Top Times recipes of 2008: Roasted potato salad

 

To put it mildly, Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter has a thing for bacon.

This winter, in fact, she wrote a story confessing that one of her favorite Christmas gifts ever was a 6-pound variety pack of the stuff. "Now if that’s not true love, I don’t know what is," she wrote. She's also on a quest to compile a list of 1,001 things to do with bacon.

The simple fact is bacon does make almost everything taste better, a point Carter pushed to the maximum in the same story with a coffee cake studded with apples and bacon -- and bacon martinis.

Those were good, but this potato salad was even better, which is why it lands at No. 5 in our countdown of the L.A. Times' top recipes of the year.

This is far from a one-note recipe. Roasting the potatoes concentrates their earthy flavor and binding them and the bacon together with mayonnaise spiked with the sharp flavors of capers and red onion is the perfect contrast.

Photo credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Top Times recipes of 2008: Spaghetti with tuna and cherry tomatoes

Among our favorite recipes of 2008: Spaghetti with tuna that you've conserved yourself. Think that sounds too complicated? It's not.

Food editor Russ Parsons shows you how to take chunks of good albacore tuna and slowly poach it in warm, flavored olive oil. You can then use it in all kinds of dishes, from a salad with white beans and arugula, to this spicy pasta with cherry tomatoes.

Join us at the Daily Dish blog in counting down our favorite recipes of the year. Please let us know if we missed one of your favorites.

Photo: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Top Times recipes of 2008: Panforte

Panforte is kind of like the Italian version of fruitcake — a dense, chewy fruitcake at that.

But if all your memories are bad ones, you have to try you this version, from Elisabeth M. Prueitt and her husband, Chad Robertson, owners of San Francisco’s acclaimed Tartine Bakery.

This recipe version, from their book “Tartine,” is a bit complicated, but it makes one of the best panforte we’ve tasted — here or in Italy.

That's why it's No. 7 on our countdown to our favorite Los Angeles Times recipes of 2008. Here where the list stands so far.

Photo: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Top Times recipes of 2008: Naked ribs

Some people like barbecue for the sauce; purists like it for the pork.

If you’re one of the latter, you have to try this recipe for naked ribs, developed by Food Editor Russ Parsons. They're No. 3 in our countdown of our favorite Los Angeles Times recipes of 2008. (Let us know if we missed your favorite, and we'll be sure to include it in our roundup.)

You don’t need a smoker to make these ribs, by the way, a good old-fashioned kettle grill will work fine. The trick is concentrating the heat along one side of the grill so that the ribs can slowly smoke on the cool side.

Note also that the dry rub spicing mixture makes enough to repeat this recipe three or four times — in other words, about a week’s worth.

Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

Counting down The Times' top recipes: Maple bacon biscuits

We're counting down to the New Year by counting our favorite Los Angeles Times recipes of 2008: The No. 9 spot goes to these maple bacon biscuits, adapted from the ones pastry chef Zoe Nathan makes at Rustic Canyon.

But first, a digression.

There's a counter outside The Times' test kitchen that's one of the most popular spots in the building, because if you time it right, you can sample some of the goodies whipped up by test kitchen manager Noelle Carter. You can always tell when Noelle is cooking, because, coincidentally, the pathway outside the test kitchen is as busy as the 405 on a Friday afternoon.

And you can always tell when a recipe rates off the chart by the speed with which the food disappears. If only we'd set our stop watches and had a video camera at the ready when these golden little biscuits were placed counterside.

In short, people went bonkers. They scarfed them down, went back to their desks, told their neighbors.... who then came running to the test kitchen for their own sample. And were oh-so-crestfallen to find them all gone. One person -- we will not say who -- was seen dabbing at the crumbs in order to get a taste of this bacon-y, buttery goodness.

So it's no surprise that these biscuits earned a spot on the list of some of our favorite recipes of the year, as chosen by Noelle (who tests and perfects all our recipes to make sure they're fit to print) and the rest of the Food staff. It will all culminate in a package we're printing on Dec. 31.

Let us know if we've overlooked one of your favorite recipes from 2008 -- and we'll include it in our roundup. Click here to see where the list stands so far.

-- Rene Lynch

Photo: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Top Times recipes of 2008: Pumpkin seed stuffing with chorizo

We're counting down to the New Year by counting down our favorite Los Angeles Times recipes of 2008.

Each day, we'll reveal one of our top recipes of the year, as chosen by Los Angeles Times Food editor Russ Parsons, Time Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter -- who tests and perfects all our recipes to make sure they're fit to print -- and the rest of the Food staff. It will all culminate in a package we're printing on Dec. 31.

Let us know if we've overlooked one of your favorite recipes from 2008 -- we'll include it in our roundup.

First up: Pumpkin seed stuffing with chorizo.

-- Rene Lynch

Photo: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times