The Feed: November 5, 2014

Butternut squash is one of winter's most popular vegetables: it's tasty, versatile and quite healthy.

The Feed is my weekly round up of interesting food-related stories from newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites.

Bon Appétit: "The Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast Headquarters."
I hope you check out my site for Thanksgiving recipes, but wouldn't blame you for also perusing the excellent content at Bon Appétit. This year, they've assembled great stories such as 25 Ways to Reinvent Your Thanksgiving and recipes for Apple Galette, salads and some incredibly buttery mashed potatoes.

New York Times: "A Cookbook That Veers From the Usual Recipe - Review: 'Prune' by Gabrielle Hamilton," by Julia Moskin.
Reading Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir Blood, Bones and Butter or eating in her Manhattan restaurant Prune are wonderful, pleasurable experiences for food lovers. Cooking from her new cookbook, Prune, may be both the most challenging and rewarding experience you can have with Hamilton. Moskin writes about how Hamilton's cookbook eschews the usual simplicity designed to assuage home cooks, but is exacting in its instructions. After reading about it, I really want some Breton Butter Cake. (Jane Black also has a nice review for the Washington Post, including a number of great recipes like Broiled Ruby Red Grapefruit With Wheat Chex Streusel; there's also an excellent critique by Bonnie S. Benwick, who thinks the book could have still delivered authenticity but better served home cooks if it had been written in a more accessible style.)

Wall Street Journal: "Meat on the Side: Modern Menus Shift the Focus to Vegetables," by Jane Black.
Speaking of Jane Black, here she is again, with an informative piece on the growing trend of restaurants using more vegetables and less meat as the centerpiece of entrees. I love the infographic that illustrates the concept, comparing an old-school pork chop with two sides dish to a vegetable-focused polenta and squash dish where meat (in much less quantity) is an accent, not a star.

Washington Post: "Bread Feast, a Welcome Taste of Palena," by Tom Sietsema.
If you were as upset as I was over the closure of Palena earlier this year, you will be pleased to hear that the restaurant's chef Frank Ruta and pastry chef Aggie Chin have resurfaced making once (sometimes twice) weekly dinners at my neighborhood bakery, Bread Furst, called "Bread Feast." I was bummed I didn't get to try it when it started the other week (I had a cold--don't want to spoil a good evening like this if I can't really taste everything). But I will definitely make a point of visiting soon. Sietsema seems quite satisfied with what he ate, like bread bowls with grilled peppers, mushrooms, a sunny egg and tomato sauce.

Washington Post: "Butternut Squash Packs a Healthful Punch. Here’s How to Use the Winter Vegetable." by Casey Seidenberg.
If you love butternut squash but always do the same things with it, check out Seidenberg's primer on the favorite winter vegetable, which also includes good tips for prepping it.

The Dining Traveler: "The London Bar NYC: Cocktails in the City," by Jessica van Dop DeJesus.
Jessica recently rebranded her food and travel blog, formerly Adventures of the Repatriate, as The Dining Traveler, and this post about New York's London Bar nicely captures what her site is about: delicious food and drink combined with memorable travel experiences. She describes the bartenders as the real deal, pouring drinks like the Seasonal Cider, a mix of cognac, apple cider and spices she said transported her "back to wintertime in Europe." Sounds fantastic.

Food & Wine: "9 Pro Tips on How to Buy and Use Good Olive Oil," by Tina Ujlaki.
Great tips for knowing what you're buying among all those choices in the grocery store.

Sir Kensington: "Fries of New York"
This is literally a pop-up exhibit devoted to French fries. That's pretty cool. And probably bound to make anyone quite hungry (this appeared as an item in Florence Fabricant's Front Burner column for the New York Times).