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.

Peppermint White Chocolate Meringues

A Bitten Word recipe, adapted from Everyday Food (May/June 2003)

As we mentioned, for our Admiral Peary Party, we handmade a couple food items to mix in with the snacks we picked up at the store.

One thing we knew from the get-go was that we wanted to make some meringue cookies. They're so easy, and we knew they'd go great with our all-white spread of Polar-inspired treats.

We found a good meringue recipe from an old issue of Everyday Food (R.I.P.!), which we adapted a bit, swapping in white chocolate chips to keep with our fête en blanc theme, and adding a little peppermint to give the cookies a minty twist.

We actually doubled the recipe below, which was very easy, although we had to bake them in two separate batches because we didn't have enough oven space. We ended up making about about 60 cookies, which our guests gobbled up.

These meringues are so easy to make and incredibly tasty: chocolaty and minty and light as air, with that perfect crunchy-chewy texture you get from a classic meringue. They were a hit!

Holiday Cookie Challenge Day 1: Gingered Sugar Cookies

Martha Stewart Living (December 2015)

It's 10 days 'til Christmas, and everything seems a little off-kilter this year.

Instead of St. Nick, we've got Krampus. Instead of a white Christmas, we've been sweating it out here in D.C. (It hit 71 degrees on Sunday!) 

Our Christmas tree fell down. Our Christmas cards got lost on their way from the printer. Zach has a head cold. 

Nothing is working as it should!

Including, by all accounts, all three of this year's Cookie Challenge recipes...

 

Thanksgiving 2015: Grapefruit Cornmeal Cake

Food & Wine (November 2015)

Imagine the moistest, cakiest, most indulgent donut you've ever had. 

Now imagine the flavors of a lemon-poppyseed muffin.

Now, in your mind, marry those bright, tart, sweet flavors to that cakey donut texture.

Now imagine it twice as tasty as whatever you're already picturing.

Ladies and gentlemen: Grapefruit Cornmeal Cake.

The 2015 Thanksgiving Index: All This Year's Food Magazine Recipes in One Handy Place

220 Thanksgiving Recipes from 10 Leading Food Magazines

Yesterday, we were all about the trends, sharing what's in and what's out for this year's Thanksgiving feast.

Today, it's all about the recipes. Below, we've categorized all 220 recipes from the 10 magazines we're tracking this year.

Of course, the November issues of these magazines feature many more recipes than this -- in order to make this list, the recipe had to be part of an explicit feature about Thanksgiving. (If a recipe doesn't have a hyperlink, it means it isn't yet available online.) 

Explore the list and share your thoughts: What sounds amazing? What sounds too wacky for your table? What might you try for this year's feast? Let us know in the comments -- and happy cooking! 

 

TURKEYS

Porchetta-Style Roast Turkey Breast (Bon Appétit)
Barbecue Spice–Brined Grilled Turkey (Bon Appétit)
Glazed and Lacquered Roast Turkey (Bon Appétit)
Two-Hour Turkey with Gravy (Cook's Country)
Applewood-Smoked Turkey  (Cooking Light)
Brown Sugar–Cured Turkey with Apple-Bourbon Gravy  (Cooking Light)
Rosemary-Orange Roast Turkey  (Cooking Light)
Citrus-Herb Roast Turkey & Gravy (Fine Cooking)
Chipotle-Butter Turkey (Food & Wine)
Citrus-and-Butter Turkey (Food & Wine)
Porchetta-Spiced Turkey with Pan Gravy (Food & Wine)
Roast Turkey with Polenta Stuffing (Food & Wine)
Soy-and-Sesame Turkey (Food & Wine)
Maple-Whiskey Turkey (Food Network)
Classic Roast Turkey (Food Network)
Lemon-Pepper Turkey with Bacon Gravy (Food Network)
Southwestern Turkey with Chipotle Gravy (Food Network) 
Herbed Turkey (Martha Stewart Living)
Molasses-and-Cider-Glazed Turkey (Martha Stewart Living)
Tamarind-Glazed Roast Turkey (Saveur)
Slow Smoked and Spice-Brined Turkey (Saveur)
Dry-Brined-and-Marinated Smoked Turkey (Southern Living) 

 

GRAVY

Gravy-Braised Turkey Legs with Cipolline Onions (Bon Appétit)
Classic Turkey Gravy with Thyme (Bon Appétit)
Maple-Whiskey Gravy (Food Network)
Classic Gravy (Food Network) 
Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy  (Cooking Light)
Make-Ahead Gravy (Southern Living) 

 

 

Tennessee Pulled Pork Sandwiches with Hoecakes

Cook's Country (June/July 2015)

There we were, standing over an electric mixer filled with slabs of steaming-hot oven-roasted pork. 

"There's no way this is going to work," said Zach.

"I'm dubious," said Clay.

The plan -- to use the stand mixer's paddle attachment to take cooked pork shoulder and pull it for barbecue -- seemed like a recipe for disaster.

We winced. We shut our eyes.

We threw the switch.

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.

 

Salt-and-Pepper Shrimp

Bon Appétit (December 2014)

Are we late to the Salt-and-Pepper Shrimp party?

We were flipping through the December food magazines when we spotted this version from Bon Appétit. Then a few minutes later, we were in Cook's Illustrated, and there, again, was the same dish, this time called "Crispy Salt and Pepper Shrimp."

This is a totally new dish to us, but not to tons of other folks. Since reading about the dish, we've learned that you can sometimes find it at authentic Chinese restaurants (though we didn't find it after scouring the online menus for our go-to Chinese restaurants in D.C.). Way back in 2011, Mark Bittman profiled Danny Bowien/Mission Chinese Food's take on the dish.

So why would this dish suddenly show up in two different food magazines? We have no idea. (Do you have any theories?) But we're sure glad it did.

 

 

Our 11 Favorite Grilling Recipes

With Memorial Day behind us, summer is officially here. And for us, that means grill season!

We love cooking on the grill -- the flavor, the flame, the ritual, the not-heating-up-our-tiny-kitchen. So we thought we'd share with you our 11 favorite grilling recipes for the upcoming summer season. 

We're off next week for some downtime at the beach. But we'll be back with a full food report, and we've got some fun things planned for June.

In the meantime, get grilling! It's going to be an awesome summer.

 

Burgers with Blue Cheese Mayo and Sherry Vidalia Onions

Every bite of these burgers has the perfect mix of sweet and vinegar and salty and cheesy and peppery and buttery amazingness. Get the recipe.

  

Spicy Korean Grilled Pork

Simple, perfect grilled pork with a delectable Korean sauce. Get the recipe. 

 

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.