The Bitten Word

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?

The Leftovers | Interesting Stuff from October Food Magazines

Here are some items we liked from October's magazines that weren't necessarily recipe-related. Previous "Leftovers" can be found here.

Us in Portland, Maine, this summer.

Bon Appétit profiles Portland, Maine in the magazine's annual round-up of America's Foodiest Small Towns.  We were excited to see the article, because we visited Portland in August. It's a beautiful city, filled with fantastic food. Most memorably, we had dinner at Fore Street, a restaurant serving mostly locally sourced ingredients. It was one of the most memorable meals we've had this year. We also loved J's Oyster, where they make an amazing Bloody Mary. Much of the feature is available online.

Saveur, in looking at food in Mississippi, mentions Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking, originally published in 1987. We knew very little about Claiborne, a former restaurant critic of the New York Times, until we read Gael Greene's memoir Insatiable earlier this summer.  We loved Greene's book, in which Claiborne makes several appearances.

A guest on The Splendid Table recently mentioned Claiborne's autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter. It appears to be out of print, but we're going to track down a copy and read it this winter. 

We geeked out over this month's Martha Stewart Living feature on vintage cast-iron pans.

They're beautiful and come in an astounding number of shapes. The feature is definitely worth seeking out. A short version is available online.

We haven't yet mastered how to make fancy edges on pie crust, but Fine Cooking has inspired us to try with their feature "How to Make Decorative Pie Crust," including a beautiful looking "wheat edge."

The magazine has a video online that shows you the technique.

Leftovers | Interesting Stuff from September Food Mags

Goodbye summer, hello fall ....

As we head into October, here are a few non-recipe related items from September's food magazines that caught our eye.

Bon Appétit

A great chef's knife for less than $25? Yes, please.  Bon Appétit claims to have found just that, with this knife produced by Mundial, a respected knife manufacturer.

We, admittedly, are knife neophytes and take most of our cutlery advice from Cook's Illustrated. In fact, almost all the knives we own were recommended by Cook's. But at $25, we're willing to give any knife a go. 

The Mundial knife is available on Amazon.

Saveur

We were ecstatic to see Saveur feature two of our favorite food destinations in its September issue. 

The first is Chase's Daily, a fantastic restaurant in Belfast, Maine.  Our friends Dan and Wendy took us there back in 2007 and it was one of those meals we've talked about ever since. 

But here's the kicker -- it's a vegetarian restaurant.  If you read The Bitten Word with any regularity, you know that we eat our fair share of meat.  But Chase's is still one of our all-time favorite dining experiences. The dish we still talk about is a braised fennel that was truly spectacular.

If you're ever in Maine, make the trip to Belfast for a meal at Chase's. They don't have a website, but you can easily find them. Here's the Saveur profile of the restaurant.

The second destination mentioned in Saveur is the Swanton Berry Farm in Davenport, California. When we visited San Francisco earlier this year and planned to take a drive down the coast, our friend Trey demanded that we stop at Swanton. Though it is a working berry farm, there is also ample food in a small help-yourself kitchen.  We arrived mid-morning and helped ourselves to blackberry cobbler and strawberry shortcake. (Yeah, we said mid-morning. WHAT?)

The farm's setting is gorgeous -- just across Highway 1 from the Pacific Ocean. And the food was AMAZING. The fresh fruit cobbler and shortcake were stunningly delicious. And we were utterly charmed by the fact that it's all on an honor system: There aren't any employees working in the kitchen.  You just help yourself to the food out of the icebox, tally up the total, and leave the money on the counter (taking change if you need it).

After the jump, we'll leave you with some photos we took at Swanton Farm in May.  Hope your October is off to a smashing start!

Rendering Duck Fat

Saveur (December 1999)

So we bought an entire duck for our recent meal of Risotto with Duck and White Balsamic Vinegar. The recipe only called for duck breasts, but we were surprised to discover that it was easier to find a whole duck for sale than duck breasts.

But we were kind of excited, too. Buying a whole duck meant we could try something we'd always been meaning to do: rendering duck fat.

The process of melting down duck fat turned out to be extremely easy. We followed this handy recipe from a 1999 issue of Saveur, but you don't even really need a recipe at all. Simply remove all the skin and fat from the carcass of the duck, cut the skin and fat into small pieces and place them in a stockpot. Cover with a half cup of water and boil on medium heat for an hour.

As you can see, the transformation is almost like magic. The fatty pieces transform from white, fleshy, meaty chunks to crispy little nubbins. The liquid morphs from watery foam to a gorgeous amber color.

And -- according to Saveur at least -- that's not even the best part.

Reader Question: What's Our Favorite Food Magazine?

We love hearing from readers, whether it's a comment on something we've made or a question.  Recently, David wrote in a with a question:

Clay and Zach --

I have followed your blog and I have to say that I really enjoy it.  Thank you for  taking the time to put up such great images and recommendations.  I was curious to know, of all the magazines you get and read, which magazine do you use most often and would you recommend for someone looking to start a subscription???   

Cheers,
David

This is such a great question, and it's a hard one for us to answer. Before we do, here are a few thoughts on all the magazines to which we subscribe:

German Split Pea Soup (Erbsensuppe)

Saveur (December 2008)

After nearly having our soup dreams derailed by Gingery Sweet Potato, we quickly got back on the train with this German Split Pea. 

So lest you be despondent over the disappointment of our last post's recipe, this more than makes up for it -- a delicious, substantial soup that has all the comforting goodness you're looking for this winter.

Thanksgiving Recap | Roasted Dry-Brined Turkey with Pan Gravy, Buttermilk Cornbread Dressing & Roasted Cranberry Sauce

Our Thanksgiving recap continues with the main event. 

Roasted Dry-Brined Turkey
Martha Stewart Living (November 2008)
Subscribe to Martha Stewart Living

Needless to say, the star of the show here is the turkey. We opted for a pretty straightforward recipe that included dry-brining. We've mentioned this technique before. (You just rub salt and herbs all over the raw bird. The salt draws moisture out of the turkey, and then the now-salty water gets re-absorbed into the meat before you cook it.) It is a great way to get delicious, moist meat. And if you've been dunking your bird in a vat of water and spices, you'll think dry-brining is a time-saving Godsend.

We made one major diversion from this recipe.  Martha Stewart recommends stuffing the bird with a Leek-Celery stuffing. We opted out of this step for two reasons.  Mostly, we had our own stuffing/dressing recipe we wanted to use.  But also, neither of us ever grew up having stuffing that was actually cooked inside the turkey.  Maybe for you that's a must-have, but it strikes us as messy and a little gross.

There were, however, a few moments of insanity in which we contemplated having two stuffings -- one cooked in the bird, one out -- but then we came to our senses.

But you do need to stuff the bird with something to keep it from drying out. We stuffed ours with some random fruits and vegetables we had on hand that we need to get rid of -- apples, onions, celery, lemons, rosemary sprigs.

Buttermilk Cornbread Sage Dressing

As for the dressing, well, this was really the only must-have recipe for our Thanksgiving table this year. It's the recipe Zach's mom has always used -- a delicious, rich, sage-scented cornbread dressing that's got almost a cakey, brownie-like consistency. We've tried many others, but this one still ranks at the top of our list.

The dressing recipe calls for four cups of buttermilk cornbread. (We, uh, well,  doubled the recipe, so we needed eight.) We made our cornbread a couple days in advance, which cut down on the cooking time.  It was just as delicious as we had remembered. 

(Keep reading for our gravy and cranberry sauce!)

Turkey Time: Thanksgiving Desserts

You've picked your turkey, selected your starters & sides, and now what?

Leave your guests to fend for dessert on their own?

Of course not! 

Here's a look at what we served for Thanksgiving dessert last year, as well as what the food magazines are recommending this year.

Choose carefully!

Turkey Time: Starters and Sides For This Thanksgiving

After looking at Turkey advice in our last post, it's high time to do the same for starters and sides. 

As we prepared our decadent feast for two last year, we pored through our magazines from the previous two Novembers, debating dishes and listing out our non-negotiables (Zach's family's dressing was a must-have). 

In the end, we went with mostly traditional dishes, or traditional dishes with a slight twist. 

Here's a look at what we cooked, followed by a full-summary of what leading food magazines are recommending for this Thanksgiving.

Turkey Time: What the Food Magazines Are Recommending

In early October, November's food magazines started arriving, promising "the easiest feast ever!," "great food for the entire weekend" and "Thanksgiving at its best."

Honestly, it's a little nerve-wracking. 

Now that we're writing The Bitten Word and hosting family this Thanksgiving, we're feeling the pressure to cook a nice meal that will fit a variety of palates.  Mostly, though, we just want to outdo last year (more on that in a minute). 

November's issues of food magazines are chock-full of tips, recipes and sage advice. We thought it might be useful to talk about some of that advice here, so over the next few days we'll be holding a little Thanksgiving-a-thon, starting today with the center of the meal, the turkey. 

Over the next few days, we'll provide you with a complete index of what the magazines are recommending for Turkey, Starters & Sides, and Desserts, to help you plan your perfect Thanksgiving meal.