The Bitten Word

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 4 -- Chinese Black Beans with Tofu; Steamed Broccoli; and Cherry-Cheesecake Pudding

2012-02-23T09:38:35-05:00

We're midway through our Cupboard Cleanout, and so far it's been pretty terrific. (Although we're also now out of pretty much all the "normal" foods we had in stock, so we're about to enter the Wild Wild West of pantry items.)

This Chinese Black Beans dish is actually something we've been making a lot lately, Cupboard Cleanout Challenge or no. It's loaded with great flavors, it's super quick to cook, it only uses one pan, and it's cheap. And it's filling. And it's meatless (well, except for the oysters in the oyster sauce).

What's not to love?

The key to the black beans is really the oyster sauce. It gives them that fermented-sweet flavor that's so terrific. You could use hoisin in place of the oyster sauce, which would give you a sweeter version of this dish. You could also use gojujang if, for some reason, you have that on hand.

We don't typically eat desserts during the week, but we guess we can make that sacrifice if it helps with our Cupboard Cleanout. We made a dessert of sugar-free Cheesecake Pudding, topped with tart Oregon cherries fresh from the can. You know what? Delicious.

Day 4 Breakfast: Protein shake with banana (Again. Don't judge.)
Cupboard Items Used: Nothing from our list.
Degree of Difficulty: 0.5 out of 10
Verdict: Good as always.

Day 4 Lunch: Leftover Roast Pork with Apple-Cranberry Mostarda, and the Collards and Couscous Salad
Cupboard Items Used: Nothing from our list.
Degree of Difficulty: 0 out of 10 (Yay, leftovers!)
Verdict: Very nice little lunch for a workday. The mostarda was a great extra treat.

Day 4 Dinner: Chinese Black Beans served with Steamed Broccoli (recipe below)
Cupboard Items Used: 2 cans of black beans, 1 package of tofu, broccoli
Degree of Difficulty: 3 out of 10
Verdict: Awesome! (See recipe below)

Day 4 Dessert: Cheesecake Pudding Topped with Tart Cherries
Cupboard Items Used: pack of Jello pudding, 1 can of Oregon red tart cherries
Degree of Difficulty: 1 out of 10
Verdict: Surprisingly tasty!

Chinese Black Beans with Tofu
A Bitten Word Recipe

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil
14 ounces extra-firm tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes*
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 15-ounce cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
Sriracha or other hot sauce (optional)
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro (optional)

*If you have time, you can press the tofu to get rid of some of the water. After cutting it into cubes, place it in a single layer on a paper towel-lined plate, top with another paper towel, and then place a flat plate or baking sheet over it. Weigh down the baking sheet with something slightly heavy, such as a can of beans. Swap in new paper towels as they soak up the water. You can do this for an hour, or all day. Pressing isn't necessary, but it will result in crispier, golden tofu.

DIRECTIONS

In a wok or a large saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over high heat until just smoking. Add tofu and cook until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Remove tofu to paper towel-lined plate.

Reduce heat to medium high and add the remaining tablespoon of oil. Add garlic to oil, sautéing until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add remaining ingredients (except cilantro, if using) and simmer, stirring occasionally, until beans are tender and beginning to break down, about 10 minutes. If the sauce becomes too thick, thin it with water to your desired consitency.

Toss tofu cubes into the bean mixture. Top with cilantro, if desired.

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 3 -- Braised Curry Chicken with Golden Raisins and Peanuts

2012-02-22T10:45:09-05:00

Three days into our challenge, we've stumbled onto a dish that's already an instant new favorite! (What's that they say about necessity and invention...?)

Yesterday, a reader named Cheryl commented on our post about Day 1 with an idea for how to use up some of the pantry ingredients she saw on our list. Cheryl wrote:

I can well imagine the chicken thighs in a tagine or curry, with onions, carrots and golden raisins, sweet potatoes, too, if they are still there...put it all over couscous or basmati rice. Slow cooking is luscious, especially thighs until they fall off the bone!

We liked Cheryl's idea so much that we went right home and got to cooking!

We seared some bone-in chicken thighs from the fridge, sautéed carrots and onions, and then braised it all in a curry-spiced broth with raisins and peanuts.

And it was delicious! Seriously, marvelous. The spicy, earthy curry was excellent with the sweet, plump golden raisins. We were a little unsure about the peanuts, but we threw them in just to use them up. Even though we only had a small handful, they really gave the whole dish a great flavor and may have been our favorite part of the dish.

In fact, we liked this so much that we're actually going to write up a recipe below -- partly so you can make it if you want, and partly so we can remember what we did for the next time want to make this!

Breakfast and lunch were unexciting but good.

Day 3 Breakfast: Protein shake with banana
Cupboard Items Used: Nothing from our list.
Degree of Difficulty: 0.5 out of 10
Verdict: This is a standard breakfast for us: Two scoops of protein powder, two bananas, 8 ice cubes, a little coffee if we have some made. Blend. Enjoy. We eat this for breakfast at least three out of five workdays.

Day 3 Lunch: Leftover Sweet Potato Soup
Cupboard Items Used: Well, leftover sweet potato soup, we suppose.
Degree of Difficulty: 0.5 out of 10 (Let's hear it for leftovers!)
Verdict: The soup made a great take-to-work lunch. We toasted some more walnuts and packed them in baggies along with some more dried cranberries. Then we mixed the toppings into the heated-up soup at lunch. If you want to make the soup, we added a recipe to the comments of the Day 2 post.

Day 3 Dinner: Braised Curry Chicken with Golden Raisins and Peanuts, served over a bed of Basmati Rice Studded with Green Peas
Cupboard Items Used: Chicken thighs, raisins, peanuts, rice, green peas
Degree of Difficulty: 5 out of 10
Verdict: Like we said, a new favorite!

Braised Curry Chicken with Golden Raisins and Peanuts
A Bitten Word Recipe (inspired by Cheryl)

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons olive oil
4 bone-in chicken thighs
1 medium onion, diced (about 1 cup)
3 garlic cloves, minced
6 carrots, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces (about 3 cups)
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 cups golden raisins
2/3 cup raw unsalted peanuts
4 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock or water
salt
pepper

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium Dutch oven over medium high heat, heat oil until shimmering. Salt and pepper the chicken thighs, and then add to oil. Sear thighs, about 4 minutes per side. Remove chicken to plate. To the Dutch oven, add onion and sauté until softened, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add carrots and cook until tender, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Add curry, raisins, peanuts, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper, and stir.

Add chicken back to pot, along with stock or water. (Chicken should be mostly covered by the liquid. If it's not, add more water.) Cover with lid and place in oven. Cook for 25-30 minutes.

Serve alone or over rice.

Our 10,000th Comment!

2012-02-22T09:16:05-05:00

Just a quick note to mention that last night we received our 10,000th comment on The Bitten Word! We continue to be so grateful to hear from you guys -- we love your comments and your emails. We literally could not do this without you.

The 10k milestone made us wonder about the first comment we ever received, so we went back to our very first recipe post, this Pork Cheek and Black-Eyed Pea Chili. Our very first comment was from "Maybelle's Mom," who wrote to say:

I found this link on the Cleveland Food Board. Would you have any idea where the best place to get pork belly on the east side of Cleveland?

Well, four years later, we still don't know anything about sourcing pork belly on the east side of Cleveland. But we're thankful for Maybelle's Mom, and for everyone else who has shared their thoughts and questions with us.

So what was No. 10,000? It was a short and sweet comment from a reader named Mary Miller, who commented on our original Cupboard Cleanout post to say, simply:

thanks guys!

No, Mary, thank you! And thanks to all of the rest of you!

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 2 -- Sweet Potato Soup, Roast Pork with Apple-Cranberry Mostarda, and a Collards and Couscous Salad

2012-02-21T10:08:52-05:00

On Day 2 of our Clean-Out-the-Cupboard Week, we went to Costco, which is exactly not the kind of place that you want to visit if you're trying to clear the pantry. But we were running errands in the 'burbs with some friends, and they needed to go to Costco, so we tagged along.

When we announced this week of cooking down the food we already have on hand, we said that we would allow ourselves $15 to spend on items we want for the week. Doing this at a place like Costco has its advantages and disadvantages. In the plus column, prices seem pretty low. But at the same time, you can't get a small amount of anything. Buying proteins was out of the question, because there were only a handful of items we would have wanted for under $15. If we had been at another supermarket, we would have purchased a couple of onions. Here, we had to buy a 5-pound bag. So here's what we purchased:

A gallon of milk: $2.58
A bag of clementines: $6.99
Two bunches of bananas: $2.78
A 5-pound bag of onions: $4.49
Total: $16.84

So we went over budget by $1.84, but think we did pretty well. This really puts the pressure on, though, for making more out of what we have on hand. If you missed the list of what we have to work with, you can see it yesterday's post.

What did we cook and eat on Day 2?

Day 2 Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs and Salsa
Cupboard Items Used: Eggs, a jar of salsa
Degree of Difficulty: 1 out of 10
Verdict: This was a quick breakfast we threw together. If we'd had tortillas on hand, we would have made breakfast tacos.

Day 2 Lunch: Sweet Potato Soup with a Cranberries, Toasted Walnuts and a Maple Syrup Drizzle (pictured above)
Cupboard Items Used: Diced roasted sweet potatoes and other root vegetables we had frozen in the fall, onions, dried cranberries, maple syrup, toasted walnuts
Degree of Difficulty: 3 out of 10
Verdict: The soup is creamy and delicious. The cranberries and walnuts gave it a nice bit of texture. The maple syrup drizzle gave a bit of sweetness (which was good because the sweet potatoes were not very sweet).

[UPDATE: Several readers have asked for the recipe for the soup, so we have included one in the comments below.]

Day 2 Dinner: Roast Pork with Apple-Cranberry Mostarda, served with a Collards and Couscous Salad

Cupboard Items Used: Pork; for the mostarda: dried apples, dried cranberries, fig jam, and something called "citrus appetizer spread" that we're unsure how we procured; for the salad: Israeli couscous, collard greens, onions, olive oil, red wine vinegar, red pepper flakes and a hint of cinnamon
Degree of Difficulty: 4 out of 5
Verdict: The mostarda (inspired by this recipe) was sweet but played well with the pork, which we seared in an iron skillet and finished in a 400-degree oven. The couscous salad was delicious, with caramelized onions, thin collard ribbons and a hint of heat from red pepper flakes.

So that's Day 2 -- a success in our book.

For those of you doing this challenge with us at home, how's the cleanout week going for you? What have you made so far?

A Few Updates: Giveaway Winner, Pins & Comments

2012-02-21T08:59:22-05:00

First, we selected a random winner this morning for our most recent giveaway. The winner is Jenise, who commented, "It's gotta be Bon Appetit, there just something so wonderful about a piece of fried chicken." Hear hear! Jenise wins a copy of Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi. Congratulations!

Second, like seemingly everyone else on the planet, we've joined the ranks of Pinterest users. If you're there, you can follow us and see things that we find of interest. Spoiler alert: there are a lot of Downton Abbey related pins. (Also, can we please talk about that Christmas special? We're still swooning.) You can also see what others are pinning from The Bitten Word, which is pretty interesting, too.

Over the weekend, in an effort to make it easier for you to comment, we made some updates to how comments work here on the blog. During the giveaway, several readers wrote to say that they were having trouble commenting, so we removed the "captcha" -- the little box that asks you to input a code. This should make leaving comments much easier. But if you have problems, please let us know. We love hearing from you.

The photo above is a beautiful little plate of pasta carbonara that we had a few weeks ago in Florida. We snuck down there for a weekend with friends. We're overdue to tell you about that, and about a trip we took to New Orleans a few months ago. We'll do that next week, once our cupboards our bare.

Speaking of -- we'll have a second post up in a few hours about Day 2 of the Cupboard Cleanout Challenge. See you then.

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 1 -- Whole Wheat Pasta with Short Rib Ragu

2012-02-20T11:08:55-05:00

Our grand experiment has begun: One week of eating only the food we already have in our freezer, fridge and pantry.

We started off by making a full inventory of our larder -- all the forgotten pastas, misbegotten pre-made sauces, and truly random ingredients lurking in our cupboard. You can read the whole list after the jump.

For our inaugural cleanout meal Sunday night, we eased ourselves in with a pretty tame dinner. We defrosted some braised short ribs and pearl onions, left over from when we made those Short Rib Pot Pies back in October. We added a little tomato paste, some red wine and some Salsa Lizano to make it a little more saucy, and we threw in some frozen peas to liven it up. We served it over some whole wheat spaghetti noodles.

Day 1 Dinner: Whole Wheat Pasta with Short Rib Ragu
Cupboard Items Used: Frozen leftover short rib filling, frozen peas, spaghetti
Degree of Difficulty: 2 out of 10
Verdict: Delicious! Rich and savory and meaty, this was an excellent way to kick off our Cupboard Cleanout.

Read the full list of all the random stuff we'll be trying to figure out how to use this week, after the jump!

We've got some thoughts about how we might connect and incorporate some of these different items -- our kitchen may or may not currently look like the shed in A Beautiful Mind -- but we'd love to hear any ideas you might have.

PANTRY

Rice -- wild, brown, basmati
3 cans of black beans
Chipotles in adobo
Garbanzo beans
Green beans
Cream of mushroom soup
Lots and lots of canned tomatoes
Bulgar
Lentils
Orzo
Couscous
Chia seed
Wheat germ
Spaghetti
Fusilli
Beef stock
1 bag of dried apples
Grits (loooooots of grits)
Tahini dressing
Cicerce
Loads of dried beans
Anchovies
A mustard based dip
Lots of pickled things: green beans, okra, cherry tomatoes, squash pickles
Almonds
Panko
Olive oil balsamic dressing
Herb olive oil
Apple butter
Fig preserves
Jello pudding
Quick oats
Walnuts
Bonito flakes
White chocolate bar
Salsa
Golden raisins
1 jar Morello cherries
2 cans red tart cherries
Miracle rice
Clams
Mastic
Watermelon rind
Chow chow
Hot pepper relish
Maple cube
Sunchoke relish
Pepitas
bread and butter pickles
Peanuts
Coconut
Pimientos
Rice wine
Pistachios
Steel cut oats
Crystal Light
Tea
A citrus spice appetizer spread
Macadamia nuts
Arame seaweed

FRIDGE

Miso
Chicken thighs
Salami
Pork end roast
Collards
Eggs
Tofu
Carrots
Lemon
Broccoli
Yellow pepper
Thyme
Dill
Tarragon

FREEZER

2 chicken thighs
Blueberries
Summer squash
Sweet potatoes
Chicken stock
Cauliflower soup
Corn
Pot pie filling
A frozen vegetable mix
Breakfast sausage
Tomato sauces
Ground turkey
Okra
Green peas

January and February Covers Gallery + Win a Cookbook in Our Latest Giveaway

2012-02-16T08:29:42-05:00

Here are two things that stuck out to us about the most recent food magazine covers.

In January, the month of "light" this and "new you" that, Food & Wine placed a nacho burger on its cover. Forget you, diet!

And in February, none of the 10 magazines we track put chocolate on the cover. Somewhere, St. Valentine is weeping. (As if to make up for it, the March Food Network Magazine just arrived in our mailbox and it's "The Chocolate Issue.")

There are several covers that we truly loved over the past two months, and you can see them in the gallery below. And we want to know what you think.

Since we loved the Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango from Plenty so much, we decided to give it away here on the blog. It's a beautiful book. Believe us, you need this book.

Here's how you can win it.

Leave a comment on this post, telling which is your favorite of the January/February food magazine covers, and why.

We'll randomly select a winner, who will get a copy of Plenty. Entries will be accepted until midnight EST on Monday, February 20. We'll announe the winner on Tuesday, February 21st.

Good luck!

Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango

2012-02-15T09:21:15-05:00

From Plenty: Vibrant Vegetables from London's Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi

At the end of last year, Plenty -- a new cookbook from London Chef Yotam Ottolenghi -- was turning up all over the place. It was mentioned in just about every magazine we receive, and we saw it on dozens of best-cookbooks-of-2011 lists.

A few weeks ago we reserved it from the library to see what all the fuss is about.

And let us tell you: It was love at first sight.

This book grabbed us at the introduction. Although Ottolenghi is not a vegetarian, he has written a column called "The New Vegetarian" for a British newspaper. This book is essentially a collection of recipes from that column, so it's all vegetables from the point of view of a meat eater. Often, recipes will include suggestions of what meat to serve along with the dish. Most of the recipes, though, look substantial enough to serve as the main dish of any meal.

As you know, we usually find ourselves at the carnivore end of the scale. But we've wanted to cut back the amount of meat in our diet. If you're looking to do the same, Plenty may be all the inspiration you need.

The book is categorized by vegetables ("Funny Onions," "Roots," "Leaves," etc.) and there are at least a dozen dishes we're eager to make. A Caramelized Garlic Tart. Chard and Saffron Omelettes. Sweet Corn Polenta. We're dreaming of spring and summer already.

But one dish lept out to us from the page: these Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango.

We hoard eggplant recipes.

Our CSA share usually gets very eggplant-heavy toward the end of the summer, so we spend the year clipping, saving and bookmarking new ideas for eggplant whenever we run across one that looks good. And in a section called "The Mightly Eggplant," Plenty has at least six eggplant recipes we want to try.

But it was these Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango that really called out to us, so we wasted no time in making them.

This recipe utilizes sharp flavors -- a sauce of rice vinegar, garlic, chiles, and lime -- to dress shallow-fried eggplant, soba and mango slices. It's all tossed in a bowl with thin slices of red onion, and then topped with herbs. It's an uncomplicated preparation, and you can serve it warm or cold. Ottolenghi suggests making it and then letting it sit for several hours.

This is the kind of vibrant dish that can brighten even the most dreary February day. It's both sweet and sharp, substantial but seemingly light. We loved the sautéed eggplant paired with the sweet mango. The onions we used were a bit too sharp, which is why we've added a few tips in the recipe below. And it's not often that we find ourselves eating fresh basil in the winter. On the one hand, it was depressing to be paying for basil when just a few months ago we had more on hand that we knew what to do with. But at the same time fresh basil leaves immediately get us thinking of warmer weather, spring planting and summer adventures.

Tomorrow, we'll be doing a giveaway featuring Plenty. We hope you come back then to find out how you can get a copy for yourself.

Pin It

Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango
From Plenty: Vibrant Vegetables Recipes from London's Ottolenghi, by Yotam Ottolenghi
Buy a copy of Plenty

(This photo from Plenty, via SeriousEats)

Tips From Zach and Clay of The Bitten Word:

Taste the red onion as you slice it. If it's especially sharp, soak in ice water for 10 minutes to mellow its bite.

Unfortunately the leftovers from this recipe don't hold up very well. They still taste good, but the next day we found that our leftoveres -- especially the mango -- had lost their vibrancy. If you want to eat this over the course of several days, we'd suggest reserving somr of your mango unsliced, and then slicing it into the soba fresh the next time you want to eat it.

Serves 6

1/2 cup rice vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 fresh red chile, finely chopped
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
grated zest and juice of 1 lime
1 cup sunflower oil
2 eggplants, cut into 3/4-inch dice
8 to 9 ounces soba noodles
1 large ripe mango, cut into 3/8-inch dice or into 1/4-inch-thick strips
1 2/3 cup basil leaves, chopped (if you can get some use Thai basil, but much less of it)
2 1/2 cups cilantro leaves, chopped
1/2 red onion, very thinly sliced

In a small saucepan gently warm the vinegar, sugar and salt for up to 1 minute, just until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and add the garlic, chile and sesame oil. Allow to cool, then add the lime zest and juice.

Heat up the sunflower oil in a large pan and shallow-fry the eggplant in three or four batches. Once golden brown remove to a colander, sprinkle liberally with salt and leave there to drain.

Cook the noodles in plenty of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally. They should take 5 to 8 minutes to become tender but still al dente. Drain and rise well under running cold water. Shake off as much of the excess water as possible, then leave to dry on a dish towel.

In a mixing bowl toss the noodles with the dressing, mango, eggplant, half of the herbs and the onion. You can now leave this aside for 1 to 2 hours. When ready to serve add the rest of the herbs and mix well, then pile on a plate or in a bowl.

Clean-Out-the-Cupboard Week Starts Sunday. Play Along at Home?

2012-02-14T09:37:37-05:00

After we made the New Year's resolution to get organized in the kitchen, a reader named Susan left an excellent suggestion for how we could pare down our overflowing food cupboards:

Can I make a suggestion? I try to do this with my family every so often... Can you take a period of time (say a week), where you spend absolutely zero $$$ on food? I find that between my freezer and my pantry, there is enough food to feed us for up to probably a month!

If you did that, you would certainly be able to justify purchasing that crown roast! And you would probably have some fun adventures meanwhile, trying to make decent meals out of the excess in your cupboards!

We loved Susan's idea -- so that's just what we're going to do! And we want you to play along at home.

Here's what we'll do.

Next week, starting with Sunday night dinner, we're not going to spend any money on food for an entire week. Instead, we're going to use up whatever we have in the pantry and the freezer. Might this result in a lovely dinner of Orzo with Clams and Fig Preserves? Yes it might!

We'll post about our experience every day next week -- what ingredients we had on hand, how we combined them, and how it turned out.

So why are we telling you this right now? Because we want you to join us! Take the Cupboard Cleanout Challenge with us!

Here's how it'll work:

-- On Sunday, we'll allow ourselves to spend $15 at the grocery store for items like milk, produce or proteins. We'll use those to augment our meals through the week.

-- For the next seven days -- 21 meals -- we won't allow ourselves to spend any more money on food.

-- We're going to take the money we don't spend on food and donate it to Share Our Strength, a wonderful nonprofit focused on ending childhood hunger in America (that just happens to be Clay's employer).

So consider taking the Cupboard Cleanout Challenge with us! Your pantry will end up more organized, and you'll have a lot of cash leftover to give to your favorite charity -- or, heck, to treat yourself to a nice dinner out once the week is over.

Are you in?

You Shared the Shame: Readers' Junk Drawers!

2012-02-13T09:41:28-05:00

When we told you about our secret kitchen shame -- an overflowing junk drawer -- we invited readers to share images of their own kitchen clutter. And share you did! Dozens of your wrote in to empathize or to out certain family members as kitchen hoarders.

And plenty of you actually shared your junk drawer pics with us!

So let's take a journey inside the junk drawers of some very brave Bitten Word souls.

From Kathleen: "At least you've cleaned yours out!"

Two images from Dawn, who shared about her own junk drawer on her blog:

From Liz, who writes, "This drawer was cleaned out only a year or so ago so it's not that bad. It still contains things I don't use, like the loose tea leaf steeper thingies (that let all the tea leaves out in the cup anyway). Also, I don't know why I need so many skewers; I can't recall the last time I kababbed anything. Oh, and the candy thermometer is useless to me."

From Darci. We love the random camera lens cap in this one!

From Lisa: "The item bottom left with the horn handle is a traditional Alaskan ulu that my husband bought from an Inuit woman."

And one reader, Sarah, was actually inspired to clean out her junk drawer. She found, among many other things, the deed to her house! (We also love the Target receipt sticking out of the back!) Here are Sarah's before-and-after pics.

Before:

During:

And after:

Thanks to Kathleen, Dawn, Liz, Darci, Lisa and Sarah for sharing in our junk drawer shame.

Have a photo you want added to the gallery? Send it our way!

UPDATE: More images from readers!

Jesse & Ben: "Useful, though it's been at least two years since I've had a ricola!"