Plus Two Bonus Recipes
This New Year, we drove up to the Hudson Valley, where we spent a few nights with a group of friends in Rhinebeck, New York. It's a beautiful little town, with cute shops, adorable houses and some nice restaurants. (The porchetta sandwich at Terrapin, with manchego, arugula and an olive aioli was especially tasty.)
Incidentally, we had an amazing New Year's Eve dinner at home. Our friend Ingela, whose mother is Swedish, made a traditional Swedish smörgåsbord: pickled herring, boiled potatoes, sour cream, meatballs, ham with mustard, homemade gravlax, and shots of Aquavit. It was such a fun meal for New Year's, and such a memorable and delicious way to wrap up 2011.
The drive there and back gave us plenty of time to chat about 2011 and make plans for what we want to do with The Bitten Word in 2012. As we looked back at the dozens of recipes we shared here in the last year, we started to make a list of our favorites, and it quickly ballooned to nearly thirty recipes.
After deep negotiations ("But that was so good!," "What if we trade the salad for the sandwich?" Heavy stuff.), we settled on a list of our 11 favorite food magazines dishes from 2011.
You can see them above (click the images for the posts). Here's a rundown of what made the cut, in no particular order.
Grilled Mussels with Herb Butter from Everyday Food -- We're already eager to make these again once grilling weather comes back around.
Spicy Pork with Asparagus and Chile from Bon Appétit -- This Asian stir-fry is simple but delicious.
Beet-and-Apple Salad from Food & Wine -- This horseradish-spiked dish, topped with pistachios, was hands-down the best salad we made in 2011.
Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash from Bon Appétit -- This chili is the definition of winter comfort and so delicious that meat eaters won't even care that it's vegetarian.
Tagliatelle with Prosciutto and Orange from Bon Appétit -- Orange adds an unexpected and delicious dimension to this pasta dish.
Butterflied, Rolled and Roasted Leg of Lamb with Fresh Mint Sauce from Martha Stewart Living -- We're still thinking about the artichoke stuffing and the fresh mint sauce.
Beer-Baked White Beans from Everyday Food -- All you need to know: These are the best beans we've ever made.
Burgers with Blue Cheese Mayo and Sherry Vidalia Onions from Cooking Light -- Easily the best burger we made at home this year. Every bite is packed with delicious flavor.
Salted Caramel Six-Layer Chocolate Cake from Martha Stewart Living -- This cake was the dessert highlight of 2011 (and we eat a lot of desserts). We're itching for an excuse to make it again.
Chicken Tinga Tacos from Food & Wine -- The best tacos we've ever made at home.
Tomato Cobbler from Martha Stewart Living -- We still swoon thinking about these cream biscuits on top of caramelized onions and sweet tomatoes.
In selecting this list, we made no considerations for which magazines published each recipe. We were interested to see that in the end, Martha Stewart Living and Bon Appétit supplied the most recipes, with three entries each. For those of you keeping score, that's two each from Everyday Food and Food & Wine, and one from Cooking Light.
Bonus Dishes
As we were reviewing all the recipes from the last twelve months, we found two others that we truly loved but that aren't from food magazines.
Spring Lasagna with Asparagus, Peas and Stinging Nettles -- We loved this spring riff on lasagna.
Dark Chocolate Banana Matzo Brei -- 2011 was the year we fell in love with Matzo.
What was your favorite dish of 2011? Was it something you made? Something you had in a restaurant?
Please let us know in the comments!
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