Great Taste

Great Taste's fave local food find of 2009

The best honey Great Taste has had from any producer in the West, North or East* is Hillview Honey from C. Richard Anderson, Northfield.

The honey was purchased from Fireside Orchard & Gardens, Northfield, which is now officially closed for the season.

Like many locally grown foods and food products in Minnesota, supplies can be limited. Whatever it is, if you like it , buy it if and when you can. In this case Great Taste bought the last jar of Hillview Honey on the shelf. When Great Taste researched Hillview Honey on the internet, nothing turned up. (For GT, this is "buying local" at its most interesting and mysterious.)

So what is this blog post about, anyway?

Well, Great Taste wants to share with others this honey discovery, but also, meanwhile, GT received a comment about the Simple Good and Tasty (aka SGT) blog from Minneapolis. Yes, GT loves it too and highlighted it in a post last month. Currently there is a recipe for baklava on the site's main page, along with information on Minnesota honey production and names of some good honey producers whose liquid gold may actually be in stock in a grocery store.  

http://simplegoodandtasty.com/   

More on baklava: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baklava

*Tupelo honey, a southern specialty, is in a class by itself.  

GG

Think flat ... bread

There's a flat bread for whatever mood you're in at International Spices & Grocery in Rochester. 

Injera, lahvosh (Armenian cracker bread), pita and hambasha are some of the round, thin Middle Eastern/ African breads that are fun to pick up and experiment with. I like hambasha, a sweet bread, with cardamom tea; other breads are perfect for dips, sauces, stews or wraps.

Pita can be toasted with olive oil and salt to become a chip. Pita chips, toasted or fried, are a key ingredient in a popular Levantine salad called fattoush. During my recent trip to Marin County, north of San Francisco, I encountered fattoush as a specialty of the house at critically acclaimed Insalata's, a Mediterranean restaurant in San Anselmo. If you'd like to make fattoush, mayoclinic.com features a recipe for it.

Or just enjoy the staff of life all by itself.

International Spices & Grocery, 125 E. Center Street (507) 288-8007.