Sometimes we go on and on about a find. Like movie reviewer Wesley Morris and his $30 pressure cooker. He's cooking dinner after dinner in that pot, and giving us the lowdown the next day at work. Multimedia guru Michael Saunders is dousing his eggs with Bacon Salt instead of the real thing, restaurant critic Devra First is eating Japanese jewels at O Ya, and Food editor Sheryl Julian is sprinkling cava vinegar on vegetables between festive indulgences. Here's what else we've been talking about this year.
Devra First
I love sushi. A lot. A few years back, I made a New Year's resolution to eat more of it, figuring I might as well make a resolution I could keep. The opening of O Ya in March made it even easier. The sushi and sashimi dishes at this semi-hidden spot near South Station are little, marvelously constructed jewels. And the cooked dishes are so good they divert me from my usually single-minded devotion to raw fish. But the food is only part of why I love O Ya. Owners Tim and Nancy Cushman, the chef and sake sommelier respectively, are gracious hosts, solicitous and happy to share their knowledge. The space is beautifully designed and a pleasure to be in. And the sushi and sashimi chefs talk and joke between creating intricate plates of kinmedai and hamachi. Sitting at the bar, I almost feel like I'm in Japan. O Ya, 9 East St., 617-654-9900.Back off, Bourdain. Out of the way, Ray. Here's Remy. With the Disney-
This was the year of the locavores. Stories about people watching their food miles and forswearing anything other than regional ingredients were everywhere (though those in the latter camp generally seemed to live in California, not New England). Everyone was talking about Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"; Time magazine picked it as one of its best nonfiction books of the year. Locavore fever reached an apex when the New Oxford American Dictionary named it 2007's word of the year. The trend can only be good for local producers. And it signals that people are paying more attention to how they eat and to the environment. Now can we have a year-round farmers' market in Boston?
I love Southeast Asian salads, with their proliferation of refreshing herbs and killer chilies. The tiger's tears salad at Myers+ Chang combines that flavor profile with tender slices of rare steak. It's addictive. So's the one at Floating Rock in Revere, but Myers+Chang is closer to home, which means I can have my fix more often. Myers+Chang, 1145 Washington St., 617-542-5200, myspace.com/myersandchang.
Does going shopping make people crave Cinnabon and Panda Express? I really don't think so. Flush with the thrill of sloughing off discretionary income, you still want something tasty for lunch. I'm not a huge fan of mall shopping, but I resent it even more when I'm stuck eating lame pizza. Shoppers deserve better food at malls. And more and more often, malls are acknowledging that. This year, the Natick Collection opened, with branches of Sel de la Terre and Metropolitan Bar & Grill inside. If only they'd do something about the options at the Wrentham outlets. Natick Collection, 1245 Worcester St., Suite 1218, Natick, 508-655-4800.
Michael Saunders
J&D's Bacon Salt does just one thing: It makes everything it touches taste kissed by a slab of smoky bacon. It was created a few years ago by a couple of bacon-loving tech guys who wanted to evangelize their bacon fixation but without the grease. How good is it? A few sprinkles revive lackluster mashed potatoes, just a dash on eggs adds another layer of flavor. It's a surprisingly faithful mimic of the sweet, salty, and smoky compounds found in good bacon, yet there's no meat at all, making it both certified Kosher and safe for vegetarians pining for pork. baconsalt.com/buy/The supremely silky BruichLaddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky (1970 vintage) is almost too smooth for its own good. It received middling marks from several spirits critics, including the late Michael Jackson, for a perceived lack of complexity and character. Ignore them, assuming you can still find this bottling, released after spending 31 years in American oak casks. Many other whiskies from the Islay region are known for their intensely peaty aroma and the accompanying phenolic flavors. A fine cigar and a robustly peaty Scotch - say, a 10-year-old Laphroaig - are a sublime pairing for some, but I'm in the camp that finds highly peated whiskies taste like licking an ashtray. Many of BruichLaddich's whiskies seem tailored to younger palates, those of drinkers who enjoy sipping sans cigarette and whose taste buds are un-skewed by years of smoking. This bottling is almost buttery, with an aroma that only hints at peat. I sipped a wee dram after I learned of Michael Jackson's death in August; I'm sure he would have boomed his approval. At high-end liquor stores.
The flavor savior of PBJ lovers, Trader Joe's Sunflower Seed Butter has emerged in the void left when many schools and day-care centers went "nut free" to reduce the chance of triggering allergic reactions to peanuts. Soy nut butter has been on the market longer, but the mild flavor is just too bland - think wallpaper paste - for it to get heavy lunchbox rotation at our house. It just doesn't have the same depth of flavor as sunflower seed butter, which matches well with sweet, tart jellies or plays happily as a solo performer on a cracker or spread on toast. At Trader Joe's locations, traderjoes.com
Chef Tim Wiechmann of T.W. Food transforms a breakfast staple into a winning starter at his Cambridge restaurant. To make creamy scrambled eggs and uni, he starts with the freshest eggs from chickens raised on local small farms, and prepares them in a time-consuming method over low heat until they're as creamy as custard. He adds a dollop or two of uni, orange sea urchin "roe" that tastes faintly of the sea. He finishes with an herbal filip of rosemary oil drizzled on top. The dish changes with the season and with Wiechmann's fancy; he currently uses black trumpet mushrooms and spinach concentrate. But the wondrous eggs are the foundation. T.W. Food, 377 Walden St., Cambridge, 617-864-4745 or twfoodrestaurant .com
Somewhere in Parma, a cheesemaker is steaming mad. The Italian region is one of the production centers for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the nutty, granular "real" Parmesan that bears little relation to pretenders from places other than northern Italy. But Parrano Robusto is Dutch, and both the name and the flavor are designed to emulate Parmigiano Reggiano. This Dutch upstart comes extremely close. It has much of the complex nutty flavor of good Parmesan, but has the creamier texture and sliceability of young Gouda. This versatility makes it a great choice for grating or eating out of hand. At Whole Foods Markets and specialty cheese shops.
Sheryl Julian
When Swiss manufacturer Kuhn Rikon came out with a very sharp small knife in bold colors, I found myself using it to pare apples, pears, cucumbers, and many other fruits and vegetables that I used to peel with an ordinary vegetable peeler. It comes with a sheath, which makes it picnic friendly. This steel blade, with its nonstick coating, is like a razor. And the colors - newer curvy-handled knives come in green, eggplant, yellow, and other hues - are fetching. Hide it, lest someone in your kitchen use it to pry open a container, rip the plastic from the package of chicken, or, worst of all, stick it in the dishwasher. Yes, it's dishwasher safe, but you don't want it rattling around and hobnobbing with lesser implements. AtI fell hard for Jenna (Keri Russell) in the film "Waitress," who made beautiful pies with clever names. She essentially baked her moods, as in the "I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie" (ham and brie quiche) and the "I Hate My Husband Pie" (bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened). Jenna was the only one who enjoyed waiting on Old Joe (Andy Griffith), who owned Joe's Pie Diner. Streams of pies emerged from the kitchen, one luscious round after another. They made me want to go home and bake pies, and save an especially creamy one in case I ever met an Earl.
When Whittard of Chelsea opened a Newbury Street outpost, I found the tea of my dreams. I'd tried dozens of Indian teas and Chinese teas, dragged home Mariage Freres from Paris and Fortnum & Mason from London. Frankly, much of it was too strong. I drink tea, but I really don't want black teeth. Whittard's 1886 Blend of leaf tea has just the right balance, strength, and flavor. It combines Assam and Keemun teas and is supposed to be drunk strong with milk (see F2 for more on tea drinking). I take mine on the weak side and sip it from the minute I wake up until mid-afternoon, pouring it into thermoses that actually keep it hot and don't stew it (a story for another day). Regrettably, the blend isn't available online. Whittard of Chelsea, 170 Newbury St., 617-536-5200.
When Devra First went to Japan this fall, she brought back a plastic egg basket that I use every day. She knows that my husband and I are eggstatic about the ovoids (sorry!). For breakfast, he makes 6-minute eggs that are a cross between soft-boiled and hard. I make a hard-cooked egg for lunch. We both insist that the yolks be bright yellow with no trace of gray rim around them. With this device, you fill the indentations with eggs and, holding the handle, lower the basket into boiling water, then cook according to the instructions written in Japanese around the edge of the implement. This splendid gift came with a translation.
Throughout the holidays, my secret weapon against big platters of delicious food and homemade confections at every turn are Spartan meals in between. Alas, there's only so much steamed veg you can eat at once - and we're not even in lean January. That's where Vinagre de Cava Loxarel comes in. Made from the Spanish bubbly cava and aged in chestnut, the vinegar comes with its own pouring spout and gives a lift to my plateful of cauliflower, green beans, and broccoli, while keeping the calories way down. I feel virtuous and it allows me, of course, to put my fist into the cookie jar when no one's looking. At Formaggio Kitchen, 244 Huron Ave., Cambridge, 617-354-4750, and South End Formaggio, 268 Shawmut Ave., 617-350-6996.
Wesley Morris
I'm late to this party, I know. But I don't drive and don't live in Union Square, so somebody has to drive me to Market Basket, and on several occasions this year somebody did. Madonna was right: Music does bring the people together. But so does 18 aisles of really affordable food. This place can be exasperating (how do you say, "Dude, that's my cart" in Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, Wolof, Russian, or Arabic?). It can be exhilarating, too, like shopping in a borderless cultural traffic jam. The cross-class unifying principle is also a riot. Grad students, maids, bankers, taxi drivers, drunks: apparently we all need those sponge-on-a-stick things. Whole Foods? Meet whole world. Market Basket, 400 Somerville Ave., Somerville, 617-666-2420.As a kid, I thought okra was like cooked leeches. It was always that lady with the daytime talk show. It was what some kids would say before they cast a spell that didn't do anything. It was definitely not what I wanted to eat. This year it was. Who can say why? I had it with shortribs at a restaurant. My grandmother makes soup with it (granny, Okra loves you, too!). And my friend Mark eats it pickled. So I've been trying to cook it whenever I can - sauteed, roasted, stewed. No, I haven't found a way to shake the leechy texture. But dang it, I'm a man now. The leechy texture is what I love.
Laura Scudder's Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter was pretty much the only peanut butter anybody used when I lived in San Francisco. Two ingredients are listed: peanuts and salt. But I liked to think there was a little crack, too, since peanuts and salt alone couldn't be that addictive. I was this close to rehab. When I moved east, I left my Laura Scudder's in San Francisco. Then about two months ago, combing a Shaw's for peanut butter to eat at my desk, I saw a jar of Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter and remembered the company had owned Laura Scudder's all along. I checked the label - peanuts and salt. About four jars later, I'm a junkie again. Try to make me go to rehab. I say, "No, no, no."
So two of my best friends - a married couple - moved here in September. She goes to grad school and doesn't always have time to prepare the time-consuming meals she prefers. I stopped by one day, as she and her husband were sitting down to a stewed chicken dinner that came out of her pressure cooker. If that device could make a dinner that good that easily, I had to get one. And so I did. For less than $30, I got one at a Brazilian supermarket. I'm still learning how to use it (don't start; it's not that easy). A few fancy friends want to upgrade me. But hold on, Beyoncé: Don't I need to master my bare-bones model before going anywhere near some Kuhn Rikon contraption? I want a pressure cooker, not the pressure to cook. kuhnrikon.com.
If George W. Bush doesn't want to be the Opiner-in-Chief, allow me: Man, it's hard to find an awesome cup of coffee in Boston. I know what you're thinking: Wesley, you don't know what an awesome cup of coffee even is. But you're wrong. I do now. It happened last May. I was in San Francisco, where, at the time, the thing to do was stop by some garage and have this "amazing" coffee. I didn't know about the coffee, but the line to get some was pretty amazing. As it turns out the Blue Bottle Coffee Company coffee actually was extraordinary. You'd need the Oxford English Dictionary to describe its awesomeness. Although a version of what the barista told me is on its website, where you can order your own: "After roasting, coffee beans exhale CO2 for several hours. Instead of keeping our beans in bins, we mix the blends and bag them within 4 hours of roasting to harness the CO2 to keep oxygen (and, hence, oxidation) out of the bags. We never preblend our coffees thus assuring the ideal roast profile for each bean used in a blend. All varietals are roasted individually, then mixed into our blends." I don't know what any of that means. But presumably it's coffee-nerd for "mmm." bluebottlecoffee.net.
