The new cassis for cooking. Photo courtesy
SurLaTable.com.

The cassis in our kitchen is crĂšme de cassis, a heavenly blackcurrant (a.k.a. cassis) liqueur made in Burgundy. We employ it in various desserts, and adore it mixed with sparkling wine (a Kir Royale cocktail) or sometimes, in a still white wine (a Kir).

Cassis is a great fixer-upper for white wines that you don’t much like. The sweet, silky blackcurrant liqueur covers up how flat, flavorless, acidic or otherwise unattractive the wine is.

The cocktail was named after FĂ©lix Kir, a longtime mayor of the city Dijon in Burgundy (from 1945 to 1968)—as well as a former parish priest, resistance fighter and subsequent knight of the LĂ©gion d’honneur. As mayor, he popularized the drink by offering it at receptions. The cocktail was previously called a blanc-cassis and mixed with AligotĂ©, a white Burgundy. (We’re not, we emphasize, implying that the mayor served bad wine.)

According to Sur La Table’s thinking, cassis is the new hot color for Le Creuset enamel-coated cast iron cookware. The retailer has the exclusive on the color, available now in SLT stores nationwide and online. It’s paired with Le Creuset stoneware in lilac. If purple is your thing, put it on your wish list. Or as one NIBBLE wag was heard to say, “Wait for the clearance and buy it at 30% off.”

But don’t wait to pick up a bottle of cassis. For cocktails, ice cream, sorbet, flavored ganache, trifles, cake filling and frosting, and a fruit salad dressing, it rocks. On the savory side, you’ll forget all about duck with cherry sauce once you substitute the cherries for cassis.

If you still haven’t decided on a Valentine’s Day gift, how about something heart-shaped for the kitchen?

Cookware, measuring spoons and tea strainers “with a heart” may be just what he or she would like from Cupid.

See all of our favorite “love”-ly kitchen gifts.

See more of our favorite Valentine’s Day gifts in every category.

Heart measuring spoons from Beehive
Kitchenware. Photo courtesy Beehive.

If you haven’t yet begun to make good on that New Year’s resolution to eat healthier and/or lose weight (and we’re guilty of that!), read our recommendations of 10 appliances that help you cook enjoyable, lower-calorie foods.

Take a look at how you can benefit from:

See them all and decide if they can help you with your eating goals.

This food steamer makes it easy to cook
three different types of healthy veggies
at once. Photo courtesy JCPenney.com.

We’re stuck on these magnetized, nesting
cups and measuring spoons from Pyrex.
Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

If you have a favorite kitchen gadget, give it as a gift. It may seem small, but if it does a big job, the recipient will be grateful to have it (our friends were thrilled to get those inexpensive garlic-peeler tubes a few years back).

To make it a more important gift, package it with the food it’s meant to help—e.g., the garlic peeler with imported French garlic or a silicone barbecue brush with gourmet barbecue sauce.

See more of our favorite gadgets in the Home Zone section of THE NIBBLE.

What items did we add to THE NIBBLE’s
kitchen this year? Check ‘em out! No, not
these! Photo by Luca Baroncini | SXC.

Here’s the first of our kitchen gift lists: Kitchen Gifts Under $35. In fact, some are as inexpensive as under-$10 stocking stuffers!

These gifts aren’t necessarily glamorous, but they’re the most useful items we tested this year. In fact, 90% of the products we test are donated to good causes. We liked these on our “gift list” so much that we kept them as part of THE NIBBLE’s test kitchen.

If you have just one oven but lots of side dishes to cook for Thanksgiving, this clever, multi-tiered oven rack may work for you. You can cook multiple dishes at once—the yams, Brussels sprouts and stuffing, for example.

The rack, which is 15″ x 11″ x 8ÂŒ”, holds up to three levels of heavy casserole dishes and then folds flat for storage. This rack is from Sur La Table (online at SurLaTable.com); but you may be able to find one locally as well. Easy assembly required.

Why didn’t we think of this one? Photo
courtesy SurLaTable.com.

Tundra from First Alert: your first defense
against kitchen fires.

Cooking for Thanksgiving? Stove fires are the number one cause of home fires in the U.S. We’ve had one in THE NIBBLE kitchen.

Here’s an important tip from The National Consumers League: Keep an oven mitt and a large pot lid next to the stove. If a small fire starts in a pan, turn off the burner. Wear the oven mitt while carefully sliding the lid over the pan to smother the flame.

Never pour water on a grease fire and never use a fire extinguisher on a pan fire—it can spray or shoot burning grease around the kitchen and end up spreading the fire.

Also make sure you have a kitchen fire extinguisher nearby. When our fire started, we lost valuable minutes trying to figure out how to work the fire extinguisher. That’s why we were thrilled to discover the Tundra—a push-button aerosol can that anyone, from children to the elderly, can handle. We’ll never be without it again.

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.

Get a set of great kitchen knives and you’ll instantly be a better cook—everything you cut will look terrific. Dull blades don’t let you slice finely or crisply. They’re also dangerous—they require more force, which can lead to slips and cuts. (When was the last time you sharpened your knives? Look in your Yellow Pages directory or ask at your local hardware store for a blade-sharpening service.)

If you’re going to invest in a set of knives, don’t skimp: You may only buy them once in a lifetime, so get the best, even if that means starting with just the five basic blades. What are the best brands? There are old standards, and new ones come onto the market each year as technology improves.

Gorgeous Shun knives, licensing a design by
master bladesmith Bob Kramer, are available
at Sur La Table and Williams Sonoma. They’re definitely not recession priced; if you have to
ask, you can’t afford them.

Call a store that sells numerous brands, like Sur La Table, and ask to speak to the head of the knife department. Make an appointment when he or she will have the time discuss your needs in detail, and make recommendations.

Dishes that seem to be of limited use can multitask to serve several purposes. Soy sauce dishes, for example, can be used to serve lemon slices, individual condiments like chutney and tartar sauce, mini sides of applesauce, sour cream, and cocktail nibbles. Or use them to serve scallions, anchovies and other “optional” garnishes, as well as savory or sweet toppings (chocolate chips, nuts, coconut) to sprinkle on desserts. You can place soy sauce dishes on plates to contain runnier foods. Or use them to serve individual portions of after-dinner mints or other treats with coffee. If you think that your specialty dishes have only one purpose, think again!

• Read about some of our favorite condiments.