Gastronomista Gift Guide - Hostess Gifts

Some people are impossible to shop for.  They seem to have everything under the sun, and whatever they need, they go out and purchase it.  Gah!  Gastronomista is here to help, gifts for your well-provisioned hostess.  Remember, good guests never arrive empty handed.

1.  Great parties require thoughtful details.  Vintage Knife Rests are a great way to add character and whimsy to a dinner table.  $95 for 6

2.  Games keep fellow party goers occupied (and out of the kitchen).   Pocket Boccee travels well, and is great for gardens and hallways.  $8

3.  Even the most perfect hostess never has enough ice.  Bring a bag of ice and a handsome Ice Bucket, and you'll be a gal's favorite guest.  $40

4.  Bottle Openers one of my favorite hostess gifts - they add so much character to a home.  I love these sphere cuties from Poketo.  $20

5.   Give a gift that takes your hostess out on the town!  A night out at The Spot Dessert Bar in the East Village is a fun and memorable evening.  The Spot serves gorgeous tapas-style desserts developed by Ian Kittichai such as Green Tea Lava Cake, Yuzu Eskimo Ice Cream Bars, Kabocha Creme Brulee, and Smoked Coconut Cheesecake.  $10 and Up

6.  Fashionable Aprons for your chef who will never leave the kitchen.  So cute, it doubles as dinner wear. $30 

7.  Christmas snappers are so last year.  This year give your hostess an Exploding Braquier Chocolate Bomb filled with Almond Dragees and toys.  $100 - $150

8.  Upgrade your hostess' butter dish with a Japanese Beehouse Butter Dish that come in fun colors such as carrot and artichoke $26

9.  Great glassware = great drinks.  These Poodle Low Ball Glasses are memorable and whimsical.  Purchase them from the virtual pop up Joyus, where all proceeds until the end of 2014 go to Women for Women International!  $75 for 6

10.  Upgrade your chef's plastic measuring cups with Nesting Ceramic Measuring Bowls from West Elm.  They are even tapered so you can pour from them!  Genius!  These are some of my favorite tools in the kitchen.  $15 

11.  Nothing says party like a Graphic Cheese Platter!  Handmade in Austin, Texas!  $35

12.  For the pie lover, give Kate Lebo's book A Commonplace Book of Pie, that is filled with poems about making pie, eating pie, and theories on pie, and gorgeous pie porn watercolors.  $14

13.  Spoil your favorite hostess with a pair of Manitobah Muklucks!  No one likes cold feet when out and about provisioning for parties, and these Aboriginal Canadian made boots will make her feel warm and cozy even when charging through the snow.   $200

Note:  I have a pair of these, and I LOVE them.  Obsessed.  Wearing them right now, my heart filled with bliss, and my toes warm and snuggled up.

14.  For the hostess who likes a great cocktail, but doesn't know what to make: a subscription to Julibox, a service that sends your hostess a monthly cocktail kit with all the necessary ingredients!  Recipe cards help your hostess make them for future parties.  $36 / mo

15.  Modern Marble Trivets for Hot Dishes by Fort Standard.  $88

16.  Have you ever noticed that it's always the cheese grater that seems to jam up your utensil drawer, and is always the guilty culprit to cut your hand?  Solve the problem with this Folding Cheese Grater by West Elm that folds all the away around, protecting your hands from its sharp edges.  Again, with the genius design move here.   $30

17.  For the hostess with the inclination towards all things Paleo:  Melissa Joulwan's latest edition of her Well Fed cookbook series filled with healthy, fast, and delicious recipes.  $17

18.  Tiered Cast Aluminum Displays for all things pretty and delicious.  $259

19.  Impress everyone at the party with a Cecil & Merl Cheesecake - handmade in Brooklyn with a graham cracker crust.  Flavors include Dulce de Leche, Lemon Ricotta, and Pumpkin.  Trust me, bringing one of these to any party is a very good move.  They are insanely light, fluffy, and mind-boggling delicious.  $55

Pops of Joy

People.  Popcorn is delicious.  Don't even try to hide it - it's the reason you go to the movies, it's the reason you stay at that bar for hours after you should, and its a main staple of your diet.  It is for us too, and that's where the truffle salt comes into play....

Popcorn.  Watch it come to delicious fruition in 12 seconds:

Decisions, Decisions

There are a lot of candy bars out there, trust us, we know.  Kit-Kat, Snickers, Peppermint Patties, Lion Bars, sigh, with so many choices, how is a girl to decide??

Enter, the Delectable Kaleidoscope of Candy Bars by Pop Chart Lab - a handsome infographic that helps you determine which bar to select despite your low blood sugar.  Craving Coconut?  How about Mounds, Almond Joy, or Cup-o-Gold.  Got a soft spot for Dark Chocolate?  There's After Eight, Special Dark, or Cherry Ripe.  Jonesing for Honey Taffy - well Bit-o-Honey would be your selection. 

Delectable Kaleidoscope of Candy Bars - 18" x 24"

  
Want one?  Order one here.  $25

We wish there was a chart for other debilitating decisions...what to get for lunch? What cocktail to order... (Pop Chart Lab, are you guys listening?)...

Noodle Mapping

Maybe you're like us, and often end up in the pasta aisle of the grocery store, pondering all those gorgeous shapes with your mouth agape.  We've always wanted to know the stories behind each fold - and how they got their names.  For instance, Orecchiette, an more obvious one - named little pig's ears.  But we digress...

Architect George L. Legendre's new book Pasta by Design has all your answers and is sure to satisfy all of your pasta fetishes (we're looking at you, Miss Gemma Gray).  The book, published by Thames & Hudson, is a taxonomy of 92 different pasta shapes - mapped and categorized, complete with cooking times and serving suggestions.  Given that we've spent our fair share of time mapping and drawing the most ridiculous things in 3D - we were weak-kneed at the sight of this book.  Just look at these diagrams:

Fisarmoniche

Galletti

We're keeping this one in mind for the holidays...

Pasta By Design
$30
Buy it Here

xxEE

Cakesplosion!!!

You may remember the Cupcake Cannon - a project by Johnny Cupcakes that got us all hot and bothered a while back.  We've found a perfect sequel to that cakey mess - Autoerotique's Turn Up The Volume video directed by Miles Jay & Derek Blais
. 

 Awesome.  If you have a spare minute, watch the video, we love the black eggs and black butter!  



via This is Colossal

Gluten Glut

Carb-loading: It’s not just for athletes anymore.

When we received a Marcato Atlas 150 Pasta Maker from a dear friend for the holidays, we knew our pots would soon overflow-eth.

And perhaps we’ve gotten a bit carried away.

This sleek, chrome dream machine churns out tagliatelle and spaghetti for us when we need a quick pasta fix, and satiny sheets of dough for ravioli and lasagna when we're feeling more ambitious. It takes formidable elbow grease to clamp this old-school device to your counter and crank out the doughy strands, so you'll have ample opportunity to sweat off those carbs in advance.

With the kitchen covered in drying pasta, we’re starting to feel like Strega Nona with her magical spaghetti pot.

Now, who’s coming over for Linguine Bolognese?

Homemade is Best

Maybe you've seen Carl Kleiner's amazing food styling for Ikea and the advertising agency Forsman & Bodenfors around on the internets.  We love these images: their simplicity, attention to detail, and their over the top obsessive compulsive nature.   If only our kitchens were this organized...

 Prinsesstårta

 Vaniljhorn

 Semlor

Gunnebodrömmar

 Mandelkubb

 Radiokaka

 Spröda maränger

 Napoleonbakelser

 Mandelmusslor

Pepparkakor

But now we bring you the video - the behind the scenes film collage that will be sure to make you fall in love with these images again and again..

IKEA – Homemade is Best. from Forsman & Bodenfors on Vimeo.

Check out the whole cookbook here to see the proper before and after shots.

Get Thee to the Boulangerie

photo from our friends at nowness

Fun fact about bread: In the olden days, women who thought they were possessed by a sexual demon would eat a phallic-shaped bread roll to exorcise it. There are lots of ex-voto breads in Italy and lots of sexual breads that look like male and female sexual parts—baguettes and breads with cracks.

Well, we won't kill the messenger, especially since he looks like this:

Meet Gontran Cherrier, experimental baker (uh, rye bread with miso?), bread scientist and all around heart-throb. God bless the man, he even takes time to rail on the Atkins diet. We love him for that! The full interview via Nowness is here. This guy's on the rise - at 31 years old he's already hosted his own show on Canal+ and authored 6 cookbooks. His first bakery opens in Paris this month. Let's woo him stateside, shall we? We hostesses are starting to brush up on our French right now. Voulez-vous coucher avec... nope, wrong phrase. Wait... is it?

If you ever doubted the sexiness of bread, we invite you to reacquaint yourself right now.