The Sweet & Savory Roundup
Peanut Butter Salty Oats
We’ve long been fans of local baker Terri Horn’s soul-satisfying Salty Oats cookies. Using handpicked quality ingredients— European-style butter, Belgian chocolate, and organic oats and eggs—Horn has created a tightly-edited line of iconic cookies that has generated a lot of buzz (and imitative recipes) in the blogosphere. Inspired by her yellow lab Clem’s love of peanut butter, and after six years of experimentation, tasting and tweaking, she recently launched two new flavors: Peanut Butter and PB & Chocolate. As with her Original, Chocolate and Chunky Chocolate Pecan Salty Oats, these new flavors are mixed, scooped, baked and bagged by hand. And like the rest of her lineup, they deliver big flavor and a pleasing fusion of sweet and savory, the latter a result of her signature sprinkle of kosher salt on top of each cookie. We can only say, it’s been worth the wait.
Peanut Butter and PB & Chocolate Salty Oats are sold individually for $2.75 and in three-packs for $7.00. You can find them at her Good Butter Bakery in Hyannis, at the Cape Cod Beer Farmers’ Market, online and at retail locations across the Cape.
Good Butter Bakery
239 Main Street (behind All Cape Cook’s Supply), Hyannis
Monday-Friday 9 am-5 pm
kayakcookies.com
Cape Cod Gourmet Toffee
For 25 years, Beverly Ricketson kept the recipe for her signature toffee a closely held secret, planning one day to sell it commercially. On New Year’s Eve 2014 she made a resolution to stop procrastinating and finally make a go of it. By Memorial Day her Cape Cod Gourmet Toffee was on the shelves at her first retail outlet. A full-time LPN, Ricketson starts the candy-making process in the morning before work—roasting almonds, cooking the toffee, sprinkling it with sea salt before coating it on both sides with dark chocolate and chopped walnuts—and packages the end product late at night, tying each bag with a chocolate brown and baby blue polka dot ribbon.
The habit-forming confection starts with a shattering crush as you bite into a wedge before it melts in your mouth; a smooth, buttery crunch, as Ricketson describes it. This year, with a growing number of retail customers, Ricketson brought on her son Brendan to help with the production. A good thing, since she’s also started rolling out a new cranberry/pecan flavor at select locations. She has also just partnered with Cape Abilities Farm and is using their Saltworks Sea Salt; although it costs a little more, it’s her way to support a local non-profit.
Cape Cod Gourmet Toffee is available in packages of two, four, six, eight or sixteen ounces (from $5.00-$37.95) at retail locations across the Cape, or online capecodgourmettoffee.com.
Roadhouse Café House Dressing
A favorite Monday night date of ours is sharing a pizza and salad at the piano bar while enjoying live jazz at The Roadhouse Café in Hyannis. Owned and operated by David Colombo, the Roadhouse has been serving award-winning cuisine year-round since 1981, making it a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. Right from the get-go, Roadhouse patrons were telling Colombo he should bottle and sell his house dressing. The Sweet Italian Vinaigrette, a proprietary mixture of onion, pepper, Parmesan, egg, garlic and spices, is made by hand in small batches in the Roadhouse kitchen. When developing the recipe, Colombo says he was trying to evoke his grandmother’s cuisine. “I never had a written recipe, I went by palette and food memory,” he says. The resulting product is creamy, complex and slightly sweet, with a hint of pucker in the follow through. It makes the perfect complement for a crisp green salad, but try it over warm asparagus spears, tossed in a pasta salad, or as a marinade for chicken like they do at the Roadhouse.
The Roadhouse Café Sweet Italian Vinaigrette is available at Barnstable Village Market, Chatham Village Market, Fancy’s Market in Osterville, Lambert’s Markets in Hyannis and Sandwich, and Peterson’s Market in Dennis Village. It retails for around $5. You can also purchase it directly from the source at The Roadhouse Café, 488 South Street in Hyannis. Better yet, pull up a seat at the piano bar, order the Baby Arugula Salad and Italian Grilled Chicken and taste it for yourself. We bet you bring home a bottle.
Red Door Farms Hamburger Seasoning
In 1955, Martin Evers, a spice salesman in Dayton, Ohio, launched the original Red Door Farms Hamburger Seasoning after months of perfecting the recipe (a mixture of paprika, turmeric, garlic power, salt and other spices). The Kroger supermarket chain was a devoted customer from the beginning, and Martin and his wife Fran spent their nights filling orders in a shed with a red door behind their house. Twenty years after Mr. Evers passed away, his granddaughter Jess Bodamer and her husband Ben have brought the seasoning back to market and are producing it on Cape Cod, where the family has summered for generations. Jess, a former lawyer, personal chef and caterer, says she took a lot of time perfecting the recipe and ensuring the production process was scalable before reintroducing Red Door Farms seasoning last winter. Jess says, “It’s super versatile and has never found a savory food it didn’t improve. It takes whatever you’re putting it on or in and makes it taste better.” Her favorite application is to sprinkle it on salmon: “It’s crazy good.” You’ll find some of her recipes on Facebook, where fans rave about how Red Door Farms seasoning elevates the flavor of everything from popcorn to roasted vegetables, rib-eye steak, even a Bloody Mary.
Find Red Door Farms Hamburger Seasoning (retail $8.99) at The Brown Jug in Sandwich, Cape Abilities Farm in Dennis, Chatham Wine + Provisions, Farm Fare Market in Sandwich, the Osterville Farmers Market on Fridays, and online at burgerspice.com.
