The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2016: Hasselback Butternut Squash with Bay Leaves

Bon Appétit (November 2016)

Hasselback potatoes have been in fashion for years now. They show up on cooking shows and in food magazines, in cookbooks and on restaurant menus.

It sounds and looks fancy. But it's really just a simple knife technique, taking a vegetable, such as a potato, and slicing crosswise in close intervals down the length of the vegetable. The slices are deep but not quite all the way through, resulting in something that's often described as looking like a fan or an accordion. To us it looks like a letter holder -- you know, if people still got letters.

Here are some true (or potentially true) origin stories for hasselback potatoes:

• They were invented by Rosie O'Donnell to taunt Elizabeth Hasslebeck and the name is intentionally misspelled. (Not true, but we wish it were.)

• Ina Garten popularized hasselback potatoes in American kitchens after seeing them in a prepared-food shop window in London years ago. (Bitten Word reader Jim told us this; we hope this one is true, because, duh, Contessa.)

• They are named after the restaurant in which they were first made, Hasselbacken, in Stockholm, which opened in 1748. (This is true, at least according to the Internets. And we all know how reliable the Internet is.) 

 Wherever it came from, Bon Appétit gave it a twist this Thanksgiving by hasselbacking the heck out of some whole butternut squash.

It was so beautiful in the magazine that we had to try it. 

Thanksgiving 2016: Deviled Crab Stuffing

Food Network Magazine (November 2016)

For previous Fakesgivings, we've deliberately chosen recipes that are a little more "out there" just to serve something unusual to our friends.

A green bean casserole with homemade Doritos? Check. A dish of only braised celery? Uh huh. Whipped sweet potatoes with banana? Yup.

This year, that dish was Deviled Crab Stuffing.

Crab? In stuffing? It seemed just out there enough that we had to try it. 

Thanksgiving 2016: French Onion Turkey Breast with Onion Gravy

Cooking Light (November 2016)

"I want to eat this gravy on everything." 

During our Fakesgiving dinner, our friend Will uttered those words to Zach as he dug in to this French Onion Turkey Breast with its delectable onion gravy. 

"Seriously," Will said. "On meat, on toast, on oatmeal. On everything short of, like, a peanut-butter sandwich. No, actually that would also be delicious."

Will is 100 percent right. The onion gravy in this dish -- which isn't even mentioned in the recipe name! -- is one of the most addictively delicious things we've eaten in a long time.

They gravy is phenomenal. It's fabulous.

And p.s.? This may also be the best Thanksgiving turkey we've ever made.

Thanksgiving 2016: Buttered Green Beans with Shallots and Lemon

Martha Stewart Living (November 2016)

Bittens, we burned the shallots.

We'd been doing so good! We'd prepped the shallots a couple days ahead of time. (For this recipe, Martha notes that "the shallots can be fried five days ahead and stored in an airtight container at room temperature.") Anything you can do early for Thanksgiving is a good thing. So two days before our Fakesgiving feast, we slice and fried and dried our shallots and stored them in an airtight container.

Then on the day of the meal, we cooked the beans, scattered the shallots o'er top, and snapped the photo you see above.

That's when things got bad.

Thanksgiving 2016: Southern-Style Buttermilk Cornbread Dressing

A Bitten Word Recipe

Way back in 2008, for the very first Thanksgiving we ever wrote about on The Bitten Word, we made a dressing using a recipe from Zach's mom. It's the kind of dressing we both grew up eating at Thanksgiving -- cornbread-based, flavored with sage and other spices, and wet and dense and cakey, with almost a brownie-like consistency.

This is the kind of dish that rarely shows up in food magazines. Over the years of cataloging Thanksgiving trends, we've seen only handful of dressings in this style.

So for our final Fakesgiving this year, we wanted to circle back to that classic Southern dressing that we both loved so much.

But this time we decided to give it a twist.

Corn Salad with Hazelnuts, Pecorino, and Mint

Bon Appétit (July 2016)

"You haven't been to All Purpose?"

"OMG how have you not had the fried chicken at Maketto yet??"

"Surely you guys have done the tasting menu at Kinship?"

"Conosci? Kyirisan? Convivial? Masseria?"

"Pineapple and Pearls? You haven't even been to Pineapple and Pearls???" 

No.

We haven't been to any of these buzzy Washington, D.C., restaurants.

Here's why.

Snap Peas and Pride

We don't talk about being gay all that much on this blog.

Oh, sure, we told you about when we got married. And we've brought you along on some of the great trips we've taken as a couple. It's obviously no secret (to put it mildly) that we're gay. 

But most of the time, there's just not much of a reason to mention it. There's no gay way to grill a steak, or host Thanksgiving, or bake a pie. We usually talk about food -- why would we mention being gay?

But it's Pride month, and we just returned from a weekend in New York City celebrating Pride (and Clay's birthday) with a bunch of friends.

So let's talk about Pride.

Grilled Broccoli and The Peace of Wild Things

Cook's Country (June/July 2016)

Clay went for a run this morning in Rock Creek Park, a large national park here in Our Nation's Capital. It's a truly beautiful place to be in the mornings, a quiet swath of green in the heart of the city. 

There's a point on the trail where a bridge crosses a bubbling creek. It's always a lovely spot. But this morning, there was a large, beautiful bird standing in the water. (Sorry, we're not up on our ornithology: Let's call it a heron.) While the water swirled and tumbled around it, the heron stood perfectly still, untroubled by the brook.

It reminded us of a comment left by one of our readers, Julie, last week, after we'd written about Orlando. Julie suggested a poem, by the great Kentuckian Wendell Berry, that she turns to when she needs support and inspiration. Julie must be a mind-reader, because it happens to be our favorite poem.

Our sadness (and this morning, despair) about Orlando remains. But we don't plan to wallow in despair. To paraphrase Mr. Berry, we choose not to "tax our lives with forethought of grief." 

We'll leave you with Mr. Berry's poem, along with an excellent recipe for Grilled Broccoli with Lemon and Parmesan. (We still know you're here for the food.)

Spread the words and the message of "The Peace of Wild Things." It has brought us comfort in difficult times. We hope it does the same for you, whenever your difficult time may be. 

 

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS 
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

Grilled Onions and Gun Control

Like many others, we have been so torn up since the Orlando shooting this weekend. We just keep getting hit by waves of sadness and anger and defeatism and confusion. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If there's one thing we learned from reading Dave Cullen's tremendous book Columbine, it's that whatever you think is true about a mass shooter during the first few days following a massacre probably isn't what's actually the case. (No, there was no Trench Coat Mafia at Columbine. No, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren't bullied social outcasts.) So we know it's still early days to speculate about the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen. Was he an ISIS sympathizer who wanted the U.S. out of Syria? Was he a closeted gay man whose own internalized homophobia finally manifested itself in the most grotesque way imaginable? Was he neither? Was he both?

Nonetheless, it makes it hard for us, as gay men, not to see this atrocity through a personal lens. There have already been a number of essays over the past couple days about how gay bars and nightclubs are something of a sacred space, a sanctuary of sorts, where gays can come together in safety. We feel that way, too -- even though we live in Washington, D.C., one of the most gay-friendly jurisdictions in the world. Even if we don't feel threatened or harassed (and in 13 years in D.C., we rarely have), it's still important to have these spaces where we can gather and celebrate with like-minded people. 

That's the sadness part of the equation.

Here comes the anger.

We just cannot fathom why semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 used in Orlando are still street-legal. We both grew up in extended families and communities of proud, responsible hunters and gun owners (though one of us did grow up in a community with a pre-Columbine school shooting that killed three students and injured five others). We don't think the government should be able to prohibit gun ownership. But it boggles our minds that Americans can't at least agree that assault weapons like this should be illegal. Do we have a right to own guns? Yes, absolutely. Do we have a right to own grenades? Bazookas? Tanks? No, because those are weapons of war. And so are assault rifles.

If you agree that it's abhorrent to have military-style assault weapons for sale to anybody who wants them, please -- please -- contact your representative in Congress and let him or her know you support an assault weapons ban. As this Washington Post editorial says, it's the only Constitutional measure that would make mass shootings less lethal.

We know: You didn't come to a food blog to read about mass shootings and gun control. But, well, those men and women in Orlando didn't go out dancing with their friends expecting to face gunfire. 

We're no doubt going to continue to grieve and rage over this tragedy in the coming weeks.

But food is part of our language of grief, and it is what we came here for. So we're leaving you with an excellent recipe for Grilled Onions with Balsamic Vinaigrette.

So here are our three things we hope you'll do today, Bittens:

1. Channel your anger and frustration over a heartless attack into a positive step forward.
   
   
2. Hug your friends and family and tell them you love them.
   
   
3. Make these onions and share a meal with your loved ones.

Kohlrabi Slaw with Harissa Dressing

Food & Wine (June 2016) 

We promise not to be one of those couples who, you know, goes to Japan and then everything we say is about Japan. ("This sushi's fine, I guess, but it's nothing like what we had at Tsukiji in Tokyo...") 

HOWEVER. We need to talk about Kewpie mayonnaise.

Kewpie mayonnaise is the most popular mayo in Japan. While we were there, we saw it on lots of stuff, most notably -- and most deliciously -- atop those amazing okonomiyaki pancakes. According to the Kewpie website, it was the first mayonnaise to be introduced in Japan, in 1925. And it's been a fixture on Japanese tables ever since.

Three things you need to know about Kewpie mayonnaise:

1. The bottle is crazy adorable, thanks to the Kewpie doll on the label. (Which, fun fact: Kewpie dolls are actually from Germany, based on a comic strip from the American Midwest.) Seriously, have you ever seen cuter mayo??

2. Kewpie is thicker, richer and creamier than other mayonnaise. It's also got more of that crave-worthy umami flavor. (Thanks, MSG!) 

3. It is a secret-weapon ingredient in this amazingly delicious Kohlrabi Slaw with Harissa Dressing.