Gift guide for foodies of all stripes
Kitchen-centric gifts are always a good bet. There are very few people who wouldn’t like something food or drink-related. There are the classics — a Kiss The Cook apron, for instance. Or spring-loaded tongs in a stocking. A beautifully wrapped box of cookies — homemade, or even Oreos — always, always gets a smile. Or a bottle of Old Grandad with a bow around the neck.
But here are a few ideas you might not have thought of.
18-piece gift box of Bergin marzipan
$14.98 at the Granite State Candy Shoppe (13 Warren St., Concord, 225-2591; 832 Elm St, Manchester, 218-3885, granitestatecandyshoppe.com)
In my opinion, marzipan is the second most under-rated candy. (Don’t even get me started on the mean-spirited hate campaign against black licorice.) Made from sweet almond paste, it’s often found in Italian bakeries. It’s delicious — let’s get that out of the way. It tastes a little like maraschino cherries. It’s soft. It can be molded to look like anything. There might be some five-dimensional shape from theoretical mathematics that can’t be made from marzipan, but fruit? Or farm animals? **Chef’s kiss**
A box of marzipan fruit is an unexpected indulgence that will earn you so many brownie points.
Microplane zester
$15.99 at Things Are Cooking (74 N. Main St., Concord, 225-8377, thingsarecooking.com)
One Christmas Eve a friend showed up at our house, which we were expecting, with her sister, who was having a super-hard holiday week and needed to get out of her house, which we were not. Because there would be gifts handed out later in the evening, there was some potential for awkwardness, when everyone got something except this very nice lady, who would have to put on an award-show smile and be happy for everyone else.
Fortunately I am married to a woman who keeps an “emergency gift closet” with emergency gifts in case of emergencies, so we were able to present our last-minute guest with several nice presents, including a microplane zester.
She said it was probably one of the five best gifts she’d ever received.
It’s a tool, so it’s cool already. As its name suggests, it removes the zest from citrus fruits, but it is also fantastic for finely shredding Parmesan cheese or grating ginger or chocolate.
It’s a very good gift.
Craven Cranberry Sweet White Cranberry Wine
from Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com)
Available at the vineyard or at Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com). 750 ml. $44.99.
Made from white cranberries — so it is a white wine, not red — this once-per-year specialty wine comes in a frosted Christmas tree-shaped bottle this year. Supplies are extremely limited, but rumor has it that once the cranberry wine is gone, a blueberry wine will take its place.
Russian candies
$10 to $20 for a generous stocking’s-worth from Siberia Food Market (50 S. Willow St., Manchester, 621-0017)
Unless the person you are giving these candies to grew up in eastern Europe, they are highly unlikely to have ever seen, tasted or even heard of these candies. Covering the gamut from hard candy to chocolate in a couple of dozen iterations to, yes, marzipan, each of these candies is delicious and also beautiful. The artwork on the wrappers of most of the individual sweets is stunning. These will be just as popular with no-longer-kids as they will be with actual kids.
Local community cookbooks
uniquebooksforcooks.com/uniquebooksforcooks.com/New_Hampshire.html
Sometimes called “Church Lady Cookbooks,” recipe collections printed in the 1960s and ’70s to raise money for church congregations, social clubs or ladies’ auxiliaries are magnificent in their own way. Each spiral-bound cookbook contained recipes written and submitted by individual members of whatever organization published it. Some of the recipes are inspiring and beautifully written. More often, however, they include mystifyingly vague ingredients and amounts — “a good-sized lump of lard” — and instructions — “bake in a not-too-hot oven until done.” Fans of these books pore through library book sales, flea markets and yard sales, hoping to find a gem.
If you don’t have that kind of time or energy, you can buy one from this online used bookshop.
An aspirational gift:
Professional Movie Theater Popcorn Machine
$609.95 from New Hampshire Restaurant Equipment (783 Second St., Manchester, 668-1151, nhrestequip.com)
While it is true that not everybody wants to own a legitimate professional-grade movie theater popcorn machine, the few who do really really want to. This is the kind of gift that several cousins might pitch in on for their film buff grandfather.
It’s an actual movie theater popcorn machine. If you get it, you get it.
Featured photo: Bergin marzipan. Photo by John Fladd.
