The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2011: Green Bean Casserole With Crispy Shallots

Food Network Magazine (November 2011)

Most of the green bean casseroles we've encountered (99 percent of which have been at Southern potlucks) have been some variation of this:

Combine two cans green beans with one can cream of mushroom soup and a splash of milk in a casserole dish. Top it with canned fried onions. Bake it for an extended period in a casserole dish.

And you know what? It tastes pretty good.

Oh, it doesn't taste at all like actual green beans. And the beans themselves are usually overcooked to the point that they're soggy, stringy and unrecognizable. Still, it's a fine enough casserole.

That casserole? It's like the country cousin to this Green Bean Casserole with Crispy Shallots.

It's as if the classic green bean casserole got a new haircut, started working out, and high-tailed it to the city where it lives in a nice little apartment, happily ever after.

So what sets this casserole apart? 

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):

Peppery Punch

Food Network Magazine (July/August 2011)

Last Monday, Drew and Ralph came over for dinner and we served this punch. More on that in a moment.

Since then, we've had a whirlwind week. Here are a few things that happened:

• Wednesday night, we boarded a plane to Portland, Maine, where we rendezvoused with Zach's family for a 70/30 trip (his stepfather was turning 70; his sister, 30).

• We spent one night in Portland, where we ate at Fore Street, which we think is just about the coziest, most romantic restaurant we've ever visited. It has an extensive, seasonal menu, a big, open kitchen and it's housed inside a really cool old building. We had some amazing mussels, an excellent steak and a to-die-for pork chop.

• Thursday, we headed to the seaside town of Camden for a few nights of what became a blur of lobster and naps.

• Clay read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which is excellent); Zach's been slugging through Cloud Atlas (which is fascinating).

• We met up with our friends Dan and Wendy for a sail on Penobscot Bay.

• Also with Dan and Wendy, we went to a field day out in the tiny village of Montville, where we witnessed a 90-plus-year-old woman compete in a cross-cut saw competition. It was one of the highlights of the trip. 

• Some of our party hiked Mount Battie in Camden, but the two of us couldn't be pulled away from the back deck of the house where we were staying.

• We had the chance to revisit one of our all-time favorite restaurants, Chase's Daily in Belfast, Maine. Nestled on the gallery-crammed streets of Belfast, it's a vegetarian restaurant that's only open for dinner on Friday nights. We ordered a bean salad (with amazing toasted almonds) and cacio e pepe to start. For entrees, we had a lasagna that included beets and a pizza topped with braised fennel and figs (delicious!). 

• We played some fierce games of Scrabble with Zach's mom B.

• Lots and lots of naps.

• And, as mentioned, there were many, many lobster rolls. We think our favorite of the weekend might be the one from J's Oyster in Portland. (If you go, get the Bloody Mary. It's one of the Top 3 we've ever had.) 

The one thing we didn't get around to was making this punch a second time. We had planned to, and we're sure Zach's family would have loved it. But we would have needed to go find elderflower liqueur, plus some champagne, and that, honestly, seemed like a bit of a chore on vacation. So we opted for simpler cocktails instead.

Still, this Peppery Punch is a fantastic summer drink to have up your sleeve.

Skillet Eggs With Squash

 Food Network Magazine (July/August 2011)

We went to Cape Cod this weekend. Friends presented the opportunity for a free house in Provincetown for several days, and we jumped at the chance to go. And it was lovely! We read, we napped, we read some more. We took walks to the beach and made dinner at the house most nights.

Before we left for the trip, we diligently cleaned out our fridge, working through all the produce that we had on hand. And that, friends, is a challenge these days, because our CSA share is getting hefty each week.

One of the main culprits? Zucchini. We have it in spades right now. A few weeks ago, our weekly share had 12 (twelve!) pounds of zucchini. This week, we got another four pounds.

So needless to say, when it's summer, we're on the lookout for new zucchini ideas. 

And one of those ideas -- Skillet Eggs with Squash -- is already a new favorite. 

Easter Challenge: Dyeing Eggs with Food from Your Pantry

Inspired by Food Network Magazine (April 2011)

Growing up, we dyed Easter eggs all kinds of ways. (Zach's mom, especially, loved trying out unconventional dyes and designs.) If you can do it to an egg -- Paas, glitter, tie-dye, crackle-finish, ombre, marbling, shrink-wrap sleeves with cartoons of Peter Cottontail -- we probably did.

But we'd never thought of dyeing eggs using household food items until we saw a feature in the current issue of Food Network Magazine, which suggests using things like turmeric, Kool-Aid and Red Hot candies to tint eggs for Easter.

Inspired, we opened up our own pantry to see what we could find.

Easy Microwave Chocolate Cake

Food Network Magazine (April 2011)

So here's the good news: You can make a chocolate cake in your microwave in less than five minutes!

And here's the bad news: You can make a chocolate cake in your microwave in less than five minutes. 

That's right.  

Got a craving for chocolate cake? Whip one up! It only takes a few minutes.

But if you're like us and need very little excuse to make yourself a treat, well, you should look away now. Because not only are these microwave chocolate cakes easy, they're also pretty darn good. 

Black Rice Risotto

Food Network Magazine (March 2011)

For us, risotto is a splurge food. 

We make it for special occasions, or when guests are coming to dinner.  

And there are recipes that we love, especially the Risotto with Butternut Squash and Sage that we made back in 2008. If you haven’t made that recipe, it’s really lovely, especially for this time of year, when there's still a bit of a nip in the air.  

Because we consider risotto a special occasion food, we expect it to be special when we make it. We want a risotto that blows us away, that rewards us for the constant stirring, and makes us want to grab a fork and dig right into the pan. 

This, sadly, ain't that kind of risotto. 

Cauliflower Couscous

Food Network Magazine (January/February 2011)

When we were in L.A. last month, we had a really great dinner at Hatfield's, which in August was ranked by Bon Appétit as one of the 10 Best New Restaurants in America.

We enjoyed lots of the dishes we tried -- especially the drop-dead-delicious croque-madam, made with yellowtail sashimi, prosciutto, quail egg and brioche.

But the most intriguing and innovative dish (and maybe the most fun) was a plate of roasted cauliflower with golden raisins, toasted almonds and -- are you ready for this? -- sautéed plantains! It was a whole new take on cauliflower, pushing the vegetable in a sweet direction that was a completely new experience for us.

We definitely still want to try to recreate the Hatfield's dish. But when we got back from L.A. and saw this Cauliflower Couscous in the February Food Network Magazine, we knew we wanted to try it first.

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!