The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2012: Haricots Verts and White Beans with Shallot Vinaigrette

Food & Wine (November 2012)

There are a number of different reasons we might pick a Thanksgiving recipe.

Maybe it's a combination of flavors we'd never thought of before, or a technique we haven't tried. Maybe it sounds like such a perfect preparation of a classic Thanksgiving dish that we can't wait to dig in.

Truth be told, we made these green beans for one reason and one reason only: You don't have to cook 'em.

Thanksgiving 2012 Recipe Index: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

Now that you're all set on the Thanksgiving trends for 2012, it's time to start planning your menu in earnest. 

As we've done for the past few years, we've gathered all the different Thanksgiving recipes from several different food magazines. This year's index features a full 239 recipes from 11 food magazines: Bon Appetit, Cook's Illustrated, Cooking Light, Everyday Food, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, Food Network Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Southern Living and Whole Living. And believe us, they are absolutely packed with great ideas for Thanksgiving. 

We hosted our annual Fakesgiving this past Sunday. As you might remember, that's our yearly meal where we invite a bunch of friends to test-drive several Thanksgiving recipes. This year we had 20 friends and family to sample 19 different dishes, from a pre-dinner snack all the way through to dessert. We'll be posting about the dishes we tried over the next three weeks, in the run-up to Turkey Day.

So dig into our Thanksgiving 2012 Recipe Index! But first, we'll share a few photos from our Fakesgiving meal.

2012 Thanksgiving Trends: What's In and What's Out at the Thanksgiving Table This Year

 
It's 22 days till Thanksgiving. Do you know where your turkey is?

We're only half-joking. Yes, there are three weeks to Thanksgiving, with plenty of time to pull it all together. But if you're hosting a Thanksgiving meal this year, it's also time to start planning. 

We try to avoid getting caught up in food hype, but we can't help ourselves at Thanksgiving. We pore through the magazines. We try out a bunch of the dishes. We invite friends over for Fakesgiving (more on this year's event tomorrow). 

And each year, we're enamored with the Thanksgiving trends that we see across the spectrum of food magazines we receive. This year, we've closely studied 11 of those magazines, charting their Turkey Day recommendations. As we have in previous years, tomorrow we'll be publishing the 2012 Thanksgiving Index -- a round-up of all the dishes recommended this year by all 11 of those magazines.

But first, here's what we're seeing in this year's trends.

Wrapping up The Super Awesome Cover-to-Cover Project

The inaugural Super Awesome Cover-to-Cover Project is complete! 

More than 300 of you -- from all over the world! -- joined up to cook nearly every single recipe in six different October 2012 food magazines. We have absolutely loved reading about your adventures and seeing how the dishes turned out. We enjoyed hearing your stories and your thoughts on the recipes, and to see the photos of the finished products. 

Though it was a lot of work, we've had a lot of fun with this project, and we'll definitely do it again in the future, in this form or another. But for now, here are all six teams' write-ups. Explore their posts and get inspired!

(As for us, we'll be turning our attention to the Super Bowl of home-cooking -- Thanksgiving -- starting tomorrow. Don't miss it!)

Huge thanks to everyone who participated and to those who have been following along!

• Team Saveur
• Team Everyday Food
• Team Bon Appetit
• Team Food & Wine
• Team Martha Stewart Living
• Team Food Network Magazine

Enjoy!

-- Zach & Clay

Food & Wine Magazine Cover-to-Cover: All the Recipes in the October 2012 Issue

Part 2 of The Super Awesome Cover-to-Cover Project

We made our first big mistake on the Cover-to-Cover Project with Team Food & Wine. 

You see, with assigning so many recipes, we didn't take the time to read every single one of the recipes ahead of time. This quickly become apparent when we received an email from Valerie about her assigned dish, which was a cocktail:

"The recipe for Aged Negroni sounds interesting but it takes a month of being aged in an oak barrel…"

Huh? 

Yes indeed, we assigned six members of Team Food & Wine aged cocktail recipes that require a "One 1-liter oak barrel" and a month's worth of time. Instruction #1: "If the barrel is new and dry inside...." 

Hilariously, Team Food & Wine seemed more than game for the challenge, and had already started discussing ways to improvise this process. Needless to say, we let them off the hook with other recipes. 

That's not to say that there weren't some seriously challenging dishes in the issue. Here are all the recipes in the 2012 issue, as cooked and photographed by Team Food & Wine. 

Give them your kudos and let us know what you're going to make out of this issue.

 

STARTERS & SOUPS | SALADS, VEGETABLES & FRUIT SNACKS | MEAT | POULTRY & EGGS | FISH & SHELLFISH |  PASTA & RICE | SANDWICHES, FLATBREADS & TAMALES | DESSERTS |  SAUCES & CONDIMENTS | COCKTAILS

Eggplant, Pear and Pecorino Salad

Food & Wine (September 2012)

Are pear and eggplant compatible flavors?

Usually when we have a question of this nature, we reach for The Flavor Bible. We find it an indispensable tool in the kitchen when you're looking for inspiration for how to use ingredients. There are no recipes, just a laundry list of ingredients and the flavors that pair best with them. 

So what does The Flavor Bible say about pear and eggplant? 

Not a thing. There's no mention of pairing the two. 

But we like eggplant. And we like pears. So we had to try this combination for ourselves. 

Grilled Okra with Red Curry-Lime Dressing

Food & Wine (September 2012)

Here's a confession: We haven't really cooked this week. 

We got home from vacation on Sunday and the cupboards were bare. We're talking vodka-in-the-freezer, ketchup-in-the-refrigerator-door bare. We knew we had to remedy that, so we went to the supermarket and picked up a few staples. Two days later, we got our weekly CSA share, so we've had a good amount of fresh vegetables in the house (okra, eggplant, arugula, a few tomatoes). 

But then we haven't really been motivated to do any focused cooking to share here with you. Oh, we've been eating at home. But it's been more of an improvised, no-recipe, throw-a-bunch-of-stuff-in-a-skillet kind of thing. Very, very simple.

It's been a nice respite. We've been been busy catching up at work, so it's been nice to spend less time in the kitchen. And the food we've been cooking has been very healthy, which is a nice break after decadent beach food. 

But simple food can be excellent food, and sometimes, the simplest recipes can really surprise you. 

Food & Wine's September issue happens to be full of recipes that are simple, in that they only have three ingredients (plus oil, salt and pepper). 

We're hard pressed to think of dishes in our regular rotation that only have three ingredients. Simple egg dishes? Very simple sautés? 

This recipe showcases the power of simple, because this Grilled Okra with Red Curry-Lime Dressing is a complete knock-out -- one of our favorite dishes we've cooked so far this year.  

Cucumber-Lemonade Mocktail

Food & Wine (August 2012)

So.  

A mocktail.  

It's like...a cocktail, but...like...without booze?

Huh?

Oh, we kid, we kid. Sometimes a boozeless cocktail (otherwise known as, you know, a beverage) is just the thing for a refreshing sip on a hot afternoon.

We really enjoyed this Cucumber-Lemonade Mocktail, but we think the name is burying the lede.

Heirloom Tomato Salad with Anchovy Vinaigrette

Food & Wine (August 2012)

The latest issue of Food & Wine has a little feature in the front, presented not as a recipe, but as a little tidbit, about how to make a traditional fish sauce. It goes something like this: Pack anchovies in a barrel, let them sit in the sun for a year, and voila! Fish sauce! (Don't worry, neighbors, we're not about to start fish sauce production in the backyard.)  

We suspect that we've already lost a good portion of readers with this headline, due to the presence of the dreaded anchovy in the recipe title. 

Are you team anchovy, or do you flee in horror at the mere sound of their name? 

If you're the latter, we think you should buck up and give this recipe a go. Here's why. 

Grilled Peach, Vidalia Onion and Bacon Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

Food & Wine (July 2012)

Let's be honest: You'd have to work pretty hard not to love a dish whose title includes bacon, grilled peaches and onions, and buttermilk dressing. You could pretty much throw all those ingredients in a bowl and satisfy just about everybody. 

And that's essentially what this salad is: Awesome ingredients, thrown together in a bowl. And you're gonna love it.