We eat lots of Mediterranean foods, often with pita bread from the supermarket that isn’t as flavorful as we’d like it to be. So when we spotted Canterbury Naturals flatbread mix, “just add oil and water,” we eagerly set out to bake our own flatbread (not with pockets like pita, but hopefully more exciting).

We were not disappointed! Warm from the oven, we proudly served our eight handmade, individual-size flatbreads, highly seasoned with a “Mediterannean” herb mix of basil, bell pepper, chile, fennel, garlic, marjoram, onion, oregano, parsley and thyme. Once they cool down they get a bit dry (like pita), but can easily be warmed in the microwave. After two days of storage in our Fresh Vac food storage containers, they still warmed up nicely.

While there are recipes aplenty to make flatbread from scratch, don’t underestimate the convenience of a packaged mix. It was easy, delicious and impressive! We mixed the package ingredients into a dough with some olive oil and water, kneaded it briefly, let it rise for 30 minutes, divided and rolled the dough into eight flat pieces, brushed the tops with olive oil and sprinkled them with the seasoning blend. The flatbreads baked for six minutes and cooled for a few minutes. Aside from the rising and cooking time, prep was no more than 10 minutes, using one bowl and one cookie sheet.

Impress your friends and family with home-baked flatbread. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

In addition to Mediterranean Savory Herb, the mix is available in Parmesan and Sundried Tomato. The attractive boxes make a nice house gift or stocking stuffer for your favorite cook. The product is certified kosher by KOF-K.

Vosges’ Red Fire Ice Cream with ancho and
chipotle chiles (plus cinnamon) lets you add
some fire to your chocolate ice cream. Then,
pair it with brownies or chocolate cake!
Photo courtesy Vosges Chocolat.

Match traditional desserts like apple pie, brownies, chocolate cake and pound cake with very modern flavors of ice cream. Vosges Chocolat’s Naga (sweet Indian curry and coconut ice cream) and Red Fire (chocolate with chilies and cinnamon) ice creams are heavenly with classic cakes and pies. Vosges will overnight-deliver them (and their two other exotic flavors) to you in dry ice, but your local creameries may offer similar delights.

Another of our favorites, Reed’s Ginger Ice Cream (in Chocolate, Ginger and Original), is available at specialty stores nationwide. Ginger is a delicious pairing with pound cake, chocolate, fruit desserts—just about anything!

Tanteo Tequila is the first spirit to become a Top Pick Of The Week—it’s that special. We tasted the three superpremium tequilas infused with chocolate, jalapeño and tropical flavors at a show filled with foods from big-name chefs. We were dazzled by Tanteo.

Made with 100% blue agave tequila, Tanteo uses all natural ingredients to infuse the tequila, and it’s a magical marriage. These are sipping tequilas and cooking tequilas—you’ll love flavoring sauces, desserts and marinades with them (more ideas in the full review). Pair them with mains or desserts that have similar flavor profiles. In terms of mixed drinks: If the possibilities aren’t endless, they’ll keep you busy for quite some time. The company offers recipes to start you off.

Tanteo tequilas are a great addition to your bar and a gift that recipients will be talking about for a long time. They can be the hit of holiday parties.

Tantalizing tequila in three irresistible flavors. Photo courtesy of Tanteo Tequila.

Our favorite ice cube trays from ISI Orka keep ice cleaner and fresher and color-code our “specialty” ice cubes.

You can make festive ice cubes for holiday drinks without investing in special pumpkin- or holly leaf-shape ice cube trays. And you can do it more elegantly, too!

Just freeze one of the following in each section of a regular ice cube tray:

We create different trays of “designer ice cubes” to match to different sweet or savory beverages. It’s easy to keep the garnishes straight in our favorite color-coordinated ice cube trays from iSi Orka.

Emeril Lagasse is about to debut a gourmet burger restaurant named Burgers And More, or … BAM! The restaurant, set to open November 22nd in the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, will specialize in burgers made from a blend of prime and grass-fed beef. Burgers And More will also have an ample nonbeef burger menu, including crab, mushroom, salmon and turkey, along with hand-cut French fries, condiments made from scratch, malts and shakes and local draft beers. (We’re ready for a crab burger with a craft brew right now!)

Asked if he planned to replicate the burger concept elsewhere, Lagasse said he didn’t yet know: “We’ll have to see how it goes.” As the burger generally ranks on surveys as America’s favorite food, it should go well.

Chef Lagasse joins other celebrity chefs who find that the margins are higher (and more fans are to be made) in selling burgers over foie gras…although Daniel Boulud has done both with his pioneering gourmet burger stuffed with shorts ribs and foie gras, available at NYC’s Bistro Moderne.

“The Piggie,” at DBGB Kitchen & Bar in New
York City, features a beef burger on Boston
lettuce topped by pulled pork, with jalapeño mayonnaise. Photo by T. Schauer © DBGB.

Burger Gourmania

Other chefs with burger restaurant concepts include Bobby Flay, Hubert Keller and Laurent Tourondel. “Top Chef” contender Richard Blais’s menu at Atlanta’s Flip Burger Boutique includes 30 rotating burgers, with a daily choice of 8-10 beef burgers, three vegetarian burgers, three pork burgers, and three “alternative meats,” lamb, duck and venison. Numerous others, like Chef Boulud, have added gourmet burgers to their casual restaurant menus. Boulud’s recently-opened DBGB Kitchen & Bar in New York (a favorite of the NIBBLE staff) offers three kinds of gourmet burgers, one of which is pictured above, a happy marriage of burger, pulled pork and jalapeño on a Cheddar cornbread bun.

French Meadow Bakery’s Whole Grain Bread,
Sandwich Bread and Italian Rolls. Photo
by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

French Meadow Bakery makes certified organic and gluten-free products that are casein-free, lactose-free and peanut-free, as well as kosher (parve). We recently tasted a selection of company’s gluten-free line of breads and cakes.

When we taste gluten-free baked goods, we do it from the same perspective as we taste all products. We don’t judge if the product is “good for a gluten-free product,” but if it is a good product that anyone would enjoy. We tasted two products in French Meadow Bakery’s gluten-free line that scored on this front; anyone in the family would enjoy them.

Gluten Free Multigrain Bread is made of a tasty mix of whole grain flour blend (amaranth, quinoa, millet, sorghum, teff), egg whites, organic flax seed, organic millet and organic quinoa and a touch of honey, among other ingredients.

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread is made of corn starch, egg whites, tapioca starch, honey, rice bran and germ, plus raisins and other ingredients.

The Gluten-Free Italian Rolls and Sandwich Bread are more appropriate for those who must restrict their gluten intake.

Some of our tasters enjoyed the Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and ate every last one of the pre-formed, ready-to-bake cookies. We could taste that they were a gluten-free product; but the good news is that, those who can’t have gluten can keep these cookies in the freezer, ready to transform into a warm, fragrant cookie whenever the need strikes.

A simple-to-make, impressive first course is a smoked salmon roll filled with salmon caviar and crème fraîche. Ask the counter person to slice the salmon in wide pieces instead of narrow strips—explain that you’re going to fill the slices and roll them up like a cigar.

1. Spread the inside of each slice with crème fraîche and a teaspoon of your favorite caviar or roe, but leave the last inch on each end clear of filling so it doesn’t spill out when you roll up. Then roll!
2. Put a few beads of caviar on top of the “cigar” for decor (consider some contrasting caviar, e.g. flavored whitefish roe or tobiko).
3. Garnish the plate with a sprinkle of snipped chives and dill and some finely diced red onion. This cigar is smokin’!

Can’t afford sturgeon caviar in a recession
(or any time)? Affordable salmon caviar is
delicious in this recipe. Photo courtesy of Red-Caviar.com, certified kosher.

Twice the size of a typical Anjou, Bartlett
or Bosc pear, one juicy Royal Riviera pear is
at least two fruit servings. Photo by
Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

We taste so many refined carbs in the course of our work day that we were thrilled to receive a gift box of Harry & David’s Royal Riviera pears, in season through February. Enormous, creamy, juicy and good-for-you, they’re a treat for the family or a gift for friends and clients who prefer the healthy life to receiving boxes of fudge. (We’re omnivores—send it all!)

How big are Royal Riviera pears? Helped by a lush rainfall this season, ours weighed about 13.5 ounces each, had a diameter of 3-1/2 inches and had “hips” (measured around the broadest part) of 11-1/4 inches! Grown in Harry & David’s orchards in Southern Oregon, they are the descendants of Anjou pears, believed to have originated in the vicinity of Angers, France. The variety was introduced to England early in the 19th century and came to America around 1842.

We enjoyed our Royal Rivieras with some of our favorite blue cheeses from Harry & David’s Oregon neighbor, Rogue Creamery (co-owner David Gremmels is one of the greatest American cheesemakers). We had his cheeses in our fridge, but a gift box of this “pear-ing” is available through Harry & David, along with pears-only from $29.95 and up. Should you be so fortunate as to receive too many pears to eat up as hand fruit, the variety is excellent sliced into salads, baked (plain, like baked apples, or in a tart) and poached (one of our favorite desserts).