Tastebuds: A Taste Catering Blog

Holiday Dessert Sauce Assortment

The Holiday's are upon us! Fortunately, there is time to pick up the perfect foodie gift created for you in our Pastry Department by Executive Pastry Chef and Top Chef Just Desserts WINNER, Yigit Pura.

 

For Holiday 2010 we are offering a sweetly delightful assortment of three dessert sauces created by Yigit:

Candied Milk Jam with Cognac,
Burnt Caramel Sauce with Fleur de Sel
& Dark Chocolate Ganache.

The three 6 ounce jars of deliciousness come packed in a beautiful bamboo bento box and tied with a festive Holiday ribbon. The price is $45 for the three sauce assortment. You can pick your assortments up at our offices or we can send them any place in the US (additional shipping & handling charges apply). Please allow for 2 business days plus any applicable shipping time. We accept most major credit cards.

Email smz@tastecatering.com or 415.550.4777 ext. 102

Taste Catering & Event Planning
3450 3rd Street, Suite 4D, San Francisco, CA 94124

Homemade Hostess Gifts

Many people have asked where to find the hostess gift items that I discussed in my ABC's View From the Bay Segment on creating Homemade Hostess Gifts.  Many of the ideas that centered around fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheeses and herbs can be found at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmers Market or at many of the other fine Farmer's Markets that have cropped up around the Bay Area.  Specifically, the wonderful peaches used in our Peach Chutney came from Blossom Bluff Orchards, the blackberries used in our Blackberry Syrup came from Yerena Farms, the Tamari Almonds from Lagier Ranches, the Mt Tam Cheese from Cowgirl Creamery and the assortment of fresh organic herbs from the Kingdom of Herbs.  You can find recipes for our wonderful Peach Chutney and Blackberry Syrup on the View From the Bay Hostess Gifts segment.  As a tasty alternative to our Peach Chutney, you might try June Taylor's lovely Quince Paste.  It is fabulous with the Mt. Tam!

In our business, presentation makes all the difference.  The same is true for gifts.  Often what makes a gift special is the container in which it comes.    With a little hunting, you can find unique, fun and inexpensive containers everywhere.  The under $5.00 bamboo box I used came from Dandelion on Portrero Ave. in San Francisco.  Dandelion is one  of my favorite places to find unusual,fun and rich looking (yet inexpensive) containers to really finish a gift, giving it that special feeling.  Also wonderful is The Gardener at the Ferry Building where I found the the great baskets used on the VFTB segment.

The main thing to remember when considering a host or hostess gift is that it need not be expensive but it will be more memorable if you put some of yourself into it.

So You Think You're a Foodie...

A few days ago, my wife received as a gift a game called "Celebrity Chef." Sunday is game night with our friends (who are mostly chefs and their significant others) and this game was PERFECT! Fueled by Prosecco and a great dinner at Flour and Water, we headed back to their house.  After about 15 frustrating minutes of reading the direction we were still clueless as to how to play the game, so we decided to just "wing it!"  We split up the teams, making sure that all of the chefs were not on the same team and began.  Surprisingly we got A LOT of questions wrong! Even a few of the well seasoned chefs (I am withholding their names to protect their reputations :). For example, one of the questions was: 

Is lemongrass

A: A root,

B: An Herb, or

C: A grass.

Now I don't know how many of you have ever played Trivial Pursuit, If you have, you know that it is all about the strategy and not about the questions. You can win Trivial Pursuit with minimal knowledge of the questions being asked. I tried to apply this strategy to "Celebrity Chef." Not knowing the answer to the above question, I reasoned that lemongrass could not be a grass because that answer is too obvious...and the obvious answer is NEVER the right one! I even managed to convince my team of Chefs that I was correct. Sadly...I was wrong, lemongrass is in fact a grass! Who knew! probably everyone but me. In the end, my team lost. The team that won was comprised of mostly non-chefs...but we all had a great time and I dare say, we may have learned something too! So, the next time you are getting together with a group of friends on a Sunday night and have nothing to do, pick up this game...but I recommend some Prosecco first!