Category: Food

How to put together a gift basket

Your in-laws own too much stuff as it is, and you can’t think of something else they’d actually enjoy owning. Or maybe you want to send a seasonal thank-you to a client. Possibly, you have decent ideas for eight or nine little gifts but can’t come up with one great present for somebody special. A holiday gift basket is an elegant solution to a lot of stressful holiday gift-giving impasses.

Steven Freeman has a lot of experience with designing food-based gift baskets. He is the owner of Angela’s Pasta and Cheese Shop in Manchester and has been filling baskets for customers for a long time. “Angela’s has been making gift baskets for, we’re in our 45th year now,” he said. How many has he made this season? “Three hundred thirty,” he said, without hesitation.

According to Freeman, one of the nice things about a gift basket is that it allows somebody to pamper someone else with little touches of luxury.

“I’m not going to buy cashmere socks for myself,” he said. “I’m not spending that kind of money on a pair of socks. But I want them.” Putting them in a gift basket is a way of indulging someone without making a big deal about it. He used the high-end candy that goes in some of his baskets as another example. “A customer may not spend $5 on an adult Reese’s, but once they try it and say, ‘Wow, that was delicious!’, they go to buy it. ‘Oh, it’s $5? Well, it was really good, so I’m going to buy another one.’”

While almost anything smaller than a bowling ball can go in a gift basket, Freeman offered a few general guidelines to putting together one that makes an impact.

Include small bites of food that the recipient can eat immediately. “You want something you can instantly get in your mouth to feed on or snack on,” he said. “Even if it’s a pasta meal that you have to cook and spend time preparing, you can get something to snack on right away. In every one of our baskets, we put something that you can break right into.”

The presents in the basket should follow a theme. “Our pasta baskets are a pasta meal,” he said. “There’s a bag of pasta in it, an equivalent size sauce to complement it, and then a snack, a beverage, and a sweet snack and a savory snack. So while you’re preparing the meal you can be snacking and drinking other things. We try to tie it together.”

Put a surprise in each basket. “One thing baskets allow us to do is to introduce customers to products that they wouldn’t necessarily buy themselves,” Freeman said. “Maybe it’s something that they don’t think is their flavor profile, or it’s not a budget-friendly thing they would normally spend money on. It should be something that the recipient isn’t likely to have tried on their own.”

Make it easy to see everything in the basket. Freedman said Angela’s usually uses shallow baskets that showcase gift items well. “The baskets [we use] are all tapered,” he said, “so it gives you a larger surface to build on it, as opposed to trying to stuff it all in. They need some good padding. And it’s very intentional that they’re filled up that high so you see the product. It gives you visual volume. And then underneath them, we use recycled packing peanuts to raise everything up, because they’re lightweight and they compress nicely. That’s our base; then we put crinkle-cut paper on top of it, then fill it with the candies, chocolates and then the bigger things.”

If you have a crisis of imagination, there’s no shame in having someone put together a basket for you. “We have about 10 gift baskets we make year-round,” Freeman said. “We revamp them every summer.” Angela’s sells 10 premade baskets that range in price from $62.99 to $166.99, from small and simple to extremely luxurious. “At Christmastime we make 12 Tiffany baskets,” Freeman said. This year, one of the 12 baskets has a $1,000 gift card to theTiffany jewelry store. “Last year we sold out; we had a lucky winner. This year, the winner last year bought the first Tiffany basket for us to donate to someone else. Win or lose didn’t matter, but she bought it. She’s like, ‘I don’t want to win again,’ so we’re donating one Tiffany basket to a customer.’

Angela’s Pasta and Cheese
815 Chestnut St., Manchester, 625-9544
For a list of gift baskets available from Angela’s Pasta and Cheese, visit angelaspastaandcheese.com/gift-baskets. Until Christmas, Angela’s will sell holiday gifts at a pop-up store at the Live Free Refillery (460 Route 101, Bedford, 488-2231, livefreerefillery.com)

The art of designing a good charcuterie board

The twin secrets to a successful charcuterie board, according to Tom Bellemore, are putting a variety of contrasting flavors and textures on a board, and making it pretty.

Bellemore, who with his wife, Leah, owns Vine 32 (Bedford Square, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, 935-8464, vinethirtytwo.com), a wine and small-bites bar, loves the way wine tastes completely different when it’s paired with different foods. Which is why charcuterie boards are such a natural way of serving food in a wine bar. Each bite of food on the board brings out different notes in a wine, which make contrast so important.

“We include a spread of cured meats, cheeses, crackers, peak fruit, some jams and tapas,” he said.

“This,” Bellemore said, indicating a cold cut on one of his charcuterie boards, “is a peppered salami. Normally we’re going to have [a variety]. We get some chorizo in there; we have prosciutto, cheeses — we’ve got truffle cheddar and sweet onion cheddar. We kind of mix and match everything.”

“This is a soppressata [a type of dried Calabrian salami from southwestern Italy],” he said, “and this is wild boar sausage. It’s one of our favorites, that’s always selling out. We like to slice it super-thin, one or one and a half [millimeters thick]. The weight’s the same, but it looks really good on a board.”

Fatty, spicy meats will bring out one set of flavors from a wine. Sharp, acidic flavors will bring out completely different characteristics. “We always have pickled vegetables,” Bellemore said. “That’s a must for me. Have you ever had caper berries? I found out about caper berries when we opened this place. They look appealing and they taste amazing! I don’t understand why people don’t use them in a dirty martini.”

Dried fruits and nuts are good choices for a board too, Bellemore said. The fruits bring sweetness, tang and a little chewiness, and nuts bring a crunchy element, salt and some fat. But the stars of a charcuterie board, he said, are the cheeses.

“Here is some manchego [a slightly sweet sheep’s milk cheese from Spain], he said, handing over a small triangle of cheese, “and this is smoked Gouda; it’s a huge favorite. This one has black truffles in it.”

Regardless of what foods go on a charcuterie board, Bellemore said, it has to be visually appealing. “It’s important to stay creative,” he said. “During the Christmas and Thanksgiving months, my wife will put rosemary [on a board] and some cranberries. She puts together some festive blends to give it a feeling that’s almost like an art piece”

Charcuterie boards are extremely flexible, Bellemore said; they can be adapted to almost any size for a given group.

“We have a big 6-foot plank that’s from the same, our same board vendor,” he said, “but for a party of 60 people. It takes us two hours to put it together. So picture a regular [charcuterie] board on steroids. We’ll bring it out for a private event, so the guests are always grazing. We offer a variety of sizes.”

Especially around the holidays, when people are feeling stressed, a charcuterie board is a thoughtful gift, Bellemore said.

“At the end of a day, you get home and you’re hungry, you don’t want to think too hard. Maybe there’s leftovers, maybe there’s not — whatever. You can have a drink with your wife or your partner or whatever. It’d be nice if there was a small little thing all prepped. And then while you’re talking and decompressing, you can have some snacks.”

Vine 32
Vine 32 Wine and Graze Bar (Bedford Square, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, 935-8464, vinethirtytwo.com) serves charcuterie boards to dine-in customers or will prepare custom boards for delivery. A fully loaded board runs anywhere from $85, which feeds six to nine people, to $125, which serves 10 to 12.
It also hosts regular charcuterie board workshops to teach participants how to put together their own. Visit vinethirtytwo.com/charcuterieclasses.

News from the local food scene

• New Greek food spot: A new branch of The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill (946 S. Willow St., Manchester, 932-2181, thegreatgreekgrill.com) will have its official ribbon-cutting at 4 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 12. It will feature traditional Greek and Mediterranean dishes, some of which will be vegetarian and/or gluten-free.

• Special cupcakes: Queen City Cupcakes (816 Elm St, Manchester, 624-4999, qccupcakes.com) has released its menu of Special Holiday Cupcakes. All cupcakes will be festively decorated and “dressed in their holiday best,” according to the bakery’s website. Holiday flavors will include eggnog, gingerbread snickerdoodle, sugarplum fairy, and chocolate-peppermint. Pre-order your holiday cupcakes by Dec.21 for pickup on Dec. 24 from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

• Meet chocolate book writer: Rowan Jacobsen, James Beard award winner and the author of nine books, will sign copies of his new book Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao’s Soul on Friday, Dec. 13, from 4 to 5 p.m. at Dancing Lion Chocolate in Manchester (917 Elm St., 625-4043, dancinglion.us). Walk-ins are welcome for the book-signing and copies will be available to purchase. A chocolate tasting following the book signing is sold out.

• Cookie tour: The Currier and Ives Cookie Tour will take place Saturday, Dec. 14, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and feature 16 stops at inns, restaurants, galleries and more in the Monadnock region. Cookie Tour tickets may be purchased at The Inn at East Hill Farm (460 Monadnock St., Troy, 242-6495, east-hill-farm.com) and Frogg Brewing (580 Sawyers Crossing Road, Swanzey, 547-7639, froggbrewing.com). Tickets are $20 per person and can be purchased with cash only. Visit currierandivescookietour.com. See the story in the Dec. 5 issue of the Hippo in the digital library at hippopress.com; the story is on page 22.

• Save the date: Chef Marcus Samuelsson will return to host the Steel Chef Challenge on Saturday, March 15, at 6 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Downtown Manchester. The event benefits the New Hampshire Food Bank. Tickets cost $150 general admission, $250 VIP. See nhfoodbank.org/steelchef.

• 1½ ounces bourbon
• 1 ounce apple cider
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ½ ounce simple syrup
• 1 egg white

Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker without ice, then shake for 30 seconds or so. After the first few seconds you might have to break the seal on your shaker — for some reason I don’t entirely understand, pressure will build up after the first few shakes, and the top will want to pop off. It’s better to do it yourself in a controlled manner than to have it pop off messily on its own, sending droplets of egg whites into unseen corners of your kitchen that will become mysterious sticky places a week from now when you’ve forgotten about this whole incident.

I have two theories for the unexpected build-up of pressure in your cocktail shaker:

(1) Do you remember making a baking soda and vinegar volcano in fifth grade? The alkaline baking soda mixed with the acidic vinegar and the mix released a bunch of carbon dioxide, along with foam that poured out of the top of your volcano. Even though your teacher knew what to expect, it always took her by surprise somehow, and she would do a nervous backward shuffle, much like she would have if she had seen a mouse.

Lemon juice is surprisingly acidic. It has a pH of between 2 and 3, the same as most vinegars. While not as acidic as the lemon juice, apple cider is also acidic, with a pH of 3.2 to 4.7, about the same as tomato juice. Egg whites are alkaline, with a pH anywhere from 7.6 to 9.7, depending on how fresh your egg is. That puts them in the same neighborhood alkalinitily-speaking, as baking soda, which averages between 8 and 9.

Keeping in mind that I’m about as much a biochemist as I am an Olympic water polo player, my theory is that the interaction between these acids and bases probably involves the release of some degree of carbon dioxide.

(2) Unless — and this is my second theory — there is some sort of emotional upheaval going on in the cocktail shaker. It is the Holidays, after all, and we all know the kind of simmering emotional pressure that can present itself this time of year.

What if — and remember that this is just a theory — the two juices, the cider and the lemon juice, are the children of the family. Lemon juice has brought her new boyfriend, Edgar White, home with her to meet the family, not knowing that he once had a brief but torrid love affair with the Cider Sister. Mom, the syrup, tries to keep a lid on things (literally, in this case), and the dad, Ken Tucky-Bourbon, sits around in confusion as the emotional pressure builds surprisingly quickly.

Then, as often happens around the Holidays, boom.

At any rate, being aware of the likelihood of pressure build-up in your shaker, dry-shake the ingredients. (That’s what bartenders call shaking without ice.) If you’ve ever made a cocktail with egg whites before, and added them directly on top of ice, you’ll understand what a fraught situation that can be.

After shaking the ingredients thoroughly, add several ice cubes to the shaker and shake it again. Now that everything has mixed together, the ice will serve to chill the cocktail and dilute it slightly.

Strain your foamy cocktail into a stemmed glass, so that you can drink it in peaceful frigidity, without your hands warming it up.

Given that there is a fairly modest amount of bourbon in this drink, it makes its presence known. The foam from the egg white, however, means that as you sip it, some of the cocktail will hit your palate in the form of a fine mist, and the flavor compounds from the fruit will announce themselves.

It is very good, with very little emotional trauma.

Featured Photo: Bourbon-Cider Sour. Photo by John Fladd.