Holiday Green Beans with An Asian Twist

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Green beans with brown butter, Asian fish sauce, crushed peanuts and celery leaves.

When guests sit down to the holiday spread, they may squeal with delight over the sight of crisp potato cakes, warm homemade rolls and creamy, cheesy cauliflower gratin.

But secretly, they’re glad you put out some green beans, too.

Because for all the over-the-top indulgences we can’t get enough of at this time of year, we also crave just a little respite with something fresh, crisp and green.

“Green Beans in Brown Butter and Ginger Fish Sauce” fits that bill.

The recipe comes from the Wall Street Journal and it was created by Chef Edward Lee of 610 Magnolia in Louisville, KY. You may remember him as a competitor in last season’s “Top Chef” competition.

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Farm-Fresh Teas and A Food Gal Giveaway

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Take a sip of the unusual teas by Grey Dog Tea.

Stinging nettles, sweet peppers and heirloom chiles — in tea?

You bet.

Last year, Baia Nicchia, the 9 1/2-acre farm in Sunol known for its impeccable tomatoes, started selling unique blends of teas, made from its organic herbs, fruits and vegetables that have been dried.

The teas proved so popular that farm owner Fred Hempel has now launched his own tea company, Grey Dog Tea, named for his pet Greyhound.

The teas are available in loose-leaf or bag form. The blends include ones with caffeine, as well as ones without. The actual tea leaves used come from San Francisco’s Five Mountains, which specializes in heirloom organic teas.

The four beguiling blends include:  “Dragon Mint Tea Blend” (heirloom teas, mints, chile pepper flakes and herbs), “Chile Mint Herb Tea” (heirloom chile pepper flakes, mints and herbs), “Citrus Stinger Herb Tea” (yuzu leaf, lemon grass, stinging nettles, sweet peppers, chile peppers, Persian spearmint, nasturtiums and citrus peel), and “Citrus Morning Blend” (heirloom oolong teas, herbs, stinging nettles, sweet peppers, yuzu leaf, heirloom chile peppers and citrus peel).

The signature "Chile Mint Tea.''

All of the blends have a purity of flavor to them, as if you were drinking something straight from the garden. The chiles in the blends won’t make you break into a sweat. They’re quite subtle, lending fruitiness and a delicate warmth.

I’m especially partial to the “Dragon Mint Tea Blend” because of how the gentle tannin of the tea leaves is lifted by the profusion of mint.

The teas sell for $9.99 to $16.99.

CONTEST: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a tin of Grey Dog Tea’s signature “Chile Mint Herb Tea,” plus a refill. You get your choice of loose-leaf or bags, too.

Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST Dec. 22. Winner will be announced Dec. 24.

How to win?

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Gift Ideas for the Foodies in Your Life

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The "Mash Bill'' collection of truffles from Vosge Haut Chocolate. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

For the Spirits and Beer Aficionado Who Also Covets Chocolate

Leave it to Vosges Haut Chocolate of Chicago to come up with a specialty box of truffles all about whiskey, bourbon, scotch and stout.

The “Mash Bill” is a nine-piece collection of dark- and milk-chocolate truffles, each of which incorporates Rogue Chocolate Stout, Templeton Rye Whiskey, Four Rose’s Single Barrel Bourbon and Bruichladdich Port Charlotte Scotch in the ganache filling.

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Dark and White Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Ginger

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Dark chocolate, white chocolate and ginger make up the trifecta of flavors in this fudgy cookie.

Consider this the ménage à trois of cookies.

You have the complementary duo of dark and white chocolates — then throw in racy ginger for an even spicier time.

Are you getting all hot and bothered yet?

Your taste buds sure will in the best of ways with these “Dark and White Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Ginger.” The recipe is from “Bon Appetit Desserts” (Andrews McMeel) by the magazine’s former editor-in-chief, Barbara Fairchild. Ever since receiving a review copy of this 686-page cookbook two years ago, I’ve been slowly baking my way through its extensive collection of 600 recipes.

These cookies bake up soft and fudgy in texture. They boast craggy dark tops with striking big chunks of white chocolate that get a little golden on the edges like toasted marshmallows.

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Eating My Way Through Montreal in the Fall, Part II

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A magnificent steelhead trout with caviar, yogurt and dill "sponge'' cake at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal.

MONTREAL, CANADA — One of the best meals I had in this city wasn’t where I thought it would be. It wasn’t in some storied white-tablecloth establishment that had been around for generations. Nor was it in some hip, counter-culture cafe headed by the latest bad boy-chef.

No, it was inside a museum, of all places.

The Musee D’Art Contemporain de Montreal boasts an impressive collection of modern Quebec art. It also has a restaurant worth seeking out, thanks to its young, self-taught chef, Antonin Mousseau-Rivard.

That Mousseau-Rivard is a chef at a museum is only apropos. After all, his grandfather, Jean-Paul Mousseau, was a famed artist whose works are part of the museum’s permanent exhibit, “A Matter of Abstraction.”

What the younger Mousseau-Rivard puts on the plate is equally a work of art — not only in looks, but in flavor and imagination.

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