— Rene Lynch

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This Thanksgiving, let someone else do the cooking

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Get them now, before the holidays, when the meat is sweet and slightly creamy and they haven't had a chance to develop any rancidity.

The shells will be fragile enough to crack with your hands.

— Russ Parsons

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(Lew Robertson / Getty Images)

Want more? Check out some of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen, and check out this photo gallery of just a few of the highlights. (But don't blame us if you gain weight just looking at these photos....)

--Rene Lynch

PHOTO GALLERY: A Thanksgiving feast for the eyes

Our best Thanksgiving Day recipes

This Thanksgiving, let someone else do the cooking

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

After stumbling across these Bread Shoes from DaDaDa studios, I began to smell a trend: Footwear designers seem to be steering their creative energy toward foodies. What's next, gladiator sandals with bacon straps?

True, the inside of a fresh baguette is pillowy and soft as an Ugg boot, but are these leavened slippers really meant to be worn? Or eaten with a slathering of, um, toe jam?

Christian Louboutin and Piper Heidsieck say that history is the inspiration behind their stiletto champagne flute collaboration. The shoe was influenced by the age-old Russian tradition of drinking out of the Bulsoi ballerinas' slippers. Their press release states that the practice was then "taken to new levels of excess on the stages of the Moulin Rouge in Belle Époque Paris. The practice evolved, with champagne served from a courtesan’s shoe becoming emblematic of an era when Europe was living life to the fullest."

Today, Louboutin's Hollywood boutique is hosting a party to celebrate the launch of the line, where guests will have their feet bathed in the champagne. (Recession? What recession?)

Baileys Irish Creme is also getting into the game; designers Alejandro Ingelmo, Farylrobin, Rafe, Shree Moni and Vanessa Noel have each partnered with the brand for the Baileys-inspired shoe line, which is set to debut this weekend at a pop-up shop on Robertson Drive.

Is foot fetishism the future of food?

--Krista Simmons

Photo: Bread shoes courtesy of DaDaDa Studios and Christian Louboutin

Piper Heidsieck champagne stilettos courtesy of Peter Lippman

When Greg Nauta of Rocky Canyon Farm kills a cow, he gets two tri-tips. That’s doesn’t put him in a good position to sell to customers looking for tri-tip in quantity, so he needs people willing to cook all the other parts of the animal.

Fortunately, chefs such as Ben Ford of Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City are interested in doing just that.

They, along with farmer Phil McGrath and moderator Evan Kleiman, talked Thursday night on a panel at the Santa Monica Library called “Eating the Whole Farm,” about a revivial of “nose to tail” farming and cooking practices.

Ford said he is buying whole rabbits, deer and pigs for his restaurant, adding that doing so gives him and his staff a new “reverence” for food animals.

McGrath noted that eating seasonably requires people to try new foods, to adapt to what's available, and that people are coming around to that idea.

“I remember back in the day when nobody would buy a beet. People were afraid of beets,” said Kleiman, host of the KCRW show “Good Food” and chef-owner of Angeli Caffe on Melrose.

Ford said he likes to use crops at several points in their growth. Young cilantro, the feathery fronds before it flowers and the flowers themselves all have different tastes and textures and uses in the kitchen.

Nauta’s Rocky Canyon Farm in Atascadero sells pork and beef. Nauta also grows vegetables and has a commercial juice room. His wife makes jams, which they may start selling.

His animals are pasture-raised, but they also get fed leftover vegetables from his crops. He says the cows love melons. But he learned from a friend to keep onions away from them or the milk with have an onion taste. The animals are butchered locally, and he sells the meat from coolers at farmers markets.

McGrath Family Farm has a farmstand and sells produce at farmers markets and to restaurants. But he also runs a community-supported agriculture program in which groups of people buy shares in the farm’s harvest – in advance, in McGrath’s case, a season at a time.

“It’s truly a commitment” for people to spend the money before they get the food, McGrath said.

He’s also planning a “huge” compost center on the farm.

He said he can employ workers year round on a diversified farm, comparing that to large one-crop operations that hire many people but in short spurts.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo of Phil McGrath by Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

The result -- one of Bishop's latest projects, "Cook's Country Best Lost Suppers" -- is like pulling up a chair to the nation's kitchen tables. But consider yourself warned: Don't pick up this cookbook when you are in a rush to get dinner on the table; it's far too easy to get caught up in the personal stories that grace each page.

Bishop is the editorial director at Chris Kimball's America's Test Kitchen empire, which specializes in testing recipes and bringing readers and viewers along for the ride. He was in town this week to tape a few upcoming segments for Evan Kleiman's "Good Food," KCET and PBS, which broadcasts the TV version of "America's Test Kitchen."

Fortunately for the Daily Dish, Bishop had time for breakfast at Fig in Santa Monica. He had a cappuccino to start, followed by steel-cut oatmeal and a side of fresh seasonal fruit.

The conversation was all over the map: lamenting the loss of Gourmet magazine, his grandmother's 99th birthday, and why his wife, cookbook author and pastry chef Lauren Chattman, just might have one up on Martha Stewart. He also let us in on a little-known secret about the recipes that come out of the Brookline, Mass.-based "America's Test Kitchen" and end up in Cook's Illustrated, a food magazine that bucked convention long ago by rejecting all advertising, and has about a million paying subscribers to show for it. (Its sister publication, Cook's Country, has about 310,000 paying subscribers.)

After the jump: highlights from our conversation and two of his favorite recipes from the new book.

-- Kimball is a familiar face and voice to devotees of all things America's Test Kitchen. Bishop is more of a behind-the-scenes guy, although he pops up regularly in the segments of the PBS show where ingredients are being tasted, or hardware is being put to the test. But if you must know more about Bishop, you can follow his wife's blog: Sag Harbor Days. There, Chattman chronicles the couple's life -- and meals  -- with their two young daughters. (One daughter cares nothing about food except that it's served, and the other keeps a detailed food diary when she goes on vacation.)

-- Most of those family meals are of the healthy vegetarian sort. Bishop, who wrote "A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen," and his wife enjoy eating that way. Vegetarian meals are often cheaper and easier to prepare, and it helps the couple model positive eating habits for their children. He rolled his eyes when he recalled the battles it took to get his kids to settle down and accept it. "A long, long time."

-- But Chattman is a pastry chef -- so there must be fantabulous desserts each night, right? Well, kind of. Prepare to be envious when you read this next paragraph, and then just recognize it for the fantastic idea that it is and rip it off:

Bishop said his wife always has several kinds of cookie dough in the freezer, to accommodate everyone's favorites. After dinner, she'll slice off a cookie or two from a frozen log, or drop two balls of frozen cookie dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, and that way everyone gets the cookie of his or her choice. Same thing in the morning while she's making breakfast, and then everyone gets a fresh baked cookie in a lunch pail.

-- America's Test Kitchen doesn't have final say on whether recipes ultimately make it into the magazine. Readers do. There's an army of subscribers who volunteer to test recipes again after Kimball & Co. are done with them. And if recipes don't score about 80% on the "would make again" question, they never make it into Cook's Illustrated.

-- Asked about some of his favorite food magazines, Bishop picked Martha Stewart's Living. He said that even if he never intends to make or cook anything in the magazine, he knows it will be an enjoyable read.

-- Bishop says his knife skills are horrible. But that has turned out to be a strength in a kitchen surrounded by classically trained chefs. Bishop gets to play the role of everyman, complaining about techniques that are too complicated for the average home chef, and kicking recipes back for more streamlining. "I tell them, 'You might be able to do this, but the rest of us can't.' "

-- He said his two favorite recipes from "Best Lost Suppers" are Cheese Frenchees (because you just cannot go wrong with a cheese sandwich covered in Ritz cracker crumbles and then deep fried), and Granny's Tamale Pie, which he raved about. Bishop said the pie is a bit of a project, and it's not a traditional tamale pie. There's no cheese, for example. But he said that if he had to pick just one recipe from the cookbook, these would be it.

I know that's two recipes, but who's counting.

-- Rene Lynch

Photo: Cheese Frenchees from "Cook's Country Best Lost Suppers"

Just-picked peaches in November?

It seems preposterous, but Tenerelli Farms of Littlerock just started selling their Autumn Ladys, making them probably the latest peaches in the Northern Hemisphere. Surprisingly, it's a good peach, not mealy like many late varieties. Read more about peaches, strawberry guavas (above), limes and more at David Karp's weekly Market Watch column:

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Photo caption: Strawberry guavas. Photo credit: David Karp / For the Times

There is a soup for every Thanksgiving -- creamy, light, sweet or spicy. Admire the bright, splashy yellows and reds in this Kabocha squash soup topped with crisp pomegranate seeds and candied pecans, and then enjoy it before your main course on Thanksgiving (or the day after with your turkey sandwich). Browse through other Thanksgiving recipes or, if you just want to drool over more beautiful food, click through our photo gallery.

RECENT & RELATED 

PHOTO GALLERY: A Thanksgiving feast for the eyes

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This Thanksgiving, let someone else do the cooking

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

There were some classic outtakes and a couple of moments of good drama, but the best part was the announcement of the ballooned-up $500 budget to prepare one course for the communal dinner. Each team, which consisted of two members from each season, was given quite the hunk of dough to put together a single course. Sounds like a foodie fantasy fulfilled to me.

What one course would you put together for 11 guests with $500?

Maybe I'd test out one of the time-consuming dishes from the new Ad Hoc cookbook, since the "All Star" show had no time limitations. Or how about taking a stab at making Joel Robuchon's quail leg stuffed with foie gras with a side of truffle mashed potatoes from L' Atelier (though I probably wouldn't be able to pull it off as well as the Michelin monger himself). That might stack up to a generous $350. I'd spend the rest on a few bottles of killer, reasonably priced bottles of Oregon pinot (under $50), maybe something from Domaine Drouhin or Soter Beacon Hill.

-- Krista Simmons

Photo: Fabio Vibiani. Credit: NBC UMV

Some are in fact really easy. There are a few that I've already made more than once, such as the chocolate chip cookies (see below for the recipe).

This cookie is slightly thicker than my Platonic ideal of a chocolate chip cookie (crisp and thin with a still-chewy center, made partly with whole-grain flour and lots of really dark chocolate, and at the outer edge it should have wrinkles that form what sort of look like concentric circles ... ), but I digress. Let's just say this one grew on me.

I think part of the reason is that these are perfect cookies for ice cream sandwiches. That's how I've been eating them, inspired by photos of ice cream sandwiches in the dessert chapter of the book. They're crisp on the outside, and chewy and slightly dense on the inside so that they don't crumble or collapse when you bite into the ice cream sandwich. 

I like the chef-y touches in this recipe. It calls for two different types of chocolate, one slightly sweeter and the other darker and more complex. First you chop the chocolate into chip-sized pieces and then you sift the pieces to get rid of any "dust." The butter is creamed in two steps. And molasses sugar is recommended. You can use dark brown sugar, but the molasses sugar really does help add another dimension.   

-- Betty Hallock

Chocolate chip cookies

Note: From "Ad Hoc at Home: Family-Style Recipes" by Thomas Keller with Dave Cruz. This recipe has not been tested by The Times' Test Kitchen.

Servings: Makes 3 dozen (3-inch) cookies

2 1/3 cups plus 1 tablespoon flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

5 ounces 55% chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces (about 1 1/4 cups)

5 ounces 70% to 72% chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces (about 1 1/4 cups)

1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 cup packed dark brown sugar, preferably molasses sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1. Position the oven racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.

2. Sift the flour and baking soda into a medium bowl. Stir in the salt.

3. Put the chips in a fine-mesh basket strainer and shake to remove any chocolate "dust" (small fragments).

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat half the butter on medium speed until fairly smooth. Add both sugars and the remaining butter, and beat until well combined, then beat for a few minutes, until the mixture is light and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until the first one is incorporated before adding the next and scraping the bowl as necessary. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed to combine. Mix in the chocolate.

5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold the dough with a spatula to be sure that the chocolate is evenly incorporated. The dough or shaped cookies can be refrigerated, well wrapped, for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 weeks. Freeze shaped cookies on the baking sheets until firm, then transfer to freezer containers. (Defrost frozen cookies overnight in the refrigerator before baking.)

6. Using about 2 level tablespoons per cookie, shape the dough into balls. Arrange 8 cookies on each pan, leaving about 2 inches between them, because the dough will spread. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the tops are no longer shiny, switching the position and rotating the pans halfway through the baking.

7. Cool the cookies on the pans on cooling racks for about 2 minutes to firm up a bit, then transfer to the racks to cool completely. Repeat to bake the remaining cookies. (The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.)

-- How to open a bottle of wine in France: For those times when you've been up all night, you're drunk and all you want to do is drink another bottle of wine, but you're in the street, you have no corkscrew and the stores aren't open yet. Happens all the time. YouTube
-- Speaking of which ... 7-Eleven's making its own wine. Oh, thank heavens. Dallas Observer
-- Hotel and nightclub impresario Sam Nazarian slams into ugly financial reality. Could this be part of the reason behind SBE's recent split with Brent Bolthouse? Wall Street Journal
-- Auntie Em's tops list for best cupcake shop; Sprinkles left out. LAist
-- A $47,000 lunch tab from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Buzzfeed
-- In the ongoing Tavern on the Green saga, the venue hosted the Halloween party from hell, say booted patrons. New York Daily News
-- BBC's "MasterChef" cooks critically endangered eel. Oops. The Telegraph
-- It's cloudy with a chance of record-setting meatballs in New Hampshire. Yahoo! News
-- Tasting ecstasy and agony at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. New York Times
-- 70 cases of brat pizzas stolen from Wisconsin company. Sheboygan Press
-- A preview of the apocalypse: Boston Markets will all run dry. Consumerist

Hot Knives is known for its vegan/vegetarian value system and a love of farmers market produce, so it isn't much of a surprise that George bristles at the long list of unpronounceable ingredients in a bottle of electric blue-colored cold and flu remedy. His alternative? A blended and boiled mixture of mint, agave nectar, ginger, lemon, olive oil, roasted green chilies, pastis and Southern Comfort.

One of the comments on the post refers to George as an "evil genius," and I would have to agree. A generous thimbleful of hot whiskey and lemon has long been my go-to self-medication at the first sign of a cold. But the concoction George comes up with is a gorgeous, all-natural highlighter green. It actually resembles something I was once given by a pharmacist in a tiny backroom apothecary in Venice, Italy. I had the kind of cough that sounded like an outboard motor underwater. Two doses of that crazy, alcohol-laced green stuff and I was as good as new.

Of course I can't attest to the efficacy of George's recipe, but I promise to try it next time I get smacked down by a super bug (please don't let it be H1N1, knock on wood three times and turn in a slow superstitious circle).

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: Hot Knives Evan George, left, and Alex Brown. Credit: Sarah Meadows

Now that we're squarely in fall, Saving the Season's Kevin West and Bettina Birch of Bee Green Farm return to Surfas on Saturday to conduct a demonstration on autumn preserves. The in-depth demo, starting at 11 a.m., will focus on fruits of the season (persimmons, apples) and comes in time to start thinking about your Thanksgiving table.

West and Birch will be making fresh persimmon butter (no canning required), spiced apple-persimmon chutney with Birch's own Fuyu persimmons and Arkansas Black apples, and something to liven your Thanksgiving dinner: not cranberry relish but cranberry jam with orange peel and candied ginger.

The demo is free, open to the public, and no reservations are necessary. West and Birch promise there will be an all-you-can-eat tasting to follow.

Surfas, 8777 Washington Blvd., Culver City.

-- Betty Hallock

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo: Fuyu persimmons. Credit: David Karp / Los Angeles Times

What kind of cranberry sauce do you serve at your holiday table? We like this recipe for Ruby Port cranberry sauce, but it's just one of several cranberry sauces we've collected here, so check them all out before resorting to the canned stuff.

RECENT & RELATED 

PHOTO GALLERY: A Thanksgiving feast for the eyes

Our best Thanksgiving Day recipes

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Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

The garden played a starring role in Tuesday night's episode of "The Biggest Loser," and today Food Network announced it will also take center stage in a special episode of "Iron Chef America." Chefs Mario Batali, Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse go to D.C. where they will be greeted by the First Lady and joined by White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford for a Super Chef Battle.

The chairman's challenge: Create a meal for America using The White House Kitchen Garden’s produce as their secret ingredients. The episode premieres Sunday, January 3rd.

According to Food Network, the chefs will be allowed to use anything found in the White House Kitchen Garden to help them create their meals. It will be Flay and Comerford against Batali and Lagasse. Each team must come up with five dishes that showcase their garden fresh ingredients and best represent "the ultimate American meal."

The judges include: chef and best-selling cookbook author Nigella Lawson; Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin; and actress, author and designer Jane Seymour.

--Rene Lynch

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo credit: NBC Universal

Made with cachaça, muddled lime and sugar, a caipirinha is a profoundly simple beverage that perfectly captures the restless, vibrant spirit of the nation that loves it. Unfortunately, though, we don't seem to have much of an appreciation for it in the States.

"I'm still amazed how challenging it is for people to say caipirinha and cachaça," says Steve Luttmann, the founder of Leblon Cachaça, one of the new boutique brands that have been making inroads in the U.S. in recent years. (Don't be one of those people. Say kye-peer-EEN-yah and ka-SHAH-sa.) Luttmann cites a study by BuzzBack Market Research in New York indicating that awareness in the U.S. of the caipirinha among cocktail drinkers is 30%, compared with 85% for the mojito, the caipirinha's closest cousin.

As someone who quit her job and moved to Rio de Janeiro for a month because she loved caipirinhas so much (OK, I also loved the beach, the music and the churrascarias), I am here to say: You're missing out, America.

To read the rest of Jessica Gelt's story, click here.

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Here's a look at this week's recipes:

Banana bread pudding

Caipirinha

Crispy braised chicken thighs with olives, lemon and fennel

Honey-walnut shrimp served at Typhoon in Santa Monica

Key lime coconut scones

Key lime pie

Thai peanut chicken wings

Waldorf salad with curried mayonnaise dressing

Want more? Check out our recipe collection at www.latimes.com/recipes -- and bookmark it. We're constantly adding new dishes.

-- Rene Lynch

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

The Westminster restaurant is decidedly modern: deep blue tiles climb one wall as if to draw a high-water mark; a flat-screen TV recedes elegantly into the back of the dining room. It's a clean style cultivated by the Chau family, which runs Hoang Yen with a welcoming air. The result is an open and inclusive space where uniformed electricians lunch alongside young mothers, and businessmen pop in for takeout as they pass through Little Saigon.

To read the rest of Miles Clements story, click here.

Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

I'm surprised no one has tried it before. There was the short-lived Menemsha, but it was a much more ambitious East Coast seafood place. That this one is small and cozy with a studied casual air and a great front of the house -- not to mention it's just across from Palisades Park and the Pacific -- gives this place a fighting chance.

Owner Jenny Morton, who also owns Blue Plate on Montana Avenue, went for a neighborhood kind of place rather than something glitzy. The menu is smart too. Pretty much everything that people love about East Coast seafood -- oysters, clams, mussels, lobster rolls, fish 'n' chips, steamers -- is listed on the one-page menu. But if you're looking for grilled or steamed Maine lobster, you're out of luck. No clam bakes either.

But then you can't have everything, can you? What's best here is the raw seafood -- oysters, clams, ceviche and some, but not all, of the cooked dishes. New York's Pearl Oyster Bar, this is not. But the service from waiters in blue-and-white gingham or striped shirts is eager and willing and the front of the house bends over backward to accommodate everyone.

To read the rest of S. Irene Virbila's review, click here.

Photo: A dozen oysters on the half shell are served with homemade cocktail sauce and Moscatel and tarragon mignonette. Credit: Christina House / For The Times

Cathy Danh got it just right when she described the problem with food blogs.

"I look at food blogs, pretty much every day, and lots of them, and I’m always thinking, ‘I want to eat that,’ " said Danh, who writes at Gastronomy Blog.

So, she and Laurie Moore of the blog G-ma’s Bakery decided to make at least some of those alluring photos real and available to all comers. They have organized Eat My Blog, a monster bake sale to benefit the L.A. Regional Food Bank.

"It seeemed silly to have people make all that food and eat it without a cause," Danh said this morning.

So, people with a sweet tooth can head to the patio of Zeke’s Smokehouse from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 5, at the corner of La Brea and Santa Monica boulevards. Twenty-five kinds of treats are now on the menu – including some for vegans and those who can’t eat gluten. Also planned: classic whoopie pies, pumpkin swirl brownies, handmade macarons and black sesame cupcakes with matcha frosting. In addition to donating its patio, Zeke’s will also bake brownies.

Danh plans to bake rosemary apricot bars.

Among the blogs taking part are Eat. Sip. Chew., Eating L.A. and Delicious Coma.

Baked goods will sell for $1, $2 or $3. If other bakers want to take part, they can contact Danh at cathy37@gmail.com.

"It’s a way to connect with our readers in an intimate and real way," said Diana Hossfeld, author of the blog Diana Takes a Bite and a member of the Eat My Blog organizing committee.

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank gets food to nearly 900 sites in L.A. County.

-- Mary MacVean

Eat My Blog logo designed by Laurie Moore. Dessert photo by Cathy Danh.