The Bitten Word

Steamed Green Beans with Lemon-Mint Dressing

Cooking Light (July 2013)

It dawned on us last week that we've now known each other for more than 10 years.

TEN years. A decade.

Can that possibly be true? The gray hairs on our heads would indicate it is.

To mark 10 years of Zach and Clay, we're celebrating with green beans. More on those in a minute.

Ten years ago, things were a bit different. We each had about a year of DC living under our belts. We were both working all-consuming jobs. In a transient city, we were trying to make friends who weren't about to move away.

But the biggest difference between 10 years ago and today? Food.  Back then, we both rarely cooked. We lived in teensy apartments with doll-house-sized kitchens, so cooking was hard. When we did make food at home, it was more of the George-Foreman-chicken-breast-with-a-side-of-ramen variety.

As we got to know each other, we wanted to cook more. Eating at restaurants all the time wasn't doing any favors for our bodies, or our wallets. So we turned to cookbooks and food magazines to start learning some new dishes.

Thanksgiving 2012: Creamed Greens with Chestnuts

Martha Stewart Living (November 2012)

Of all the dishes we served at our pre-Thanksgiving Fakesgiving, we never expected Creamed Greens with Chesnuts to be the crowd favorite.

Wilted kale, collards and chard? How could that ever compete with sweet potatoes and stuffing?

Shows what we know.

Spiced Lentils and Poached Eggs

Cooking Light (October 2012)

Earlier this week, we invited our friends Trevor and Owen over for dinner. They just got married a few weeks ago here in D.C. (We were honored to get to participate -- Clay stood up with Trevor, and Zach sang a song during the ceremony.) It was a beautiful event.

Right after the wedding, T&O took off for a honeymoon in Hawaii. They just got back this past weekend, and we wanted to catch up and hear about their trip. So we invited them to swing by for dinner on Monday night.

The previous night, on Sunday, we had thrown a dinner party for 8, which we'll write about soon, after the Super Awesome Cover-to-Cover project. The Sunday night dinner ended up being a fairly lengthy affair, with plenty of wine consumed by the group. 

The next day, the evidence remained -- empty wine bottles and wine-streaked glasses still stood on the dining room table. And at 7 pm on Monday, they were still there. Trevor and Owen were due to show up at 7:30.

Mission 1: Clean up from the previous night's dinner.

Mission 2: Get cooking.

Not-Fried Tomatoes

Everyday Food (September 2012)

Is it possible to simultaneously both believe in "light" cooking and not believe in "light" takes on fried foods?

We think that's where we stand. We're all for lightening a diet, and we do it all the time. Yes, we sometimes post aboout decadent dishes, but when we're not cooking for the blog, we eat a simple, sane diet: lots of vegetables and protein, healthy snacks, light breakfasts and lunches, and dinners that are calorie conscious. 

Sure, we indulge (see: yesterday's lunch at Shake Shack, preceded by really decadent dinners on both Friday night and Saturday night, not to mention a Saturday afternoon snack). But we balance that indulgence with relatively measured eating (see: low-cal lunches every day last week). 

But we totally understand the impulse and popularity of light takes on fried foods. We all want to eat whatever we want to eat. And sometimes, we want to eat what's bad for us, so we look for ways to do that without going overboard. 

The problem is, these faux-fried recipes are so rarely successful. And these Not-Fried Tomatoes fall into that category. 

Skillet Corn, Edamame, and Tomatoes with Basil Oil

Martha Stewart Living (August 2012)

Martha had us at basil oil.

We're honestly not sure we would have made this if it had been called "Skillet Corn, Edamame, and Tomatoes with Basil," just because it sounds like a dish we've already made a hundred times. But add "basil oil" to the title, and we were totally on board. 

Essentially, this is a succotash, even though it's not called that. And Lord knows we love a succotash. (Would a succotash by any other name still taste as amazing? YES.)

But the basil oil intrigued us. We almost always throw a handful of chopped basil into a corn succotash -- the flavors are perfect together. But the idea of infusing oil with basil, and then using that as a dressing, made us really eager to try this dish.

Well, we did have one big takeaway from this recipe. But it wasn't the basil oil.

Chinese-Style Eggplant

Adapted from The Yangshuo Cooking School

We're awash in eggplant right now. 

Our CSA is having a bumper crop of eggplant. In a given week, we can easily receive three to seven pounds of eggplant. In a household of two, that's a lot of aubergine. (If you're unfamiliar with CSAs, we have a post that explains what a CSA is and how it select one.)

But we were eager for eggplant season to start this year. And we were ready. We have old standby dishes like this Eggplant Parmesan recipe (we've already made it once this month). And earlier this year we found another eggplant recipe that we loved, with these Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango (and it's on the docket to make again). 

But we were especially excited for eggplant season because we've been waiting to use this recipe we learned back in November when we were traveling in China. During a visit to Yangshuo, near Guilin in Guangxi Province in the Southern part of the country, we spent most of one day in a cooking class. We made five great dishes, but this eggplant was a standout.  

Moroccan Carrot Salad with Spicy Lemon Dressing

Food & Wine (July 2012)

There are a few reasons we love -- no, adore -- this carrot salad:

First, it's absolutely delicious. The lemon dressing, tart and spiced by harissa (which we wrote about extensively last year), takes carrot salad (which, let's face it, can be a bit blah) and makes it into a side dish worth getting excited about. The raisins are sweet, the feta is salty. The whole package is an amazing combination. An amazing carrot salad -- we honestly didn't know it was possible. 

That may be because this is also a recipe by Susan Feniger, a chef we fell for when she was on Top Chef Masters. We've been to the restaurant she owns with Mary Sue Milliken -- Border Grill in Los Angeles -- and had some amazing tacos there, including one that was a quinoa-crusted avocado taco unlike anything we've had before or since. There's a spread featuring party food from Susan in the latest Food & Wine. It's a dreamy L.A. party and worth checking out. 

The other nice thing about this carrot salad is how light and refreshing it is. Sure there's richness from the olive oil and feta, but it's mostly veggies. We felt great eating this salad.

And believe us, we need something light. We're just back from a rather decadent week away at the beach, where we ate and drank to our hearts' content. Now that we're back, it's time to start eating like sane people again. 

And then, there's this:

Quinoa Salad with Asparagus, Edamame and Radish

adapted from Fine Cooking (June 2012)

Our friend Jim just graduated from business school, and we invited him over for a celebratory dinner. Nothing fancy -- just a few friends for backyard cocktails and some food on the grill. (We did do one little thing to make it special. We made Jim's self-proclaimed all-time favorite cake.)

The biggest rule for the dinner? No indoor cooking. It was a steamy Saturday, and we didn't want to turn our apartment into a hotbox.

So we were very pleased to come across the feature in the June Fine Cooking on grain salads. The mag proclaims them "the new summer side," and we couldn't agree more.

Red Lentil Dal with Tamarind and Asparagus

Food & Wine (May 2012)

We love food magazines for introducing us to new ingredients. But we really love learning how to combine familiar foods in new ways. That was the case with this Red Lentil Dal. It's made from relatively familiar ingredients -- lentils, asparagus, chiles, fennel, onions, coriander, even tamarind, which we've cooked with before -- but the sum of the parts was a completely new thing for us.  

This recipe leapt out to us from the pages of Food & Wine. It was a no-brainer, really. We adore red lentils. And between our CSA and overpurchasing at the farmers market, we're swimming in asparagus right now. 

Black-Eyed Pea Salad

Saveur (May 2012)

We cut into the tiny habanero, and we both started coughing.

The spice immediately seemed to be in our throats. Is it really possible that the pepper is so hot that we felt it while just chopping it? 

Now we knew how John O'Connor felt.

In the new issue of Saveur, O'Connor has an essay about eating in Senegal, where he describes Scotch bonnet chile-spiked dishes so hot they're "incendiary."

We were eager to try one of the dishes. We contemplated making the Thieboudienne, or Senegalese Fish and Rice, the country's national dish.

But we opted to start our Senegalese cooking adventures with something a little closer to home: this Black-Eyed Pea Salad.