Category Archives: New Products

A Few of Jamie Oliver’s Favorite Things

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Mustard with a real kick.

Celeb chef and kids’ nutrition revolutionary, Jamie Oliver, has searched the United Kingdom for handmade, artisan food products to share with the rest of the world.

His hand-picked collection of condiments, cookies and teas — under the Jme label — is now available at Williams-Sonoma.

Recently, I got a chance to sample some of the products, many of which would make great holiday gifts and stocking stuffers.

Jamie Oliver's mustard is chunky and complex.

First up, Jme One Mean Mustard.

Don’t you just love the name?

It sure packs a punch with jalapeno, tumeric, paprika, dark brown sugar and white wine vinegar.

More like a mustard crossed with a chutney, it’s spicy, tangy, sweet, chunky and complex. One taste had me thinking of how great this would be slathered over grilled chicken.

An 8.3-ounce jar is $14.

Buttery, nutty cookies.

Next, Jme Nutty Pecan & Pumpkin Seed Biscuits. Made by London bakers, these shortbread cookies are extremely buttery and crunchy, with a distinct vanilla flavor. Made with Welsh butter, they’re studded with nuts and seeds for added contrast.

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One of the Most Fascinating Food Books Ever & Winner of the Gourmet Mushroom Kit

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Cao Xiaoli, a professional acrobat, balances on one hand with her day's worth of food at Shanghai Circus World in Shanghai, China. (From the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) The caloric value of her day's worth of food on a typical day in June was 1700 kcals. She is 16 years of age; 5 feet, 2 inches tall; and 99 pounds. Cao Xiaoli lives in a room with nine other girls. She started her career as a child, performing with a regional troupe in her home province of Anhui. Now she practices five hours a day, attends school with the other members of her troupe, and performs seven days a week. She says what she likes best about being an acrobat is the crowd’s reaction when she does something seemingly dangerous. MODEL RELEASED.

Celeb chef cookbooks may dazzle on the coffee table and instructive cookbooks may be must-haves on the shelf.

But here’s a food book that is so captivating you’ll be hard-pressed to put it down.

“What I Eat” (Material World/Ten Speed Press) is a fascinating around-the-globe look at what 80 people eat over the course of one day.

The authors are Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, whose work you already might be familiar with, as they also were behind the James Beard Award-winning, “Hungry Planet” (Material World), which examined what families around the world eat over the span of one week.

In their newest book, the couple, who lives in Napa, spent three years chronicling the diets of these spotlighted individuals, who range the gamut from a sumo wrestler in Japan to an arctic hunter in Greenland to a model in the United States to an astronaut in space.

Each profile is accompanied by stunning photos, as well as every item each person consumed (from supplements to cigarettes), the total calorie count (from as little as 800 to as much as 12,300), and demographic information such as age, height, weight, occupation and activity level.

For instance, the 99-pound, 5-foot-2-inch Chinese acrobat (top photo) buys yogurt, European-style cakes and fruit for breakfast, then has a hefty lunch of deep-fried pork ribs, noodles, tea-cooked egg, stir-fried cucumber, rice and a salty vegetable broth with green onion in the Shanghai Circus World Employee Cafeteria. The 16-year-old doesn’t eat dinner because most days, she’s performing in a nightly show. Typically, she practices five hours a day and performs seven nights a week.  In all, she consumed 1,700 calories that particular day.

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Bay Area Mushroom Entrepreneurs; Winner of the $100 CSN Card & A New Giveaway

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Two UC Berkeley business school grads and their innovative mushroom company. (Photo courtesy of Back to the Roots)

When Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez graduated from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last year, they thought they would become investment bankers.

Instead, they invested in themselves, becoming farmers whose innovative way of growing mushrooms ended up, well, mushrooming beyond their wildest dreams.

Now their small start-up company, Back to the Roots, produces about 500 pounds of fresh oyster mushrooms a week — all grown in recycled Peet’s coffee grounds (10,000 pounds a week of it to be exact).

It was during their last semester in school when Arora and Velez figured out it was possible to grow mushrooms this way.

Nurtured on the grounds of Peet’s fine brew, these mushrooms have won over the likes of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Bay Area Whole Foods stores, which sell them for upwards of $10.99 a pound.

This year, they also launched the “Easy to Grow Mushroom Garden” ($19.95), which allows folks to grow up to a pound of fresh oyster mushrooms at home in as little as 10 days. You get multiple crops from it, too. Just set it on a kitchen window sill and mist twice a day. Just think: a project to amaze the kids and a way to have fresh, gourmet mushrooms at your fingertips for cooking up delicious meals. The kits, which come complete with a mister and recycled coffee grounds, are available at Whole Foods markets.

Pasta with homegrown oyster mushrooms. (Photo courtesy of Back to the Roots)

Through the holidays, 5 percent of all sales from the kits will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer awareness. It’s a cause near and dear to Velez, who is a cancer survivor.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get the chance to win a free kit. The contest is open to anyone in the United States. Deadline to enter is midnight PST Dec. 4. Winner will be announced Dec. 6.

How to win? Just tell me your most memorable experience with mushrooms — be it a dish you tasted for the first time or an adventure you had involving them in some way. The best answer will win the kit.

To get you started, here’s my own answer to that question:

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Licorice Love

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Candy that's vibrant in color and organic, to boot.

Leave it to Nell Newman (Paul’s daughter) to come up with the first organic licorice twists.

In fruity wonderful flavors, too.

Newman’s Own Organics new licorice also is low in fat, sodium and cholesterol, and contains no trans-fat. Five twists have 130 calories.

Besides traditional black, the licorice also comes in three fruit flavors: Strawberry, Pomegranate and Tangerine. The latter three are not only fruity tasting but fruity smelling. They’re a little softer in texture than your average Red Vines, yet still plenty chewy. They’re not overly sweet, either.

I especially like the pomegranate one for its almost holiday berry relish flavor. There’s real pomegranate juice concentrate in them. And the tangerine licorice boasts tangerine essential oil.

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Fruity Over Fruit Bread

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Panettone Autunnale from Emporio Rulli.

Meet panettone, the only fruitcake-like concoction I actually adore.

The others? Cloying, gummy, heavy and dense as can be, they’re the butt of so many tireless jokes. For good reason.

Not panettone, though.

The Italian holiday bread — baked in the shape of a towering cupola — is airy and fluffy, thanks to the long proofing of the sweet dough.

For a really exemplary version, try the one made by the Bay Area’s Emporio Rulli.

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