Hand-painted paper boxes in shapes to charm food lovers

Whenever I’m in San Francisco, I try to stop in for lunch at Zuni Café on Market Street. I’ve been going there ever since chef and co-owner Judy Rodgers started cooking there in 1987. At lunch, have a bowl of polenta swirled with mascarpone, house-cured anchovies with celery, or pipérade with a fried quail egg and rosemary toast — and if you have the time, the chicken for two roasted in the wood-burning brick oven and served with a Tuscan-style bread salad.

After an espresso -- and maybe a couple of biscotti (the recipe in "The Zuni Café Cookbook" is the best I’ve found) -- head over to Bell’occhio an enchanting shop tucked in an alley on the other side of Market.

Filled with beautiful ribbons, paper goods and romantic little treasures, Bell’occhio is perfect for whiling away a rainy afternoon. I just discovered the shop has a website too, which could be dangerous.

I have a thing for brushes and Bell’occhio has a wonderful collection of brushes for dusting, cleaning bottles, cleaning bicycle and motorcyle wheels, whatever. Poking around the website, I also found these charming hand-painted paper boxes in the shapes of a truffle, a morel, a strawberry, a raspberry (this one is flocked!), a lemon, an apricot (flocked too), an apple, a walnut, a flageolet, a cacao bean, a coffee bean — and a fuzzy green almond.

Bell’occhio, 10 Brady St., San Francisco, (415) 864-4048; www.bellocchio.com. Paper boxes, $16 to $28.

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Photo:  Fuzzy green almond box. Credit: Bell'occhio.

The word is gourmet

According to "The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary," gourmet is defined as:

 n. A connoisseur in eating and drinking; a judge of good food.

adj. Of the nature of a gourmet, of a kind or standard suitable for gourmets.

When a friend asked me to pick up the sausages for the choucroute he was making Sunday night, he sent me to a wonderful shop in Glendale called Continental Gourmet Sausage Co. On the way back, or on the way somewhere that day, I passed Gourmet Delights and wondered just how many businesses have the word gourmet wedged somewhere in their name.

Googling "gourmet Los Angeles" pulled up about 112,000,000 hits. About. 

I started making a list and it went on and on and on. I stopped. It would make a good Google map, though, something to propose L.A. as about the most gourmet-conscious city on the planet. Or is there another city that yields up 112,000,000 hits for the word gourmet? 

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Illustration: S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times. 

Stocking stuffers: Dish towels, a canister and honey sampler, oh my!

Christmas is right around the corner and whether you are a planner or procrastinator when it comes to shopping, there's still time left for stuffing, I mean really stuffing, those stockings. We've posted gift ideas over the last month and, with a little under a week to go, here are a few more:

The poppy pattern on the Marimekko Pieni Unikko dish towels is simple in design but bold and bright in color. The pattern was designed in 1964 by Maija Isola and has remained the most popular Marimekko print. Pick up a set of two for $29 at Crate and Barrel.

Anthropologie carries this pastoral-looking ceramic canister. The gorgeous ivory clay and olive wood "Verdant" jar is perfect for cookie storing. Find it online or at an Anthropologie store for $78.

The Ames Farm honey sampler set from Terrain fits the bill for any tea or cornbread enthusiast. Learn where a specific honey was collected in Ames' searchable bee yard database, which provides the geographic location, time period and flavor profile of each jar collected from the farm's 300 hives in Minnesota. The set of five 2-oz. jars is $24.

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-- Caitlin Keller

Photo credits (clockwise): crateandbarrel.com; anthropologie.com; shopterrain.com

For the wine buff: Replica of 1770s decanter

Sleek contemporary decanters from the Austrian glass company Riedel are coveted by wine buffs around the world. But nothing feels as festive and, well, special, as an elegant etched glass decanter. The Rare Wine Co., a wine importer in Sonoma, commissioned the 109-year-old British glass company John Jenkins & Sons to create a replica of a 1770s decanter. The original held a magnum, and is just about sold out now, but the firm has also developed an exquisite single bottle decanter based on the same late 18th century design. The Taper is 12" high and holds 750 ml of wine. 

The Taper decanter, $275, from the Rare Wine Co. (800) 999-4342; (707) 996-4484. Available for holiday delivery.

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Photo credit: The Rare Wine Co.

 

 

Gift for Asian Cooks: Red Boat Fish Sauce

When Diep Tran, owner of Good Girl Dinette, mentioned her obsession with Red Boat Fish Sauce in a question and answer session, I remembered that I’d meant to search out the first-ever first-press fish sauce months ago.

When I went onto Red Boat’s website, I found the only place selling it in L.A. is Broome St. General Store in Silver Lake. And I never pass up an excuse to head over there for a coffee (from Gimme! Coffee  in New York) and a pastry from CakeMonkey Bakery or Valerie Confections. 

Sure enough, I found the Red Boat Fish Sauce, on a shelf with a handful of other Asian basics. Wow, what a difference from conventional fish sauce. Not exactly subtle, it packs a wallop of anchovy. It tastes alive.

The nước mắm nhi is produced at a small family factory on the island of Phu Quoc in Vietnam. Made from fresh, wild-caught anchovy caught off the coast, the fish is salted and then slowly fermented in wood barrels. Only the first press is bottled. The only ingredients: anchovy and sea salt. No added water, MSG or preservatives.

I’m giving a bottle to all my friends who cook Asian. But its use isn’t just limited to Asian dishes. I can see adding a splash to a Caesar dressing, or making a dipping sauce for Dungeness crab. Maybe even using it to flavor meatballs or to rev up a braised meat dish.

Red Boat Fish Sauce, available at Broome St. General Store, 2912 Rowena Avenue, Los Angeles (Silver Lake); (323) 570-0405.

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Photos: Red Boat Fish Sauce. Credit: S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times

Gifts for the cocktail set

A vintage or contemporary cocktail shaker or decanter should delight just about anybody with a fondness for wine or spirits. And even if the recipient already owns one, no problem: your gift makes the beginnings of a collection. The following two Los Angeles shops stock an inspired selection of barware:

In Silver Lake, the quirky Bar Keeper is filled with new and vintage cocktail paraphenalia. Cocktail shakers run $16 to $60, decanters, $40 to $140. Small bottles of bitters (you can taste them at the bar) make perfect stocking stuffers for the drink-obsessed ($6 to $20). They have plenty of vintage and new cocktail glasses in various shapes and sizes, too, plus accoutrements for serving absinthe. And now that owner Joe Keeper finally has a liquor license you can also pick up a bottle of absinthe or other spirits. 

Empiric on Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Grove sells a line of handsome bulbous glass decanters with polished brass or nickel stoppers in three different shapes, $145. And if you’re looking for a very big gift, consider one of their raw steel bar carts ($750) or the incredibly stylish polished aluminum one that looks like a kissing cousin to an Airstream, $1,175.

Bar Keeper, Silver Lake, 3910 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 669-1675 www.barkeepersilverlake.com.

Empiric, 7916 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 634-7323, www.empiricstudio.com.

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Photo: Brass-cube-stopped decanter from Empiric. Credit: Empiric

Stocking Stuffer: Kastehelmi bowls by Iittala

Renowned Finnish glass designer Oiva Toikka originally designed the Kastehelmi collection of glassware in 1964. After pondering ways of covering the joint marks left on the surface of pressed glass pieces by the production process, Toikka came up with the idea of using droplets of glass as decoration. The result was beautiful, timeless glassware that continues to ooh and ahh with the line's range of glass bowls and plates. Iittala reintroduced a selection of the most popular pieces last year with colors ranging from apple green and light blue to festive red and traditional clear. The bowls from the Kastehelmi collection are $17 each.

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Credit: Iittala.com

Stocking Stuffer: My mug

If you're prone to picking up coffee mugs of various colors, shapes and sizes from here and there for yourself or for someone else, these mix-and-match mugs might be your cup of tea or joe. Each brightly colored ceramic mug features a handle in a contrasting color. The mugs are $11 each and can be purchased at Kárikter, a notable shop in San Francisco that sells European character merchandise.

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Photo: Karikter.com

A different way with grits

When I was testing recipes from Paula Wolfert’s new book, “The Food of Morocco,” I found one that uses stone-ground grits for couscous. She writes that “corn couscous is popular in the southern Souss region, where, in summer, it is often served with shellfish and baby turnips, and in the mountains, where it is a winter staple with meat confit and vegetables.” Sounds good to me.

She recommends coarse corn grits, preferably stone-ground. And I just happened to have some from Anson Mills in South Carolina. Their Antebellum grits are made from heirloom white or yellow corn varieties — and stone-ground. In Wolfert’s recipe, grits are treated similarly to couscous -- that is, steamed several times, after moistening the grains with water and tossing and leaving them to rest until the water is absorbed.

Though you need to start up to three  hours before serving, the process is fascinating — just how much water can the grain absorb? — and well worth the effort. The result is grits like you’ve never had them before, each grain distinct, with a clean, nutty taste. A 1-1/2 pound bag of grits will yield about 12 cups.

I’m a total convert. 

Stocking Stuffer: Sqirl

Los Angeles-based company Sqirl makes some pretty tasty preserves -- jams, jellies and marmalades -- for stuffing inside stockings this year. Jam maker Jessica Koslow playfully displays her products for purchase alongside eccentric props and colorful backdrops on the company's website. Made with local produce from family-owned farms no more than 200 miles from her kitchen, Koslow's jams incorporate flavorful fruits -- some of which are on the Ark of Taste.

Among Sqirl's preserves is a strawberry and rose jam, made with McGrath Family Farms Seascape strawberries, Rancho Del Sol Sorrento lemons and Earthtrine Farms rose geranium. Another favorite is the Santa Rosa plums and flowering thyme jam made with plums from Flora Bella Farm, Sorrento lemon juice from Rancho Del Sol and Shear Rock Farm flowering thyme.

Sqirl's preserves range in price from $12 to $14 and can be purchased online or at Proof Bakery in Atwater Village.

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