On Monday, Chef Gil Marks offered us a delicious array of recipes to fill your shalach manot basket with freshly-baked treats (hamentaschen, of course, but also baklava, almond horns, pecan tassies and even fortune cookies!) Now, he’s back with even more ways to surprise your friends on Purim with creative, DIY shalach manot.

Chef Marks is the author of The James Beard Award-winning, Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, and the upcoming Encyclopedia of Jewish Food - Next week, Chef Marks will be back with a menu for a Purim Persian Feast!

Themed Gifts:
Besides giving baked goods and confections, theme baskets provide an outlet for your ingenuity.

Try an Italian motif with an assortment of pastas, homemade tomato sauce, pesto, balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes, salami, Italian bread or focaccia, biscotti, and a bottle of Italian wine.

For a sushi basket (most of these items can be found in health food stores) include some homemade sushi, short-grain rice, nori (seaweed sheets), rice vinegar, tamari, mirin (sweet rice wine), homemade pickled ginger, wasabi (Japanese horseradish), salmon caviar, dashi (soup stock), sake, and Japanese tea and enclose instructions on how to use everything.

For an English effect use scones, an assortment of marmalades or jams, Cheddar cheese, rice pudding, pound cake, shortbread cookies, English ales and beers, and an array of teas.

After you have gone to the trouble of making and/or purchasing special items for shalachmones, it seems only appropriate to put them into something special…

Decorative Baskets

A cake pan or tart mold provide an apropos base for baked goods. Insert a piece of velvet or other cloth in a large picture frame and use as a tray for a unique backdrop to your treats. (Your friends can then utilize the frame for its original intention.) Or use a large ceramic bowl or colander.

Baskets make charming containers and frequently can be purchased at bargain prices at discount and odd-lot stores. Use a mask (they are easy to make yourself using color paper and elastic thread), candy money (make your own gelt out of chocolate-covered apricots), cards containing the music and words for popular Purim songs (you can find this information at a Jewish bookstore), and/or a grogger (noise-maker) to enliven your presentation.

You may want to add a note of explanation for those friends who are unfamiliar with the custom. If you are worried about the contents falling out or for the added effect, wrap the basket in cellophane and tie the top with a ribbon.

Purchase Chef Marks’ cookbook, Olive Trees & Honey here.