Blogs : CHOW Pick
CHOW Pick Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.
New Finds: Maple Bitters from Vermont
Vermont-based Urban Moonshine makes maple bitters using organic botanicals. Imbibe has a nice cocktail idea on its blog for using them, courtesy of John Gertsen of Drink in Boston. We think they’d be a delicious addition to our Log Cabin cocktail recipe: apple brandy, maple liqueur, sparkling apple cider, and lemon juice.
If you want to try your hand at making your own bitters, we also have easy recipes for grapefruit, saffron-cardamom, and cherry-vanilla, among others.
Urban Moonshine Maple Bitters, $10.99
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New Finds: The Grand Central Baking Book
The new cookbook from the minichain of Grand Central bakeries scattered throughout Portland and Seattle is full of simple, classic recipes: clafouti; rustic fruit tarts organized by season; “hand pies” filled with spicy potatoes or steak and onion; homemade graham cracker sandwich cookies filled with vanilla cream … the list goes on. It’s not a book of fancy trendy things, just stuff that is timelessly appealing, presented in a way that feels accessible and nonintimidating. It would be a nice gift for someone just getting interested in baking.
The Grand Central Baking Book, $30
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New Finds: Irresistible Peppermint Patties
Recchiuti Confections recently sent over some samples of its holiday chocolate lineup to the CHOW office, and though the truffles were good, printing some Christmas-related crap on top of the same old dark-chocolate ganache doesn’t really seem all that new or exciting. What was new, however, was the appearance of peppermint thins. They’re bite-sized, extremely minty, and coated with dark, intense chocolate. Now Recchiuti just needs to start making them the same size as those big York Peppermint Patties.
Recchiuti Peppermint Thins, $18 for a box of 24
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New Find: Never-Stick Brownie Pan
No more broken brownies or stuck-to-the-bottom brownies. This is like a springform pan for brownies or bar cookies, even Rice Krispies Treats. You simply cook the batter in a grid shape, then the bottom lifts out so each brownie is individually formed and needs no scraping out of the pan. Genius!
Slice Solutions 9×9 Inch Brownie Pan Set, $19.99
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New Finds: Parker's Guide to Cheap Wine
Yet another sign of the times. Hot on the heels of Michelin FINALLY reviewing moderately priced food in New York, along comes Parker’s Wine Bargains, a book from wine expert Robert Parker that covers the best wines costing less than $25. The book is organized by country and has tasting notes for more than 3,000 wines.
Parker’s Wine Bargains, $12.14
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New Finds: The Local Foods Wheel Hits New York
The San Francisco Bay Area has had one of these great local food wheels for a while, but now there’s a new version for the New York metro area. The rotating cardboard discs tell you what’s in season throughout the year; you can move the dial based on the month to see what you can consume and still be a locavore. The team that makes the wheels—Jessica Prentice, Sarah Klein, and Maggie Gosselin—dealt with the troublesome fact that nothing grows in the dead of winter in New York in a cute way. From mid-January to mid-March, there are pictures of a root cellar. Sweet potatoes, onions, dried beans, apples and such, are in crates below jars of apple cider and pickles, hanging cured meats, and crocks of sauerkraut, and kimchee. (CHOW has instructions on how to make sauerkraut.)
I’m happy to see that the locally-made items listed as “year round” include hard cider and maple candy. Now that’s a sustainable diet I can get behind.
Local Foods Wheel, New York Metro Area, $12.95.
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