What Hailee Catalano Can’t Cook Without

These actually have pieces of tangerine in them as well as whole chiles. They’re sweet, salty, and spicy, and I could just eat them as a snack out of the jar. They’re nice on a charcuterie plate. I also love taking plain lettuce or romaine — whatever kind of salad I’m making — and putting these on there with the brine and some olive oil. It makes the most delicious dressing, and it’s really easy. I’ll also chop them and put them on roast chicken.

I started getting this in the past month or two. It’s from upstate New York. Most maple syrups have a bit of smoky flavor, but you can really taste it in this one. It’s smoky and caramelly. I’m assuming that’s because it’s reduced over a wood fire. I used to use honey in a lot of my vinaigrettes, but lately it’s been this. I make a dressing for radicchio that’s this maple syrup and sherry vinegar. It’s a really nice pairing, especially with the bitterness of the radicchio. I thinkChuckused it in a coconut marinade — like coconut milk and a bunch of spices — and that was really good.

I don’t know if this is true, but Mutti is the only brand I’ve seen that does triple-concentrated tomato paste. Usually, it’s just double concentrated. I really do think it makes a difference, especially when you make a quick vodka sauce or something that’s all tomato paste. In that case, it really makes it taste like it’s been cooking all day — which it has been cooking longer, but they did it for you. I make this pastina–and–mini-meatballs soup and always add tomato paste to that. It’s a quick soup, it doesn’t simmer long, but adding the tomato paste gives it a rich flavor. I also love just caramelizing the tomato paste a little bit in a pan, adding butter, and making tomato-paste butter noodles. It sounds kind of crazy, but it’s really good. Especially with the triple concentrated, it makes it really, really umami.

I live in New Jersey, and there’s this place called Delicious Orchards, which is a niche grocery store. Sometimes I just walk around there. One time, probably about four years ago, I noticed it had all these different mustards. This one was so brightly green, and I love tarragon so I wanted to try it. I put it on a turkey sandwich and, oh my God, it’s so good. It has a creaminess on its own — like it’s not too abrasive. Tarragon is a very distinct herb with a strong flavor, but it just works with the creaminess of this. It’s also really good if you make a ham-and-butter sandwich and then add this mustard. I’m sure it would be good in a dressing, or you could add it as a finishing mustard in a fines herbes sauce for chicken, but this one is really a sandwich condiment for me.

Red-wine vinegar is my go-to vinegar whenever I’m cooking, and this one is my favorite. A lot of generic red-wine vinegars are very sharp and almost taste like they just dyed white vinegar that color. With this one, you can really taste the grape. It’s sharp but still has a mellowness. Especially in the summer, if I’m making a quick salad, I just put this on with olive oil. I also love to make red-wine-vinegar roast chicken. I do that a lot. I’ll roast the chicken and then use all the drippings, mix them with the vinegar to make a sauce, and pour that over.

I need a jam in my fridge at all times. This one is technically not a jam — it’s a spread — so I think it has less sugar. It’s not too sweet, and it has that distinct sourness of the cherries. It’s my go-to for toast or a PB&J. It’s really good in barbecue sauce. This is a random thing that’s going to sound disgusting, but my mom used to make these things called cocktail meatballs with Heinz Chili Sauce. It might be a midwestern thing, but it was chili sauce and grape jelly mixed together. But I’ll make cocktail meatballs for the holidays and use this.

This list would not be complete if crushed Calabrian chiles weren’t on it. People cooking my recipes will ask me, “Can I just use red pepper flakes?” Of course you can; that will make it spicy. But you’ll be missing the fermented taste, which you really can’t find elsewhere. This is actually really spicy, so a little goes a long way. But it also has this fruitiness and floralness and fermentedness all in one jar. I always use this in my tomato sauces. Literally any time there’s a tomato-based sauce, this is going in. I stir it into butter, which makes a really delicious compound butter for seafood. I add it to a honey butter for biscuits, too.

These are my standard canned tomatoes. I started using Bianco DiNapoli during the pandemic, when I was in a huge phase of making ricotta ravioli, and it’s just a game changer for a quick marinara. It has a fresher taste than a lot of brands. There’s nothing tinny or musty you have to take hours to cook out. When we make pizza, we don’t even like to make a cooked tomato sauce. We just crush these up and season them with a little salt and olive oil and they taste like a fresh tomato.

A while ago when I was in culinary school, I didn’t care about black pepper. But then I realized I wasn’t appreciating how good it could be — especially when you toast high-quality black peppercorns and then freshly grind them. We toast them at a low temperature, like 300 degrees for about 30 minutes. They toast all the way through. If you cut open a regular peppercorn, it would just be white on the inside, but when we toast them, it’s actually tan all the way through. It really changes the flavor. These ones I especially love. They have a nuttiness and a floral taste others don’t. Diaspora keeps it fresh, which is a really big thing. I use black pepper so much and finish almost everything I make with it, so I go through my full mill in a week.

Maldon is nice, but there’s something about Jacobsen. I think it’s crunchier, which I prefer. Maldon breaks up easily when you sprinkle it, whereas Jacobsen keeps some bigger pieces and it’s more irregular. Because of the variation in size, you get more fun pockets of flavor where one part is a little saltier and another is a little more mild. It’s just a really nice balance of size and texture.

Saba is my new thing I’ve been loving, especially during grilling season, which is why it’s on my mind. It’s reduced unfermented grape juice — also known as grape must. Think of it as a chic balsamic glaze but much more complex. It’s sweet and has a grapey flavor. You just drizzle it on any kind of grilled item and it adds what a balsamic glaze would but without that cloying sweetness and vinegar sharpness. The first time I had it was in a restaurant many years ago where we worked. We were grilling bacon and then drizzled that on top and it was very delicious. But it’s also really good on vanilla ice cream with berries. I love it with grilled zucchini and torn burrata with olive oil. It’s also good on a sandwich with prosciutto and cheese.