A couple possible additions to Heather Kenny’s roundup of good bets for gourmands in the Holiday Gift Guide:
The only thing harder than getting a reservation at Ferran Adria’s Catalan restaurant El Bulli may be making the recipes yourself. As Mike Sula notes of the recently released A Day at El Bulli, “The handful of recipes included aren’t meant to be duplicated with much success by the average home cook.” (Much like the Alinea cookbook.) Here to help: Ferran Adria’s Sferificación Minikit (“sferificación” is Spanish for “spherification;” “minikit” is, of course, Spanish for “minikit”), available for around $275 USD. Think of it as training wheels for molecular gastronomy; the kit provides tools and ingredients for making edible spheres, gels, and foams, plus a booklet with recipes. The Australian‘s Rob Ingram tested it out by making tomato water spheres and found himself a little out of his league. “Preparation 1, says the booklet. Mix 500g water with four doses of algin using an electric mixer. This is not a good start. My over-stimulated mind cannot compute 500g of water. Surely they mean 500ml of water.” I know the feeling.
If haute cuisine isn’t so much your style, Burger King’s got you covered: for just $3.99, you can smell like a fast-food joint. Yesterday they released Flame, a body spray for men that supposedly captures the essence of the Whopper, offering “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.”
Think that presents don’t get any worse than that? Think again. Japanese department store Tokyu Hands offers a disturbing realistic roast-turkey hat. It doesn’t appear to be available online, though, so unless you’re going to Japan soon you may be out of luck. But there’s always the turkey cannon
(h/t Mark, Irma)