The Ultimate Thanksgiving: Bon Appetit in 60 seconds

Filed under: Recipes, Magazines, in sixty seconds

• Everything you need to know, kitchen-wise, about Thanksgiving, including four different kinds of turkey and gravy, four different kinds of stuffing, six different types of potatoes, and even four variations on cranberry sauce.
• What to do with the turkey carcass.
• What to cook the other 29 days of November.
• Gifts for the cook on your list.
• Ideas for a simple, chic holiday party.
• More recipes from this month: Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls, Greek Salad Pita Sandwiches, Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Cayenne-Spiced Walnuts, and The Perfect Pie.

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[via] Slashfood

Happy National Pickle Day!

Filed under: Vegetables, Recipes, Holidays

I just realized, I hardly ever eat pickles. I'll sometimes have them with sandwiches when I'm in a sandwich mood, but beyond that I don't give them much thought. I do like all kinds though: dill, bread & butter crisps, gherkins of all kinds.

Today is National Pickle Day. RecipeSource has a bunch of pickle recipes, from 14 Day Sweet Pickles to Zucchini Pickles (333 recipes in total!). Here's one for Nukazuke, which are Japanese pickles (made with rice bran and cabbage) You can even buy a T-shirt to tell everyone how much you appreciate the pickle.

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[via] Slashfood

Mashed potatoes, sides and the perfect pie: NYT Dining and Wine in 60 seconds

Filed under: Recipes, Raves & Reviews, Newspapers

After preparing 32 pounds of potatoes in three days, Julia Moskin determines that when it comes to mashers, it's hard to go wrong. NYT Dining and Wine editors scour the archives and put together a collection of links to the best Thanksgiving stuff from the last 20 years.

Melissa Clark puts together three recipes designed to make the vegetarians at your Thanksgiving table feel loved, appreciated and well-fed. Looking for a perfect pie recipe? Florence Fabricant peaks at several cookbooks and offers up a collection of delicious recipes.

Frank Bruni reviews Harry Cipriani, with an eye on the outrageous prices and mediocre food. The Minimalist discusses gravy options and Eric Asimov gets together with some of the folks from the NYT food team to taste turkey, sides and wine in order to determine some good wines for your Thanksgiving feast.

[via] Slashfood

Chocolate linked to ancient Central American brewers

Filed under: Beer, South America, Chocolate, Did you know?

As a self-professed beer geek, I've always appreciated the link between chocolate and beer. I've been known to munch on a bit of good dark chocolate whilst enjoying a cold flute of Lindemans Framboise, and there's nothing quite like a bottle of Young's Luxury Double Chocolate Stout. Until yesterday I had no idea the connection between two of life's greatest gustatory pleasures goes back to 1100 B.C. (N.B., that's Before Christ not Before Chocolate, though given what I learned it could very well stand for Before Chocolate.)

National Geographic News reports that researchers believe chocolate was accidentally discovered 3,000 years ago by Central American Indians brewing beer from the pulp of cacao seedpods. Around 1100 B.C. ancient brewers used the cacao pods to make their beer. The pod pulp was used to make the beer and the seeds were then discarded. Some 300 years later people began to use the fermented seeds to make a hot beverage, a distant relative to today's hot cocoa. Chocolate itself continues to be made from fermented cacao pods.

Give an ancient Central American the sludge left over from brewing and what do you get: chocolate. Give a Brit a similar goo and you wind up with Marmite. Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair, after all the Central Americans were making beer since 1100 B.C.

[via] Slashfood

Veggie stuffed risotto for kids (and adults too)

Filed under: Dinner, Vegetables, Recipes, On the Blogs, Rice

I am a sucker for risotto. There's nothing like the creamy toothsomeness of cooked arborio rice to really set my heart afluttering with joy. I'm also a huge fan of butternut squash and kale. Happily, I just stumbled across a recipe that all those items into a single, hunger-inducing dish.

This recipe is over at GastroKid, so it's designed as a way for parents to help their kids eat and enjoy their veggies. However, I don't think anyone is going to get mad at me if I make it with nary a kid in sight.

[via] Slashfood