-Gifted-

If you’re Christmas shopping for a foodie then Sous Chef is a good place to start. If you’ve never got lost in their pages of ingredients and kitchen kit, then clear your schedule and jump in! You can shop by ingredients, cookware, tableware, techniques or cuisine. For an early festive treat, courtesy of Sous Chef I headed to the Mexican cuisine section.

Mexican cuisine: not just chilli

There is so much to choose from, just in the Mexican section. From packs of speciality chills, to ‘taste of Mexico’ recipe packs. You’ll find loads of stuff to help you recreate your fave Mexican restaurant dishes. This molcajete is a pestle and mortar made out of basalt. Our pestle smashed years ago leaving the mortar as nothing more than a fancy door stop, so this will be really useful in our house. The stumpy little legs make this molcajete really sturdy so we should get decades of use out of it if we aren’t so clumsy. Traditionally used for grinding spices for Mexican pastes, in our house it will grind spices for curry, cakes and much more. Maybe I’ll make a mole for the first time as well….

Just a note, it needs seasoning – just like a cast iron griddle does. You can find one easy way to do it here.

Cheers to cinnamon

When the clocks change, I go into hot chocolate mode. It has to be rich and full of flavour. So I couldn’t resist this Mayan hot chocolate which is infused with cinnamon.

The molinillo stirer is a cute addition for real hot chocolate fans. Rub it between your palms so it whisks the milk as it heats in a pan. I love making a proper milky hot chocolate at home, it’s so much better than a low cal sachet of dust. It’s like stirring risotto – a gentle moment to chill and zone out. So I think this will live by the hob and get loads of winter use. This is fun if you make hot chocolate for lots of people at once – it is quite big so needs 2+ cups of milk in the pan to cover the head.

FYI, the instructions say to use 1 full tablet for 1 litre of milk – which would be 3-4 mugs. I used just over 300ml for my mug size, and must admit that I used almost half a tablet because it is cold and I wanted a big chocolate flavour! I chopped the chocolate with a knife and melted it into the milk over a low heat. I actually think it needed this amount. There are seven tablets in the box, so play around with quantity to get the flavour you like.

The result is a slightly spiced hot chocolate that you’d happily pay for in a coffee shop. You could even add the scantest touch of  cayenne for an extra tingle if that’s your bag.

Also worth a look

The molcajete, hot chocolate and molinillo were gifted kindly by Sous Chef, but thoughts and opinions are all my own.

What foodie delights would you want in your stocking this year?

---