The Bitten Word

Roasted Pork with Mostarda

Martha Stewart Living (December 2009)

 

You can have your goose, and you can have your ham.

Take your turkey and your beef roast, too.

For us, there's simply no better Christmas dinner than a roast pork loin drizzled in a sweet sauce. We can't say why, exactly. We just know that a succulent, tender pork roast smothered in a sweet, fruity compote is, to us, quintessential holiday fare.

Which is why our jaws dropped -- dropped! -- when we first spied this Roasted Pork with Mostarda in the December Martha Stewart Living. 

First, it was the word "mostarda" that caught our eye. Our minds immediately went to "mustard," thinking that this would be a pork loin slathered in a sweet mustard sauce.

Well, there is mustard in this mostarda, but there's also so much more.

The Leftovers | Interesting Stuff from November Food Magazines

Here are some non-recipe items that caught our attention in November's assortment of food magazines.

Gourmet

In the (sniff) final issue of Gourmet, John Willoughby has a short but surprising item. 

The Gourmet test kitchen bought eight random tablespoon measurements from a variety of stores, and then weighed the amount of salt each one held.

The results were surprising, with the variance between the largest and smallest at 33 percent -- 33 percent!  As Willoughby points out, this might not make much of a difference in a lot of cooking, but in more precise recipes, like baking, it could make a huge difference in the final result.

Now we need a scale to see how much our tablespoons hold!

Food & Wine

We loved this profile of Athens, Georgia-based supper club The FourCoursemen.  The club was started by two friends who just liked to try new recipes. Over the course of three years, it has blossomed into a full-blown affair, with elaborate dinners for twenty-four guests. Invitations are in high-demand. Their food is beautiful and we want to come to dinner.  Seriously.

Martha Stewart Living
 
We've been hearing about The Lee Brothers' new cookbook, Simple Fresh Southern, all over the place, but it was in Martha Stewart Living that we first saw it featured. 

We haven't yet gotten our hands on a copy, but we're looking forward to checking it out this winter.

If you've already picked it up, let us know what you think!

Follow Us on Facebook

And finally, if you're on Facebook, then be sure to become a fan of The Bitten Word.  It's one more way you can follow the goings on here at the blog.

Thanksgiving 2009: Sweet Potato and Sage-Butter Casserole

Martha Stewart Living (November 2009)

If forced to choose between white potatoes or sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving, we resoundingly come down on the side of sweet potatoes.

Sure, regular potatoes have their place, but sweet potatoes -- with their orange autumnal hue and sugary flavor -- seem tailor-made for Thanksgiving table. 

For the past two years, we've made the same sweet potato dish for Thanksgiving: Spiced Whipped Sweet Potatoes with Brown Sugar. 

We loved that dish two years ago. We adored it last year.  This year, it's time to try something new.  Can this Sweet Potato and Sage-Butter Casserole hold up to our two-time favorite?

Thanksgiving 2009: Roast Spatchcocked Turkey

Martha Stewart Living (November 2009)

>>UPDATE: Check out our video demo on how to spatchcock a turkey!

We have a love/hate relationship with Thanksgiving turkey. On the one hand, a golden-skinned roast turkey is the classic centerpiece of the Thanksgiving dinner. Done right, the meat is tender and juicy, the skin perfectly crisp.

But getting the bird on the table can be so much work! Do you brine it ahead of time or not? If you do brine, should you do a wet brine or a dry brine? Should you rub the skin with butter? Should you stuff the bird or cook the stuffing separately? Should you baste it while it's roasting?

And then, on the day of the big dinner, the bird sits there, taking up the majority of your oven space for three hours while the clock ticks closer to dinnertime.

Well, forget all that!

Reader, we'd like to have a word with you. Just one word, actually. This word is your key to a Thanksgiving turkey that takes just 70 minutes (!) from start to finish. No brining, no stuffing, no nothing.

That word is "spatchcocking."

Thanksgiving Guide 2009: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

172 Recipes From 9 Leading Food Magazines

 

Thanksgiving is food magazines' time to shine. In years past, many of the food mags we read have used their November issues to really push the limits with innovative spins on Thanksgiving faves.

Sure, there are usually plenty of approachable standbys. But the classics usually sit alongside some really envelope-pushing ideas: Throw a Thanksgiving clambake! How about a Pacific Rim-fusion dinner? Truffle-laden turkey! Indian-spiced sweet potato gnocchi!! Vegan French-Vietnamese gluten-free stuffing!!!

Not so this year. From the looks of this year's crop of Thanksgiving food mags, 2009 is all about simplicity and basic, standard dishes. It's the Great Recession, and everybody just wants a big ol' piece of pumpkin pie.

Just look at what the magazines call out from the newsstands:

Martha Stewart Living: "Thanksgiving, simple and sensational"

Fine Cooking: "All the classics made easy"

Food Network: "Easy Thanksgiving"

Bon Appétit: "Thanksgiving made easy"

Everyday Food: "A Thanksgiving menu that's easy to make"

We have nine November issues in front of us, and nearly all of them are focused on "traditional" menus that are very straightforward.

The food magazines may have stuck to the classics this year, but that doesn't mean the options are limited. In the nine magazines we have, there are, in fact, 172 Thanksgiving recipes.

All those options can leave you more than a little stressed out. It's all too easy to get wrapped up in the idea that Thanksgiving has to be perfect and if you don't select the right stuffing recipe, your mother-in-law will break into tears at the table.

But fear not!  We've cataloged all 172 options below so that you, dear reader, can browse this year's recipes and make some selections for yourself. Over the next three weeks, we're going to be cooking and writing as many recipes as we can fit in. We'll post our photos and let you know how they turn out.

And as you're gearing up for the holiday, if you have questions, post them here and we'll do our best to answer them.

Okay, ready for the recipes?

Steak au Poivre with Balsamic Reduction

Martha Stewart Living (October 2009)

On summer evenings, you're very likely to find us out on the patio, keeping watch while a big, juicy steak sizzles on the grill. We keep it extremely simple: salt and pepper, maybe a little Dale's.

But it's fall now. It's getting dark earlier and our grill's been cool for a while. It's time for a more grown-up steak, something a little fancier, more refined.

Hello, steak au poivre!

Moroccan-Style Stuffed Acorn Squashes

Martha Stewart Living (October 2009)

As we mentioned earlier, we just returned a long weekend in Vermont with Zach's family. It was gorgeous -- with the foliage at peak color, we spent our days exploring impossibly cute villages and marveling at the explosions of crimson and gold that blanketed the mountains and valleys. Seriously, the entire state is like one big Sears Portrait Studio backdrop.

It really got us in the mood for fall -- and especially fall cooking!

These Moroccan-Style Stuffed Acorn Squash are a gorgeous little swath of Autumn. They're warm and inviting, and the cinnamon, nutmeg and golden raisins really capture the flavors of the season.

Bacon with Citrus Glaze

Adapted from Martha Stewart Living (September 2009)

Orange-and-honey-glazed bacon.  Just think about that for a minute. Orange.  Honey.  Bacon.  A salty slab of bacon coated with a caramelized, sweet glaze of honey, brightened with the citrusy, sunshiney bolt of fresh-squeezed oranges.

We were salivating at the mere thought of this three-ingredient dish.

But when we made it, our salivation gave way to frustration.

The first batch of bacon ended up charred, smoky and burnt to a crisp. So -- believing in the healing power of cured pork -- we changed the recipe and tried again.

This is a tale of two bacons.

Corn, Cranberry Bean, and Fried-Okra Salad

Martha Stewart Living (August 2009)

"Y'ALL."

That is not a word we use often -- and it's not a word we use lightly.

But after one bite of this phenomenal, change-your-life salad, we each slammed down our forks, looked across the table, widened our eyes and exclaimed: "Y'ALL."

Watermelon Bloody Marys

Martha Stewart Living (July 2009)

On Sunday mornings we pay a visit to the farmers market, where we play a little game called "buy so much produce that we'll struggle to get through it all by week's end."

Recently, we've been obsessed with beautiful, impossibly sweet watermelons from one of the vendors. So we've bought one for the last few weeks and lugged it up the hill back home --  no small feat given the amount of other purchases we're carrying. 

We've mostly been eating it as a dessert or a snack, cut up into big chunks and lightly salted. We've also made Tequila Soaked Watermelon wedges a couple times for parties and even Pickled Watermelon Rind.

This weekend, we couldn't resist whipping up a batch of these Watermelon Bloody Marys.