THE NIBBLE BLOG: Products, Recipes & Trends In Specialty Foods


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CONTEST: Best Macaroni & Cheese Contest

Our favorite contest is on again—favorite because it produces the best macaroni and cheese recipes we’ve ever had. We publish each year’s winners on TheNibble.com.

If you think your homemade macaroni and cheese recipe rocks, enter it in the fifth annual Tillamook Macaroni and Cheese Recipe Contest. Six home cooks (no professionals!) from around the nation will compete in the grand finale cook-off in Portland, Oregon on October 23rd. The deadline to enter your recipe is Monday, August 17, 2009 at midnight PST.

Finalists will compete for the 2009 title of the “Big Cheese,” $5,000 cash and 25 pounds of outstanding Tillamook cheese from Oregon (their great Cheddars and other cheeses have won awards worldwide). The first runner up will receive $2,000 cash and 20 pounds of Tillamook cheese; the second runner up will receive $1,000 cash and 15 pounds of Tillamook cheese. The People’s Choice Award winner takes home $1,000. Finalists and their guests will be flown out to Portland, where they will cook their recipes from scratch in front of a live audience and a panel of judges consisting of national culinary experts and professional chefs.

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Mac & Cheese Chile Relleno Pie, the Second Runner Up recipe in the 2008 competition.

Enter your recipe at MacaroniAndCheeseAndCheese.com/contest.

Want to see what the competition looks like? See some of the previous Tillamook macaroni and cheese winners:

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Top Pick Of The Week: Ruby Et Violette Cookie Dough Ice Cream

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First Kiss—salted caramel ice cream—could
keep someone kissing until the pint is empty.

What can you say about a company that’s the only four-time honoree as a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week? More, please! And more!

This week, the Top Pick Of The Week honors go to Ruby et Violette’s luxurious cookie dough ice cream. Forget other cookie dough ice creams. As alluring as they might once have been, they pale in comparison to Ruby et Violette’s. This artisan company raises the bar to the point where you feel like you’re eating ice cream cake—no raw dough flavor, but the taste of the actual cookie.

Some history: The business was born as a specialty chocolate chip cookie baker, making 100 different flavors (about 20 at any given time). Ingredients are primo: excellent Belgian chocolate chips from premium chocolatier Callebaut, plus the finest French fruit and nut pastes and other ingredients (fine dried strawberries for the Super Strawberry chocolate chip cookie, for example). The chocolate chip cookies were a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week in 2005. In 2007 the founder retired, and the new owners brought new ideas, including the ice cream and some of the best brownies we’ve ever had. They were a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week in 2008, followed by the Seduction Cookies line, which debuted just in time for Valentine’s Day 2009 (and are our favorite of all 100+ cookies).

The ice cream is equally memorable, leveraging the brand heritage of chocolate chip cookies. Each flavor is made with lots of chocolate chip cookie dough—the same dough from which the cookies are baked, minus the raw egg—plus a generous extra handful of Callebaut’s callets, a word which means “bits” (as in chocolate bits) but which you can interpret as “large chocolate chips.”

The result of this ice cream alchemy: creative flavors that are bursting with natural taste and amazing texture—creamy, rich ice cream, huge mouthfuls of cake-like cookie dough and as many crunchy chocolate chips as one’s heart could desire. Ruby et Violette is certainly the best in the Cookie Dough Ice Cream category, and once you dig in to a few flavors, you can decide where else to bestow superlatives. And, since it’s National Ice Cream Month, indulge!

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RECIPES: Gourmet Martinis—From Guava To Black Truffle

The original martini called for gin and vermouth. Gin is a complex spirit, and part of the enjoyment of a gin martini is savoring the layering of botanical flavors in the gin.

But with the rise in popularity of neutral-flavored vodka in the 1980s, the vodka martini has morphed into an endless parade of full-flavored cocktails (one lounge in Chicago offers more than 100 varieties of vodka martini). Here are four special vodka martini recipes, plus a classic vodka martini recipe for the less adventurous, courtesy of Grey Goose vodka. These sophisticated drinks will generate excitement at any gathering.

 

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Survive the summer heat with a Maharaja’s Martini, made with guava juice and fresh mint leaves. You need to be a maharaja to afford the Black Truffle Martini.

  • What makes gin so special? Read about the ingredients that go into making it, and why each brand of gin has such a distinctive flavor.
  • Want more ideas for summer cocktails? Find them in THE NIBBLE’s Cocktails & Spirits Section.

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TIP OF THE DAY: Gourmet S’Mores

Summer is s’mores time. Walk on the wild side and make your s’mores with exotic chocolate bars—those flavored with chile, ginger, curry, coconut, even wasabi. Check out the flavored chocolate bars from Vosges Chocolate and Chocolove. Use great marshmallows too: We love the handmade marshmallows from Recchiuti and the Tiny Trapeze brand from Whole Foods (the chocolate marshmallows are even better than the vanilla variety). But you’ll be begging for “s’more” when you see the flavors of gourmet marshmallows we’ve uncovered.

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Product: Dale & Thomas Chocolate Popcorn … & Grammar

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Another great popcorn flavor from DaleandThomasPopcorn.com.

 

If you’re looking for an inspired gift to send to your favorite camper, hostess or celebrant, we can recommend the new Dark Fudge Caramel N’ Almonds flavor from Dale & Thomas. We’re still equally fond of the other chocolate-drizzled flavors, including Chocolate Chunk N’ Caramel, Chocolate & Peanut Butter, Peanut Butter & White Chocolate, Toffee Crunch and Twice-As-Nice Chocolate (dark and white chocolate). A gift box filled with six large bags is $39.95, in your choice of a single flavor or one bag of each of the six flavors (highly recommended!). Dale & Thomas sweet popcorn is not overly sweet (that is to say, it’s welcomed by the sophisticated palate), and is elegant enough that it can become a light dessert, by itself or sprinkled atop vanilla or chocolate ice cream.

All Dale & Thomas popcorn flavors are certified kosher OU-D and are gluten free.

And now, some editorializing from our editor:

  • Dark Fudge Caramel N’ Almonds. The colloquial ‘n’ is the written version of a verbal convention of dropped consonants in the word “and”: peaches ‘n’ cream, sugar ‘n’ spice, rock ‘n’ roll. Apostrophes take the place of the dropped letters; when only one letter is dropped, only one apostrophe is needed (e.g., smokin’). Over time, people have erroneously chosen to drop one or the other apostrophe; now, heaven knows, anything goes. It’s amazing to us that none of the rulebooks on grammar—which tend to be so rigid on the most minute points—address the varied uses of ‘n versus n’ versus the technically correct ‘n’. The American Heritage Dictionary, a great arbiter, accepts ‘n’ and ‘n but not n’—take note, Dale & Thomas. Oh well…while it can be confusing to the eye, it’s not as egregious as the rather sudden eradication of the personal pronoun “who,” on the part of many American speakers (we hesitate to say English speakers). Have you noticed that we’re now all objects: the woman that came here yesterday, the people that voted for Al Franken? What’s up with that?
  • Decadent. The word “decadence” was used in the Dale & Thomas promotion material to describe Dark Fudge Caramel N’ Almonds popcorn: “…bathed in waves of the warm toasty sugar and buttery decadence that we call Dale’s golden caramel.” Forgive the copywriter; hopefully (s)he will learn. Far larger companies than D&T blast the word “decadent” over the airwaves and in print ads, leading to its use by too many individuals. Ladies and gents, go to Dictionary.com or the word resource of your choice and look it up: “decadent” does not in any way refer to food. The word such people are looking for is luxurious, indulgent or something else, but not decadent. Decadent food does not exist, and if it did, you wouldn’t want to eat it. Even if it meant what people erroneously think it means—sumptuous, over-the-top, rich and luxurious—how can you refer to Diet Dr. Pepper as “decadent?” Editors around the world are ROTFL over that one.
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