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Oct 01, 2023

Hanukkah Sweets and Dips

Advertisement Supported by Front Burner The Friday box from a Brooklyn caterer

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The Friday box from a Brooklyn caterer offers matbutcha and other delights, chocolate halvah bonbons from Dandelion Chocolate and more.

By Florence Fabricant

Yes, there are likely to be latkes, but what else can you offer for a gathering on one of the eight nights that Hanukkah is celebrated? Daniel Soskolne and Loren Abramovitch, Brooklyn-based caterers, have assembled the Friday box, a gift box of Israeli and Palestinian dips, spreads and pickles, ready to serve with a generous slab of well-seeded sesame flatbread. Excellent hummus, green tahini, lightly spiced tomato-based matbucha and burned eggplants, eight ounces of each, make up the colorful array, along with pickled pink turnips and a sweet coconut Malabi pudding. A skateboard-size Lebanese sourdough pita, a cross between a Jerusalem bagel and focaccia, comes alongside, ready to reheat.

Friday box, $72 including delivery and tax, to order by midnight Thursday for delivery in New York on Friday, fridayyy.co/products/friday-box.

There are only seven of these luxurious bonbons in the box, so you won't have enough for all eight nights of Hanukkah; two elegant boxes wouldn't be a mistake. The large blocks cover Seed & Mill's vanilla-sesame halvah and a layer of chocolate ganache in thick, dark chocolate. And to signal a special occasion, there's a wisp of gold leaf on each one.

Dandelion Chocolate Halvah Bonbons, $45 for seven, store.dandelionchocolate.com.

Whatever you might think of crypto currencies and NFTs, you can make short work of many of Manischewitz's new Hanukkah gelt for the 21st century, CryptoGelt. Four gold-wrapped milk chocolate pieces come in little blue mesh bags.

Manischewitz CryptoGelt, about $3 a bag, or around $14.99 to $16.99 for 36 bags at Stop & Shop and ShopRite stores.

The Savory Pantry, a shop and e-commerce company in Hot Springs, Ark., with a branch in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is a source for goods to enhance entertaining. They are now offering pieces made from golden, darkly veined Tunisian olive wood, including an appetizer tray with three sections; small condiment bowls with infinite uses; and somewhat larger snack bowls, sold individually.

The Savory Pantry Three-Section Olive Wood Appetizer Tray, $39.90; condiment bowls, $12.80, snack bowls, $23, savorypantry.com.

Sandhi Wines in the Santa Rita Hills American Viticultural Area near Santa Barbara, Calif., was founded in 2011 by the sommelier Rajat Parr and winemaker Sashi Moorman. They have now released two wines made with grapes from Jalama Canyon Ranch, a center for regenerative agriculture. These wines are made in partnership with the White Buffalo Land Trust and show Jalama Canyon Ranch on their labels. They are a chardonnay, pale, with a scent of honeydew and green apple and pleasing bitterness on the finish; and a floral, light-bodied pinot noir, silky on the palate but well-structured. All profits go to the White Buffalo organization.

Sandhi Wines, chardonnay and pinot noir, or two pinot noir, $130 including shipping, sandhiwines.com.

The collection of recipes in "The River Cafe Look Book," the bright new cookbook by Ruth Rogers, a founder of the esteemed River Cafe on the edge of London, is given double duty. Color photos of each recipe are shown adjacent to whimsical pictures of shapes, designs and objects suggested by the food, like raspberry sorbet with a pink telephone and a frittata in a skillet next to a Ping-Pong paddle. A section follows with the recipes, the highlights of which are excellently rendered pastas, mostly classics like carbonara, amatriciana and cacio e pepe. This is a book that children can enjoy paging, but when it comes to the cooking, close supervision is needed.

"The River Cafe Look Book: Recipes for Kids of All Ages" by Ruth Rogers, Sian Wyn Owen and Joseph Trivelli (Phaidon, $34.95).

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Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks.

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