A Holiday Gift Guide: Tools, Treats, and Trifles for Food Lovers

I don’t deliberation I viscerally understood the value of a Christmas tree, oregon a Hanukkah menorah, oregon a St. Lucia’s crown until I moved into an flat with tons of windows: the nighttime is agelong and acheronian retired determination this clip of year, successful this portion of the world, and adding a small other airy goes an awfully agelong mode toward brightening the mood. It makes consciousness that the acold months are erstwhile we, warm-bodied animals, privation to travel together, to beryllium celebratory, to affirm and reinvigorate our affections. And what amended mode than with the speech of useful, lovely, oregon absurd objects? Here, for the food-focussed and the culinarily inclined, are immoderate of my favourite things that lick nary existent oregon urgent problems but might, successful tiny and astonishing ways, marque beingness much enjoyable to live.

I’ve said this before, but it’s arsenic existent present arsenic successful immoderate different year: if thing connected this database feels right, past what you should astir apt springiness your loved 1 is simply a cookbook. Drop an email to the bully folks astatine a culinary-specific bookstore, specified arsenic Kitchen Arts & Letters, successful New York, oregon Now Serving, successful L.A., wherever the obscenely well-informed unit tin urge an perfect acquisition based connected the recipient’s interests and aspirations. Or, if your giftee’s cookbook stack already teeters too high, effort exploring the adjacent class of culinary-art books—recent favorites of excavation see the representation lensman Melanie Dunea’s witty, provocative “Amuse-Bouche” ($295), featuring lithe bodies adorned successful radicchio undergarments and octopus-tentacle necklaces, and “Leaked Recipes” ($26), the creator Demetria Glace’s painstaking compilation of each the cooking contented that’s been revealed successful large information breaches, including the Sony hack, WikiLeaks, and Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. All you person to bash is wrapper them up with a bow.

Enter a Blue Period

When I archetypal began moving successful nutrient media, I learned that determination was a taboo against cookbooks oregon cooking-magazine covers that prominently featured the colour blue. I retrieve erstwhile asking the originative manager of the mag wherever I worked wherefore that was: “People conscionable don’t similar the mode nutrient looks connected a bluish background,” helium replied. Don’t they, though? I deliberation virtually immoderate crockery looks stunning erstwhile presented against a backdrop the colour of the oversea oregon the sky: a heap of bronze-skinned chickenhearted legs connected an oceanic Sur La Table stoneware oval ($50), oregon orangish parentheses of roasted squash arranged connected Settle Ceramics’ shallow-rimmed circular platter successful vivid Yves Klein bluish ($165). Wouldn’t it beryllium awfully amusive to service an existent herring connected Royal Delft’s herring crockery ($329)? Or a spinny orangish swirl of spaghetti pomodoro atop Porta’s Tommaso platter, which features sardines successful a cerulean sunburst ($198)? I can’t ideate a lovelier colour to present a bounteous feast.

Utensils with Staying Power

I’ve purged astir of my cooking utensils successful the past fewer years, motivated successful portion by the large black-plastic freakout, and successful portion by elemental ennui. The tiny radical of items that survived the cull are astir each brusquely utilitarian (OXO tongs, $18; a superior plan does not exist) oregon profoundly meaningful (a reddish melamine ladle that my parents owned good earlier I was born, and which I stole from them 20 years ago, and which I fishy they’ve been looking for ever since). When replacing tools, I’ve looked for designs that volition enactment amended than thing other oregon volition past forever. For instance, a sleekly aerodynamic turner spatula (starting from $44), fabricated from a azygous portion of stainless steel, from the hundred-and-sixty-six-year-old French cutlery shaper André Verdier. Or Gestura’s singular 01 Silver Spoon ($27), which is brilliantly designed with a heavy good to forestall spilling, a tapered constituent for drizzling, and a flared-out borderline for scraping; plus, it holds precisely 1 tablespoon, for on-the-fly measurement. Given however “tweezer food” has go thing of a gastronomic punch line, I’ve been shocked by however I’ve travel to trust connected a brace of pointed cooking tweezers ($24), for turning tiny things successful a blistery cookware oregon sportfishing retired the bouquet garni from a cookware of soup, oregon click-clacking unneurotic happily for nary crushed astatine all.

The Kids’ Table Is All Right

Any virtues sung of kids’ tableware tends to absorption connected its functional features: its durability, its easiness of cleaning, its suction-to-table properties oregon spill-averting gyrodynamics. What a pleasure, then, to urge specified products connected the spot of emotion. I americium simply successful emotion with everything made by Anelia Co., a babe marque that translates the shapes and colors of accepted Mexican tableware into kid-proof cups and plates. Its full suite of items is terrific—such arsenic a barro-inspired silicone acceptable ($28), which includes a plate, a cup, and a lidded vessel that resembles a salsero de barro—but I’m peculiarly enamored of its postulation of toddler talavera mugs ($13 each), a rainbow enactment of lidded, soft-handled silicone vessels printed with leafy motifs that evoke the accepted Mexican glazing technique.

Crustacean Decoration

Every play has its ain fashionable non-fish oversea life—we person been done the hegemony of the decorative shrimp, the reign of the graphic-designed lobster, the epoch of the octopod. In the tone of unity and openness, I suggest that we fling these trendy follies speech and yet observe the magnificent alien quality of each creatures of the deep. A bully commencement is the enactment of the creator and jewelry decorator Nana Watanabe, who creates stunning, intricately embroidered crabs, shrimp, and different marine invertebrates. Imagine being served your adjacent shrimp cocktail portion wearing a brace of tremendous iridescent shrimp earrings ($493); hosting your adjacent crab boil successful a necklace made of the astir beauteous bluish crabs you’ve ever seen ($1,693); oregon pinning an octopus brooch ($1,077) to your enarthrosis for bully luck connected your adjacent sportfishing trip.

Jungian Therapy

Dora Jung, the pioneering Finnish textile artist, treated linen arsenic her painter’s palette. From a workplace successful Helsinki, from 1932 until her death, successful 1980, she spun retired enactment that was, according to 1 breathless Danish critic, “fantastic, imaginative, emotional, exquisite.” Her “Play of Lines,” woven from impossibly good linen, enactment Finland connected the plan map. She understood that quality lives successful the everyday, that a tablecloth could beryllium some creation and utility, and that each azygous thread matters. Many of her designs person fallen retired of production, but respective were precocious reissued by the Finnish shaper Lapuan Kankurit, among them tablecloths woven with Jung’s iconic “100 Roses” signifier (from $348) oregon with “Play of Lines” ’s traced-out spiky triangles (from $441). Alternatively, you tin find plentifulness of vintage retired there, astatine thrillingly tenable prices—such arsenic this “Timber” signifier tablecloth ($86) oregon a “Princesses” beverage towel ($25), which would look awfully bully successful a frame. (N.B.: A fascination with Dora Jung is simply a earthy complement to an Eva Zeisel fixation, if you hap to cognize idiosyncratic who is already down that peculiar road.)

Placemats, Please

I emotion a well-dressed table, but each the cloth and fuss of a full-on tablecloth tin beryllium an ordeal, particularly if your eating array (like mine) serves aggregate household roles successful the people of a day: message tray, enactment surface, market triage station, etc. Rather than dramatically sweeping each the crap disconnected each 4 to six hours conscionable to laic down a beauteous ample portion of fabric, I similar to enliven my array with placemats. These small rectangles connection the cleanable dose of wit and elegance and color; they’re speedy to driblet down, speedy to prime up, and chic arsenic each get-out. For fancy dinners and peculiar occasions, I adore Misette’s embroidered ones with colorful squiggles ($260 for a acceptable of four) oregon a much austere and graphical vintage acceptable bearing Jacquard peacocks ($95 for four) from the aforementioned Dora Jung. For a regular jolt of joy, I urge these polychromatic plaid placemats ($32 each; besides disposable successful yellow!) from Block Shop Textiles—easy on, casual off, casual delight.

Garum? I Barely Know ’Em!

The funky fermented-fish condiment that provided umami to the cuisine of past Rome is having a caller moment, I’m truthful blessed to say. A zingy, amber-hued concoction made from fermented food intestines, salt, and time, it functions similar Vietnamese nuoc mam oregon Thai nam pla, and the process by which it’s made is much oregon little identical to those crossed different cultures, involving the enzymatic breakdown of food proteins into glutamates whether you’re successful Pompeii oregon Phu Quoc. Garum’s caller resurgence, portion of the culinary world’s ongoing fermentation renaissance, has led to each sorts of fascinating experimentation among chefs and home-kitchen huffy scientists. I’m a large instrumentality of the mentation produced by Maine Garum Co., which partners with fisheries successful the authorities to crook eel and different seafood by-product (what the institution evocatively describes arsenic “the rejects, trim, bones, and viscera near behind”) into liquid bronze. A six-ounce vessel of this magical, magnetic worldly volition tally you $25 or, for a genuinely worthy recipient, prime up a 1.5-litre “Big Boy” of the foodstuff for $99. (For immoderate non-meat-eaters successful your beingness successful request of a spot of a savory boost, Noma Labs—yes, that Noma—sells a mushroom garum for $25 with a wonderfully husky complexity.)

Let Us Now Feel Aesthetically Conflicted About Eating Animals

It is possibly extracurricular the accepted scope of a vacation acquisition usher to philosophize connected the consequences of quality hegemony implicit each different beingness connected Earth. It is not precisely amusive oregon festive to deliberation astir the information that, arsenic the biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote, “in pushing different taxon to extinction, humanity is engaged sawing disconnected the limb connected which it perches,” oregon that, successful our property of maximally businesslike mill farming, chaotic mammals marque up lone 4 per cent of the full fig of mammals connected land. But determination is simply a sobering quality successful this acceptable of carved-wood carnal blocks ($83, ships to the U.S.), designed by the creator Johan Olin, successful which each taxon is sized according to the comparative proportionality of its population. Look astatine those tiny crocodiles! So cute! Also highly upsetting.

Knives Out

A weapon made of c steel, alternatively than emblematic stainless steel, tin attain terrifying sharpness and clasp a magnificently honed borderline seemingly forever, truthful agelong arsenic it’s good taken attraction of. If the weapon idiosyncratic successful your beingness doesn’t person a carbon-steel leaf already, the Japanese knifemaker Misono’s Swedish Carbon Gyuto ($125 for the twenty-one-centimetre blade) is simply a cleanable start. If the weapon idiosyncratic successful your beingness does person 1 (and you’ll know, due to the fact that they ne'er unopen up astir it), get them a attraction kit: a rust eraser ($9); an if-you-know-you-know polishing cloth from Fabulustre ($13), pre-treated with anti-tarnish solution; and a small vessel of camellia lipid ($12), for keeping things silky. Maybe besides adhd a small enactment telling them not to get too persnickety astir insuring the leaf is mirror-shiny each the time. What I emotion astir astir my carbon-steel weapon is the constellation of spots and stains that person accumulated connected the blade, a ocular grounds of clip and attraction and labor.

Knives Out, But Slightly More Chill About It

You don’t request to beryllium a weapon idiosyncratic to admit a small blade, particularly if it’s a truly amusive one, similar this clever picnic weapon from Opinel ($40), which tin besides alteration into a fork oregon a spoon. Another large enactment is simply a classical mushroom-forager’s weapon ($30), double-ended, with a folding leaf connected 1 broadside and a gentle ungraded brushwood connected the other. Scissors, too, are an indispensable portion of immoderate cutting kit: I emotion Joyce Chen’s colorful room snippers ($36, successful a scope of hues), which are cleanable for snipping herbs and twine, and I deliberation each refrigerator-owning idiosyncratic I cognize needs a small acceptable of scissors that looks similar a daikon oregon a carrot ($8 each), with a useful magnet successful the screen for sticking close wherever it’ll beryllium astir useful.

If You Want to Gift Two Thousand of Something

Like astir 3 quarters of humanity, I americium obsessed with rice. There’s beauteous simplicity to a cookware of mean grains made with the astir minimal of tools. There are besides truthful galore worthy ways to gild the ritual, starting with the atom itself. I emotion Golden Queen’s spectacular short-grain assortment ($26 for a five-pound bag), which is grown successful Korea and past freshly milled to bid successful New York; its customers see fancy-pants restaurants specified arsenic Atomix. Elevate the enactment of washing atom with this ingenius “3-Ways” rinsing vessel ($38), whose clever angled plan allows you to soak, rinse, and drain each successful the aforesaid vessel. For steaming the grains to an perfect fluffy-stickiness, the Taiwanese electronics marque Tatung makes a beautiful, retro-chic, steely-shiny electrical atom cooker ($250, besides disposable successful pome greenish and cheery red), which has remained virtually unchanged since the nineteen-sixties. Throw successful a vessel of artisanal soy condiment ($19 for 5 100 millilitres) from the cookbook writer Clarissa Wei’s caller brand, Heydoh, for your recipient to drizzle connected their perfect, and perfected, rice.

Fruit Fantasia

Earlier this year, I received a gift—from myself, for me, due to the fact that I wanted it—of a ample container of chocolate-dipped effect from the California confectioner Compartés ($140), and I americium present utterly devoted to giving the aforesaid acquisition to others. There’s thing intensely satisfying astir the mode the pieces of effect are nestled unneurotic mosaically successful their container, the mode jewel-like slivers of apricot oregon sultry curves of orangish peek retired from their cocoa shells. It’s 1 of the astir beauteous things I’ve ever fixed oregon received, and the uncommon acquisition that feels genuinely universal, arsenic fitting for the hard-to-shop-for, the distant relative, oregon the intimately beloved.

Spendy Suds

My favourite authorization connected dishwashing, the precocious Buddhist monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh, recommended cultivating mindfulness portion performing the chore: “There are 2 ways to lavation the dishes. The archetypal is to lavation the dishes successful bid to person cleanable dishes, and the 2nd is to lavation the dishes successful bid to lavation the dishes.” If we are ever rushing to get the occupation implicit with, alternatively than relishing the moment, helium explained, past we are letting ourselves beryllium “sucked distant into the future.” I don’t expect your loved ones to bask dishwashing immoderate much than I do, but possibly an utterly over-the-top vessel of bergamot-scented dishwashing liquid from the storied parfumerie Astier de Villatte ($45 for 5 100 millilitres) would crushed them successful the occurrence of the present and now.♦