The Bitten Word

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!

Culinary Resolutions for 2011, Plus How We Did on our 2010 Resolutions

Happy New Year!  The new calendar means it's time for us to make our annual list of Culinary Resolutions -- and check in on how we did with our resolutions from last year.

As you may remember, this entire blog is the result of a New Year's resolution to cook more recipes from the food magazines we received each month. So now our Culinary Resolutions give us a chance to explore even more new things in the kitchen.

So, what are we planning for the upcoming year? Well, first, let's see how we did with our 2010 Resolutions:

The Successes! 

• Get rid of old spices -- We were really good this last year about keeping our pantries cleaned out and purging items whose time had passed.  This was especially true with our spice rack.  For the past six months, it's remained organized and many of the spices that were past their prime have, indeed, left the apartment. 

• Write more recipes -- We featured more than a dozen recipes of our own creation on the blog over the past year.  You can explore them all in the Our Own Recipes category. We're especially proud of the Indian Spiced Meatloaf with Spicy Indian Ketchup, Grilled Panzanella Salad, and Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Sriracha and Cashews. 

• Make more jams, preserves and canned goods -- In 2010, we made Meyer Lemon Ginger Marmalade and we canned tomatoes once again. Both were big undertakings and we were pleased with the results.  

• Experiment more with cocktails -- We don't make a lot of cocktails at home, but when we did this year, we experimented more with muddling ingredients and also with using bitters.  

• Learn a little something about wine -- We're counting this as a success based solely on the phrase "a little something." We did visit some vineyards in Mendoza (a post on that trip is coming soon) and we've been reading Matt Skinner's Heard It Through the Grapevine: The Things You Should Know In Order to Enjoy Wine. So we're by no means wine experts, but we did learn a little something. 

 

The Failures (so far)!

• Make an aspic, a salt-crusted beef tenderloin, and Yorkshire puddings -- All three of these weren't accomplished by year's end.  We considered throwing a Resolutions Dinner and just knocking all three out, but other stuff got in the way. Maybe this month!

• Eat at a Thomas Keller restaurant -- This one didn't happen, either, but we're not torn up about it. We didn't make it to California in 2010, and when we were in New York, we chose to eat at Momofuku Ko, which we had wanted to visit for a very long time.  We'll get to a Keller restaurant at some point....

So that's 2010.  We think we did pretty well!

So what about Culinary Resolutions for this year?