A much-publicized trend this holiday season is to “shop small” and buy local; support your hometown businesses to keep them afloat during these tough economic times. Here are three ways to do just that, if you’re looking for holiday gifts for the cook or oenophile in your life.
What could be a more appropriate holiday present for a Central Coast foodie than the new cookbook titled Holiday Dinners with Bradley Ogden?
One of the most celebrated chefs in the nation, Chef Ogden has 14 restaurants, including Root 246 Restaurant in Solvang. During his three-decade career, Ogden has been named “Best Chef—California” by the James Beard Foundation and “Chef of the Year” by the Culinary Institute of America.
Chef Ogden’s gorgeous, glossy hardcover book, released a few months ago, covers three holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve celebrations.
The 150 recipes in the cookbook include eggnog; corn and shrimp fritters; crab cake and citrus salad; twice-baked blue cheese soufflés (a favorite appetizer at Root 246); foie gras poppers; sage-butter roasted turkey; leftover turkey hash; black mustard beef tenderloin with red wine sauce; basil gnocchi; and coconut angel cake with banana pudding.
“It’s very user friendly,” said Ogden, who created many of the delectable dishes in his restaurants.
Some are new recipes just for the book, but all of them were tested in his home kitchen.
“All the ingredients you can get at your local market and you can substitute,” he said. “If you can’t get delicata squash, you can get acorn or whatever.”
Ogden has been a believer in buying seasonal, organic, and sustainable produce and meats long before it was fashionable.
“So many people throw that verbiage around—farm-to-table—and you’re lucky if you ever see them at the farmer’s market or at the farmer,” he said.
“I’ve always had the attitude [that] I cook food that I like to eat,” declared Ogden, who writes in his book, “The opportunity to prepare an exceptional feast for my family and friends is my biggest gift to bestow.”
For Christmas, “I usually do a traditional prime rib. Which is sort of classic,” he said. “Sometimes I might switch it up and do lobster. I might do caviar, my blue corn cakes. I might do a chowder dish, but it’s a little more elegant, I think, than Thanksgiving.”
Ogden also includes his family holiday traditions, table setting guidelines, a lesson on how to carve a turkey, a holiday party preparation timeline, and a short section of summer recipes.
Holiday Dinners is a superb holiday gift.
Ogden’s cookbook ($30) is available for purchase at Root 246 Restaurant at Hotel Corque in Solvang.
Another great gift idea is a cookbook from another restaurant in the Santa Ynez Valley, this one written by brothers Matt and Jeff Nichols of Brothers Restaurant at Mattei’s Tavern, where “time-honored dishes are combined with seasonal ingredients for a mix of old and new.”
Their first cookbook, Brothers Cuisine, Recipes from Santa Barbara, California Wine Country, was published a year ago and has sold 3,000 copies.
“We’ve just gotten fantastic feedback on the cookbook,” Jeff said. “People are enjoying cooking at home with it.”
Over the years, the chefs have cooked for more than half a million people, and this book is a compilation of their guests’ favorite dishes.
“It’s a snapshot of what we do. Pretty much, our restaurant is in that cookbook,” Matt said. “It’s kind of a simplistic gateway to sophisticated cooking.”
The cookbook features cocktails and bar specialties, a section on sauces and dressings, and several pages dedicated to risotto recipes, such as morel mushroom and English pea risotto. Other recipes include purée of sweet corn soup with Maine lobster; horseradish-crusted Irish salmon; pulled chipotle pork sliders with shaved fennel slaw; Iowa pork rib chop with apple sauce and honey butter; and Mom’s chocolate cookies.
The book also contains “Bro Notes”—culinary tricks of the trade and recipe variations for home cooks. The book, Brothers Cuisine, ($34.95) is available at Brothers Restaurant in Los Olivos and at matteistavern.com.
Another book any local wine connoisseur should have wrapped up under the Christmas tree this year is written by someone very familiar to readers of this column.
Former Sun wine and food writer K. Reka Badger took her immense knowledge about the local wine industry and co-authored the book, The California Directory of Fine Wineries: Central Coast Edition.
“Years of writing the ‘Eats’ column certainly gave me the background: what questions to ask, what was important, what people were interested in hearing about,” Badger said.
The hardcover profiles 58 of the best wineries on the scenic back roads of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and includes nearly 200 photographs, maps, touring suggestions, and historical information.
“It makes a wonderful gift. It’s a beautiful coffee table book as well as a really fine guide,” Badger said. “It kind of does the whole duty, something beautiful to look at and also very functional for getting started on the wine trail.”
Badger wrote all the San Luis Obispo County profiles: “For the Santa Barbara/Santa Maria-area people who want to venture north a little bit, it’s got good information on the SLO County wineries that they might not know about,” Badger said.
Santa Barbara-based writer Cheryl Crabtree wrote the Santa Barbara County profiles.
You can find The California Directory of Fine Wineries ($19.95) at the local wine tasting rooms featured in the book, including Addamo, Costa de Oro, Kenneth Volk, Foxen, Cambria, and many more. You can also buy it and learn more about the book at californiafinewineries.com.
Before you finish your holiday shopping, why not support our local chefs and authors by dropping in to pick up a copy of their book for someone special on your gift-buying list—or why not treat yourself?
Sun wine and food writer Wendy Thies Sell is asking Santa for wine industry and restaurant story ideas this Christmas. Gift her with some at wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2011.