The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2011 Recipe Index: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

Our Fakesgiving + Our Favorite Holiday Dishes

A little more than a week ago, we had Thanksgiving.

Or really, we had Fakesgiving, our annual tradition with friends and family where we pack as many seats as possible into our apartment, make a bunch of new dishes from November food magazines, and see what everyone likes and dislikes. This year, there were 13 of us. Zach's mom and sister came and helped cook the day before (we literally could not have done it without them), and we made 17 new Thanksgiving dishes. 

(This year's Fakesgiving crowd, minus the two of us.)

Below, you'll see the initial list of recipes we started with: more than 250 Thanksgiving recipes from 10 magazines. To be included in the index, the recipes had to be part of the magazine's Thanksgiving coverage. So this is not meant to be comprehensive -- there are many more recipes in this month's magazines. If the recipe is hyperlinked, it is available online. If not, it's not there yet. 

In preparation for this year's Thanksgiving coverage, we've also created a page of Our Favorite Holiday Recipes. There, you'll find a collection of dishes from Thanksgivings, Fakesgivings and holiday dinner parties past. We'll be updating it as we introduce new content and recipes on the site.

Enjoy the index! 

Thanksgiving 2011 Trends in Food Magazines: Pies, Pecans, Ginger and Green Beans

Thanksgiving is coming! Thanksgiving is coming!

And we're ready. We've scoured the magazines, tested recipes, and we're eager talk turkey, recommend dishes, and answer any Thanksgiving-related questions you might have.

We're kicking off our Thanksgiving coverage by looking at the trends in this year's crop of magazines. As in previous years, we've indexed every single one of the November Thanksgiving recipes from the magazines in our rotation. We'll share that list with you on Monday. There are some really exciting (and bizarre) dishes among the more than 250 recipes.

But today we're going to talk about trends. 

As we pored through this year's Thanksgiving features, some clear trends emerged. To illustrate many of the trends in this year's T-Day recipes, we created word clouds, like the one above, which illustrate how frequently certain words popped up. You can click on all the word clouds to enlarge them, so you can take a closer look. 

What's the general theme for this year? Well, for a lot of our magazines, the theme seemed to be, "Thanksgiving 2011: We're Just Not That Into You." Food & Wine and Saveur seem rather light on their coverage. Even Martha Stewart Living, which we would sort of hold up as the grande dame of Thanksgiving entertaining, seemed scaled back. (We hasten to add that we're not saying that's a bad thing -- Lord knows there are plenty of great autumn recipes out there that don't involve sweet potatoes or cranberry sauce.)

But there was one magazine that blew us away this year. You guys know we tend not to single out particular magazines or issues as favorites, but this must be said: Bon Appétit BROUGHT IT this Thanksgiving. Buh-ROUGHT. IT. From its "Feast from the East" feature, which showcased marvelous ideas for an Asian-inspired Thanksgiving, to the "Down South" feature on a Louisiana Cajun Thanksgiving feast, we were enthralled. Four turkeys, a host of awesome side dishes, and drool-worthy desserts (we need that Grape-and-Apple Pie) -- the November 2011 Bon Appétit is a pleasure. Even if you're set on your Thanksgiving menu, consider picking up a copy just for fun.

Anyway, trends.

As you can see from the word cloud above, the usual suspects are, well, the usual suspects. So here's a word cloud showing all the recipe words, minus "turkey," "gravy," "cranberry," "stuffing," "potatoes," "dressing" and "roasted" (a.k.a. the saddest Thanksgiving ever):

Potato Galette

Cook's Illustrated (April 2011)

One of our favorite potato recipes -- actually, one of our favorite dishes in general -- was a Crispy Potato Roast we made last year. Golden and roasted on the outside, warm and buttery on the inside, it's a knockout of a dish -- and how often can you say that about potatoes?  Since we wrote about it last January, we've heard from several Bitten Word readers that it's become an instant fave around their dinner tables, too.

So the bar was high when we spied this Potato Galette in the April Cook's Illustrated. But we were sold on CI's description of "a crisp, earthy-tasting potato cake" and the accompanying photo of beautifully layered potatoes. Plus, the article promises a great dish without all the fussy layering. 

Could this newcomer hold its own against the heavyweight Crispy Potato Roast?

Time for a potato-off!

Our 10 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of the Past Year

                                      

Here at the beginning of a new year, we've been thinking a lot about the past 12 months of The Bitten Word, and about the dishes that we really loved.  

So we made a list of our 10 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of the Past Year. And that exercise was a complete failure, because we just couldn't narrow it down to 10!

So after we cut out as many as we could stomach, there are 13 dishes on the list. We hope you'll forgive us.  

We were surprised to find that once our list was made, nearly all of the magazines we cover were represented.  Fine Cooking, Bon Appétit, Everyday Food and Cook's Illustrated each had two recipes on the list.  Southern Living, Martha Stewart Living, Cook's Country, Food Network and Saveur each had one recipe each. Surprisingly, Food & Wine isn't on the list, even though we really liked several dishes we made from their pages.

Making this list also reminded us that we learned some fun new words this year, including sformato, larding, and affogato. More on those in the list below. 

So here they are, Our 10, uh, we can't possibbly choose only 10, so 13 Favorite Food Magazine Recipes of 2010 (in the order that we cooked them): 

• Crispy Potato Roast from Everyday Food: "We don't want to overstate how good this Crispy Potato Roast is...but it will forever and irreversibly alter your life." 

• Indoor Pulled Pork from Cook's Illustrated: "This pulled pork tastes like it came from the best, divey-est Memphis BBQ shack." 

• Cajun Red Beans and Rice from Cook's Illustrated: "The beans are soft and creamy, while the andouille sausage is spicy and hands-down amazing."

• Korean Fried Chicken from Saveur:  "Spicy and sweet with the promise of a crispy, crackly skin? We were sold! ...This fried chicken is absolutely one of the best things we've made in a very long time."

Read the rest after the jump!

Thanksgiving 2010: Send Us Your Photos!

We're all done with our Thanksgiving posts! We really enjoyed trying all these recipes, and we've loved hearing from you about what you're planning to cook!

Now comes the fun part: Are you making a dish from a food magazine this year?  We'd love to feature your dish in a round-up of reader experiences after the big day. Whether you tried something new this year or you cooked some family favorites, we'd love to see your pics! Email them to us along with your thoughts on the dish and we'll post a round-up sometime after Thursday.

Below, you'll find every dish we made this year for Thanksgiving -- click on an image to read the recipe. And remember, don't lose your head on the big day.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving! We hope it's full of love, family and really, really good food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>> More Thanksgiving recommendations from the Bitten Word

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Thanksgiving 2010: Rustic Bread Stuffing with Sausage, Cherries and Pecans

Cook's Illustrated (November/December 2010)

Neither of us grew up eating stuffing that was cooked inside a turkey.

Rather, we both come from dressing families, where a wet mixture of bread, stock and vegetables is poured into a dish and baked casserole-style.

But we were still intrigued by this recipe, whose aim is to create a stuffing that tastes as if it was cooked inside the bird, infusing it with turkey flavor.

We were up for the test.

Thanksgiving 2010: Butterflied Turkey with Cranberry-Molasses Glaze

Cook's Illustrated (November/December 2010)

If there's one non-negotiable dish on every traditional Thanksgiving menu, it's the turkey.  You can quibble about corn and squabble over sweet potatoes.  But there's always gonna be turkey.

But here's the irony: lots of Thanksgiving dinner guests probably couldn't care less. When was the last time your guests said the turkey was their favorite part of the meal?

It's not because roast turkey doesn't taste good (although it's extremely easy to wind up with a dry, bland bird). It's just that, with all those tasty side dishes (and pies waiting in the wings), who cares about the turkey?

For as much as turkey is meant to be the main event of the Thanksgiving show, oftentimes it's really, well, unmemorable.

This year, though, you can forget all that. Serve this Butterflied Turkey with Cranberry-Molasses Glaze, and it's sure to be the star of your Thanksgiving table.

Thanksgiving 2010: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

A Bitten Word Round-Up of 175 Recipes from 10 Leading Food Magazines

As we said yesterday, we've got tons of great Thanksgiving dishes to share with you. But before we get to our Thanksgiving parade of recipes, we wanted to post our annual round-up of all the T-Day recipes from all the food magazines we receive.

Last year, we said that if we were to assign a trend to the 2009 Thanksgiving issues, it would be about simplicity.  

This year, that trend seems even more extreme. This year's food mags are all trumpeting "simple," "easy," "foolproof," "no-time," "Thanksgiving 101" recipes.

Still, we did find a handful of really innovative dishes -- notably, in Food & Wine's "East by Northeast" Thanksgiving spread, which features an Asian-American meal that incorporates Eastern flavors and traditional Thanksgiving dishes. We also lusted after Martha Stewart Living's "Land of Plenty" feature, which showcased a farm-to-table Thanksgiving dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. It's the Thanksgiving we most wanted to attend (maybe because it started off with Hudson Baby Bourbon Whiskey?).

We noticed a few micro-trends this year, too. Despite the beautiful slices of pie that adorn the cover of Martha Stewart Living, it's cakes that seem really popular this year. And especially pumpkin layer cakes -- three different magazines feature one this year.

Other ingredients that are big this year? Pomegranates are everywhere. As is fennel. Both of those are nice ways to add a new flavor into standard Thanksgiving dishes.

What's out? Corn, believe it or not. Other than cornbread stuffings and a couple of soups from Saveur, there's only one dish in all these food magazines that includes corn (Food & Wine's Creamed Haricot Vert and Corn Casserole).

Which ingredients stood out the most this year? Using Wordle.net, we created a couple of interesting word clouds that display the different ingredients in all these recipes according to how often they appear.

Here's a word cloud showing every prominent ingredient:

And here's one where we omitted all the usual suspects (turkey, stuffing, etc.):

Anyway, onto the master index!

The Leftovers | Interesting Stuff From April Food Magazines

Here are a few items that caught our attention this month. 

 

Unspoiled Lemons & Unspilt Milk

In the "Notes From Readers" section of the latest Cook's Illustrated, a reader writes in to ask about the best way to store lemons. Since we cook quite a lot, we try to always have lemons on hand and for years we've kept our lemons sitting on the counter top in a bowl. Sometimes they last, but after a while, they turn hard and become unusuable.

The folks at America's Test Kitchen, always on the case, did an experiment with storing lemons, both in and out of the fridge, and in a variety of containers (and even no container at all). The result? Lemons stay freshest when stored in a zipper-lock bag in the fridge. We'll never keep ours on the counter again.

There's a second quick tip in this issue that we loved. If a recipe calls for buttermilk, you likely have leftover milk when you're finished cooking. If so, you can easily freeze it in small paper cups. Once frozen, wrap the cups in plastic wrap and store them in a resealable plastic bag. Small quantities will be waiting for you when it's time for more buttermilk.
 

 

Praise the Lard

This Sunday, we're attending Cochon 555 for the second year. At the event, a group of top chefs from the Washington D.C. area will each prepare a heritage breed pig, concocting as many dishes as they can manage. The event is to celebrate heritage breeds and last year the chefs were amazingly creative and the food was outstanding. Needless to say, we each ate our weight in pork.

After this Sunday's event in DC, Cochon 555 is happening in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, leading up to a cookoff among the regional winners at the Food & Wine Classic this June.  If you want to attend one of these upcoming events, tickets are available at Cochon555.com. 

Gourmet Whoopie Pies to Order

Last week Clay had the opportunity to sample some of B. Hall's gourmet whoopie pies when a colleague brought some into his office. Though the pies are made here in DC, they're available for shipment all over the country and come in many flavors. Clay loved the Vanilla Bean (pictured right, courtesy of B. Hall) and we're dying to try the Raspberry Red Velvet. If you want some for a gift (or yourself), you can order them online. 

Happy Spring! 

Cajun Red Beans and Rice

Cook's Illustrated (January/February 2010)

We've got New Orleans on the brain, and it's not just because of the Saints' big win or the city's recent mayoral election.

Tuesday is Mardi Gras! And although we're feeling a bit too old for the whole beads-and-Jello-shot version of the celebration, we think it's the perfect occasion to make these Red Beans and Rice.

With an overnight soak time for the beans and two hours of prep for the actual dish, you can't exactly call this recipe the "Big Easy."  It's more like the "Big Moderately Difficult and Time-Consuming But Not Really All That Hard Once You Get Into It."

And it's the ideal dish to make should you find yourself confined to your home under 30 inches of snow.

Actually, you can "quick-brine" the beans if you want, meaning this dish can be ready in about three hours, most of which doesn't require your actual attention. So if you've got a little time, these Cajun Red Beans and Rice are a wonderful way to heat things up on a cold winter night.