Balmy August nights call for refreshing cocktails, and this passionfruit cocktail is just the ticket. For two cocktails, you’ll need one cup of chilled passion fruit purée or nectar (if you can’t find the nectar at your regular market, try a natural food or specialty food store) and a bottle of chilled sparkling wine or Champagne. Immediately before serving, fill two Champagne flutes half full with the passionfruit purée and add a few dashes of bitters. Then add the sparkling wine. Garnish with a strawberry (slice a notch halfway up from the tip and perch it on the rim of the flute) or some raspberries on a cocktail pick or stirrer.
This week’s Gourmet Giveaway prize is Scarpetta pasta sauce from Sauces ‘n Love. One winner will receive four varieties of this delectable, shelf-stable pasta sauce, which is a pasta lover’s dream (shelf stable means that you don’t need to refrigerate it until you open the jar)!
A NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week, Scarpetta sauce flavors provide quick, easy and healthy gourmet meal solutions for pasta, chicken, tofu and anything you like to serve with a good tomato or pesto sauce. Like all of the small-batch, artisan products from Sauces ’n Love, these sauces are gluten free and vegetarian, and made from authentic Italian recipes you are sure to love. Buon appetito to the winner!
Check out our review of Sauces ‘n Love and enter this week’s Gourmet Giveaway.
These sauces require no refrigeration until the jar is opened.
Some of the most refreshing desserts are the simplest. Put fresh fruit salad in a wine goblet and cover it with a fizzy Moscato d’Asti, a sweet sparkling wine from Italy (our favorite is La Spinetta from Rivetti, with an amazingly low alcohol level of around 6%, similar to beer). The sparkling wine elevates the fruit salad to elegance, and is the perfect ending to a light or heavy dinner. After guests finish the fruit, they can drink the remaining wine from the goblet: It’s a dessert and a dessert wine in one (though have an extra bottle on hand for guests who want more of this intensely fruity, exuberant wine). If you don’t drink alcohol, you can use Fizzy Lizzy Fuji Apple sparkling juice.
Cheese kabobs are a festive way to serve different cheeses at parties, and are a fun family snack (and save the calories and carbs of bread and crackers). Buy blocks of different-color cheeses that can be cut into 1-inch cubes. Put 3 different cubes on a skewer or jumbo toothpick, alternating with a fruit (melon ball, grape or berry) or veggie (grape tomato, broccoli floret or zucchini cube). Create a variety of different skewers and arrange them in an inverted half watermelon or winter squash on a tray, or in a large round loaf of crusty bread. You can also arrange the skewers in a shallow vase or an ikebana (Japanese floral arrangement) dish.
Check out the Nibble’s Cheese Glossary for more information about cheese.
Granola and nuts = crunchy sweetness.
Photo by Emily Chang | THE NIBBLE.
Nature Valley has ported granola into a very crunchy line of Granola Nut Clusters: bite size, 100% snacks that are an alternative to candy and other sweet treats. While they are made of nutritious nuts and honey, whole grain oats, canola oil and other better-for-you ingredients, there’s also a lot of sugar—catering to the American palate that’s been trained to want more sweetness than other flavors. The sweet, crunchy nuggets certainly more than please.
The strongest nut flavor (and least sugariness) came from Nut Lovers, a combination of cashews, peanuts and pecans. Roasted Almond and Roasted Peanut tied for second, with Roasted Cashew trailing in third, the mild cashew flavor overwhelmed by the sugar.
Granola Nut Clusters can also be used to garnish a dish of ice cream.
