Last week we picked up a 12-pack box of peeled chestnuts at a club store. We’ve been snacking on them from the pack as well as hot from the microwave—it’s like chestnuts roasting on the open fire without the need to peel the chestnuts!

Today, we received this stuffing recipe from Swanson. Thanks, Swanson: We’re going to enhance our regular chestnut stuffing with figs.

We personally don’t like sweetness in our savory foods, so we’re substituting the two tablespoons of honey for two tablespoons of fresh sage.

RECIPE: CHESTNUT, FIG & HONEY STUFFING

Ingredients

 
*If there are vegetarians in your crowd, use Swanson Vegetable Broth.
 
Preparation

1. HEAT oven to 350°F.

2. HEAT the butter in a 3-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the shallots, chestnuts, figs and celery and cook until the celery is tender, stirring occasionally.

3. STIR the honey and broth in the saucepan and heat to a boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the parsley and stuffing cubes and mix lightly. Spoon the stuffing mixture into a greased 3-quart casserole. Cover the casserole.

4. BAKE for 30 minutes or until the stuffing mixture is hot.
  

Taste great, feel good chocolates. Photo
courtesy Compartes.

Here’s a feel-good holiday gift that’s beautiful, delicious and sure to be appreciated.

Jonathan Grahm, owner and chocolatier at top chocolatier Compartes in Los Angeles, has created this five-piece set, Chocolates for a Cause: African Chocolate Collection.

The chocolate-covered caramels are adorned with a rainbow progression of the African continent, and are packaged with a Relief Beads bracelet for a three-in-one gift: chocolates, bracelet and the gift of a donation to Darfur. The set is $20.00.

Proceeds benefit Relief International’s efforts in Darfur. They directly help feed malnourished children and fund a women’s help center.

Order at Compartes.com.

What does the fox say? Ring-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding, for starters (here’s the official video on YouTube.

Sing the song as you enjoy these foxy pancakes, designed by Angie Ramirez for NatureBox, an e-tailer of healthy snacks. Angie shares yummy food, easy DIY crafts, adventures of motherhood, and everything in between on her blog, Little Inspiration. She intended this pancake to be a bear. Bear, fox: take your pick.

Prep time is 20 minutes, cook time 5 minutes per pancake.

RECIPE: FOXY PANCAKES

Ingredients For 8 Pancakes

1. COMBINE all dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Whisk in milk, egg and melted butter.

2. PREHEAT griddle or non-stick pan. Scoop a small amount of pancake mix (about 3 tablespoons) in the middle of the griddle to form a circle. Cook until bubbles start to form, about 2-3 minutes. Carefully, flip pancake to the other side and cook until lightly brown, about 2 minutes.

3. ASSEMBLE.

“Umami” was a trending word in America a few years ago, a Japanese word coined in 1908 to indicate a brothy or savory taste (umai = delicious, mi = taste).

Lauded as “the fifth taste” after sweet, sour, bitter and salty, the term seems to have faded into the background since its heyday here in 2006. If you need a brush-up, here’s an umami overview.

We consume “umami foods” every day: anchovy paste, asparagus, beef stew, bouillon, cured ham, ketchup, lamb shank, miso sauce and soup, MSG, mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, ripe and sun-dried tomatoes, soy sauce, steak sauce and Worcestershire sauce, among others.

Umami is part of Western culture. Beginning in Greece and appearing in nearly every ancient Roman recipe as early as the 7th and 8th centuries B.C.E., garum, a fermented fish sauce, was the universal condiment to flavor food.

Fish sauce is an Asian staple, and things came full circle when Captain Henry Lewis Edwardes (1788–1866) brought the recipe for a fish sauce condiment home after travels in India.

It somehow got to John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, two dispensing chemists (pharmacists) in Worcester, England, who created the first “umami sauce” sold commercially, in 1837 and called, not surprisingly, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce.
 
 
THE NEW UMAMI SAUCE

Continuing the tradition, a team of chefs from Omni Hotels & Resorts has created “Umami Sauce”—a sophisticated steak sauce—as a table condiment for its customers.

The chefs worked tirelessly for six months to create a sauce that “perfectly combined the essential ingredients to achieve the umami factor.”

This secret sauce was then bottled, wrapped and set out on restaurant tables for customers to use on everything from scrambled eggs in the morning to a late-night burger.

We cooked with it. It vastly improved a chuck pot roast—we tested it with an Umami Sauce marinade on one half, massaged it into the crevices of the meat, and salt and pepper on the other half.

The marinated side tasted so much richer that we next stirred Umami Sauce into a wild mushroom risotto, with similar happy results.

Umami Sauce can be purchase for $9.95 at select Omni Hotels, and is available online. The sauce is all natural and gluten free.

So if you’re looking for a special food stocking stuffer, head to the Omni Hotels website.

Mini pies have been trending, and might be a better choice for Thanksgiving, when you’re stuffed to the gills but still want dessert. But Lauryn Cohen, a.k.a. Bella Baker, has an even better idea: mini pecan pie bites.

Mini Pecan Pie Bites are baked in a mini muffin tin, creating “just a bite” to end the meal. Like the idea? Make mini pumpkin pie bites, too.

“These are quick, easy and a perfect choice to serve at a holiday party,” says Lauryn Cohen, a.k.a. Bella Baker. Here’s her recipe; there are many more special sweets to discover at BellaBaker.com.

RECIPE: MINI PECAN PIE BITES

Ingredients For 24 Bites

Preparation

1. PREHEAT oven to 350°F and spray the cavities of a 24-cup muffin tin generously with nonstick spray.

2. COMBINE the flour, sugar, butter and cream cheese with an electric mixture on medium/high speed until the dough comes together. One at a time, roll small balls of dough into the palm of your hand (about the size of a ping pong ball). Press each ball of dough into the muffin tin cavity, pressing dough up the sides to form a pie crust.

3. WHISK together the egg, brown sugar, butter and vanilla extract. Switch to a rubber spatula and mix in the chopped pecans. Pour filling into each of the muffin tin cavities filled with pie crust.

4. BAKE for 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 300°F and bake for an additional 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before removing from muffin tins. If need be, run a knife around the perimeter of the mini pie bites to loosen them from the muffin tin.