Editor's Choice: Cahoot's House Rub

  We get a lot of BBQ sauce and other spice mixes at the Fancy Food offices. Most of them are...special, the way the French mean special. I am always delighted to find a diamond in the rough. Cahoots Catering's House Rub is a great product. Despite the misleadingly pastoral label and dilettante design, this is a rub that works, and keeps working.

I have used it at home on the grill, in the crock pot and in the oven. It adds warmth and flavor to meats and veggies without over-powering the natural tastes. There is no sugar added, just natural spices, so it is like an original blend you would buy at a fancy spice shop.

My favorite use of the House Rub is on a whole chicken. As I have mentioned before, we eat a lot of chicken from the grill at my house. I just lightly coat a whole chicken in olive oil and then with a sprinkle coating of House Rub over that, and some in the cavity, and pop it over a beer can and onto the grill for an hour (last week I used "retro" 7-Up with real sugar and it was amazing). What you get is perfectly seasoned and browned chicken with a crispy skin and flavorful meat without too much salt or overpowering spices. Perfect. When it is monsieur's turn to cook, he is always looking for, "That good spice, the one you used last time." I can't wait to try it on a roast this winter.

-Elizabeth Dugan

Editor's Choice: Manja! Gourmet Glaze & Drizzle

The next time I get down to North Carolina, I sincerely hope to stop in at Mama Brava's family restaurant. It is described as being "in the cozy little hamlet on the Shallotte River in coastal NC." Doesn't that sound like a little slice of heaven?

After giving their Manja! Gourmet Glaze & Drizzle a try, I can well believe they make the heck out of their BBQ too. Though Mawji Foods (www.mawjifoods.com), the creator of the sauce, claims never to use corn syrup, I just don't know how they get such a sweet and spicy sauce without that key ingredient in many sauces.

We used it on roast chicken for dinner, one night. At my house, we are meat lovers. All meat, all the time (with a veggie and a salad of course). So, following the directions, we coated the whole chicken with a layer of glaze for the last 30 minutes of cooking. We coated it twice, actually. One at 15 minutes and another five minutes from the end. It seemed to be a good system, because the chicken browned beautifully and got a lovely caramelized glaze.

The chicken was tender and juicy and the glaze gave it such a sweet and peppery taste that everyone had double portions. Actually, I am not a fan of peppers usually. I don't do fajitas, chili, or stuffed poblanos, or really any pepper-heavy food. But this level and depth of pepper didn't drown out everything else (chicken and sweetness and the seasoning in the sauce), which is usually my complaint. Oh, we will be using our whole bottle of Manja! Yes, we will.

-Elizabeth Dugan