Drinking and eating well during the holiday
season is never the problem. The hard part is when you’re the one tasked with
providing the party’s sustenance or when you’re at a get-together and
you’re put on the spot — as the enthusiastic booze guy — to whip up a special
holiday cocktail. Fear not, because between how-to cooking videos from celeb chef Michael Mina to the
slickest iPad book on wine we’ve ever seen, holiday good times are only a smartphone
or tablet away.
Cook Taste Eat (cooktasteeat.com)
We were lucky enough to get into the SoMa test kitchen of Cook Taste Eat, the daily
video-lesson project from Michael Mina (the genius behind the Bourbon Steak restaurants).
Even home cooks with limited skills can get a lot out of the how-to videos. Lucky for us,
each video focuses on a specific dish. If you’re easily overwhelmed and/or under the
influence when you cook, you can just take it one step at a time. Because there’s a
daily lesson, it’s a nice way to get menu ideas even if you don’t have the
time to try every single suggestion.
Wine Simplified (iTunes)
This interactive book that does exactly what it says on the box: simplify wine.
As people who like, but don’t love, wine, this is just what the doctor ordered.
As a matter of fact, if you’d like a copy for yourself, be one of the first
three people to email [email protected], and a world of wine wisdom is yours.
From an overview about where different wines come from — and the Old World/New World
divide that helps you instantly get a read on any wine — to a chapter on how to conduct
yourself at a restaurant when ordering wine (you really don’t have to sniff the
cork), everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask is here. The chapter on
entertaining and serving wine at home is especially helpful. One note: This isn’t a
book you read straight through. Here, the navigation is crisp and intuitive, and the
information is presented in chunks just big enough to leave you satisfied but not so large
as to leave you bored.
Holiday Cocktail Bar (Google Play, iTunes)
This is the best of the holiday booze apps. We learned that making eggnog from scratch
isn’t really that hard, and it impresses people much more than it should. Designed by
James Beard-honored mixologist Kim Haasarud, the original recipes make a good app that
much better. “Grandma’s Cold Toddy,” for example, is a rich concoction
made with Grand Marnier, fresh lemon and Riesling. The photography is so slick it’ll
make you thirsty, and the glossary of various spirits and ingredients and garnish ideas is
worth the price of admission.
Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List App (Google Play, iTunes)
If you’re only going to have one cloud-cookbook this holiday season, go with
Epicurious. One of the most mature and polished food apps out there, it has a section for
dinner party ideas, a section devoted to cocktails, an area for those who can barely cook
and another section for those who cook like a pro. Our favorite feature is that if you see
a recipe you like, you can add it to your shopping list, and next time you’re in the
grocery store just open the app and check off what you need to buy. Hit the little
“create shopping list” button to merge all your recipes into one big list. For
those of us who always forget something at the grocery store, this is a godsend.