The Bitten Word

A Gelée in the Sun...

What happens to a gelée deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

No. It melts into one globous, gelatinous mass.

After writing up the post about those Lemony Blackberry-Vodka Gelées, we took them on Sunday to Zach's sister Cassidy's house in Annapolis. She was throwing a crab boil, and we thought these gelées would be a great way to kick things off.

But.

The hour-long drive from DC proved too hot and sunny for our little Jello shots. By the time we arrived at Cassidy's, the individual gelées -- which we had worked so hard to pry out of the bowl and slice into perfect little cubes -- had oozed and congealed into one big mess.

(Forgive us, but it looked exactly like when a vampire gets staked on "True Blood." Only click on that if you want to see something truly unappetizing.)

Sure, the gelées still tasted delicious, but we couldn't bring ourselves to serve them and ask Cassidy's guests to grab a spoon and dig in.

But we did bring 'em back with us. And that grabbing-a-spoon-and-digging-in thing is still a very real possibility...

Lemony Blackberry-Vodka Gelées

Cooking Light (July 2013)

Once the provenance of frat houses and bachelorette parties, gelées now pop up occassionally in the pages of food magazines.

Whatever you do, don't call 'em Jello shots. They always go by their classier, more adult name, Gelée (which sounds like what we might name a baby we adopted from France). 

In fact, in our third month of blogging here, more than five years ago, we featured Lemoncello Gelée from Martha Stewart Living at a going-away dinner party. It was love at first shot sight. 

We're back with gelées today. The July issue of Cooking Light features the classiest looking gelées. With Fourth of July festivities ahead of us, we thought this might be the perfect recipe to get you ready for fireworks. 

In Praise of Milquetoast: Cucumber Salad

Cooking Light (June 2013)

Cucumber salads come in a number of forms.

There's the incredibly bracing sort, so tart from vinegar and acid that your face puckers a bit. 

There's the cucumber salad that pits bracing against sweet in an epic battle to see if it will first pucker your face or rot your teeth (kind of our favorite, if we're choosing). 

And there's the bland, the watery, the "is there any dressing on this or did you just serve me a bowl of sliced cucumbers?" salad. 

We picked up a bunch of cucumbers at the farmers market recently, and while trying to figure out what to do with them, we ran across this recipe in Cooking Light. We've never featured a cucumber salad here on the blog, so we gave it a shot. There's nothing out of the ordinary about this recipe: sliced cucumbers and green and red peppers get tossed with oil, white wine, lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper, as well as some herbs. It's a pretty basic take on the dish. 

But here's the thing about this cucumber salad -- we find it to be perfectly balanced. It's not too sweet, not too tart. The dressing doesn't overpower the vegetables. There's no secret, star ingredient smuggled into the mix to set your taste buds on fire. It's a standard, very good, absolutely ordinary cucumber salad. And we loved it for that.

Mussels in Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Broth

Cooking Light (April 2013)

The truth is we've never really met a flavor of mussels (by which we mean the broth poured over them) that we didn't like.

White wine with garlic; fennel with chorizo; Thai spices and peanuts -- you name it, we've enjoyed it. 

So we definitely wanted to try out these Smoky Poblano-Cilantro Mussels from Cooking Light.

Barbecue Turkey Meatballs

Cooking Light (April 2013)

We try to pack our lunch nearly every day of the week.

It's part budget, part health and part being-tired-of-lunch-options-near-our-offices. 

Our regular cast of lunch characters includes various takes on tuna salads, turkey meatloaf, and endless variations of chicken and vegetables. And of course, leftovers. Lots of leftovers. 

We chose to make these Barbecue Turkey Meatballs precisely because we thought they would be a perfect addition to our lunch line-up. 

So we bought enough of the ingredients to make a triple batch of meatballs and got to work. 

Let's call it a lunch audition. 

Microwave Sweet Potato Chips

Cooking Light (May 2013)

Here's an idea that we genuinely want to love: thin slices of sweet potato, sprinkled with salt and rosemary, and microwaved briefly until they're crisp.

And for the most part, we do love it. They're salty. They're sweet. They're crunchy. They're, well, heaven.

The only problem is, we can't for the life of us figure out how to reliably cook these chips without half of them burning.

Perhaps you can help.

Here's the problem.

Artichoke and Pea Sauté

Cooking Light (March 2013)

It's a snow day here in our nation's capital.

A winter storm is whipping its way through the area, so we're inside the house, still wearing pajamas, and dreaming about warmer days. And pancakes. But mostly warmer days. 

We've been troopers this winter -- not complaining about the cold (well, not complaining too much about the cold). But we're ready for change, for sun, for mornings that don't require four layers of clothing.

It's March. It's time. 

And with dreams of spring weather come dreams of spring foods. We're craving them. Earlier this week, in a moment of spring desperation, we bought a pound of fresh snap peas from our supermarket. Though the quality wasn't great (nothing like the peas we'll see at farmers markets come April and May), they were good enough for us, steamed, with a simple drizzle of citrus -- a literal taste of spring. 

Those same dreams of warmer days are what drew us to this Artichoke and Pea Sauté. It screams [use your best old timey voice here]: "Spring's a comin'!" 

And the best part? The ingredients come from the freezer section. 

Broccoli Stalk Salad

Cooking Light (February 2013)

We've been eating a lot of broccoli in the past few months. And why not? It's packed with good nutrients, it's cheap, and it's just about the quickest vegetable side you can make. 

If we've got a little time, we'll chop the florets, toss them in olive oil and roast them in the oven. (That takes about 25 minutes.) If we're in a hurry, we'll chop the florets, steam them over some boiling water, and add a squeeze of lemon. (That takes about 4 minutes.)

But somewhere along the way, we asked ourselves a question. "Hey, selves," we said. "Why are we only using a third of each bunch of broccoli?"

And that's when we started eating broccoli stalks.

Thanksgiving 2012 Recipe Index: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

Now that you're all set on the Thanksgiving trends for 2012, it's time to start planning your menu in earnest. 

As we've done for the past few years, we've gathered all the different Thanksgiving recipes from several different food magazines. This year's index features a full 239 recipes from 11 food magazines: Bon Appetit, Cook's Illustrated, Cooking Light, Everyday Food, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, Food Network Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Southern Living and Whole Living. And believe us, they are absolutely packed with great ideas for Thanksgiving. 

We hosted our annual Fakesgiving this past Sunday. As you might remember, that's our yearly meal where we invite a bunch of friends to test-drive several Thanksgiving recipes. This year we had 20 friends and family to sample 19 different dishes, from a pre-dinner snack all the way through to dessert. We'll be posting about the dishes we tried over the next three weeks, in the run-up to Turkey Day.

So dig into our Thanksgiving 2012 Recipe Index! But first, we'll share a few photos from our Fakesgiving meal.

2012 Thanksgiving Trends: What's In and What's Out at the Thanksgiving Table This Year

 
It's 22 days till Thanksgiving. Do you know where your turkey is?

We're only half-joking. Yes, there are three weeks to Thanksgiving, with plenty of time to pull it all together. But if you're hosting a Thanksgiving meal this year, it's also time to start planning. 

We try to avoid getting caught up in food hype, but we can't help ourselves at Thanksgiving. We pore through the magazines. We try out a bunch of the dishes. We invite friends over for Fakesgiving (more on this year's event tomorrow). 

And each year, we're enamored with the Thanksgiving trends that we see across the spectrum of food magazines we receive. This year, we've closely studied 11 of those magazines, charting their Turkey Day recommendations. As we have in previous years, tomorrow we'll be publishing the 2012 Thanksgiving Index -- a round-up of all the dishes recommended this year by all 11 of those magazines.

But first, here's what we're seeing in this year's trends.