (Technically) Gone: Photos from Summer

It's already starting to feel like autumn here in Washington, D.C.  The air is clearer, the sun a different kind of gold, and the nights are getting cool.

But a mere two weeks ago -- two weeks! -- we were sitting on the beach, drinking cocktails (like the Big Gulp Aperol Spritz pictured above, a favorite libation of ours over the past few months).  Oh summer, we already miss you.

We wanted to share some shots from our summer. Some of these are exciting; some mundane. But they added up to a wonderful summer for us.

Come along with us!

Pressure Cooker Lamb Curry

Martha Stewart Living (September 2014)

 

We love our pressure cooker. Well, correction: We love the idea of our pressure cooker. We've used it on occasion -- for things like short ribs, chicken stock, even a Pork Vindaloo. 

But we don't take nearly enough advantage of our pressure cooker. It's such a terrific shortcut to deep flavors and quickly make delicious dishes. Every time we do use it, we vow to utilize it more often in the future.

That's what got us excited about this Pressure Cooker Lamb Curry -- that, and, here on the cusp of Fall in our nation's capital, it seems like the perfect dish to make on a cool evening. 

So We Planted a Garden (Again)

 

We neglected to write about it this summer, but back in late April we planted our fourth garden since moving into our apartment. 

Previous years of our gardening were marked by fretting and constantly tinkering with the plants. Last year, we were a bit more mellow about it. This year was even more laid back. Call it the "Set It and Forget It" year of gardening (that's for you, infomercial fans). Maybe it's that we were out of town a lot. Maybe it's a more relaxed attitude about the growing season. Or maybe we're just really, really ridiculously good at gardening -- nope, that's not it.  

The garden, all ready to go back in April...

As with previous years in our garden, there were special guests, triumphs, failures and lots and lots of cherry tomatoes.

Kil't Greens with Bacon Jam

Garden & Gun (September 2014)

We don't have a huge list of current culinary heroes.

In fact, it's pretty short. Here are a few people on it: 

Mark Bittman (who was at our farmers market in DC on Sunday!), who we have long admired for his work and writing. 

Ruth Reichl, who wrote what we think are some of the best memoirs ever. 

Christina Tosi, because she invented the Compost Cookie. 

Contessa, because she's Contessa.

Whoever invented peanut butter. 

And then there's Chef Ouita Michel, who most of you probably haven't heard of -- at least not yet. 

Clay first met Ouita during college. They were in the same fellowship program, though in different years. When he was an undergraduate, Ouita had already started her first restaurant, Holly Hill Inn, just outside of Lexington, Kentucky. Since then, she's built a bit of an empire, with five restaurants now in the Bluegrass. We visited a few of them earlier this year and wrote briefly about it in our post about 72 Hours in Lexington, KY. 

Why is Ouita one of our heroes? First there's the fact that her food is amazing. We've loved everything we've ever had at one of her restaurans. She prioritizes local ingredients from Kentucky, which we love. And then there's the fact that she has stayed in Kentucky to build her restaurants, showing people a new way to eat and employing hundreds of people over the years. 

When a recipe from Ouita popped up in the most recent Garden & Gun, we got to cooking. And if it wasn't enough that we were already fans, there were these two beautiful words: Bacon Jam. 

Bananas and Emails

First, a bit of humor:

Whenever we go on vacation, we always try to order groceries so that we have food in the house when we return. (We're lucky to live in a Peapod delivery area.) But there can be pitfalls to doing this, especially when you're doing it quickly, from a beach in North Carolina.

The idea was simple: Order 15 bananas. The reality? We inadvertently ordered 15 bunches of bananas. Oops!  Well, now out freezer is chock full of bananas, ready for smoothies, muffins and other yummy treats.

Now, on to a ltitle housekeeping. Some of you receive posts from The Bitten Word via email. The email system we've used for years is, frankly, a calamity, and we've noticed that the emails are not reliably going out (sorry about that).

To fix things, we're rolling out a new email program. If you already get The Bitten Word via email, no need to do a thing.You'll still get it every day that we publish.

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No-Bake Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cookies

Food Network Magazine (September 2014)

Think of this as "The Curious Case of the No-Bake Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cookies."

But first, let's back up: No-Bake Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cookies have a soft spot in our hearts. It's partly due to our love for all things chocolate/peanut butter. The cookies also remind us each of fond memories of childhood. And more recently, it's our association of this kind of cookie with trips to the beach. 

Every Labor Day, we spend that final, blissful weekend of summer in North Carolina, at our friend Drew's family's beach house. We make a long weekend of it (today's actually our last day at the beach). The days are long and lazy. Books are read. Magazines are passed around. The nights are most often filled with home-cooked meals. And, frankly, we eat a lot of stuff that we don't allow ourselves to eat during regular life (see: the multiple bags of spicy Cheetos that have been downed over the past few days). 

For a number of years, it's been a sort of tradition to make No-Bake Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cookies at the beach. Typically, we make any old version of these cookies -- whatever first shows up in Google. This year, when the latest issue of Food Network Magazine had a recipe for these cookies, we rushed to make them. Thanks to a few surprise ingredients -- golden raisins, coconut, flaxseeds -- we were eager to give them a shot.

So here's what happened.