The Bitten Word

Happy Thanksgiving, Bittens!

Bittens, we're all done with our Thanksgiving posts this year.

And let's face it, tomorrow is Thanksgiving -- if you don't already know what you're making, you're likely letting someone else do the cooking or you're gonna be serving Chinese takeout. (No judgment!)

We've loved sharing all these dishes with you, and having you cook along with those 7 pies.

Now it's time for you to share a meal with your loved ones tomorrow -- whether that means a crowded house full of family, a table of friends, dinner for two at a restaurant, or even just pausing for a moment over takeout to think about friends and family you can't be with this year.

We'll be honest. In lots of ways, 2016 has been pretty terrible. Shootings that have shaken us, crises that have tried us, an election (and a result) that has bitterly divided us. Wars, refugees, Zika, bombings, Brexit, Bowie -- it's been rough. And we don't know what's going to happen in the year to come.

But know this: We -- all of us -- are exceedingly, ridiculously, unimaginably fortunate. We are here. Right now. We are alive together in this moment, and we have so, so much for which to be grateful. Tomorrow, let's all be mindful of just how fortunate we are, even in a year when that can be hard to see. 

We love you, and we'll be back after Thanksgiving with some more posts.

For now, we'll leave you with some photos. Up top are portraits we took on Fakesgiving a few weeks ago. There are a couple people we didn't get a shot of, unfortunately. But it was really a special gathering of people -- from D.C., Annapolis, New York, Chicago, and even Switzerland! (Apparently, when folks know it's the final Fakesgiving, they will show up.)

Now, here's our full Fakesgiving menu, and some more shots from our feast, snapped by our friend Ken.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Earl Grey–Bourbon Punch

 

Celery Root Bisque with Walnut-Parsley Gremolata

 

French Onion Turkey Breast with Onion Gravy

Cranberry Chutney with Orange, Figs, and Mustard

Southern-Style Buttermilk Cornbread Dressing

Deviled Crab Stuffing

Buttered Green Beans with Shallots and Lemon

Hasselback Butternut Squash with Bay Leaves

Kale Colcannon

 

Deep-Dish Pumpkin Icebox Pie

Chestnut Meringue Pie

German Chocolate-Pecan Pie

Miso Caramel-Apple Pie

 

Thanksgiving 2016: Miso Caramel-Apple Pie

Cooking Light (November 2017)

Sometimes, a recipe can really break your heart. 

That's what happened with us and this Miso Caramel-Apple Pie. 

We were so looking forward to eating this pie. It was the first dessert we decided on for our Fakesgiving dinner. It was, we thought, an easy home run. We're miso obsessed, so throwing some miso in with apple pie? A no-brainer. 

We did as the recipe suggests and made the Miso Caramel first, days in advance. And it was incredible. It was the Miso Caramel of our dreams. Sweet and savory and the kind of sauce you want to dive face-first into. 

But then we made the pie. 

Thanksgiving 2016: Deep-Dish Pumpkin Icebox Pie

Martha Stewart Living (November 2016)

You may have noticed a conspicuous absence in our Fantasy Thanksgiving Menu that we posted last week: There was no pumpkin pie. There was no pumpkin anything.

That's not because we don't like pumpkin desserts. We do! A lot. It's just that we find it hard to get all that excited about them. With so many great dessert options -- chocolate! pecan! maple! -- it can be hard for a pumpkin pie to measure up.  

Is this Deep-Dish Pumpkin Icebox Pie up to the challenge?

Thanksgiving 2016: Kale Colcannon (Irish Mashed Potatoes)

Real Simple (November 2016)

And as longtime readers know, we're a sucker for odd Thanksgiving words. Spatchcock. Shrub. Sformato.

So when we were browsing through this year's recipes, our eyes jumped right to Colcannon. We'd never heard of it. What, pray tell, is a Colcannon?

Turns out, it's a combination of either cabbage or kale with potatoes. We'd never seen it featured in a food magazine (or if we had, we'd never seen it called Colcannon), but we were in the market for a potato dish, and this seemed like as good a choice as any, with kale thrown in to liven up mashed potatoes. 

Thanksgiving 2016: Chestnut Meringue Pie

Food Network Magazine (November 2016)

If there was a sleeper hit at this year's Fakesgiving dinner, it may have been this pie. 

We'd chosen it because we really liked the idea of a chestnut dessert. We've made chestnut soup a couple times, but we couldn't ever remember seeing a chestnut pie before.

We were intrigued! But once we made it, we were kind of the opposite.

We were untrigued.

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. 

Our Fantasy Thanksgiving Menu

Several readers have written this month to ask an exceedingly difficult question: What's on our fantasy Thanksgiving menu?

So we're taking a break today from our Fakesgiving coverage to attempt to answer that question. 

This many years into The Bitten Word, we've made a whooooooole lot of Thanksgiving dishes. And there are many, many that we've loved.

So here's our attempt at a single Fantasy Thanksgiving menu, made up of all of favorite dishes from over the years. We want to hear about fantasy menu, too! 

 

TO START: 
We chose a soup, a bread and a light, refreshing salad.
 

Butternut Squash and Sage Soup with Sage Breadcrumbs

Shaved Apple and Fennel Salad with Crunchy Spelt

Popovers

 

 

THE MAIN COURSE: 

In our Fantasy Thanksgiving, there's only one turkey but a whole lot of stuffing. We struggled to narrow it down to just three. And we had to have two potato dishes.
 

Roast Spatchcocked Turkey

Cornbread, Chorizo, Cherry, and Pecan Stuffing

Southern-Style Buttermilk Cornbread Dressing

Cornmeal-Crème Fraîche Spoon Bread

Cherry-Port Cranberry Sauce

The Barefoot Contessa's Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Sweet Potatoes with Bourbon and Maple

Green Beans with Benne and Sorghum

 

FOR DESSERT: 
Yep, we're foregoing a pumpkin pie. 

Maple Syrup Pie with Crème Fraîche

Black-Bottom Peanut Pie

Sorghum-Sweetened Chocolate Pecan Pie

 

We'd love to hear about your Fantasy Thanksgiving Menu. What's on the table? Let us know in the comments!

Thanksgiving 2016: Pie Challenge Results!

Bittens, it's pie time!

Hundreds of you signed up and completed the Thanksgiving 2016 Pie Challenge -- we have loved reading your reviews and seeing your photos!

For those of you catching up: A few weeks ago, we asked Bittens to sign up to bake a randomly assigned pie. We had scoured the November issues of food magazines and selected 7 pies from 7 magazines -- each with a bit of a twist on traditional Thanksgiving flavors. Readers had one week to bake and rate their pies and submit their results. 

We've tallied up the responses. Below, you can review the pies ranked worst to best by the Bitten Bakers themselves. There are some real surprises in the results -- and some pies we really want to try. 

To all of you bakers who participated, thank you! We hope you had a ton of fun and maybe got inspired or excited for Thanksgiving cooking. We've compiled some of your comments here Zagat-style, but we'd love for you to share more of your experience in the comments!

 

Let's get to it:

 

#7: Virginia Peanut: The “Disappointment”
From Martha Stewart Living

Photo credits, clockwise from top left: Melissa B., Kathy G., Marissa M., Joy B.

Bitten Bakers "loved the Pate Brisee” in this “fun twist on the traditional Pecan Pie.” But the final results are “VERY rich” and “VERY sweet.” Plus, it's “hard to find Lyle’s Golden Syrup.” One tip: “For heaven’s sake, don’t omit the cayenne. The pie needs it.” You may be happier if you "stick with your favorite pecan pie" instead.

Average Bitten Rating: 2.9 out of 5

Get the recipe 

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.