The Bitten Word

Indian Fish and Potato Tikkis (Fish Cakes) with Chile and Lime

Saveur (April 2016)

We often imagine other lives we're living.

There's the us that lives in New York City, like Clay once did, where we live in a tiny apartment that has no real kitchen to speak of. We rarely cook, but there's so much good (and affordable!) food around. We're rarely at home, always at work or with friends.When we do cook, it's an event, with lots of friends crammed into our apartment, just to remind ourselves that we can. 

The West Coast us worships the sun. In this alt-life, we're living in Los Angeles, and live to be outside, going to the beach every chance we get. We actually have a really big apartment in this version (our L.A. selves are rich!), with a citrus tree in the yard, and a huge, airy, light-filled kitchen. West Coast us is calm, rested, absolutely zen. We are cooking, but it's mostly salads. Very light, very healthy, totally amazing salads. (But then obviously we cheat by going to SQIRL and In-and-Out on the regular). 

There are other versions, too. Like another West Coast us who lives in San Francisco and is super outdoorsy and spends every weekend in Napa or Tahoe or Big Sur.

There's an us who lives year-round on Cape Cod (or maybe Maine), in a little rambling house with crooked walls and low ceilings. In summer, we pluck blueberries from the bushes in our back yard and pack slices of our home-grown tomatoes to take to the beach. We freeze through the winters, huddled around a little Franklin stove and dreaming of summer. This version of us cooks a lot of seafood -- hearty fish chowders and stocks.

And maybe even a lot of fish cakes.

Because it turns out, we love a fish cake. And that was not always the case. 

Sautéed Collard Greens with Six-Hour Caramelized Onions

Saveur (January 2016)

We were so smitten with Six-Hour Caramelized Onions -- how they made our house smell amazing, how we loved how the slow cooking brought out their amazing sweetness -- that their original purpose was, six hours later, just an afterthought.

We'd originally made them with these Sautéed Collard Greens in mind, thinking it was high time we changed up our collards game. We've been buying collards at the supermarket ever since winter arrived, cooking them about once a week by giving them a quick sauté over high heat. That method works fine, but is also feeling a little plain, as we've been making them that way for the several years now. 

In truth, we think these Sautéed Collard Greens succeed because of two elements: the phenomenal caramelized onions, and the right balance of vinegar. 

Six-Hour Caramelized Onions

When you're letting onions cook for six hours, you think about a lot of stuff.

 

HOUR 1

"Six pounds of onions is a lot. Our dutch oven is nearly full. Will they ever cook down?"

"Broad City can't start soon enough. Less than a month!"

"Could Donald Trump really be the GOP nominee?"

 

HOUR 2

"Tokyo: We're going this spring, towards the end of April. We have to start planning our time there. Do The Bittens have any recommendations?"

"How's Downton Abbey going to end? Will there be a flash-forward? Will we finally learn that Cora is a vampire?"

"Is Transparent our new favorite TV show? Yes." 

 

 

HOUR 3

"We've got to get to New York City for a weekend this spring."

"Good god, these onions smell amazing."

"Will it be 2017 before we see Hamilton? From the look of available tickets, the answer is yes."

"Zach's stepdad is having knee surgery on Monday. Need to call and wish him well!"

 

 

HOUR 4

"This stack of New Yorker magazines isn't going to read itself." 

"Wonder what's getting past its prime in our fridge right now? We've really got to cook some cauliflower."

"Wow there's still a lot of snow on the ground here. And our street hasn't even been plowed." 

"What are we going to do with all these onions? Part of them are for a recipe, but we're going to have a lot left over. Should we make a soup?"

 

 

HOUR 5

"Once the snow is cleared, we should really go see The Revenant. But it sounds like such a chore..."

"You know what was a really good read? Fates and Furies."

"What to read next? When Breath Becomes Air?"

"Wow: Six hours is a really long time."

 

 

HOUR 6

"Should we bake a chocolate cake today?"

"Death, Sex & Money and The Mystery Show are such great podcasts." 

"Why don't we make caramelized onions more often?" 

"Wow, these onions taste incredible!" 

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) 

 

 

Charred Cauliflower and Shishito Peppers with Picada Sauce + We're Going to Spain!

Saveur (March 2015)

Bittens, we're going to Spain!

We are so excited! Neither of us has been before, but Spain has long been at the top of our list of destinations to visit. We're hitting three main areas: Barcelona, the Basque Coast (and the Rioja wine region), and Seville. 

We'll also be meeting up for part of the time with our friends Trevor and Owen, who moved to Europe last fall. You've met Trevor and Owen on the blog before: We had them over for Spiced Lentils after they got back from their honeymoon, and we once discovered the joys of Pickled Shrimp at their house on a hot, hot summer night. (And they've been at every Fakesgiving we've had, except the most recent one, when Europe stole them away from us.)

Anyway, España.  We're really looking forward to it. 

Got any recommendations of restaurants, neighborhoods, sites to see?  Please pass them along to us! You can leave a comment here or send us an email. 

With Spain on the brain, we were immediately drawn to this dish of Charred Cauliflower and Shishito Peppers with Picada Sauce.

Let's talk about these ingredients.

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: Navy Bean Pie

Saveur (November 2014)

 

Navy beans.

Of all the non-traditional ingredients we saw in Thanksgiving food magazines this year -- harissa, ras el hanout, madras curry -- it was probably these navy beans that stood out the most to us.

Navy beans.

In a pie. 

And here's something else you likely weren't expecting at your Thanksgiving table: This pie is brought to you from the Nation of Islam. Allow us to quote Saveur:

The silky, custardlike base of this autumnal pie is made from sweetened navy bean purée spiced with nutmeg, vanilla, and cinnamon. Pies made in this way have their roots in dietary guidelines set forth by religious leader Elijah Muhammad. In his 1967 treatise How to Eat to Live, he wrote that beans were a blessed food—but that sweet potatoes weren't fit for man to eat. His daughter developed a sweet potato pie–like recipe using navy beans that was so delicious, it became the most popular way to raise money for the Nation of Islam. Its members hawked them on street corners from the early 1970s onward.

Okay, so: Sweet potatoes out. Beans in.

But how does a pie made with navy beans actually taste?

 

Thanksgiving 2014: Brussels Sprouts with Horseradish and Pomegranate Seeds

Saveur (November 2014)

It's quite possible that our biggest legacy from The Bitten Word will be that we got more people to eat Brussels sprouts. We absolutely love them, and we know (because you've told us) that we've made converts out of more than a few readers. 

Well, we're sorry to say we don't think this dish is going to make a convert of anybody.

Nashville Hot Chicken

Adapted from Saveur (June/July 2014) and Food Network Magazine (June 2014) 

Have you ever heard of Nashville Hot Chicken?

It's a Nashville specialty -- fried chicken that's slathered in a super-hot, spicy glaze. There are a few joints in Nashville that are known for it, including Prince's, Bolton's and relative newcomer Hattie B's. 

It is seriously hot -- the last time we had some on a visit to Tennessee to see Zach's family, we made a beeline from Bolton's straight to Jeni's ice cream to cool down our fiery gullets.

Even if you hadn't heard of Nashville Hot Chicken a couple months ago, odds are -- if you read food magazines -- you know about it now. Why? Because no fewer than four magazines have featured this dish in the past two months (and two of the recipes are from Hattie B's)! There it was in the June issues of Saveur, Bon Appétit, and Food Network Magazine. Then this month, there's a feature on it in Good Housekeeping (not a mag that's in our regular rotation, but we happened to see a copy).

It's gettin' hot in herre! Anybody hungry for some chicken?*
 

 

Clearly, Nashville Hot Chicken is having a moment. (And Hattie B's has an excellent publicist!)

So last week, it had a moment at our house.

Ayam Jeruk (Grilled Chicken and Toasted Coconut Salad)

Saveur (May 2014)

Wanderlust.

We have it.

Bad. 

We blame Saveur, but we want to pass it on to you, too. 

You see, the May issue of Saveur is a bit different from typical editions of the magazine. Titled "A Day of Cooking," it progresses through a 24-hour day following stories of food and people from around the world.

At 6:21 a.m., someone is ordering brioche French toast from room service in L.A.'s Bel-Air Hotel. By 3:34 p.m., we're having afternoon snacks in Abu Dhabi. Later, in the wee hours of the morning, we're in a chef's home making quesadillas as a late night meal. It's an inventive, fresh issue, and each story has a corresponding recipe. 

We fell in love at first read in Indonesia (2:00 p.m.), with the description of Ayam Jeruk, "an addictive warm salad of grilled shredded chicken and roasted coconut tinged a bright yellow from fresh turmeric roots."

If we can't jaunt to Bali, we were at least going to give this recipe a shot. 

But just like we're substituting this dish for a trip to the Indonesian isles, we had to make a lot of substitutions in this recipe itself. 

As you might expect from an exotic recipe, there are several ingredients here that you ain't gonna find at Harris Teeter. In fact, we couldn't find the following ingredients at either Harris Teeter, Whole Foods or the tiny Japanese market in our neighborhood that we always kind of forget is very specifically Japanese and not, in fact, a pan-Asian superstore:

• Asian shallots
• Balinese long pepper
• Candlenuts
• Galangal
• Indonesian shrimp paste
• a Holland chile

On top of that, we accidentally bought two young coconuts at Whole Foods instead of two regular ol' mature coconuts, thinking they'd be interchangeable. They're not. Young coconut meat is more of a soft gel consistency and doesn't shred or toast. So we ran out and bought a bag of unsweetened shredded coconut. (One exotic item we did have on hand was fresh Kaffir lime leaves, thanks to a little potted Kaffir lime tree we bought a few years ago and have somehow kept alive. We love having it -- the leaves add a wonderful flavor to stir-frys and other dishes. And they make a killer martini when muddled with gin.)

Anyway, after all those substitutions, is it even worth making this Ayam Jeruk?

Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes.