Emma's Eats Gift Guides: Whimsey

images via Anthropologie

Some people have everything they NEED for their kitchen, but you can never have everything you WANT for your kitchen, and then of course sometimes the line between need and want gets blurred but that is another conversation for another time.  Anyways, this whimsical gift guide is all about getting someone something fun that they don't need but want.  There are all sorts of fun measuring cups out there, like these ceramic flower ones, they probably won't completely replace your utilitarian stainless steel ones, but your stainless steel ones cant double as a small serving dish for nuts or tapenade in a pinch.  I love the whole idea of recipe bookmarks and this pack of 100 from Anthropologie, with fun patterns printed on card stock would make a great stocking stuffer (that is, if it were still available, but I am keeping them on here anyways, as inspiration.  There are similar products out there if you look, here is one I found).  And when you give these to someone, you are helping them keep track of the amazing recipes they want to make, possibly for you, so you benefit too.  An unusual apron is a fun way to add some glamour to a friends cooking, you can get ones that look like adorable dresses, much more flattering to wear when you are having company over than your old stained, sturdy cotton one.  I love this purple silverware, its got a classic shape but the color is anything but.  Imagine it with crisp white linens, and you have a gift for someone who wants their table settings to pop.  I like giving ornaments as gifts, at this time of year they are everywhere and if you take a minute or two to look at them wherever you are you can pick up the perfect one for everyone on your list by the time you get your other shopping done.  I love this set of russian tea ornaments, but there are millions of food related ornaments to pick from, get your friend who always has a cup of coffee in her hand a mini coffee mug one, the friend who foisted bag after bag of zucchini on you needs a blown glass zucchini for their tree.  Also, the right ornament paired with a gift card or a bottle of wine is a nice way to personalize the gift.  Lastly, everyone needs a bottle opener, but how many people have fun ones?  This old fashioned key would be great to give the beer lover in your life, pair it with a nice six pack for a fun hostess gift, or it would make a perfect stocking stuffer.                 

Emma's Eats Gift Guides: Cookbooks

I have a thing for cookbooks, I love them, and I think you should too.  My thought is that you can never have too many cookbooks, and to that end I feel they make fabulous presents.  I picked out a few of my favorites to share with you, and I may be completely biased because, after all, they are my favorites, but I think they would make good gifts for anyone.  

   

Nigella Lawson is my favorite cookbook author, and I would recommend any and all of her books.  Her recipes are fabulous and the way she writes makes you feel like she is your favorite, decidedly not dieting, aunt who popped in for a chat.  We have a running joke in my family about how in the event of a divorce my dad is going to marry Nigella, and I am a-ok with that.  I would also move to London to be her unpaid intern, I'm just saying.  So Nigella, if you ever need a hand (I can babysit or be an amateur therapist with my psych degree or walk your dog....), call me.   

Pioneer Woman, or P dub or PW or whatever you want to call her, the blogger turned cookbook author turned autobiographer turned subject of a future major motion picture has a great cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, with what can only be described as cowboy food.  We are basically besties because I sat in the front row when she spoke at the National Book Festival and she waved to me, and then she signed my cookbook.  I must admit though, I read her blog long before I met her and I imagined her voice differently and it really threw me hearing her for real.  But her food is good.   

Julia Child cookbooks are a bit of a classic, I have Mastering the Art of French Cooking (volumes 1 & 2) (and yes I was inspired by the book Julie and Julia) and they are really informative books.  They are detailed and frequently have many, many steps in a recipe, no shortcuts here, but every step is well explained and various other possible methods are outlined.  And sometimes a girl needs to have a recipe that calls for beating nearly an entire pound of butter with a rolling pin in her possession, just in case.      

The Art of Simple Food is one of those cookbooks with a little of everything in it, but what I really like about it is that at the end of the recipes there are suggestions for ways to tweak them.  For example there is a basic almond biscotti recipe but at the end there are several suggestions about substituting various nuts and dried fruits and spices and the quantities of each that would work in the recipe.  There are also good descriptions of basic techniques (which you may not think you need, but you might be surprised, I really had no idea what braising was until Alice told me) and the illustrations are gorgeous.

Of Tide and Thyme is a Junior League of Annapolis cookbook that my family has given to many people over the years.  The recipes are great and while you can get it online at Amazon or Borders, because it is a Junior League cookbook you might say that it isn't a super well known title.  And because I love to get people presents that they don't think of asking for but will love, this book is perfect.  If I had to classify it, I would say it has it's eye on casual entertaining.  Also, the breakfast strata type recipes are amazing.

Emma's Eats Gift Guides: Meat

Images from Williams-Sonoma

Some people are unabashedly meat eaters, solidly in the carnivore camp, and while I wouldn't quite put myself in that category I do sympathize and thus have come up with some ideas for the steak and potatoes types out there.  I thought I would start with bacon, the gateway meat (everyone loves bacon, even vegetarians have professed a fondness for smelling the stuff cooking).  I normally bake my bacon because I am lazy and it is easy, but for the slightly more motivated bacon cooker, a bacon press will help the bacon cook more evenly and quickly, and as an added bonus, you can use it to make a panini.  I am a big fan of using scissors in the kitchen, after all we all learned to use scissors before knives (at least I hope so....) and hacking away at a hunk of meat with a big knife seems much more dangerous and difficult than using poultry shears.  And Martha Stewart uses them, so there's that.  Mini grilling thermometers are adorable and are perfect for someone who throws summer BBQ's and wants to make sure that every steak is cooked to the perfect temperature.  Pair the thermometers with a carving board, little pyramids keep the meat from sliding around and the well traps any juices that escape, and you have the perfect gift for grilling and serving.  For the serious meat lover a sausage stuffer is an original gift idea, this one attaches to a KitchenAid mixer, and opens up a whole world of gourmet ground meat products.                       

Emma's Eats Gift Guides: Gadgets

Images from Target

According to my dictionary a gadget is a "small mechanical device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one," and these are gifts for the people that love them.  The beauty of gadgets is that you can find one that can make life easier for just about anyone, and at any price range.  There are tons of gadgets out there, so I am only featuring a few that take your basic kitchen stuff and bumps it up a notch, upgrades it to something a little more gift-worthy.  A scale is like an upgraded set of measuring cups, millions of people bake weight instead of volume (kind of like how everyone else is all about the metric system, and America would rather not, thanks but no thanks) anyways, they swear by it and it is a more accurate form of measurement.  You may want to include a cookbook with weight measurements in it though, such as Ratio by Michael Ruhlman.  I developed a fondness for electric kettles when I lived in Ireland, they heat water more quickly than a standard kettle on the stovetop and they shut themselves off automatically when the water boils so there is no putting water on for tea, getting distracted and forgetting it on the stove.  My grandmother has one and LOVES it.  An immersion blender is a cooler blender.  Have you ever made a blended soup?  Transferring it to the blender and back to the pot is a huge pain, and there is the explosion factor when you blend hot soup that makes it exciting, but I would rather not have to worry about nearly boiling soup ending up coating my entire kitchen, enter the immersion blender.  Thinking about using a traditional blender over an immersion one doesn't really seem like that big of a deal until you do it for the first time and then you will see, life is better on the immersion side.  A programmable crock pot is pretty self explanatory, crock pots aren't exactly considered sexy, but give  a foodie who works all day complete control of the meal that is cooking all day on their counter and it is like having a personal mini robot chef in a way.  My last suggestion, a Thermos food jar, is also not very sexy, but according the Thermos people, it can keep hot food hot for 5 hours and cold food cold for 7, hello upgraded tupperware and a fabulous bag lunch, sometimes all a girl needs to get through the morning is the thought of a luscious lunch awaiting her.

Emma's Eats Gift Guides: Baking

Images from Sur la table

It's December and you know what that means, time to start doing some serious shopping.  I thought I would put together a few ideas for those of you who have foodies in your lives.  Now some people may not be excited to get a good quality baking sheet for Christmas, these are not the kind of people I have in mind for these presents.  Speaking of which, my suggestions for the baker in your life includes jellyroll pans, they are heavy duty and can be used for baking cookies or roasting vegetables or anything in between.  Combine the pans with silicone mats to put on them for baking and a cooling rack for when they come out of the oven and you have a great gift for someone who is just starting to get into baking or moving out on their own and now needs to stock their kitchen from scratch.  For the more established baker who already has everything, cookies cutters and cupcake papers in nontraditional shapes and colors are a fun idea.  A tiered server or cake stand for dishing those treats up to family and friends can work as a gift for just about anyone who likes to bake, there are so many to pick from that you can find one to match any personality.  And of course there are always cookbooks, because who doesn't love a new cookbook?

Molasses Cookies

I love the holiday season.  I start listening to Christmas music on the drive home from Thanksgiving dinner and don't stop until December 25.  I bake dozens of cookies, I mull wine, and drink hot spiced cider.  I watch Love Actually at least once in the month of December every year.  I like looking for that perfect present for everyone on my list.  Count me in for Christmas parties, driving around looking at lights and Christmas pageants, I love it all.  And so, I am kicking off my holiday baking today with these molasses cookies.  I love molasses cookies, my aunt makes the best (she always used to have a jar of molasses cookies for me and a jar of snickerdoodles for my sister every time we came to visit), unfortunately I seem to have lost her recipe somewhere along the way when I moved back east from Portland, so this recipe I found on Beach Home Companion will have to do for now.  Don't get me wrong, these molasses cookies are absolutely delicious (my dad had already eaten 3 by the time the last batch was out of the oven), but they are a thinner, crisper version instead of the thick, chewy ones I grew up with.  These thin ones though, the sugar caramelizes a bit on the edges and your first bite is a carmely, slightly spicy crunch which is pretty fabulous.  The recipe can be found here.      
 

Start by mixing the dry ingredients together.

Then mix the wet together.

Now, this is tricky, combine the wet and the dry.  Then you have to chill the dough until it hardens, which happens fairly quickly, I waited about an hour.

Once the dough is properly chilled, scoop out about a tablespoon at a time, roll each blob of dough into a ball and roll it in sugar.  Make sure you space the cookies out because they will spread.  The warmer the dough gets the harder it will be to work with, it will start sticking to your hands, so work quickly and put it back into the fridge after you fill up a tray so it can firm back up before you do the next one.

The recipe says to flatten the balls slightly with the bottom of a glass, which I did 2 out of 3 times, and it made no difference, so smush them a bit if you want, it is kind of fun, but you don't need to.

Bake for about 10 minutes, they will make your house smell quite nice, and enjoy.

Sunday Meat Sauce

There is something deeply satisfying about having a giant vat of tomato sauce bubbling away on the stove, especially at this time of year, I guess it is the Italian in me.  And let me tell you, this is a giant vat of sauce, consider yourself warned.  The first time I made this I had to switch pots in the middle because, silly me, I thought six servings of tomato sauce would fit in the dutch oven.  They did not.  I have yet to meet the six people who can polish off the whole pot in one go.  This is another Food Network Magazine recipe, and can be found here.  It is delicious, but not very photogenic, and I got caught up in getting it all together and forgot to take pictures, so you will have to excuse the lack of pics and just imagine the pile of sausages and such.  I did tweak the recipe a bit, as usual.  I used only sweet italian sausages instead of half sweet and half hot, I omitted the beef shin and I baked the meatballs because it is so much easier than browning them in batches and makes for a less greasy sauce.  The first time I made this I browned the meatballs in batches and they were falling apart  and it took me FOREVER and it brought me to the edge of a nervous breakdown, causing me to proclaim that everyone had better savor the sauce that we had because I would never be making it again, ever.  It was so good though that I reconsidered that proclamation by the end of the meal.

Start out by making the meatballs, I really like these meatballs, but you could always substitute your favorites.  Also, the recipe tells you to make 16, which I feel is ridiculous, so I made 50 about the size of walnuts, much better than 16 softball sized meatballs.  Then brown then in the pot or bake them, which is so much easier.  Next brown the sausages, which I do in the pot, and set aside.

Next you take the onion and garlic, which are just quartered and smashed respectively (you cook the sauce for long enough that they basically fall apart anyways, so there is no need to chop) and cook it until it softens.

Then you basically toss everything in the giant pot, the tomatoes and tomato paste, the various meats, some water and a bunch of bay leaves and let it simmer, preferably all day long.  I am of the school where the longer it cooks the better with regards to tomato sauce, the melding of flavors and whatnot and serve it over pasta with some nice crusty bread to soak up all the sauce.