The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2010: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

A Bitten Word Round-Up of 175 Recipes from 10 Leading Food Magazines

As we said yesterday, we've got tons of great Thanksgiving dishes to share with you. But before we get to our Thanksgiving parade of recipes, we wanted to post our annual round-up of all the T-Day recipes from all the food magazines we receive.

Last year, we said that if we were to assign a trend to the 2009 Thanksgiving issues, it would be about simplicity.  

This year, that trend seems even more extreme. This year's food mags are all trumpeting "simple," "easy," "foolproof," "no-time," "Thanksgiving 101" recipes.

Still, we did find a handful of really innovative dishes -- notably, in Food & Wine's "East by Northeast" Thanksgiving spread, which features an Asian-American meal that incorporates Eastern flavors and traditional Thanksgiving dishes. We also lusted after Martha Stewart Living's "Land of Plenty" feature, which showcased a farm-to-table Thanksgiving dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. It's the Thanksgiving we most wanted to attend (maybe because it started off with Hudson Baby Bourbon Whiskey?).

We noticed a few micro-trends this year, too. Despite the beautiful slices of pie that adorn the cover of Martha Stewart Living, it's cakes that seem really popular this year. And especially pumpkin layer cakes -- three different magazines feature one this year.

Other ingredients that are big this year? Pomegranates are everywhere. As is fennel. Both of those are nice ways to add a new flavor into standard Thanksgiving dishes.

What's out? Corn, believe it or not. Other than cornbread stuffings and a couple of soups from Saveur, there's only one dish in all these food magazines that includes corn (Food & Wine's Creamed Haricot Vert and Corn Casserole).

Which ingredients stood out the most this year? Using Wordle.net, we created a couple of interesting word clouds that display the different ingredients in all these recipes according to how often they appear.

Here's a word cloud showing every prominent ingredient:

And here's one where we omitted all the usual suspects (turkey, stuffing, etc.):

Anyway, onto the master index!

The Leftovers | Interesting Stuff You Should Know About

Here are a few things that caught our eye over the last month that aren't necessarily recipe-related.

While in Tennessee over the holidays, we picked up bar of chocolate from Nashville-based Olive & Sinclair Chocolate.

We were sucked in by their cute labels but immediately became fans after tasting the Sea Salt chocolate bar. It seems the company is just getting going, judging by the limited info on their website. 

Here's hoping they expand nationwide in 2010!

The December issue of Real Simple featured Herb-Savor, a product designed to make your herbs last up to three weeks in the refrigerator.

Admittedly, we've pulled our fair share of dead herbs out of our fridge, so we're intrigued. Prepara, the company who makes the product, is sold out online, but if you want to try it, Amazon has is it for $29.99. If you already have one, let us know what you think!

We featured ROOT Organic Liqueur in our holiday gift guide. Zach gave Clay a bottle as a Christmas gift, and we've enjoyed trying it.  On the rocks, it's a bit much for us, like a really boozy root beer.  But we loved it mixed with ginger ale.  Want to try it? You can order ROOT here.

In their December issue, Fine Cooking features an interesting blog that was new to us: TheOldieFoodie.com.  On the site, author Janet Clarkson writes about food history and historic recipes. The recipe archive is astounding, with titles like "To dresse a Hare or Cunny in brothe, with a pudding in their bellyes (1588)." We're adventurous cooks, but we're steering clear of that one. 

And finally, friends and family gave us some wonderful food-related books at the holidays.  Here's a rundown of what we'll be reading over the next few months:

The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis -- We've read raves about this book for years and can't wait to cook from it ourselves.

Craig Claiborne's A Feast Made For Laughter -- The autobiography of a former New York Times food critic and writer, we wrote about this previously when we recommended Gael Greene's Insatiable.  It's out of print, but available online through resellers.

Cleaving by Julie Powell -- We're keen to hear about Powell's experience apprenticing as a butcher, even if we'll only be able to imagine Amy Adams wielding a cleaver the whole time.

The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis & Scott Peacock -- Another classic Southern-themed cookbook. We've been meaning to to buy this book for years. We're glad it's finally on our shelf! 

Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller -- It seems that everyone was talking about this book over the last few months. We look forward to trying out some of the recipes.

The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook -- We spent a lot of time thumbing through this book while staying with a friend in San Francisco this spring.  We're happy to have a copy of our own.

What's on your reading list?

**You can read previous Leftovers posts here**