Spilling the beans
Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee has long been roasting signature blends for upscale restaurants including Blackbird, Custom House, Scylla and Alinea. Now these chef-directed brews can cap off meals at home. Blends are sold by the cup and pound, with flavors rotating monthly at Intelligentsia’s new store, 55 E. Randolph St.; they’re all available online (intelligentsiacoffee.com). The coffee is $14 per pound, whole beans or ground.
Online to India
This starter kit from Currycurry.net, a Riverside-based Web site, has many of the ingredients for an Indian meal, including four jars of curry, spices such as panch phoron (a five-spice combination), and masoor dal (split red lentils). Chai ingredients are here too. Recipes are included. The kit is $25; the site also sells individual jars of curry for $5 each.
Down the aisle, and into the kitchen
Two cookbooks pop the question: What’s for dinner, lovebird? The “Williams-Sonoma Bride & Groom Cookbook” (Free Press, $34.95), by Gayle Pirie and John Clark, and “Betty Crocker Cookbook Bridal Edition” (Wiley, $29.95) offer great dishes with lots of primers, charts and color photos. The Williams-Sonoma book emphasizes elegance and 150 recipes; Betty Crocker’s (a “keepsake” version of its “Big Red” cookbook) takes a more utilitarian approach with more than 1,000 recipes.
