The Bitten Word

Final Thanksgiving Thoughts: Plus a Ranking of our 2014 Fakesgiving Dishes

 

To paraphrase Kathryn Stockett:

    "You is good. You is kind. You is going to have an amazing Thanksgiving."

In other words, you're gonna ace this Thanksgiving! Whether you're hosting this year or blissfully not in charge of any food at all, we hope that our coverage here at The Bitten Word has provided you with a healthy dose of holiday inspiration. 

Trust us. If we can host a Fakesgiving for 24 friends in our tiny apartment and a shoebox-sized kitchen, making nearly 20 dishes for the first time, then you've got this Thanksgiving in the bag! 

If you're still looking for a sure-fire, last-minute dish, check out our (just updated!) Favorite Holiday Recipes.

And for those of you have gotten lost in the Thanksgiving blur of the last month, here are all the dishes we made this year.  We asked the friends we had over for Fakesgiving to rank all of the dishes. (Yes, there was an actual electronic survey involved. You gotta sing for your supper Chez Bitten Word.)

Here's every dish we made this year, ranked in order of our friends' preferences, on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 excellent):

RATING    DISH

10.00         The Barefoot Contessa's Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes
9.00           Cornmeal-Creme Fraiche Spoon Bread
8.79           Curried Carrot Apple Soup
8.29           Maple Syrup Pie with Creme Fraiche
8.14           Black-Bottom Peanut Pie
7.92           Moroccan Spiced Turkey with Onion Jam
7.69           Turkey Roulades with Fontina and Sage
7.57           Sweet Potatoes with Crispy Rice Topping
7.57           Knockout Punch from 2 Birds 1 Stone
7.54           Cornbread, Chorizo and Cherry Stuffing
7.43           Navy Bean Pie
7.43           Sautéed Collard Greens with Caramelized Miso Butter
7.38           Brussels Sprouts with Horseradish and Pomegranate
7.31           Chocolate Mousse Pie with Phyllo Crust
7.25           Cherry-Port Cranberry Sauce
6.64           Harissa and Maple Roasted Carrots
6.38           Pumpkin Tiramisu
3.85           Old Fashioned Cracker Dressing
3.83           Roasted Citrus Relish

 

Now it's your turn.

Please share Your Thanksgiving with us: If you make something we've posted about, report back by emailing us or commenting here! If you're social media-minded, tag us on Instagram (#TheBittenWord), Facebook (#TheBittenWord) or Twitter (@bittenword). 

And if you fall into a Thanksgiving crisis, contact us any time. We're here to help. 

We'll leave you with photos from our Fakesgiving that will hopefully inspire you but may very well terrify you, too. 

See you after Thanksgiving.

~ Zach & Clay 

Thanksgiving 2014: Pumpkin Tiramisu

Food & Wine (November 2014)

 

Trifles have long been the go-to dessert for Zach's mom Brenda.

Any time of year, for just about any occasion, she'd whip up a trifle. In the summer, it'd be ladyfingers layered with fresh berries and cream. In colder months, she'd make coffee tiramisu trifles -- dipping the ladyfingers in strong coffee and then laying in chocolate and mocha cream.

In fact, there's a funny family story about Brenda and trifles (a story that also happens to tell you a whole lot about Brenda as a person).  

See, in the small Tennessee town where Zach grew up -- especially back in the day -- ladyfingers were often hard to find. You could usually hunt them down around Christmas, but they didn't really show up much during the rest of the year.

One time, Brenda came home from town with bags -- bags -- full of packages of ladyfingers. There must have been 30 packages. She'd found a good supply and bought every last package in the store, which she planned to freeze and use in trifles later on. 

The reason Brenda bought out the store's entire supply of ladyfingers? She wanted to "stock up before the hoarders could get to 'em."

Indeed.

Thanksgiving 2014: Sautéed Collard Greens with Caramelized Miso Butter

Bon Appétit (November 2014)

Miso is always rumbling around in our fridge.

Ever since we made Chocolate-Chip Cookies with a Red Miso Buttercream, we've been smitten with miso. We always have some on hand, dolloping it onto sweet potatoes, into soups, salad dressings -- anywhere that we want a little kick of salty umami. It is not unheard of for us to eat it directly off a spoon...

So when miso showed up a few times in this year's Thanksgiving Recipe Index, in both green beans and collard greens, we knew we wanted to try it. We latched onto these Sautéed Collard Greens with Caramelized Miso Butter. 

Here's why we love this dish:

Thanksgiving 2014: Navy Bean Pie

Saveur (November 2014)

 

Navy beans.

Of all the non-traditional ingredients we saw in Thanksgiving food magazines this year -- harissa, ras el hanout, madras curry -- it was probably these navy beans that stood out the most to us.

Navy beans.

In a pie. 

And here's something else you likely weren't expecting at your Thanksgiving table: This pie is brought to you from the Nation of Islam. Allow us to quote Saveur:

The silky, custardlike base of this autumnal pie is made from sweetened navy bean purée spiced with nutmeg, vanilla, and cinnamon. Pies made in this way have their roots in dietary guidelines set forth by religious leader Elijah Muhammad. In his 1967 treatise How to Eat to Live, he wrote that beans were a blessed food—but that sweet potatoes weren't fit for man to eat. His daughter developed a sweet potato pie–like recipe using navy beans that was so delicious, it became the most popular way to raise money for the Nation of Islam. Its members hawked them on street corners from the early 1970s onward.

Okay, so: Sweet potatoes out. Beans in.

But how does a pie made with navy beans actually taste?

 

Thanksgiving 2014: Cornmeal-Crème Fraîche Spoon Bread

Martha Stewart Living (November 2014)

As a general rule, we're not huge advocates of Thanksgiving dishes that need to be made at the very last minute.

We are plan-ahead, make-ahead, stash-ahead, heat-up-at-the-least-minute-or-maybe-actually-just-serve-at-room-temperature Thanksgiving hosts, especially when it comes to feeding a crowd. 

But rules are made to be broken.

And this Cornmeal-Crème Fraîche Spoon Bread is worth breaking all the rules.

Thanksgiving 2014: Black-Bottom Peanut Pie

Food & Wine (November 2014)

 

 

Hey there!

Do you like delicious things?

Do you especially like really delicious things?

How about crazy-delicious things? You're pretty much on board for those, right?

Please do keep reading, then, to hear all about this Black-Bottom Peanut Pie.

Thanksgiving 2014: Harissa-and-Maple-Roasted Carrots

Bon Appétit (November 2014)

Different rules apply when you're having a Fakesgiving vs. a Thanksgiving.

At a real-deal Thanksgiving, you have people to please, traditions to uphold, and cranky relatives to remind you that your stuffing does not taste like grandma's.

But at Fakesgiving, you can take risks. You can serve whatever you want, and you can make dishes that are way outside your T-day comfort zone. 

The November Bon Appétit has a bit of advice along those lines: "If you're going to get creative, do it with the veggies."  

And Bon App definitely did get creative. The Thanksgiving side dishes they featured this year were really appealing to us: beets with seasame and marjoram; broccolini with rye breadcrumbs; and a dish of crispy sunchockes.

We didn't make those dishes, but we zeroed in on a few others, including these Harissa-and-Maple-Roasted Carrots.

Thanksgiving 2014: Moroccan-Spiced Turkey with Onion Jam

Food & Wine (November 2014)

When we wrote about the Thanksgiving trend of Global Flavors, we had Marcus Samuelsson in mind.

His extended feature in Food & Wine is exactly the kind of Thanksgiving feature we just love: Familiar foods seen through a new lens. Given Chef Samuelsson's unique personal history -- born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, now firmly esconced in Harlem -- it's a lens unlike any other. Seriously, this has got to be the only Thanksgiving menu in history that includes Ethiopian-spiced black-eyed peas, Southern peanut pie, and mulled Swedish glögg. How much do you want to go to that Thanksgiving?

We love it!  We just wish we could say the same for this Moroccan-Spiced Turkey.

Thanksgiving 2014: Old-Fashioned Cracker Dressing with Dried Cranberries and Pecans

Cook's Country (November 2014)

If a food magazine features an "old-fashioned" or somewhat unknown regional recipe, we're all about it. This is one of the reasons we love Cook's Country -- they consistently surface recipes that are windows into another time or place for us, like the Carolina Sweet Potato Sonker we made a few Thanksgivings ago.

When it comes to Thanksgiving, we're open to some novelty, be it tortilla chips, prunes or even olives. None of these flavors scream Thanksgiving to us, but hey, why not try it?

So we loved the novelty and concept of this Old-Fashioned Cracker Dressing with Dried Cranberries and Pecans.

Of course you can make a dressing with crackers (Goldfish dressing? Cheez-It stuffing?), but should you?

We made this dish to find out.

Thanksgiving 2014: Roasted Citrus Relish

Bon Appétit (November 2014)

Dear Bittens,

Don't make this for Thanksgiving.

Love,
Zach & Clay

 

P.S. As a standalone fruit salad, it's OK, although nothing special. But serve this instead of cranberry sauce and you will be crucified by your guests right there on the Thanksgiving table.

P.P.S. This is incredibly time-consuming and makes a paltry amount -- especially compared to how easy it is to make a more traditional cranberry sauce.

P.P.P.S.  The roasting took much longer for us before we ended up with anything remotely "golden" or "crisp." And about a third of the segments were too blackened too use. On top of that, while the roasted citrus looks kind of cool in the bowl (or does it? Does it just look like black bits floating in your relish?), we couldn't discern that it added anything in terms of flavor.

P.P.P.P.S  This relish is eye-wateringly tart. Come on, it includes raw lemons.

P.P.P.P.P.S  We ate some leftover relish on fish and it was decently good. But we had to mix in some agave to temper the overwhelmingly sour citrus.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. If you're looking for a great cran-sauce alternative, consider this Tart Apple Chutney we made in 2012. We very much liked that as a complement to turkey. But again, we think you'd want to serve that in addition to a cranberry sauce.