The Bitten Word

So We've Been a Little Bit Busy....

Yesterday morning we woke up to find that nearly every dish, plate, and vessel in our house was dirty. That, friends, is not an ideal way to begin the week. 

You see, Sunday was Fakesgiving (the biggest one yet!), which meant that for the last week we've done nearly nothing but plot, plan, shop, cook and clean. The photo above is our grocery delivery from this past week, and that was only a fraction of the food that was delivered. 

Two days post-Fakesgiving, with 20 recipes under our belts and 24 happy eaters, we are returning to sanity, but need a few days to get our wits about us. 

Next up, we'll kick off our Thanksgiving coverage. And it will be epic. Prepare yourselves. 

In the meantime, you can read more about previous Fakesgivings:

Fakesgiving 2013
Fakesgiving 2012
Fakesgiving 2011
Fakesgiving 2010

And feel free to drop by our place and wash a few dishes. 

~ Zach & Clay 

Maple Flan

Martha Stewart Living (October 2014)

We're always pleasantly surprised when people ask us if The Bitten Word is our full-time job. 

No, the truth is we both have day jobs. And they're day jobs that we love. But once in a while, those day jobs actually overlap with The Bitten Word.

Case in point: this past weekend. Clay works with a wonderful nonprofit devoted to ending childhood hunger in America. This weekend was the New York City Wine & Food Festival, and Clay's organization is one of the two beneficiaries of all the funds raised by the event. So Clay was in New York for several days working the event. One of his jobs was to introduce food personalities who were doing chef demos. (Zach tagged along for the free food and wine. He's no fool.)

Anyway, on Saturday afternoon, Clay got to introduce to the stage ... Ms. Martha Stewart! (Have you heard of her?)

Even better? He got to mingle with her in the green room backstage. Okay, maybe "mingle" is too strong a word. But they get to exchange a few words before the event began. Martha was super busy, and they only really had a chance to exchange a couple pleasantries and talk about the festival.

But it's just as well that's all the time they had together: If they'd talked for even a little bit longer, it's likely that Clay would have blurted out five exuberant, slightly embarrassing words:

"We loved your Maple Flan!" 

 

Pork Roast with Garlic-Parmesan Cream

Food & Wine (October 2014)

We always hate throwing away our cheese rinds. 

Whenever we finish off a block of Parmesan, we dutifully wrap up the hard rind and store it in the refrigerator to use in a future dish, 'cause that's what food magazines tell you to do. ("Save the rind and use it in a cheese sauce!" "Use it to flavor soups!" "Toss it in a pot of rice for added flavor!")

But the truth is we rarely ever do anything with our hoarded Parm rinds. The recipes we cook from hardly ever call for a cheese rind. And when we're improvising dishes on our own, we tend to forget about the huge cache of rinds sitting in our fridge. So the pile of rinds just continues to grow. Seriously, at one point we must have had 10 discarded cheese rinds sitting in a Ziploc in the fridge.

That's one reason we were eager to try this Pork Roast with Garlic-Parmesan Cream:  It would make use of one of our stowed-away cheese rinds. 

The other reason we wanted to try this? Because it sounded deliriously delicious.

Spinach and Spaghetti Squash Fritters

Vegetarian Times (October 2014)

 

The word "fritter" is a beautiful thing.

Apple fritters. Corn fritters. Zucchini fritters.

Don't all those sound absolutely divine? A bit crunchy? Satisfying and, oh yes, fried? 

We've had a little crush on Spaghetti Squash this fall. Ever since the first one of the year showed up in our CSA haul, we've been tinkering with recipes (if you have a favorite spaghetti squash recipe, we're all ears!) and so this one leapt off the pages of Vegetarian Times. 

Spinach and Spaghetti Squash Fritters? You had us at spaghetti squash. You sealed the deal with fritters. 

Grilled Fig Salad with Spiced Cashews

Food & Wine (October 2014)

Zach's parents were in town for a visit this past weekend and we had a great time together. We toured a wonderful art museum, had an excellent dinner at Buck's Fishing and Camping to celebrate Zach's mom's birthday, and generally just enjoyed walking around the city on a gorgeous early autumn weekend.

We also cooked at home. We made a not-that-special, help-us-eat-some-of-our-CSA-vegetables dinner when they arrived on Thursday.

But for Saturday night, we wanted to try some new recipes we'd dog-eared in some of our latest food magazines.

We had zeroed in on this Grilled Fig Salad with Spiced Cashews from Food & Wine. The magazine stamped this the "Salad of the Month." We loved the idea of the unusual ingredient combinations, along with other little twists, like using Chinese Five-Spice to flavor the cashews.

But this salad turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Let's talk about how to fix it.

Roasted Acorn Squash with Dates and Thyme

Bon Appétit (October 2014)

If this time of year were a book-turned-movie-starring-Ben-Affleck-and-Rosamund-Pike, it'd be Gone Grill.

Yes, it's not even cold yet in Our Nation's Capital, but we've already said goodbye to our grill and hello to the oven. Sorry, grill. What can we say? Our love is seasonal and fickle and you did the best you could to make it work. Someone else in another hemisphere will love you more this time of year than we ever could. 

But now we've moved on to our perennial fall/winter obsession: oven-roasting just about anything and everything. It is some combination of our love for caramelized vegetables plus our laziness and the simplicity of tossing a bunch of stuff with oil and throwing it in the oven that really gets us going when the temperatures dip. 

And this recipe for Roasted Acorn Squash with Dates and Thyme is just the kind of roasting recipe that we like: completely simple and incredibly flavorful. 

Giveaway Winner! And Salad Inspiration for Days....

We loved your comments on last week's giveaway post, telling us what you'd fill that big wooden bowl with if you won. Salad was the big theme of the comments. If you're needing salad inspiration, we highly suggest you read through the comments. There are literally dozens of salads that we would love to try.

But sadly, there is only one winner. 

The randomly selected comment for this giveaway was from Megs, who said she would fill the bowl with "Roasted Cauliflower and Hazelnut Salad from Jerusalem: A Cookbook."

That sounds delicious to us. Congrats, Megs! 

 

 

 

Giveaway: You Could Win This Wooden Bowl Set!

 

Greetings, Bittens!  

It's been a while since we did a giveaway. But we've got something that we think you'll really like: this gorgeous Acacia wood salad set, provided by Pacific Merchants Trading Company.

If you're like us, you're already thinking in the back of your mind about Thanksgiving (only 57 days away!!). And if you're also like us, Thanksgiving is a time where you end up trotting out every conceivable vessel to use as a serving dish. Yes, we've been known to serve cranberry relish in what would otherwise be used as a vase. And we've definitely set out mashed potatoes in a metal mixing bowl.

This bowl would help you out. It's got an arrestingly beautiful irregular shape, and it comes with two serving utensils (as well as a Kilner preserve bottle you can use for salad dressings or other condiments). It would be a lovely addition to your Thanksgiving table, and throughout the rest of the year as well.

How can you win it for yourself?