There has been a tremendous amount of cooking and eating going on in the month of December. Now that the smoke has cleared, it’s a good time to pass along some of the food discoveries that have improved my cooking in the last year.
J. Martinez & Company Coffee Merchants This boutique coffee roaster from Atlanta, GA delivers estate coffees and their own excellent blends at reasonable prices. You can order Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee—the rarest in the world—from two different estates. Yes, it is 50 bucks a pound, which is, of course, ridiculous. Until you taste it. For half the price you can get Jamaican High Mountain, which despite its name is just coffee. But really great coffee. There’s an excellent estate Kenya AA and Kona, and their private blends that were created as signature coffees for restaurants are well worth trying at $11 a pound. Plus, you get to choose from 4 grinds and two roasts so you can order coffee just the way you like it brewed.
Marx Foods Here is an internet purveyor that has a retail face to their institutional side selling meats, poultry, and produce. have you ever heard of Finger Limes? Maybe you have never tasted heritage breeds of chicken like French Poulet Rouge. Or tried Kurobuta or Iberico Heritage pork—not to mention unusual meats like Ostrich, Kangaroo, or even Burmese Python. These are some of the unusual finds at Marx Foods. They sell in bulk, bur if you have a big freezer, there is room for 16 duck breasts or a whole grass-fed beef striploin. They ship overnight and the shipping is included in the price. Plus the service is personal and prompt when you need them.
Marshalls Creek Spices Once you try spices from this small-batch packer you’ll never go back to supermarket bottles. You can find these spices behind the scenes in many restaurant kitchens. It’s obvious from the moment that you open the box that these actually look like fresh leaves that are dried instead of flakes of unreliable provenance. The prices are actually better than premium spices at your local grocer and they have some blends that you won’t find anywhere else—including a few great mixes that have no salt. While you do pay for shipping, it is a single fee per order, so clear your shelves of your old spices (you should do it once a year anyway) and restock from this site.
Anova Sous vide cooking at home is becoming more and more popular and I have been increasingly working it into my weekly repertoire of techniques. Anova makes sous vide sticks—appliances with a heater, pump, and controls that you attach to a bin of water to make an immersion bath in which you cook vacuum-sealed foods at low temperatures. Recently they have expanded the product line with a counter-top oven that adds programming and combi-steam capabilities, along with more common multi-purpose oven features, that has the potential to change the way you think about cooking.
Have you found any tools, foods, or purveyors that made your gustatory life better last year? I’d like to hear about them.
