Food is Food

Over the past year I've gotten to try a lot of speciality foods. Here are some of my absolute favorite sweet and savory treats. 

This year I fell in love with the products from Tonewood Maple. They make maple products in many different forms, but also highlight different styles and flavors of maple. If you think as I did, “maple is maple” there’s a reason for that. In many places, such as a certain well-known province of Canada, all the maple products are processed together. So you don’t get different flavors from different estates, just different grades. 

Tonewood offers single estate maple syrups in their grade collection in golden delicate, amber rich and dark robust flavor profiles, and each are completely different. These are maple products that reflect place, just like wine! Some are earthy, some are spicy, but they all have a depth of flavor missing from other maple syrups. Honestly this is the best maple syrup I’ve ever tasted. 

In addition to syrup, they offer maple cream, which has the most divine, melt-in-your-mouth buttery consistency. You’d swear there is butter in the product but it’s just pure maple. 

The other very cool product they offer is their award winning maple cube. It’s solid and you grate it to get chips or flakes that are lovely on a cheese plate but also can be a great topping for ice cream, salads, cereal or more. 

Another award-winning product that knocked my socks off this year at the Fancy Food Show was Pistacchiosa, a Sicilian pistachio spread with extra virgin olive oil. This unbelievably creamy smooth and lucious spread is intensely flavored with the best pistachios in the world. While you could just smear it on toast, because it’s not very sweet, you can use it in recipes as well. Try it in ice cream or gelato, add it to whipped cream or pastry cream to make a cake or eclair filling or slather it on fresh ricotta or goat cheese. 

I have to admit to being more in the savory than sweet camp. And I love Dijon style mustard! In Paris just past the famous Ladurée tea shop, famous for French macarons, you will find at the Place de la Madeleine  the wonderful food shop Fauchon and the Maille mustard boutique. Step into the shop and there are so many different flavors of fresh, pungent and scrumptious mustard on tap! 

Maille makes outstanding mustard, so much brighter and more intense than what you can get from most other brands. Fortunately their products are available online, especially the more fantastic flavored mustards like the ones in the Exotique collection. It features mango and Thai spices, fig and coriander, apricot and curry and saffron and Isigny creme fraiche. This gift will make any mustard lover swoon! 

Last but not least I recently attended a party thrown by Touch of Modern, which is a rather masculine site that has flash sales. They have a gourmet category that often has some pretty amazing deals on really great stuff. You never know what they will have, but I recently saw the best price I’d ever seen on jamon Iberico de bellota as well as Three Jerks beef jerky made from filet mignon. 

They also offer some other quirky things like Himalayan salt shot glasses and Stu's Mixology Set for making bloody mary's, which includes powdered key lime and sweet corn to rim your glasses. 

And now the 

Thanks to Tonewood Maple and Maille mustard I am giving away a maple cube and a set of the Exotique mustards. 

Please let me know if you prefer savory or sweet treats, which ONE item you are interested in winning. You must have a US mailing address to win. You MUST leave your email address in the field where it is requested, it will not be visible to the public only to me. DO NOT leave your email address in the body of your comment, if you do, I will delete it. Only one entry per person! I will choose the winners at random on December 18th, 2015.

Good Morning!  What did you do this weekend?  I was flying solo so I gave my kids 11 baths (to kill time... they've never been so clean) and we made Christmas cookies!  I can't wait to share them with you this week.  What are your favorites to make?  I love to stick to my usuals as well as try out new recipes.  Believe it or not, I don't make these classic Peanut Butter Blossoms every year but I knew my kids would love to unwrap (and eat) the kisses (also killed a lot of time).  I followed this recipe with one variation: I browned the butter on the stove and let it cool in the fridge for a bit before mixing it in with everything.  If you're wondering why I did that, well, I happen to think browning butter makes everything better.  Especially when there's peanut butter involved!

So tell me... what else should I make this year?    

I think I've posted this exact same thing before but oh well. It's just so good. You know McDonalds has an Egg Mc Muffin? Well, this is that. But at home. The only caveat is that you need english muffins which are generally not sold in Sweden (but occasionally they can be found at The English Shop). So you either need to bake them yourself, which is quite hard work (anyone has a failproof recipe?) or you need to find them somewhere else. I found these particular ones in my freezer, since I stocked up last summer. 

Not a recipe as much as an idea - soft tortillas, filled with spiced pork tenderloin, softened peppers and onion, a wonderful guacamole, pickled red onion, grated cheese, and sour cream. 

Home Baked isn't strictly a dessert book, it also contains savory baked goods, but the vast majority of the recipes are for sweets with just one section dedicated to breads (and a few recipes for dog biscuits). This book is mammoth! It has over 150 recipes for everything from Viennoiserie to cakes, cookies, pies and patisserie. 

What sets the book apart is that the instructions are incredibly clear and well written and for the most part feel very easy to accomplish. The photographs are appealing as are the creative flavor combinations like Zaatar, Carrot Banana Cake, Chocolate Olive Oil Cake with Grapefruit, Peach and Berry Tarts with Buttermilk Custard and Fig, Apricot, Stilton and Goat Cheese Tart.
Who's it for? Any baking enthusiast or as the author says, "domestic adventurer." 

Francois Payard the author of Payard Cookies is a third generation French pastry chef. He was named pastry chef of the year by both the James Beard Foundation and Bon Appetit magazine. He is also a cookie monster. Ok, not a monster but a self-proclaimed lover of cookies. As you might imagine, his cookies are not rustic or homey, they are elegant, sophisticated and well, fancy. 

This is not a book for beginners but for someone with a stand mixer, a scale (everyone should really have one). rolls of parchment paper, a pastry bag and tips as well as silicone baking mats and in some cases, a candy thermometer. The cookies are stunning and involved. For example the Walnut Cookie Bars are composed of a crust, walnut filling, almond cream and a topping.
Who’s it for? Anyone looking to impress or learn some professional pastry techniques. 

I thought I’d seen it all, until Cookies & Beer came around. Yes, it is what it sounds like, a book of cookie recipes with beer pairings. Like a romantic comedy with a car chase thrown in, I suppose it might bridge a divide between two possibly divergent groups, in this case beer lovers and cookie lovers. 

The recipes come from brewers as well as acclaimed pastry chefs from around the country—such as William Werner and Christopher Elbow. The book has both traditional and modern recipes—there are manly cookies with bacon, savory cookies as well as some classics like Russian Tea Cakes and several versions of chocolate chip cookies. There are even cookies with spent grain (from making beer) or beer in the batter.

The recipes are mostly really easy and you can skip the beer if it’s not your thing, or put a whole new spin on the traditional cookie party.
Who’s it for? Obviously cookie and beer lovers!

Guittard Chocolate Cookbook was written by Amy Guittard, the great, great granddaughter of the founder of the Guittard chocolate company. It was published earlier this year but it has lots of holiday appropriate recipes, such as Chocolate Trifle, Chocolate Almond Ginger Bark and Jim's Special Fudge so I'm including it.


I love the use of light rye flour in recipes like Chocolate Pistachio Sables, Salted Chocolate Shortbread and Morning Muffins made with applesauce and oats. The recipes are geared for the home baker and generally don't require any fancy techniques. The book has recipes for cookies and bars, breakfast pastries, cakes, puddings and confections.The recipes use Guittard chocolate, and the chips at very least are widely available in supermarkets.
Who's it for? Chocolate lovers!

one small bowl 

50 g pistachios (unsalted) 

1 tbsp olive oil

140 g feta cheese

large handful of coriander leaves (or two handfuls, really. Lots!)

1/2 garlic clove 

1/2 tsp sambal oelek (feel free to use red chili instead, and as much as you'd like - I like things mild...) 

zest and juice from 1/2 lemon 

2-3 tbsp greek yogurt 

Use a food processor. Start with the nuts and the oil and process briefly until coarsely chopped. Add everything else, and pulse until lovely and creamy. Taste to see if you want to adjust the seasonings. Then serve. Eat. Enjoy. Lick from bowl.