Instead of generic “wine and cheese,” serve
different wines (or beers) in the same
category and turn your event into a “tasting.”
Photo courtesy Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

Last week we proposed 10 “Best Picture Cocktails” as party fare for your Oscar party.

But what if your friends prefer wine or beer?

Instead of making a random selection at the store, focus on selecting bottles for a beer or wine tasting.

Pick up to a dozen different kinds of a single beer (amber ale, IPA, stout, chocolate beer and ale) or wines from a particular region (New Zealand, South Africa) or a particular grape varietal (zinfandel, shiraz, semillon).

Guests not only enjoy the Academy Awards, but discover new favorite beers or wines in the process.

Looking for palate excitement this year? Like eating on the cutting edge?

McCormick’s 2010 Flavor Forecast offers 10 new ways to pair food and spices. How does a spice company decide what’s hot? The flavor experts at McCormick team up with leading chefs, food writers and other culinary authorities to identify the top flavor pairings and key trends that are poised to shape the way we eat.

This is the 10th anniversary of the McCormick Flavor Forecast, so join the celebration and try the recipes (THE NIBBLE has been publishing them since 2008). We’ll present one a day for the next 10 days.

The first pairing is almond and ale. You might enjoy nibbling on almonds as you drink an ale; now see what it’s like to put almonds into the ale.

Why does this pairing work?

You like ale, you like almonds; so how about
an Ale Almond Spritzer? Photo courtesy McCormicks.com.

The Recipe:

The bittersweet character of both ale and almonds makes a congenial, cozy and hearty match. Invite friends to try this recipe for an Almond-Ale Spritzer, a moderately sweet beer-based cocktail. Enjoy it with a good food-themed movie.

And come up with your own recipes: ale-steamed shrimp with toasted almonds, for example.

The cost of party cakes is out of control: a 1/2″ thick piece of wedding cake for $10 a slice? That’s what wedding cake specialists charge in our town. To add to the pain, hotels charge a “cake slicing fee” to cut and serve the cake.

This, plus the fact that too many guests don’t like the heavy fondant that covers many wedding cakes, means that you’ve just paid a fortune to serve people something they may just pick at—or ignore completely.

But there’s a happy solution:

Cupcake “trees” have been fashionable at weddings and other parties for several years.

You can make the presentation even more exciting with cupcake wrappers—gracefully die-cut outer wrappers into which the finished cupcake is placed—are now offered in so many colors and designs, that there’s a beautiful presentation that elevates the already-charming cupcake.

A wide range of wrappers turn cupcakes
into celebration cakes. Photo courtesy KitchenKrafts.com.

Cupcake wrappers aren’t inexpensive—they run a dollar or more apiece. But combine the cost of the cupcake and the wrapper, and you can serve something less expensive, more exciting at the table and cake that people are excited to eat.

Next recommended improvement: Make the wrappers edible or collectible. It’s a crime to throw something so lovely away.

Visit the collection at KitchenKrafts.com.

It can walk the walk on the grocery shelf, but
can it “taste the taste?” Have a mineral water
tasting party to find out. Photo courtesy
Antipodes.

Whether you’re looking for a zero-calorie way to get through the Academy Awards or a great way to entertain adults and kids in general, water is the way.

Have a mineral water tasting, comparing domestic and imported waters to your local tap water and club soda (with sparkling waters).

It can be a formal sit-down or a walk-around event, open or “blind”—where you mask the water bottles in wine bags so tasters aren’t biased and you reveal the results at the end.

Select up to 12 waters—perhaps six still and six sparkling—and a great time will be had by all. What should tasters look for? See our article, How To Evaluate Water.

Say “I love you” with sweetened mascarpone
and raspberry purée. Photo courtesy Peabody Rudd.

If you love mascarpone, the extra-rich “Italian cream cheese” that’s the base of tiramisu, then you might want to whip up a Coeur à la Crème for Valentine’s Day.

The luscious mascarpone creation can serve as a cheese course prior to dessert, or instead of dessert.

You need special heart-shaped ceramic molds, but they can be used throughout the year for other purposes. (With a tiny dish underneath, we use them for tea bags, olive pits and garnishes—for example, to hold croutons for soup.)

For goober-loving Americans, Green & Black’s of the U.K. has introduced its first U.S.-exclusive flavor.

The newest addition to the Green & Black’s family of premium organic chocolate bars is the Peanut bar, a blend of premium 37% cacao dark milk chocolate with delectable caramelized peanuts and a hint of sea salt.

Whether you’re single and celebrating with a group of friends or planning a romantic evening for two, a chocolate and wine tasting is a delicious way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Green & Black’s suggests the following chocolate-and-wine pairings (and we have many more ideas—see below):

A great combination of peanuts, sea salt
and milk chocolate. Photo courtesy Green & Blacks.

Conduct the tasting as would a wine tasting. Choose up to six pairings. Start with the lightest variety (white chocolate) and finish with the darkest (dark 85%).

What’s for dessert tonight? February 5th is National Chocolate Fondue Day.

Chocolate fondue is always a hit. And it’s easy to make. (Fondue comes from the French word fondre, to melt. Melt the chocolate and other ingredients, and start dipping.)

The finer the chocolate, the more delicious the fondue. You can buy the best chocolate baking wafers from Guittard.com, or chop up a gourmet chocolate bar.

And here’s a tradition that can make a Valentine’s Day fondue even tastier: Whoever loses a dipping piece in the fondue not only has to fish it out, of course; but he/she also has to kiss everyone at the table.

Who wants chocolate fondue? (You don’t even
have to ask.) Photo courtesy of Sugardaddys.com.

You know how to eat it, but do you know
how to taste it? Photo courtesy
EatWisconsinCheese.com.

You love to eat cheese, but have you ever thought of its organoleptic qualities (taste, texture, aroma)?

Take another step towards cheese connoisseurship by learning how to taste cheese like the experts. Toward this end we offer:

Now, you’re ready to have a cheese-tasting party. For extra fun at the party, have everyone take this cheese trivia quiz.

Have a heart: Use red doilies on Valentine’s
Day. Photo courtesy
MozzarellaCompany.com.

Plan ahead for Valentine’s Day and pick up some small red heart-shaped doilies.

Use them to present cocktails, crottins of chèvre, individual desserts (panna cotta, cupcakes) and other dishes on your Valentine’s Day table (start with morning toast!).

Use them for just one course per meal, though: Too much of anything is overkill.

It’s easy to make! Photo of Baked Alaska by
Sergey Kashkin | IST.

February 1st is National Baked Alaska Day. This dazzling dessert is a masterpiece of chemistry: an ice cream cake topped with meringue and baked in the oven until the meringue browns. Yes, frozen ice cream is baked in an oven!

The concept (and execution) is simple. Ice cream, mounded on a pie plate, is covered on all sides with slices of sponge cake or pound cake, which is then covered with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in a 500°F oven just long enough to firm the meringue—three or four minutes. The meringue is an effective insulator, and in the short cooking time needed to finish the dessert, it prevents the ice cream from melting.

The concept of baked ice cream was developed by the Chinese, who used pastry as the insulator; a Chinese delegation introduced it to Paris in the nineteenth century. In 1804, the American physicist Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) then investigated the heat resistance of beaten egg whites, and demonstrated that beaten egg whites were a better insulator.

His dish was named Omelette Surprise or Omelette à la Norvégienne, the Norwegian attribution owing to the “arctic” appearance and cold center. Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City renamed it Baked Alaska in honor of the newly acquired Alaska territory, and the name stuck.

Make a Baked Alaska with this recipe (it’s easy when you use store-bought ice cream and pound cake instead of making/baking your own from scratch).