According to Chris Kilham, Fox News' “Medicine Hunter,” the onion is much more than a kitchen staple. The underappreciated superfood deserves to be ranked with powerhouse foods like pomegranates and green tea, as onions help boost immunity, protect against heart disease and even have anticarcinogenic properties. While eating a raw onion every day is the most efficient way to benefit from the vegetable's healthful properties, it’s not the most appealing. Instead, take a suggestion from Melissa Rubel Jacobson, who uses diced onions in this fast recipe for Chicken Breasts with Apricot-Onion Pan Sauce.

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The results are in: The Art of Living According to Joe Beef won Food52’s third annual Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks. In the site’s final round of bracket-style cookbook competition, guest judge Alice Waters chose Beef over Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. Despite her disappointment over the high fat content in many of the buzzy Montreal restaurant’s recipes, the produce-championing Waters loved the book’s idiosyncratic stories, unconventional layout and pervasive “deep love of Montreal.” Joe Beef chefs Frédéric Morin and David McMillan shared some of their fantastic French-Canadian recipes with F&W a few months ago, including this indulgent Confit of Guinea Hen Legs with Prunes and Honey. The recipe is enriched with rendered duck fat, and best served with an Alice Waters–friendly watercress salad.

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Many of the most popular Chinese dishes in the US are Americanized—no bones, no feet, no serious spice. But as cities like Beijing become more international, take-out favorites like General Tso’s chicken, chop suey and fortune cookies are winning favor in the country that inspired them, Newsweek reports. One of our favorite Chinese-American dishes is sesame chicken. Ready in just 35 minutes, Marcia Kiesel’s version of the sweet-and-crispy chicken is coated with a spicy ginger-garlic sauce and mixed with a healthy serving of broccoli.

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Warning: Test Kitchen Tease snapshots may cause cravings, lip-smacking and an unshakeable desire to cook.

When it comes to focaccia, most people are familiar with savory versions like Pisaladiere, a version topped with anchovies, olives and caramelized onions. This week, the F&W Test Kitchen tested an unusual dessert variation—Blackberry Focaccia (left) from Nigel Slater’s forthcoming cookbook, Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard. This blackberry-studded, confectioners' sugar–dusted focaccia is substantial and just barely sweet. Slater recommends cutting it into thick wedges and eating it when warm, but we loved it just the same in smaller squares, which we served with steaming cups of tea. Slater's cookbook won't be out until April, but this savory focaccia from the F&W archives, topped with caramelized onions, pear and blue cheese, is a good variation to try for Super Bowl Sunday. 

 

 

Now that we’re a month into the New Year, it’s time to stop talking about a 2012 diet. That moment is gone. Instead of giving up foods, wouldn’t it be great to bring some new things into your life: squirrel, fish bones, black water. Here’s a few things you should start eating immediately to be on the cutting edge of the food world.

Chocolate-Covered Sprouts. Last year Frito-Lay began putting natural foods in their snacks. (Brief round of applause for them.) Now comes junk food that’s having even more of an identity crisis. Lulu Chocolate’s Smoked Sea Salt Almond raw Organic Chocolate Bar (that’s a mouthful) is made with sprouted almonds—sprouts being a supercool health foods these days. Is that better than Shiloh Farms Dark Chocolate Covered Sprouted Almonds? There’s only one way to find out.

Fish Spines. We’ve come a long way from the days when nose-to-tail was a novelty (back in the olden days, about 8 years ago). Even fried fish bones are now almost as ubiquitous as sliders on menus, at least in NYC where I live, at places like En Japanese Brasserie and Brooklyn’s Isa in Brooklyn. The new frontier is fried fish spines. At Blue Ribbon Bar & Grill in midtown Manhattan, they serve specials like fried wild eel spine—it’s the size of a pencil. They’re also eating the gills from wild king yellowtail: first they dehydrate them, then they fry them, and serve them “just for fun,” says Blue Ribbon Manager Rich Ho.

Unnaturally Black Foods. Black foods are nothing new. So it’s foods like squid ink pasta, blackout cake and black sesame seeds (what I like to think of as “naturally occurring black foods”) that have paved the way for this new breed of black foods. Specifically the jet black burger buns that anchor the “Darth Vader” burger which will debut this month at France’s fast food chain, Quick. And of blk., the black health water that’s the brainchild of Albie and Chris Manzo, who you know from the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Like the Manzo brothers, you might not understand exactly what makes the water black, but is that really the point of this water? No, it’s not.

Random Animals. Recently some high-profile people in the food world have offered opinions on what we can eat in the name of causes like saving the planet, and pushing boundaries. Rene Redzepi, chef of Noma in Copenhagen, aka the world’s best restaurant, recommended that people in the States start eating squirrel (he hashtagged them “rabbit of the sky” on Twitter). And Bizarre Foods hero Andrew Zimmern came back from a trip to Beijing energized by a 10-course donkey tasting. “Donkey should be on everyone’s plate in 2012,” he says.

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Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures

Super Bowl Recipes

(pictured: Black-Sesame Salmon Balls)

In a featured recipe from F&W’s weekly series Andrew Zimmern’s Kitchen Adventures, the TV chef describes a walk along Penang’s New Lane as the “single greatest street-food stroll in the world.” Some of his favorites stalls sell glazed chicken wings and quarters, which inspired Zimmern’s One-Pot Sticky Chicken Wings. The wings and sauce cook together so that fat from the chicken enriches its glaze. The end result: exotic, finger-licking-worthy chicken wings and only one pot to clean.

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At Carmel Valley Ranch, active guests partake in hilltop yoga, nature hikes and even beekeeping. The resort then uses honey from the ranch’s hives in spa treatments, cocktails and recipes like these Honey-Chile Chicken Wings. Prep doesn't require a bee-proof suit or a trip to California. The sweet-spicy Super Bowl snack will come together with just a few pantry ingredients, some good honey and an oven; chef Tim Wood crisps the skin using a broiler.

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This Sunday, the competition isn’t just between two football teams trying to win the Super Bowl. There’s also a battle of the hot sauces: the original fire-breathing chicken-wing glaze, Frank’s Red Hot, and Tabasco’s new Buffalo Style hot sauce. Each company recently launched a multi-million-dollar ad campaign in the hope of securing its place in hot-wing recipes across the country. There’s a more unique alternative. At The Good Fork in Brooklyn, husband-and-wife owners Ben Schneider and Sohui Kim use neither Tabasco nor Frank’s. Their Asian-inflected Hot Wings get lots of heat from the cult Thai condiment, Sriracha. To combat the spice, Kim and Schneider serve a cooling mix of rice vinegar–spiked sour cream alongside.

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While Food & Wine is busy helping phenomenal chefs like Mario Batali and Rick Bayless make change and save the world, some other notable people are doing their part, too. Leonardo DiCaprio is partnering with outstanding coffee producer La Colombe Torrefaction to create a special blend called Lyon. All net profits will go to environmental projects supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. (The foundation works with, among others, the National Resource Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund on one of my favorite initiatives, SaveTigersNow.org). "Leonardo has an acute understanding of the challenges we all face," says Todd Carmichael, Torrecfaction's co-founder. "Particularly those people in the developing world, which incidentally, are also coffee growing countries."
 
And here’s more on Lyon coffee. It’s a blend of, no surprise, sustainably raised beans from Haiti, Peru, Ethiopia and Brazil. It’s available at Williams-Sonoma and select Whole Foods, plus at La Colombe cafés. You won’t see DiCpario acting as barista at La Colombe any time soon, unfortunately; he’s in Australia filming The Great Gatsby.

When it comes to French fries, I’m pretty much of a purist. I’m perfectly happy with the Thrice-Cooked Chips (translation: twice fried fries) at New York City’s Breslin. But for many, that’s way too simple. Let’s look at a few enterprising places that get creative with their fries.

Thrasher's French Fries, Ocean City, MD. Thrasher’s has been serving fries on the boardwalk since 1929. The fries come in cup sizes: 16 ounces, 32 ounces and 53 ounces, at which point you’re basically in supersize popcorn bucket territory. Thrasher’s doesn't offer ketchup – only apple cider vinegar. "We have no catsup, because we don't want anything competing with the wonderful taste of the French fried potato," owner Buddy Jenkins has said.

Primanti Bros., Pittsburgh, PA. Here’s why I love Pittsburgh: because they’re not afraid to put French fries right in their sandwiches. In fact they might have pioneered the practice. Primanti first started adding fries to their sandwiches in the 1930s. Now the Primanti’s “Almost Famous” menu includes Pitts-Burgher Cheesesteak, Knockwurst & Cheese, Colossal Fish & Cheese and Jumbo Bologna & Cheese—all topped with french fries, cole slaw, and tomatoes.

Fresh Fries, Los Angeles. The Fresh Fries truck takes their specialty seriously. But maybe serious isn’t the right word for a place that offers their fries —which come in natural cut, sweet potato or curly –in such crazy combinations. Among their offerings: Stinky Pinky (topped with grilled onions and thousand island dressing); Peanut Buttercup (sweet potato fries with nutella and peanut butter); and the most cross-cultural option, 626 (with hoisin sauce, mayo and crunchy noodles).

Big and Little’s, Chicago. Unlike some places in the wacky French fry category, Big & Little’s is primarily known for something besides fries; in this case, their mahi fish tacos. Still, they’re also skilled at putting a serious piece or two of perfectly seared foie gras on top of their perfectly fried fries. For those who find that to be just too much, they also offer truffle duck fat au jus as a side to the fries.

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(pictured: Bobby Flay's Bistro Fries)