The Bitten Word

1 Video and 10 Photos to Wrap Up Our Trip to China

2012-01-27T08:40:09-05:00

This photo? This is what we would call a chopstick fail.

We were having lunch in Beijing, at a place we had randomly picked while walking down the street, and we were in the midst of a massive dumpling craving. So we went in and ordered several kinds of dumplings, plus these beef noodles. As you can see, our attempt to split it between bowls didn't go so well. The staff of this restaurant thought it was hilarious and not so discreetly kept coming by the table so they could see (and laugh).

At this point, our trip to China at Thanksgiving seems a lifetime away. But as we think more about the trip and look at our photos, we just can't help ourselves! Here's one last post about our trip.

We told you about our favorite dishes, the wacky food, and gave a tour of a Chinese market. This last set of photos features things we thought were fun, or that you might be interested in seeing.

Let's start with a video.

We shot all this footage on our iPhones, so it's a bit shaky, but we think it gives a good taste of some of our adventures while traveling in China. The Great Wall! The Forbidden City! Crazy food!

But there are some shots from the video that might need a little 'splaining.

On our first full day in the country, we went on an amazing motorcycle sidecar tour called Shanghai Sideways. For four hours, we zipped through the streets of Shanghai on vintage cycles, from the French Concession to the Bund to the Old City. That's Zach in the sidecar in the photo above.

It was a fantastic way to get oriented to Shanghai, and the guides took us to some off-the-beaten-path places that we definitely wouldn't have seen otherwise. Also, the guides were the coolest: ex-pat French living in Shanghai. They seemed like characters out of a novel.

From Shanghai, we took a bullet train to the city of Hangzhou for a day trip. It's a city of "only" 8 million people, and it's centered around a beautiful, peaceful lake surrounded by hills studded with pagodas. Here's a (slightly jumbled) panoramic shot from an island in the middle of the lake. (This is actually a famous view in China: The three stone sculptures you can see floating in the lake are on the 1-yuan note.) Click on the image to get a better view.

The boat tour you saw in the video was one that we took down the Yulong River near Yangshuo, in the southern part of China. One day, we took a bike tour of the countryside, just the two of us and a guide whose English name was Karen.

At one point, we left our bikes with Karen and hopped on one of these bamboo rafts. We sat on the little bench, and a dude stood behind us on the back of the boat, propelling us downriver with a long oar. Occasionally, we came to a lock in the river, and the boats had to go over these little drops, down to the next level of water, which is what you see in the video.

It was like a Venetian gondola, if those gondolas were much more rickety and didn't have sides, and you got wet, and you had to go over a series of small cliffs. We loved it!

Food & Wine was the only U.S. food magazine we encountered on our travels. This one was inside an airport in Beijing. We assume it's the same headlines as the U.S. version since it shares the same cover. Western Thanksgiving propaganda?

We visited many Buddhist temples on the trip, but this was one of our favorites, outside Shanghai.

This is a street scene in the Old City of Shanghai. You can click the image to enlarge it, and get a better sense of the full scene: street vendors selling food, people eating al fresco, crowds milling up and down, considering their food options.

Another temple shot of incense being burned. We just like the photo.

This geological formation in Yangshuo is called a karst. They're literally everywhere in that part of the country. We found them to be otherworldly, like something from a fantasy movie. (Incidentally, this shot was taken from our balcony at the inn where we stayed.)

One more karst shot from the roof of our inn...

...and the last of the karsts (with us blocking the view!).

So that's China, or at least what we saw of it. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you probably saw that we were just in New Orleans, so we'll be telling you about that trip very soon.

We actually don't have any other trips on the horizon, but have been thinking about where we might go this year. What about you -- where are you heading this year?

Swordfish Puttanesca

2012-01-25T11:18:15-05:00

Saveur (January 2012)

One of the best things about cooking our way through magazines is that we're always learning something new. Whether it's an ingredient, a preparation or an actual dish, we're constantly finding out about new techniques or being confronted with dishes that we have long heard about but never tried.

Puttanesca is a perfect example. We've always heard about it, but if we'd been pressed to define it, the best we would have come up with is, "It's like an Italian...sauce...right?"

Well, puttanesca, we're sorry it's taken us so long to get to know you. Where have you been all our lives?

Packed with sharp, salty flavors, puttanesca is an excellent alternative to a more traditional tomato sauce. Anchovies, olives and capers give a briny contrast to sweet tomatoes.

We loved this dish for a couple reasons. For one, it's super easy and quick to prepare. We went from zero to the dinner table in under 20 minutes. For another, we like pairing this sauce with fish instead of pasta. Sure, it would taste great over spaghetti. But serving it with fish makes for a lighter, carb-free meal. (This time of year, we'll take all the help we can get.)

Speaking of fish, we did make a substitution. Although the fish counter at our neighborhood supermarket does sometimes have swordfish steaks, it didn't have any this time. So we used monkfish instead. Any meaty fish will do fine here.

Mostly, we loved this dish for the flavors. Bright and sharp and pungent, we couldn't get enough. Clay thought this dish was plenty good; Zach thought it was phenomenal.

So if you're not familiar with puttanesca, introduce yourself! You'll be glad you did.

Swordfish Puttanseca
Saveur (January 2012)
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(This photo: Todd Coleman/Saveur)

SERVES 6

INGREDIENTS

6 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
6 swordfish steaks (about 6 oz. each and 1/2-inch thick), skin removed
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 anchovies in oil, finely chopped
3 cups whole peeled canned tomatoes in juice, crushed by hand
3/4 cup large green olives, pitted and roughly chopped
1/4 cup capers, rinsed and drained
1/2 tsp. crushed red chile flakes
3 tbsp. roughly chopped parsley
4 tsp. fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in a 12-inch skillet over high heat. Working in two batches, season swordfish with salt and pepper, and add to skillet; cook, flipping once, until brown outside and medium rare inside, about 3 minutes. Transfer fish to a plate and set aside. Return skillet to medium heat. Add garlic and anchovies; cook until soft, about 2 minutes. Add tomatoes, olives, capers, and chile flakes; cook until almost all the liquid evaporates, about 10 minutes. Return swordfish to skillet, and add parsley and lemon juice; cook until fish is cooked through, about 2 minutes. Divide swordfish among 6 serving plates and top with sauce.

Warm Coconut Rice Pudding

2012-01-23T09:42:39-05:00

Cooking Light (January/February 2012)

Rice pudding is easy to forget about. It's sort of a sleeper dessert. If it were an Oscar contender, it'd be The Artist. If it were a character on Downton Abbey, it'd be Edith, the middle daughter. (Yes, we're watching. And we're obsessed.) If it were a Beatle, it'd be George. (Obviously, if Ringo were a dessert he'd be something more like this.)

Rice pudding is Jan Brady.

Which, of course, isn't fair. Rice pudding is warm and comforting, and it's easy to make. Scented with cinnamon and other spices, it's the perfect treat on a chilly winter night.

And this recipe from Cooking Light has us sitting up and taking notice. More than two years ago, we asked ourselves why we weren't eating more rice pudding. But, well, we keep forgetting about it. Not any more. This rice pudding may just be our new favorite winter dessert.

We suppose the greatest charge against rice pudding is that it's bland. But this dessert -- flecked with coconut and fragrant notes of cinnamon and cardamom -- is full of great flavors. And it's topped with crushed pistachios for a nice bit of crunch.

The pudding is easy to make. Once you've cooked your rice, you make a quick custard and then fold the rice into it. One note on the rice: The recipe calls for instant rice, but we didn't have any on hand and couldn't find any at the two corner markets near us. We cooked regular long-grain rice as instructed on the package, and then proceeded with the recipe as written. It worked out just fine.

So now we're dreaming up other rice puddings, and thinking about all the spices and mix-ins lurking in our cabinets that may make for delicious puddings.

Rice pudding, it turns out, is a total Marcia!

Are you a rice pudding fan or foe? Tell us about it in the comments.

Related links:

Rice Pudding with Poached Rhubarb

Warm Coconut Rice Pudding
Cooking Light (January/February 2012)
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Nutritional Information Available at CookingLight.com

(This photo: Cooking Light)

Yield: Serves 6 (serving size: 1/2 cup pudding and 1/2 teaspoon pistachios)

Tips and Notes from Zach and Clay of The Bitten Word:

This recipe calls for instant rice, but we didn't have any on hand, so we used regular rice, cooking it as instructed on the package and then proceeded with step 2 below.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup water
1 cup uncooked instant rice
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk, divided
2 large egg yolks
1 cup light coconut milk
1/4 cup flaked sweetened coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 tablespoon chopped pistachios

DIRECTIONS

Bring water to a boil in a saucepan. Stir in rice; cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat; uncover. Set aside.

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a small bowl.

Combine 1/4 cup milk and yolks in a bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add sugar mixture to milk mixture, stirring with a whisk until blended.

Bring remaining 1 1/4 cups milk and coconut milk to a boil in a small saucepan. Gradually add hot milk mixture to yolk mixture, stirring with a whisk. Return milk mixture to pan. Bring to a boil, and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in cooked rice, coconut, and next 3 ingredients (through cardamom). Top with pistachios.

Inside a Chinese Market -- A Video Tour

2012-01-19T09:29:00-05:00

One of our favorite ways to experience a new place while travelling is to visit markets and shops where locals shop for food. You're able to get a sense of what everyday life is like, as you see everyday folks shop and sample.

Never was this more true than while traveling in China a couple months ago. In Shanghai and then again in Yangshuo, we had the chance to visit several "wet markets," and to see everything that was on offer there.

In Yangshuo, we snapped quite a few photos, along with some video, and thought you might enjoy getting a glimpse inside a Chinese market.

Let's start with the photo up top. It's hard to tell, but both the crab apples on the left and the citrus are quite small, smaller than a ping-pong ball. We sampled both while travelling. The crunchy apples you could eat whole. We also ate the citrus whole, though it was pretty tart.

Almost everywhere we went in southern China, we saw fresh or dried persimmons, like the ones above. In the countryside, we'd see them laid out on huge pallets to dry.

We have no idea what these are, but we loved the look of them. They're jujubes! Thanks to the commenters for letting us know!

Tofu was being sold in every market, in many forms. In one market we visited, it was the only item we weren't allowed to photograph. We never did understand quite why, but it had something to do with that particular seller not wanting to let people see how she prepared her tofu. Who knew tofu was intellectual property?

The markets were full of tubs of live items for sale, everything from mollusks to frogs to eels. Here are a few tubs of snails. You can see some of these items in slimy, slithery action in the video at the end of this post.

This gives you a sense of how many tubs we're talking about, just on one side of the market.

We're (fairly) sure these are eels but they look an awful lot like snakes to us.

Live frogs! You can't get that at Safeway.

Small fish varieties.

The daikon radish were absolutely massive, as you can see here.

The Chinese people we met referrred to this plant as Chinese lettuce. Later this same day, we took a cooking class and used the lettuce. You actually eat the stem itself (although we assume you can eat the leaves as well). It was somewhat similar to celery, but a denser, non-stringy, lettuce-tasting celery. Actually, maybe not similar to celery...

Cucumbers (we think). Bitter melon. (Thanks, commenters!)

Families were sitting and shelling beautiful beans that you could then purchase.

Massive zucchini! Check out how it absolutely dwarfs the scale next to it. (We were told this wasn't even a particularly large zuccini!)

Huge sacks of dried fish also on offer.

We were obsessed with these eggs, and we'd guess that there were easily a dozen varieties of eggs on offer. One variety, though, was smeared with this red paste. We're not sure what it is, but we'd be interested to try them.

So what's not pictured here? Tons! Here's a little video we shot inside the market in Yangshuo that gives you a sense of the scale and the ... liveliness ... of the food for sale.

Related Posts:

Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Greens

2012-01-17T09:50:05-05:00

Martha Stewart Living (January 2012)

We're on a bit of a cauliflower kick right now.

Last week we made that yummy Radicchio and Cauliflower Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs, and now here we are with this cauliflower soup.

Cauliflower abounds in the January issues of food magazines. In fact, two magazines -- Everyday Food and Bon Appétit -- are currently featuring recipes for cauliflower steaks. (Do two make a trend?)

There are plenty of reasons why the food mags turn to cauliflower in January. It's seasonal, affordable, healthful and hearty. And, oh yeah, it's extremely versatile and it tastes great.

Nothing showcases all those accolades more than this Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Greens.

We love a simple soup, and it doesn't get much simpler than this. Two ingredients -- cauliflower and kale -- make up the majority of this dish. A little dill, some aromatics and salt and pepper are tossed in for flavor.

And the prep couldn't be much simpler either: Sauté the aromatics. Boil everything. Blend it. Eat it.

We're fans.

The result is a richly satisfying soup that's hearty and surprisingly creamy. Seriously, you won't believe there's not a drop of cream in this, making it an excellent vegan option.

The mild, nutty cauliflower melts into the fresh "greenness" of the kale. (The recipe calls for using either kale or collards -- we went with kale, but we don't think the flavor would change substantially if you use collards.) The swirl of olive oil adds a savory finish -- and makes for an elegant final touch. We had trouble picking out the taste of the dill in the soup itself, which was fine with Clay, who's iffy on dill anyhow. But as a garnish, the dill is lovely.

We made a double batch of this soup last week. We ate it for dinner a couple times, packed it for lunch a few other days and still had plenty to freeze for later.

You're definitely going to want to add this soup to your winter repertoire.

Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Greens
Martha Stewart Living (January 2012)
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Active Time: 15 Minutes
Total Time: 2 hours
Makes 8 cups

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
Sea salt
1 medium head cauliflower (about 3 pounds), florets and stems cut into 1-inch pieces (8 to 9 cups)
4 1/2 cups filtered water
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish
5 large kale or collard leaves, or a combination, tough ends removed and leaves roughly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat; cook onion, covered, until soft, 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and a pinch of salt, and cook for 3 minutes more. Add cauliflower and pour in filtered water until it reaches just below the top of the cauliflower.

Bring to a boil over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons dill. Reduce heat to low, and simmer until cauliflower is just tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in greens, and simmer for 3 minutes.

Let sit for 5 minutes to cool slightly. Stir in remaining 2 tablespoons dill. Puree soup in batches in a blender until very smooth, adding more water (about 1/2 cup) if it's too thick. Return to pot and reheat. Season with salt and pepper. Garnish with dill, black pepper, a drizzle of oil and a pink of sea salt.

Pasta and White Beans with Broccoli Pesto

2012-01-13T09:01:44-05:00

Everyday Food (January/February 2012)

Zach's sister Cassidy grew up a very picky eater. Sitting down to a meal was more like entering hostage negotiations between Cassidy and Zach's parents in an attempt to get her to try new things. Even through college, she was extremely particular about textures and colors, and she essentially allowed no vegetables to pass her lips.

Since then, Cassidy's come around. She started testing the waters with things like cream cheese and olives, and now she'll eat everything from Brussels sprouts to foie gras. She's turned out to be one of the most adventurous eaters we know. (Perhaps she's making up for lost time?)

But there's still the matter of vegetables. Cassidy will eat them, and there are some she even rather enjoys. But she still doesn't think she eats enough veggies. Over the holidays, she told us she wants to get better at "hiding" vegetables into her diet, a la Jessica Seinfeld.

"Hiding them from...?" we asked.

"Oh," she said, "from myself."

Cassidy, this one's for you.

We loved the idea of this recipe. The pasta and white beans sounded hearty and filling, and the notion of cramming an entire bunch of broccoli into a pesto sauce seemed very clever. (Since you boil the broccoli and then blend it in a food processor, we actually went ahead and diced a portion of the big stems as well as the florets. It worked well.)

As it is, the broccoli pesto is fine, but a little on the bland side. And if you're truly a broccoli-phobe, you won't be fooled by this pesto. It tastes pretty much like what it is -- broccoli with parsley. We happen to love broccoli, so that was fine with us.

But here are some thoughts on how to take this from good to great:

Pick basil. If you're gonna make a pesto, make a pesto. Swap in basil for the parsley. It'll add more flavor and (if you care) mask the broccoli flavor even further.

More means more. If we make this again, we'll definitely up the amounts of lemon, olive oil, garlic, Parmesan and salt and pepper. (This recipe includes only half of a small clove of garlic.) That should help take care of any blandness.

Seeing red. Why not add a couple cups of diced tomatoes to the food processor? Obviously, that will take the sauce out of the realm of pesto, but we think it would make for a tasty dish. And if you are concerned about hiding the broccoli flavor, tomatoes would definitely do the trick. (If you do add tomatoes, we'd suggest leaving out the lemon; otherwise the finished sauce could end up being too acidic.)

As we said, this is a good dish that's pretty tasty. And with a few little alterations, we'd really love it.

And it's a great way to sneak some veggie goodness into a meal. We think even Cassidy would approve.

Pasta and White Beans with Broccoli Pesto
Everyday Food (January/February 2012)
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Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes
Yield: Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 bunch broccoli, cut into 1-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
10 ounces short pasta, such as fusilli
5 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 ounce Parmesan, finely grated (1/4 cup), plus more for serving (optional)
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest, plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup packed fresh parsley leaves
1/2 small garlic clove
1 can (15.5 ounces) cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

DIRECTIONS

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook broccoli until tender and bright green, about 4 minutes. With a slotted spoon, transfer broccoli to a food processor. Return water to a boil and cook pasta according to package instructions. Reserve 2 cups pasta water; drain pasta and return to pot.

To food processor, add oil, Parmesan, lemon zest and juice, parsley, and garlic. Puree until smooth, about 2 minutes, scraping down side as needed. Transfer pesto to pot with pasta. Stir to coat, adding enough reserved pasta water to make a creamy sauce. Stir in beans and heat over medium until warmed through.

Season with salt and pepper. To serve, sprinkle with Parmesan, if desired.

Creamy Polenta with Sausages and Roasted Grapes

2012-01-11T10:22:18-05:00

Bon Appétit (January 2012)

We wanted something fast, easy and fresh for dinner last week. We knew just where to turn: Bon App's "Fast, Easy, Fresh" section. It's a front-of-the-book collection of relatively quick and simple recipes, and it's always good for a little inspiration.

This Creamy Polenta with Sausages and Roasted Grapes sounded perfect -- hearty and comforting, with the roasted grapes adding a fun twist.

The biggest "innovation" here is microwaving the polenta. Bon Appétit says it "puts an end to nonstop stirring." We suppose. Honestly, we don't think polenta is all that time-consuming or labor-intensive to begin with. (It's not like we're talking about risotto.) Microwaving does cut out some of the stirring and minding of the pot, but we also felt like the finished product was a little stiffer and gummier than it would have been had we made it on the stove. So microwave at your own peril.

We have a few other minor tweaks for this recipe:

A thyme sprig gets placed in the polenta before it is microwaved. We suggest fishing it out after the polenta is finished, so that your or a guest don't wind up with a mouthful of twig.

While keeping grapes on the stem makes for a striking presentation on the plate, it's exceedingly difficult to eat. We recommend removing the stems for this preparation, or at least removing most of the stems.

We used chicken sausages and found that when they were placed in a hot, dry pan, they had trouble browning. To fix this, we put a thin coating of olive oil in the pan and the sausages browned very nicely.

So, yeah, we didn't fall in love with this dish. It's perfectly fine, and all the components are good. But it just didn't come together in a way that wowed us.

The good news is that the one aspect of the dish that really attracted us -- the roasted grapes -- was a real hit. We've only really experimented with cooking grapes in a savory dish once before, in a Braised Chicken with Gewürztraminer and Grapes. But we need to do it more often. Roasted or braised grapes are a delicious pairing with savory meats like chicken, pork or even duck.

Creamy Polenta with Sausages and Roasted Grapes
Bon Appétit (January 2012)
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Nutritional Information Available at BonAppetit.com

(This photo: Bon Appétit)

4 Servings
Active time: 30 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

Notes From Zach and Clay of TheBittenWord.com:

A thyme sprig gets placed in the polenta before it is microwaved. We suggest fishing it out after the polenta is finished, so that your or a guest don't get served it.
Though grapes with the stem-on make a striking presentation on the plate, it makes it exceedingly difficult to eat. We recommend removing the stems for this preparation, or at least removing most of the stems.
We used chicken sausages and found that when they were placed in a hot, dry pan, they had trouble browning. To fix this, we put a thin coating of olive oil in the pan and the sausages browned very nicely.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup medium-grind polenta (not instant)
3 large sprigs thyme, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 pound fresh hot or sweet Italian turkey or chicken sausages
1/3 cup low-salt chicken broth
1 pound seedless red grapes, cut into bunches with stems attached
1/4 cup chopped shallots
1/3 cup dry white wine
Flat-leaf parsley leaves

DIRECTION

Preheat oven to 450°. Stir polenta and 2 1/2 cups water in a medium microwave-safe bowl; add 1 thyme sprig and season with salt and pepper. Cover with a plate. Microwave for 4 minutes. Carefully remove plate and whisk polenta. Cover and microwave for 4 minutes longer. Repeat until polenta is soft, adding more water by 1/4-cupfuls if too thick, 10–12 minutes total, depending on strength of microwave. Stir in butter.

Season to taste with salt and pepper; keep warm.

Meanwhile, heat a large cast-iron or ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausages and fry until browned, turning occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add broth, remaining 2 thyme sprigs, grapes, and shallots to skillet; transfer to oven. Roast, turning grapes and sausages halfway through cooking time, until grapes begin to caramelize and sausages are cooked through and begin to burst, 12–15 minutes.

Spoon polenta into wide, shallow bowls. Arrange sausages and grapes over. Add wine to skillet; stir over high heat, scraping up browned bits. Drizzle pan sauce over sausages. Sprinkle with parsley.

Radicchio and Cauliflower Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs

2012-01-09T10:06:14-05:00

Fine Cooking (December 2011/January 2012)

January is a cruel month for salads. Just when you're trying to eat better and more healthfully, good lettuce becomes hardest to find. The rest of the produce can be wan and unexciting, and you valiantly abstain from all the good stuff ("Oh, no blue cheese for me, thanks!", "Could I get that dressing on the side?").

Every bite of a January salad can feel like choking down a resolution.

But there's good news.

This Radicchio and Cauliflower Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs is a welcome break from the sad iceberg lettuce of January. It's just the sort of New Year's salad we can get behind.

While salad greens may not be at their best this time of year, cauliflower is plentiful and fantastic.

We're always a bit gun shy about using radicchio because it can be so bitter. But this recipe balances that bitterness with the near-sweetness of cauliflower and the crunch of toasted breadcrumbs. Those three main components play off each other nicely, and are complimented by a zingy, mustardy vinaigrette.

One note on the breadcrumbs: Do yourself a favor and make fresh breadcrumbs for this salad, rather than using store-bought breadcrumbs. Yours will be exponentially better. If you don't want to buy an entire loaf of bread just for breadcrumbs, consider buying a few hard rolls from a bakery. It'll be cheap and will give you plenty of breadcrumbs for this salad. If you do buy a country loaf to make breadcrumbs, but have no other need for the rest of the loaf, you can wrap it up tight and freeze it for a later use. Or hey, make a sandwich!

This salad would make for an elegant start to a meal, but we also think it would work just as well as an entree on its own.

Perhaps salads in January aren't all bad.

Radicchio and Cauliflower Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs
Fine Cooking (December/January 2011)
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Nutritional Information Available at FineCooking.com

(This photo: Fine Cooking)

Serves 4

TIPS FROM ZACH AND CLAY:

Do yourself a favor and make fresh breadcrumbs for this salad, rather than buying breadcrumbs. It will be exponentially better. If you don't want to buy a large loaf of bread just for breadcrumbs, consider buying a few hard rolls from a bakery.
If you do buy a country loaf to make breadcrumbs, but have no other need for the rest of the loaf, you can wrap it up tight and freeze it for a later use.
This salad dressing calls for a raw egg, so use good quality eggs. Fine Cooking suggests buying pasteurized eggs if you're concerned. We used fresh eggs we purchased from a farmers market.

INGREDIENTS:

1 medium head radicchio (about 1/2 lb.)
1-1/2 cups coarse, fresh breadcrumbs (from a country-style French or Italian loaf)
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1 small cauliflower (about 1-1/4 lb.), cored and cut into 1-inch florets
1 medium clove garlic
1 Tbs. red wine vinegar; more as needed
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 large egg yolk
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Remove any damaged outer leaves from the radicchio, quarter it, remove the core, and cut each quarter crosswise into 1-inch widths.

Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 350°F.

Put the breadcrumbs on a rimmed baking sheet and toss lightly with 2 Tbs. of olive oil to coat evenly. Spread in a thin, even layer and season lightly with salt. Bake, stirring every few minutes, until crisp and light golden brown, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool on the pan.

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil over high heat. Cook the cauliflower in the boiling water until just tender, about 3 minutes. Drain, spread on a baking sheet, and set aside at room temperature.

Put the garlic in a mortar, add a pinch of salt, and pound to a paste with a pestle. Or mince and then mash to a paste with the side of a chef’s knife. Combine the garlic, vinegar, lemon juice, and mustard in a small bowl. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes. Whisk in the egg yolk, and then slowly whisk in the remaining olive oil until emulsified. Taste with a piece of cauliflower and season with more vinegar or salt if necessary.

Put the cauliflower in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. Gently toss with just enough vinaigrette to lightly coat. Add the radicchio and parsley, season with salt and pepper, and toss again with just enough vinaigrette to lightly coat. Taste and add more salt or vinaigrette if necessary. Gently transfer the salad to a platter or individual serving plates; it’s best if it’s arranged somewhat flat. Drizzle any remaining vinaigrette on the salad (you may not need it all), scatter the breadcrumbs on top, and serve.

Variations

For a tasty variation, try adding black olives or finely chopped hard-cooked egg. To make the salad a meal, serve thinly sliced, seared skirt steak alongside.

2012 Culinary Resolutions (And How We Did with 2011's Resolutions)

2012-01-05T10:01:31-05:00

It's been nearly two weeks since we've cooked anything.

Between holiday parties, travel for Christmas and New Year's, and then catching up with friends after we've returned, we've been away from our kitchen for far too long.

While away over the holidays, we played sous chefs/kitchen sidekicks for others, and while in Tennessee for Christmas we did make Nigella's Chocolate Fruit Cake (it's a tradition, after all). We're glad to be back in our own kitchen, making our own food. And we're about to start cooking with a vengeance.

Those of you who have been reading The Bitten Word for a long time likely remember previous years of culinary resolutions. We try to avoid the "lose weight," "get more exercise" types of proclamations and instead focus on specific things we want to learn, eat or improve for the coming year. Before we share our resolutions for 2012, here's a reckoning of how we did with our resolutions for 2011.

The Successes

Less meat on the plate. We're proud to call this one an unqualified success! We've done a really good job of elevating veggies to a main course and de-emphasizing meat. And we've had more and more meals without any meat at all -- at least one or two dinners a week. We're positive that we ate less meat in 2011 than ever before. This is a good example of a realistic, workable resolution. If we had resolved to "give up meat" or "become vegans," we would have failed miserably (and we would have been two very unhappy guys). But by resolving to simply make meat less of the star of a meal, we've really been able to make a difference in how we eat.

Flex our canning muscles again. We canned tomatoes this year, made some jam and experimented with pickling okra. We have a pressure cooker now, so look out, 2012!

Familiarize ourselves with our cookbook collection (or purge them!). Done and done. We've done a pretty good job of getting to know the cookbooks on our shelves, and an even better job of getting rid of the ones we don't use. Plus, we've been getting our cookbook fix by test driving new books from the library before we buy them.

The Failures (so far!)

Visit a food magazine test kitchen. Not yet, but that's more because of timing than anything else. We've got some irons in the fire on this one. Stay tuned!

Give gardening another go. We did, with moderate success, and wrote all about our gardening adventures. Will we do it again this year? Probably so. Though last year's harvest wasn't great, it was our best yet, and we already have some ideas about what we'd do differently in 2012. We learned a lot and (for the most part) had a really good time doing it.

Strive to buy higher-quality meat. Eh, not so much on this one. We've given it a game try, and we're confident we bought better meat in 2011 than any year before. Some months we did better than others, purchasing more of our meat from the farmers market, but just as often we got our meat from the supermarket, mostly due to cost.

So what about our culinary resolutions for this year?

The Bitten Word's 2012 Food Resolutions:

Make a crown roast. -- This might just be the most beautiful, most impressive-looking cut of meat there is. But we find it (and its usually sky-high price tag) intimidating. We're going to find an excuse to make one this year.

Get organized in the kitchen. -- Our pots and pans are a mess, our food cupboards are literally overflowing, and we have a junk drawer that we are convinced leads to an alternate dimension of space and time. We're going to clean, organize and eat down the foods in our pantry. Perhaps we'll all do it together?

Use smaller plates. -- Often when we're plating dinner, we reach for our largest dinner plates, which we've come to realize are very large. That causes us to put more food on the plate, which then causes us to eat more. So as a simple solution, we're going to start using smaller plates more often, as a way to control portion sizes and cut calories. We'll see.

Make restaurant meals count. -- Since we cook so much at home, we actually already do a decent job of not eating out too often. But we still too easily fall into a rut of going to the same restaurants time after time, for no good reason. It's expensive and unhealthy. This year, when we dine out, it's going to be at places we really, actively want to eat, for food that's not the sort of thing we can easily eat at home.

Push our boundaries on ethnic cuisines. -- We're definitely not shy about trying new cuisines. In the past year alone, we've eaten at Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Burmese, Northern Thai, and Polish restaurants, among a host of others like Chinese, Thai and Indian. But there are still plenty of places we have yet to explore near our house, including a Caribbean place we've always wanted to try and an Eritrean restaurant we walk past twice a day.

Buy a nice olive oil. -- This one should be easy, right? We love the huge jugs of olive oil we can get at Trader Joe's for $7.99. That olive oil is fine for cooking, and it seems that nearly every recipe we make starts with a hefty pour. But for salad dressings and other finishing touches, we'd like to explore using better olive oils with more flavor. Do you have one you like?

So what about you? What are your food resolutions for the new year? Any tips to help us with ours? Let us know in the comments!

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Our 11 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of 2011

2012-01-03T09:29:17-05:00

Plus Two Bonus Recipes

This New Year, we drove up to the Hudson Valley, where we spent a few nights with a group of friends in Rhinebeck, New York. It's a beautiful little town, with cute shops, adorable houses and some nice restaurants. (The porchetta sandwich at Terrapin, with manchego, arugula and an olive aioli was especially tasty.)

Incidentally, we had an amazing New Year's Eve dinner at home. Our friend Ingela, whose mother is Swedish, made a traditional Swedish smörgåsbord: pickled herring, boiled potatoes, sour cream, meatballs, ham with mustard, homemade gravlax, and shots of Aquavit. It was such a fun meal for New Year's, and such a memorable and delicious way to wrap up 2011.

The drive there and back gave us plenty of time to chat about 2011 and make plans for what we want to do with The Bitten Word in 2012. As we looked back at the dozens of recipes we shared here in the last year, we started to make a list of our favorites, and it quickly ballooned to nearly thirty recipes.

After deep negotiations ("But that was so good!," "What if we trade the salad for the sandwich?" Heavy stuff.), we settled on a list of our 11 favorite food magazines dishes from 2011.

You can see them above (click the images for the posts). Here's a rundown of what made the cut, in no particular order.

Grilled Mussels with Herb Butter from Everyday Food -- We're already eager to make these again once grilling weather comes back around.

Spicy Pork with Asparagus and Chile from Bon Appétit -- This Asian stir-fry is simple but delicious.

Beet-and-Apple Salad from Food & Wine -- This horseradish-spiked dish, topped with pistachios, was hands-down the best salad we made in 2011.

Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash from Bon Appétit -- This chili is the definition of winter comfort and so delicious that meat eaters won't even care that it's vegetarian.

Tagliatelle with Prosciutto and Orange from Bon Appétit -- Orange adds an unexpected and delicious dimension to this pasta dish.

Butterflied, Rolled and Roasted Leg of Lamb with Fresh Mint Sauce from Martha Stewart Living -- We're still thinking about the artichoke stuffing and the fresh mint sauce.

Beer-Baked White Beans from Everyday Food -- All you need to know: These are the best beans we've ever made.

Burgers with Blue Cheese Mayo and Sherry Vidalia Onions from Cooking Light -- Easily the best burger we made at home this year. Every bite is packed with delicious flavor.

Salted Caramel Six-Layer Chocolate Cake from Martha Stewart Living -- This cake was the dessert highlight of 2011 (and we eat a lot of desserts). We're itching for an excuse to make it again.

Chicken Tinga Tacos from Food & Wine -- The best tacos we've ever made at home.

Tomato Cobbler from Martha Stewart Living -- We still swoon thinking about these cream biscuits on top of caramelized onions and sweet tomatoes.

In selecting this list, we made no considerations for which magazines published each recipe. We were interested to see that in the end, Martha Stewart Living and Bon Appétit supplied the most recipes, with three entries each. For those of you keeping score, that's two each from Everyday Food and Food & Wine, and one from Cooking Light.

Bonus Dishes

As we were reviewing all the recipes from the last twelve months, we found two others that we truly loved but that aren't from food magazines.

Spring Lasagna with Asparagus, Peas and Stinging Nettles -- We loved this spring riff on lasagna.

Dark Chocolate Banana Matzo Brei -- 2011 was the year we fell in love with Matzo.

What was your favorite dish of 2011? Was it something you made? Something you had in a restaurant?

Please let us know in the comments!

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