The Bitten Word

Fried Chicken Cook-Off: Garden & Gun vs. Clay's Mom

Garden & Gun (October/November 2016) 

One of the first big projects we ever did on The Bitten Word -- all the way back in September 2008! -- was a fried-chicken cook-off that pitted famed chef Thomas Keller's extremely complicated fried chicken recipe against Clay's mom's recipe, which was decidedly simpler and more straightforward.

Now that we've decided to wind the blog down, we knew we wanted to do one more fried-chicken face-off before we say goodbye.

So this past Sunday, we had 9 of our friends come over for another good ol' fashioned chicken fry. (And to pose for chicken-leg portraits.)

This time around, we paired Clay's mom's chicken against the North Carolina "Dipped Chicken" recipe on the mouthwatering cover of the current issue of Garden & Gun.

Fire up your fryers, Bittens! This one's a barn-burner.

Skillet Blueberry Cobbler

Garden & Gun (June/July 2015)

 

[UPDATE: We tried a different Skillet Blueberry Cobbler we liked much better: Read about it here!]

 

What is it about foods cooked in cast-iron skillets that are so darn appealing to us? 

"Cook it in a skillet" is as good advice as Put an Egg On It: It just makes everything better.

Or maybe that's just our Southern showing?

At any rate, Zach's mom was here a few days ago, and the three of us spent the weekend doing what we do best: eating and chatting and eating some more. We did a bit of cooking, too, including a meal that was topped off by this Skillet Blueberry Cobbler from Garden & Gun. 

The 10 Best Food Magazine Recipes We Made in 2014 -- Plus Our 5 Other Favorite Dishes

   

    

   

Happy New Year, Bittens!

We are so excited to start cooking in 2015!  But first let's take a quick look back at 2014.

In our ongoing quest to test-drive food magazine recipes, we tried out a lot of dishes last year. Some were good; some were duds. Here are the best things we made all year long, in chronological order. First up are our favorite food magazine recipes, followed by a few other favorites from last year.

 

The 10 Best Food Magazine Recipes from 2014...

1. Pork and Squash Stew with Chiles 
Tender bites of pork in a savory broth with a warm, comforting heat. It's the perfect dish for winter -- and, as we wrote back in February, an ideal make-ahead dish. 

 

2. Herbed Faux-tisserie Chicken and Potatoes
We have roasted a LOT of chickens in our day. This one is absolutely one of the top three ever.

 

3. New Orleans–Style BBQ Shrimp
Spicy and buttery and delicious. The next-best thing to actually going to New Orleans.

 

4. Edamame-Miso Tuna Salad Sandwiches
This is probably the one dish we've made the most since posting about it last year. The mix of miso, hot chile oil and edamame is a great new spin on tuna salad. We've made this (especially for lunch to take to work) more times than we can count.

 

5. Ayam Jeruk (Grilled Chicken and Toasted Coconut Salad)
We debated whether to include this dish in our year-end roundup, because we'd made so many substitutions in the recipe. But who cares? This dish was to die for, and we're sure it's even better if you can find fresh galangal. And shaved coconut. And candelnuts. And Asian shallots. And Balinese long peppers...

 

6. Asian Marinated Tomatoes 
These tomatoes are really more of an accompaniment or a condiment than a stand-alone dish. But they're marvelous. If we may quote our own post from last summer: "Imagine if a bowl of salsa spent a semester abroad in Thailand, and got really into meditation and mystic Buddhism and lemongrass, and then came home and hopped up on your grilled chicken." Who doesn't want that??

 

7. Spiced Lamb Burgers
Nothing we made last year was as drool-worthy as these lamb burgers. As we said back in July, "The lamb is flavorful and full of wonderful spice from the coriander, cumin and cinnamon. The fat from the lamb melts into the pitas, soaking them with flavor and making them crispy and amazing." If you're not salivating at that, there may be something wrong with you.

 

8. Vietnamese Pork Chops with Pickled Watermelon
In August, we solidly declared this the "DISH. OF. THE. SUMMER."  We stand by that. This salty/savory/sour/sweet/pungent/crispy/juicy dish is everything you want in a grilled entree.

 

9. The Barefoot Contessa's Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes
It's highly possible that no dish we've featured has ever elicited a greater response than these potatoes that we made for our Fakesgiving test-run of recipes. We heard from countless -- countless! -- friends and family and Bitten Word readers who made these for Thanksgiving. And just about everyone has told us these are the best mashed potatoes they've ever made.  

 

10. Maple Syrup Pie with Crème Fraîche
This delicious pie was the crowd favorite at our Fakesgiving meal this past year. We could eat it morning, noon and night. 

 

... Plus 5 More of Our Faves.

 

Thanksgiving 2014: 2 Birds 1 Stone Knockout Bourbon Punch

Garden & Gun (October/November 2014)

Earlier this week we shared one of our best Thanksgiving stalling-tactics to buy you some time while you get food on the table: serve a soup or a salad. 

That goes hand-in-hand with another tip for keeping a large crowd at bay: Have a beverage ready for guests as they arrive. We don't know about you, but we just aren't not the kind of hosts who invite a bunch of people over, and then make craft cocktails for each person. The stuffing is burning; the carrots are dry; the gravy needs a stir; and we need guests to be able to serve themselves a libation. 

That's why a punch is such a great way to kick off a party. Set out in a big punch bowl, a pre-dinner drink like this Knockout Bourbon Punch is not only beautiful, it's also festive. 

Just heed the warning of our friend Ed...

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. 

Southern Cocktail Week: The Full List

Our Southern Cocktail Goodbye Sobriety Hello February party was a total hit.

By which we mean our friends hated us the next morning.

These seven very stiff cocktails would have challenged even the most stalwart of tipplers. But Dry January had left us all with the tolerance of a Mormon grandmother. And the larger than planned pours weren't helping matters.  

It was awful. It was amazing. We can't wait to do it again next year!

Here's the full round-up of what we served:

• Hamilton Cobbler
• Redless Snapper
• Spicy Shrub Paloma
• Honey Bunny Hot Toddy
• Diamondback No. 5
• The Seelbach
• After Midnight

Pick a cocktail and pour yourself a drink. We just don't recommend pouring yourself seven of them. 

Southern Cocktail Week: After Midnight

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

Feb. 1. 10:15 p.m.
Cocktail #7
Feeling: jkll;k';lijo;ugb??

Hazy. Boisterous. Overturned chairs. By this point in the night, we still have at least 10 people in our apartment. 

This happened (and the paparazzi were there...).

Shouldn't we have had dinner by now? Oh right, we ordered food. But how long ago was that? 

One thing's for certain: Tipsy was a long time ago. 

We need a nightcap like we need a hole in the head, but we soldier on to our final drink. (For you, Bittens! For you.) 

We're not huge fans of creamy nightcaps. Drinks made with Bailey's and Carolans and Kaluha -- they're just not our thing. They're too thickly sweet and cloying for our tastes.

The After Midnight is a nice alternative. It's still plenty rich, with half-and-half and crème de cacao. But it's not as sickly sugary as other nightcaps can be.

Would we make this again? Probably not.

Would we recommend it to you? Sure, if you like nightcaps in the creamy-sweet family.

Do we totally 100% even remember drinking this drink? We're choosing not to answer that question. 

Just as we pour these cocktails, Thai delivery arrives. Our guests scarf it down, quickly, voraciously. We eat as if we have never eaten before. And then we ever-so-politely kick everyone out.

Seven Southern cocktails later, this party is a wrap. 

Southern Cocktail Week: The Seelbach

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

 

Feb. 1. 9:20 p.m.
Cocktail #6
Feeling: Uhhmm....

Extra guests have arrived! Our friends Ryan and David stop by (we hadn't initially thought to invite them since they hadn't done dry January). But we're happy to see them! And they brought their own alcohol which is great because God knows we only have about 30 gallons of booze in our house right now.

Speaking of gallons of booze, The Seelbach. At this point in the evening, we've already had sherry, rum, gin, tequila, whiskey and brandy -- clearly we need some champagne.

This drink hails from a century ago at Louisville's Seelbach Hotel, and it's a delicious mix of Kentucky whiskey, Cointreau, bitters and champagne. (According to Garden & Gun, the recipe was lost in Prohibition and only rediscovered in 1995.)

This is great. Really, a wonderful cocktail. We love it, our guests love it. Everyone loves everything.

But this cocktail party is starting to break down.

Not break down in a "things are winding down and people are getting ready to leave" way. Break down as in "the breakdown of society in a post-apocalyptic hellscape."

One more drink to go...

 

Southern Cocktail Week: Diamondback No. 5

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

Feb. 1. 8:35 p.m.
Cocktail #5
Feeling: Hazy

This is where things start getting a little blurry.

We were excited about this Diamondback No. 5 because we've had a bottle of Root liquor burning a hole in our liquor cabinet for a long time. We really like its sassafras flavor, but it's a very strong flavor. So you never need very much of it.

Case in point: You only use it here to rinse the glass. Then you discard the excess liquid. (Which incidentally is fun to do in a party-trick kind of way. Or at least our guests thought it was neat. Pro tip: By the fifth cocktail, your guests will think anything is neat.)

This drink, by the way, is probably the priciest one we served at our party. The 375-ml bottle of chartreuse we bought was $30, and we used half of it for drinks for 8 people. Spendy!

Basically this is a twist on an Old Fashioned. It's really good, and the licorice-ness of both the Root and the chartreuse are a great accompaniment to the rye and the apple brandy.

At this point, a couple of our friends had to peel off to go to a birthday party. We were sorry to see them go, but hey, more for the rest of us.

Heaven help us.

Southern Cocktail Week: Honey Bunny Hot Toddy

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

 

Feb. 1. 8:05 p.m.
Cocktail #4
Feeling: Supergreat

Hot cocktail time!

There are only certain situations where we'd ever think to order a hot cocktail. Après-ski, obviously. Sitting by a roaring fire under a winter sky filled with stars, maybe. On a horse-drawn carriage ride through snowy woods, perhaps.

These are not situations we ever find ourselves in.

So we can't tell you the last time we had a hot toddy. Still, we wanted to serve one at our Goodbye Sobriety party just to mix things up.

Honestly, we didn't have high hopes -- it smells great on the stove, but do our friends really want a hot drink?

Answer: Yes. To our surprise, this is a total crowd favorite. Our guests love it, and so do we, and we know that has nothing to do with the fact that everyone is already three stiff drinks in before they even taste this one.

Seriously, the lemon/ginger/honey/cinnamon combo is so nice and warming and comforting, and it tastes really terrific with the rum.

We declare ourselves hot toddy converts, and we swear to ourselves that we won't wait until the perfect snowy ski weekend before we have another one.

Onward!