And The Winner Is…

I am a hopeless romantic, so it comes as no surprise that the actor Colin Firth holds a special place in my heart as the quintessential leading man.  He played the wealthy, handsome and proud Mr. Darcy in Jane Austin’s timeless classic Pride and Prejudice, and repeated the role in the hilarious modern day version, Bridget Jones’ Diary.  So when I saw the advertisement for the film, the King’s Speech, based on the true story of King George VI, I was thrilled to discover that Colin Firth was once again the leading man. Initially, my husband was not quite as exuberant as I, however, as the accolades piled up, his interest grew as well: 12 Academy Award Nominations, 2 Golden Globe Awards, and 7 British Academy wins, including Best Actor for Colin Firth.  With such high recommendations from a jury of one’s peers, we thought it worth the high ticket prices and relentless previews to venture out to the multiplex to view this production on the big screen.  We were certainly not disappointed. The movie was everything a movie should be:  a gripping story, superlative acting, stunning photography and beautiful music.  Hopefully my favorite leading man will be posing for the paparazzi on the red carpet very soon with the coveted Oscar in hand. 

In some ways, the specialty food industry is not so different from Hollywood. You may be surprised to discover that The National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, or the NASFT, has its own version of the Academy Awards, complete with Oscar statuettes and a red carpet.  The NASFT, which is a not-for-profit trade association for the $60 billion food industry, aims to bring great specialty foods to market and to award authenticity and innovation in both the domestic and international markets.  The award ceremony is held once a year at the summer Fancy Food Show, and The Specialty Outstanding Food Innovation, or SOFI awards, are handed out in 33 categories of specialty foods and beverages, with Silver Finalists and Gold Winners in every category. 

This prestigious SOFI award is considered the gold standard for the industry so you can be certain that the products are exceptional.  I found quite a number of these superstars while roaming the shelves at Sickles Market the other day.  In the cookie category, Tate’s was a 2010 Silver Finalist for their Whole Wheat Dark Chocolate Cookie, a slightly lighter, healthier, but equally scrumptious version of their traditional chocolate chip cookie. Effie’s Homemade hit a double with Gold in the cookie category for oatcakes, made from a 4^th generation family recipe, and a Silver win for corncakes, bursting with the flavor of toasted corn and just a hint of anise (cracker category).  Harvest Song, an Armenian preserves company, also walked away with dual awards in 2010 for their Fresh Walnuts (confection category) and Wild Black Currant (Jam, Preserve).  The currants are not cultivated, but grow wild in the mountains of Armenia and the flavor is intense and exploding with flavor.

The Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery produced a winner in a jewel of a goat cheese called “Bijou.” This petite creamy aged crottin is delicious in a salad or spread on a rosemary croccantini cracker from la Panzanella.  Another excellent goat cheese accompaniment is also one of the hottest gourmet products on the market today:  Yuzu marmalade.  This amber colored preserve is created from a South Asian citrus fruit, the yuzu.  It has a taste reminiscent of grapefruit, lime and fresh pine and it takes 30-35 fruits to make one jar of this delectable marmalade.  This SOFI Silver finalist is truly unique and irresistible.  We have a sample in the cheese department and I am trying not to eat the entire jar myself!

In your travels, you may also come across an item that has received the Good Food Award.  This relatively new award is presented to outstanding American food producers and farmers who create exceptionally delicious food, and in addition, support sustainability and the social good.  Food communities from each of the five regions of the US are awarded in seven specific categories:  Beer, Charcuterie, Cheese, Chocolate, Coffee, Pickles and Preserves.  The stories of each of the winners are published at goodfoodawards.org and are a fascinating and inspiring read.

I found quite a range of Good Food Award recipients in just our cheese department alone:  New Jersey’s Alexian Duck Mousse with Cognac Pate, La Quercia Prosciutto, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk, Point Reyes Farmstead Blue, and Uplands Cheese Pleasant Ridge Reserve, to name a few.  Also, as a special treat, this Saturday, February 26 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nicasio Valley Cheese Co. will be visiting Sickles Market and offering tastings of several of their organic farmstead cheeses, including their Good Food Award winning Nicasio Square.

So keep your eye out for SOFI and Good Food Award signs as you shop.  I think you’ll find that these special products are the superstars of the culinary world, and, just like my much acclaimed movie, you won’t be disappointed!

Enjoy!

Cheri the Cheesemonger

Once in a Blue Orchid

You would think a plant is a plant, and an orchid is well, an orchid! But the fanfare surrounding the introduction of the “Blue Mystique” orchid has the horticultural world in a tizzy. The first big “thing” to happen in the orchid world since they became available all year long, the development of the blue orchid has drama and mystery surrounding it that’s fit for the finest of soap operas.

Ok. A blue orchid? Purists and orchid “snobs” are grumbling a lot about this, asking if this is some kind of painted thingy like the St. Patty’s Day green carnation or a fluke of nature. What the freak is it? Well, not so fast, says Andrew Bartha of Silver Vase growers in Florida which has partnered with the Dutch grower Floricultura to bring this beauty to life. It’s something unique, fun and enjoyable, and not part of a vast cloning conspiracy. In fact, the blue orchid took over 3 years to develop.

According to the grower, the blue color comes from a patented process that takes between 48 and 50 hours to achieve. There’s the rub-- a patented process. The grower’s secret. All I can find out about this process is that it’s proprietary-- an injection of dye at the time the orchid sets the buds. But, that’s ok. And, it’s nothing new. We buy different ingredients to get the bluest of blues in our hydrangeas, so why not orchids? Natural chemicals in the soil always affect the color of certain flowers. So, no mad Dr. Frankenstein here—it’s just our knowledge of plants and cultivation taking us to different heights and new challenges.

The grower says the orchid buds on the same stem will come out blue as well. Future orchids blooming next season will be white, like a regular white Phaleanopsis. If you think these “secrets” are a little bit on the weird and mysterious side, think again. Many of the flowers we love and purchase stand up to rain, heat, humidity and other nasties because they were developed by dedicated horticultural scientists. Not in a freak show lab, but by hard working, serious growers that dedicate their lives to developing better strains of plants for our climates. For example, the lowly petunia usually doesn’t stand up great to big heavy rainstorms, and it’s been the hard work of the folks from the famous “Proven Winners” group to encourage its growers to produce plants that will stand up to the elements.

A glimpse into how this elusive “patented process” in toying with the growth of plants are achieved, look at the way we’ve seen hydrangeas go from one- time bloomers to blooming all summer long with the Forever and Ever series. The new tree hydrangea, Pinky Winky, developed by the Dutch, is grown to have a spray of pink blush on its blooms. This isn’t black magic. It’s a process by which the tissue, in certain stages of development, is tweaked to take advantage of certain melanins, or colors.

Orchids are amazing species. Their pollination habits lend themselves to tweaking, cross pollinating, and capturing the seeds. Some of the most beautiful varieties have come out of the hard labor of these “artistic” researchers. Take a look at the Cymbidium orchid. These orchids have to be the showiest in the orchid world. Their stems are literally stuffed with flowers of all colors. Almost resembling a Gladiolus, the Cymbidium orchids put on a show in your house for months. Unlike most orchids, the Cymbidium can also do well in very cool temperatures as low as 28 degrees for a period of time. That drafty spot in your house need not be without an orchid. The orchid growers have scooped up the Cymbidium orchid and made good use of its tolerance and abundance of flowers. Of all the orchids, these flowers last the longest indoors, and you will find all the colors you can imagine in this hardy plant.

Never fear an orchid. They may seem like a challenge, but, truly, they are just doing their own thing, taking a little while longer to rebloom, and are pretty relaxed as far as houseplants go. If you water and gently fertilize them weekly, and keep in a warmish, light area, they will provide you with years of payback. And where can you get a houseplant with non-stop blooms for 3 months? The answer is in an orchid. As they say, “try one today”!

By Pat Dumas

A Few Tips on my Mind for February

The stinkbugs are coming out of their hiding places in the house again.  I know spider webs are a drag in the house, but, I’ve seen more of these little devils caught dead in them than in any other place. Try to let the spiders do their job. Also, ask our staff about a new anti- stinkbug product we have.

Bring bare branches from fruit trees, quince, and forsythia in the house for forcing in a vase of water. You’ll have gorgeous pre-season blooms, and it’s a good way to prune a bit from your outside shrubs. The Pussy Willows are popping out now in the woods, so check your bushes and cut a few. Keep them in water-less vases, or they’ll turn to green leaves.

Get a head start with vegetable plants. Seeds planted now in small containers and put up on a warm windowsill will be ready by the end of May to plant outside in your garden. Plant lettuce seeds directly outside in the cold soil. The elusive

SweetPea can be yours too if you direct seed them outside now. Both lettuce and sweetpeas love the cool weather.



Fresh from Ecuador!

Local boy intently eating a mango.

What does an Ecuadorian three-year-old boy, a professional surfer from Argentina, and a traveler from Germany have in common? They relish fresh fruit, and they eat it regularly and with pleasure, while in Ecuador.

The local mini-tienda with stacksof bananas
and piles of mangos & pineapples.

Can you imagine a child of the same age in the States, finding the same messy joy in eating a mango, as this wee boy is, while he sits outside his parents' mini-tienda, or convenience store? Can you picture surfers at the Jersey shore refueling with bananas and mangos after a session in the waves, as these surfers are, at the same tienda? Do you think tourists from Germany return from a trip to America, marveling about how fresh, sweet, and abundant our fruit is?

Probably not.

We live in a land of plenty, but we tend not to value freshness. Instead, we opt  for quantity not quality, and we want our food cheap and we want it now. What this means is that most of our fruit and veg (what´s not grown by the Sickles family, of course!) is harvested from far away and shipped long distances. To endure the the bumps of long-haul travel, fruit is picked long before it's ripe, thereby depriving it of its full potential of juicy delishouness. No doubt it´s been a long time, if ever, that we have savored tree-ripened fruit in the States.

A mango cut to order on the beach.

Here in Ecuador, in the tropics, fruit is everywhere and enjoyed every day, all day. The morning begins with an ensalada de frutas, with chunks of banana, mango, pineapple, and melon topped with yogurt and granola. For a snack before lunch, bowls of bananas or slices of watermelon--not chips or cookies--are put out at school. During meals, batidos, or fruit milkshakes, are the drink of choice, not sodas or beers. At restaurants or at simple stands on the road, the batidos are made right on the spot, in a blender, with your fruit of choice (I go for passion fruit), raw sugar, milk or water, and ice. If you are wilting in the heat

A passion fruit batitdo.

at the beach, keep an eye out for a vendor to pass you, selling fruit cut to order or fresh, green coconuts, the size of an alien´s head, whose tops have been cut off with a machete so that you can drink the rehydrating water within with a straw.

A recent catch of camarones, or shrimp.

Ecuadorians probably don't think twice about how fresh their fruit is.    It's just how it is here--grown, cultivated, and harvested close by. And it's not just the fruit that's incredibly fresh, but also vegetables and fish. Why import food from other countries and provinces,when there's so much good prodcuts nearby, in the mountains, in the ocean, and in your backyard? It's the opposite for us in New Jersey. We may live in the Garden State, but most of our produce comes from the other side of the country or from other hemispheres. We may frolic on the Jersey shore, but the fish we enjoy at local restaurants arrives frozen from far away waters.

Men tending to fresh veg.

Since my fellow tourists and I know that we won´t be able to enjoy fruit or fish this fresh--or this cheap!--when we return to our home countries, we're savoring as much of it as we can now. Furthermore, when I do come back, I plan to buy, when I can, only local produce, in an attempt to restore and demand a regular supply of  fresh food. It's better for us and the earth, and for our tastebuds.

With only four days left at the beach, I am heading off to eat some ceviche for lunch, maybe made with those recently harvested camarones.

Eat fresh!
Diana the Cheesemonger

Life, Love and Chocolate

“My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Forrest Gump

I was watching that classic American film the other day while huffing and puffing away on my treadmill.  I started thinking about life and chocolate (not a very productive thing to do on a treadmill) and how Forrest’s momma had hit the nail right on the head with her eloquently simple anecdote.  When I was growing up, my own mother would invite friends over to play bridge in the afternoons.  On occasion, I would sneak into the See’s candy box reserved for the guests, and poke my finger into the bottom of all the candies to see which one was worth eating. If something yucky oozed out, like cherry or cream filling, I moved on. When I found solid chocolate, through and through, that piece was mine for the savoring. Of course, I was eventually found out when the ladies noticed the holes in the bottoms of their treats!

www.tastespotting.com

Chocolate has always held a very fond place in my heart and I am not alone in my chocolate reverie. There are chocolate lovers in every corner of the globe:   The Spanish eat their sugar coated churros for breakfast, dipped in a steaming bowl of thick, syrupy hot chocolate, the Germans get chocolate massages at the annual Chocolate Festival in Tubingen, and the World Chocolate Masters will explore the mystical origins of cocoa and the Aztec civilization while creating masterpieces at this year’s event in Paris.  I would be remiss if I did not mention Le Salon du Chocolat, a trade show that exhibits in eight countries and includes a fashion show in which the dresses are made out of chocolate!  One can even learn all about chocolate by staying at a new exclusive hotel on an actual cocoa plantation in St. Lucia, The Hotel Chocolat.  The same company offers an upscale chocolate tasting at their attractive shop on Newbury Street in Boston.

The best news of all for chocolate lovers is that, according to a number of recent studies, chocolate appears to have a lengthy list of health benefits that few foods can match.  According to Sarah Jane Evans, founder of the UK’s Academy of Chocolate and author of the new book, Chocolate Unwrapped, this super food has the highest concentration of flavonoids (a heart-healthy antioxidant found in plants) of any source on the planet, more than spinach, blueberries or green tea!  Chocolate has also been shown to improve one’s mood and reduce tension.  Although both Casanova and the Aztec emperor Montezuma reputedly drank chocolate for its aphrodisiac properties, the jury is still out on that claim.

www.pocodolce.com

      As for me, I love chocolate most of all because it tastes so delicious!  And with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I am looking past the usual choices in the chocolate department and getting a little more creative.  My latest favorite indulgence is Poco Dolce.  The owner of this award winning company, Kathy Willey endeavors to “stay on the savory side of sweet” and she does so impeccably.  Try the Espresso Toffee Double Shot Covered in Bittersweet Chocolate, tucked in a small silver bag, but packing a huge punch of flavor, or the Sesame Toffee Tiles which won the 2010 NASFT SOFI Gold Award for Outstanding Chocolate.

      Another chocolate worth checking out is Madecasse from Africa, where 85% of the world’s cocoa comes from, although less than 1% is actually made there.  This company was started by Peace Corps volunteers who really know Madagascar and work with the local people to create a unique and complex chocolate in varying intensities.  Pure Dark is another handcrafted, all natural chocolate with beautiful packaging and an earthy richness.  Some of the bars are studded with plump, dried fruits and chunky nuts, but I love the slab, which is almost an inch thick and chock-full of roasted cocoa nibs.

      Summerdown Mints are a special find on the Sickles Market’s chocolate shelf.  This extraordinary product hails from a small farm in England where they have dedicated themselves to bringing the once rare English black Mitcham mint plant back from near extinction.  This mint is like nothing you have ever tasted: crisp, cool and intense, like mountain air.  Another delightful Valentine’s gift is the French Fondue au Chocolat Noir, a decadent little treat in a stoneware crock that you just heat up and serve with fresh fruits, nuts, shortbreads or cakes.  The crock keeps the chocolate warm and melted for almost an hour!

    

   We always stay home on Valentine’s eve since it is one of the busiest nights out in the restaurant world. I love to cook up a romantic dinner for two and always finish with something chocolate. This year I am thinking about Soft Chocolate Cookies with Grapefruit and Star Anise and a scoop of Jeni’s Dark Chocolate Ice Cream on the side.  If I get too busy to cook dessert, I may just bring home a couple of dark chocolate Cake Pops, lovingly prepared by our own Paula in the bakery.  They are pretty hard to pass up!

      Wherever you find yourself this Valentine’s Day, indulge in a little chocolate to sweeten the day!

Enjoy!

Cheri the Cheesemonger

From little seeds…

Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the store

And the dimes are the things that he needs,

And I've been to buy them in seasons before

But have thought of them merely as seeds;

But it flashed through my mind as I took them this time,
You purchased a miracle here for a dime.

- Edgar A. Guest, A Package of Seeds

Pips, nuts, and kernels; spores, berries, and grains. Whatever you call them, seed is the beginning of a plants life. That little speck of combined DNA that falls off dried flowers or fruit is the beginning of a whole new generation. We thank the bees for that one.

The seeds of great oaks and pines replant our forests while providing food for birds and mammals. Seeds make their presence known whether you plant them or not. They float in the air from a poofed out fuzzy dandelion in the spring, and embed themselves all over our yards. Little helicopters from the flowers of the invasive Swamp Maple clutter our driveways and lawns with a mess that turns into a profusion of maple saplings. It’s a reproductive hurricane out there, and we can capitalize on it in our own gardens.

If you’ve got a bit of patience and a dream for the future, you can plant your own flowers and vegetables from these little dynamic capsules. In fact, the allure of the seed packet over the last 150 years has drawn many a gardener to their present day passion. The more opulent the colors and design, the more we want to buy them. They certainly lured me in when I was young, and I still haven’t given up. It’s also a great way to grow plant varieties that are hard to find.

The colorful and alluring seed displays in stores this time of year are hard to pass by. Packets designed with bright and exotic colors lure us with promises of opulent flower and vegetable gardens. Choosing the right seed is not hard. You just have to know what all the seed packet vocabulary means and how it will work for your garden.

When you turn a seed packet to the back, you’ll see it has some simple information which is not hard to understand. Perennial, Annual or Biennial are some of the terms you might find. This will tell you if the plant survives for one year, and is an annual, or comes back every year from deep roots — a perennial. A biennial is a little different-- it’s a plant that grows leaves the first year, and adds flowers the next year. After that, the plants’ life is over. The trick is to keep biennials coming back from it’s re-seeding on the ground. Hollyhocks are a great example of a beautiful, old-fashioned biennial, and getting them to come back in a hot, sunny and dry garden is easy.


Re-seeding is a gift from our flowers. A flower that easily drops its seed to the ground and survives through winter to grow new plants in the summer is a bounty for every gardener. Flowers like Cosmos and Morning Glory are great examples of flowers that re-seed. Summer after summer you’ll see new versions of Morning Glory sprouting all over with the most amazing colors. The bees don’t stick to just one variety, so, with Morning Glories, you’ll see fabulous varieties from long ago sprouting every year from dropped seed. It’s a page from the Morning Glory history book. Varieties that have bloomed in long ago gardens will grace you with a visit. Cosmos reseed like wildfire, and make the perfect wildflower field in places where you want a big show.


Planting depth, transplant spacing, days to germination, and other useful facts are also included on the backs of the seed envelope. The depth is how deep to plant the seed and the transplant spacing is how close to one another they should be planted when transplanting out into the garden. Usually, the smaller the seed, the less deep you plant. Tiny, almost microscopic seeds like Portulaca and Petunia can just be patted on the soil’s surface. You’ll also want to know how long (under normally warm circumstances) the seed will take to germinate—or pop out of the ground, and how long it will take to produce a vegetable or a flower- (days until harvest). Some seed packets may give a little more info in terms such as needs “stratification” or “bottom heat”. Stratification is just a chilling of the seed for a couple of months before planting, and bottom heat under seed pots helps encourage germination. A little bottom heat—whether suggested or not, is always helpful. Turning on the old heating pad on low, and setting your planted pots over them for a couple of hours a day is always a good trick for helping seeds germinate.


Choosing pots for your seeds is a cinch. Peat pots are terrific for planting in- they are biodegradable, and you can plant your growing plant right in the ground- pot and all. If you’ve got Styrofoam cups laying about the house, those are good too if you want to keep them out of the landfill for awhile. The soil for your seeds is an easy choice. Regular potting soil is fine, if it’s not too wet. Choosing specially formulated seed -starting soil is one step better. It’s a soil-less mix that keeps the seed alive and viable—preventing rot and damping-off, which is a fungal disease that kills young seedlings.

When planting individual seeds in pots, don’t crowd them. One or two seeds per pot is quite enough since you’ll have full blown greenery filling them up before you know it. If the seed is as big as a chocolate chip, then one seed per pot will do. You can arrange all the little pots in a big tray which catches the water and keeps them side by side for good humidity.

Caring for your newly planted seeds is full of anticipation. Keeping the seeded pots on a warm, bright windowsill encourages them to sprout as will a little bottom heat if you can provide it. When watering newly planted seeds, a “spritz” from a water bottle is the perfect accessory. It doesn’t flood the medium with water and the seeds get a good, light misting. After greenery appears, you can pour a little water in daily when the soil is dry. I find that putting a piece of plastic wrap over each pot speeds up germination. It provides a greenhouse effect that keeps humidity, heat and moisture in. The warmer it is, the faster your seeds will swell and sprout.

Once you see the first shoots of greenery emerging, you can remove the plastic and enjoy the fast growth. Seedlings grow like wildfire, and before you know it, you may need to transfer them to bigger pots to await the outdoors. Planting seeds in January and February usually gives enough lead time to having perfectly sized plants to put in your garden in May and June.

Once the warm spring weather arrives and there is no chance of frost, your plants can go outside. For the first week, “harden the plants off” by putting them outside and out of the sun during the day to adapt. Gradually move them towards more sun exposure outdoors as they grow used to their new environment. Here at the greenhouse, we don’t have a fancy set up at all for that. Old windows cover a trench where the seedlings are growing outside. During the day, the windows are off the trench and during the night they are put back on to keep in warmth. Putting seedling pots outside on a shelf draped in removable plastic sheeting will provide the same benefit. It may not look so beautiful, but it does the trick. Instant greenhouse! After a week or so getting used to the outdoors, you can plant your plants, pot and all, into the garden and watch them shine. There’s nothing like growing from seed to flower, fruit or vegetable. It’s a satisfaction hard to explain. Simple, yet full of promise.

I have grown plants by seed that I can never find anywhere else. A favorite is a vine called Cup and Saucer Vine that grow 4 inches a day when they take off, and are full of large cup-shaped purple flowers at the end of summer. A rare tomato like Yellow Plum and old-fashioned flowers like Hollyhocks are easy when starting early.

My favorite seeds by far are the endless species of funky, demented, twisted and gorgeous gourds for drying and making birdhouses. As with Morning Glories, you never know what re-seeding from gourds will produce. In fact, the great geneticist Gregor Mendel experimented with gourds and their offspring before introducing his famous theories. What he found is that a seed contains an amazing history of what has gone before it. If you plant that seeds’ babies, and babies of those babies, you never know what you’re going to get!
Seeds may not look like much at first when opening up the pretty colored packets, but, like children, acorns and oaks, they always grow into something fine and wonderful with care, and a lot of passion.

By Patricia Dumas

Being Resourceful

Call me old-fashioned, but there is just something about curling up with a good book and a cozy chenille blanket on a wintry evening, that an ipad or Kindle can’t replicate. I love the feel of the paper on my fingertips, the faint scent of ink, the whisper of the pages as they turn. Somehow the glare of the computer screen just doesn’t do it for me. When I was living in the centre-ville of Bordeaux France during my college days, my tiny apartment shared a wall with a book binding shop. Although I wasn’t keen on the pounding that started at about 6:30 every morning, I did love to peer at the colorful endpapers and leather jackets in the window. To this day, I find books hard to pass up, and often give and receive them during the holiday season. Food-related tomes are especially tempting to me, although even I am starting to reach my saturation point in the cookbook department. Instead, I am leaning more towards resources for entertaining guests, expanding my culinary knowledge base, and even solving everyday cooking quandaries.


Every kitchen should have a basic food reference book and there are a few excellent volumes to choose from. The Larousse Gastronomique was first published in France in 1938 and has been the authoritative classic in the US since the early ‘60’s. The book features everything from food and tools of the trade to famous chefs and food-related occupations. There are also 3800 recipes included in this extensive work. The Oxford Companion To Food by Alan Davidson is the other highly respected food dictionary, with over 2500 carefully cross-referenced entries. Davidson is highly accurate and often quite witty (this is the one I own), discussing everything from aardvarks to zabaglioni, but not a recipe to be found within.

If you are feeling adventurous in the kitchen and want to experiment with different combinations of foods and flavors, The Flavor Bible (Page/Dornenburg) may be right up your alley. This guide relies on the wisdom of an impressive number of well-respected chefs and culinary experts as it walks you through the ABC’s of “the language of food,” otherwise known as flavor. It has some handy matchmaking charts which pair up different flavor affinities, such as yams+apples+cream+ginger, or white asparagus+hazelnuts+parmesan cheese+white truffle oil. Another useful reference which I received for Christmas this year is The Herb & Spice Companion (Webb/Craze). Not only a dictionary, this little collection offers culinary, medicinal and cosmetic uses as well as the history and characteristics of herbs and spices. The chapter in the back offers recipes for popular spice combinations such as Garam Masala, Chinese Five Spice, and French Quatre-Epices.

What do you do when you are making an Italian dessert and realize that you don’t have the mascarpone that the recipe calls for? There is a useful little reference that offers invaluable advice such as substituting fresh cream cheese whipped with a little butter or heavy cream in place of the mascarpone. Do you have a recipe for persimmon cake and no persimmons? Try mangoes instead, or equal parts mashed banana and drained, crushed pineapple. I found these suggestions and more in Epstein’s Substituting Ingredients. And if you are tired of drinking the same Chardonnay or Merlot every night? Time to move beyond “wine’s usual suspects” and check out Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine. In his latest wine guide, Mark Oldman has even included a nifty little chart which suggests “Brave New Pours” as alternatives to the standard glasses of wine. If you usually drink Cabernet, try a glass of Malbec, Cahors or a red from Portugal. Prefer Pinot Grigio? Try the less traveled road of the Torrontes or the Muscadet. The suggested wines are, for the most part, quite reasonably priced and easy to find.

My most cherished book gifted to me this Christmas is not only a cheesemonger’s dream, but an essential reference for any cheese lover’s kitchen: Mastering Cheese, by maitre fromager, Max McCalman (co-authored with David Gibbons). Everything you need to know to understand real artisanal cheese, from where it comes from and how to buy it, as well as to how to serve it, can be found in this book. McCalman includes foolproof guidelines for wine and cheese and even beer and cheese tastings! And our cheese department at Sickles carries the majority of the cheeses discussed in this spectacular volume.

Most of these publications are available in the Kindle format, and you can probably find the same information by downloading an app onto your iphone, but for those of you who still enjoy the beauty of the written word tucked up on your kitchen shelves, grab a glass of a “brave new pour,” and curl up in an armchair with one of these culinary references. Not a bad way to spend a winter’s evening.

Enjoy!

Cheri The Cheesemonger