[Photographs: Max Falkowitz]

It was only two years ago that Nafi's Condiments and Sauces—a line of habanero-based pepper sauces and pastes—was launched in New York City, but the journey that led to Nafissatou Camara's jumpstarting her business began many years before.

In the 1950's, Nafissatou (nicknamed Nafi) moved from France to Senegal to find her father, and she immediately became enamored by the culture she discovered there. Her main influence was her grandmother, also named Nafissatou. "She became my best friend, and even before I could understand the language she spoke, she shared with me her love of cooking, the wonderful recipes that she loved to prepare for the family I was just reunited with." Nafi's Condiments and Sauces is a tribute to her.

Camara makes seven products, including five "hot pepper condiments" and two "original sauces." The flavors range from cumin to coconut curry-yam to mango-tamarind, though they're all based on fiery-but-fruity habanero chilies. The sauces are made at La Marqueta in Harlem; Nafi's sauces is an incubate business in the Hot Bread Kitchen Incubates program.

Nafi's condiments distinguish themselves from other pepper sauces by being made with habaneros and scotch bonnet peppers, the same ingredients that are used in her region of Senegal. "They are unique not just for their level of heat but for their intense and bold taste." Nafi recommends the condiments be used for quick meat and vegetable marinades to hummus stir-ins and easy add-ons for grain dishes. Her personal favorite sauce is the cumin: "It is amazing to cook, grill, or simply put on toasted bread and enjoy with goat cheese and figs."

As her business grows, Nafi hopes to pay homage to the people of Senegal; she aspires to soon be able to purchase peanut butter from a Senegalese source. "Several women groups in rural areas there formed cooperatives that aim to improve the lives of women through the culture of peanuts. One of my goals is to be able to make an impact on women's lives in developing countries."

At this point, Nafi almost single-handedly runs her company, except for the help of her daughters and a part-time social media person. That being said, she is looking to hire more people, expand distribution, and maybe even open her own restaurant one day.

In the meantime, her company is growing every day. Her products can be found at Greene Grape Provisions in Brooklyn and Gracefully on the Lower East Side, as well as at the Green Flea Market on the Upper West Side, and pretty soon at the Whole Foods on 97th and Columbus. In addition, you can purchase the condiments on her website.

About the author: Ari Rudess is a Serious Eats intern and student at Wesleyan University. You can check out her Wesleyan food blog at www.wesstuffed.com

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

Impressed by the texture and nutritional value of her workout buddy's roasted chickpea snack, Linda Kim began experimenting with making her own. Eventually, she started a company, Pulse, to sell them. "I wanted a name that represented a heart healthy snack, she says, "and it just happens to mean beans."

There are three flavors available at the moment, which were developed to complement the chickpeas' natural flavor: lightly salted Original, Balsamic, and Spicy Lemon Zest. A fourth, Chocolate Cayenne, is on the way. Since Kim chose to work with chickpeas in large part because they make a healthful snack, she works hard to flavor them in ways that don't add a lot of sugar or sodium. She explains, "they are high in fiber, a great plant-based source of protein and naturally gluten free. I don't want to compromise the nutritional value for taste and vice versa."

She adds, "To bring sweet flavors that, I rely on ingredients like organic balsamic vinegar and organic coconut sugar that are low on the glycemic load. Chickpeas are low on the glycemic index, so it only makes sense to avoid adding ingredients that would disrupt this health benefit."

Kim works out of an incubator kitchen in the Bronx, roasting 150 pounds of chickpeas a week. Like many small business owners, she wears many hats, doing all production, R&D, sales, demos, and business-related tasks herself, working long days, and getting little sleep. "It's worth it though," she says, "because there's been positive growth on a business and personal level."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Brooklyn Cured]

"When I first started out, I thought it would be enough to make something really good," Scott Bridi of Brooklyn Cured shares. "As a cook, I didn't think much about things like packaging, promotion, price lists that are well designed."

Since the last time Bridi's charcuterie was featured in this column, he says Brooklyn Cured has shown a steady increase in business. "We have systems in place," he says, "We're ready to do more."

Some of that "more" is a new relationship with Bark, the locally sourced hot dog restaurant in Park Slope. Brooklyn Cured sausages will have a dedicated section of the menu; chicken chorizo will be one of the selections, but the remainder will be chosen by the attendees at "sausage kick-off parties" at Bark on March 20th and 27th.

There are more and more varied products available. Bridi has added a smoker to his kitchen, allowing him to expand his offerings to include pastrami, bacon, smoked sausages, and seasonally available Mangalitsa hams.

And he is doing more consulting for restaurants interested in adding classic New York-style meats to their menus; he'll travel to Paris to April to help fellow Gramercy Tavern alum Gregory Marchand set up the hot dog and pastrami programs at Marchand's new venture, the street-food-inspired Frenchie to Go.

He's already succeeding at one of the goals he set for himself when he initially launched the business: teaching and mentoring people who are interested in learning charcuterie. One of his current employees, he says, had barely held a knife before coming to work with Bridi, and now is an accomplished cook. "Actually seeing that happening is really awesome," Bridi says.

Brooklyn Cured now employees three people in the kitchen in addition to Bridi, and another two or three to work at markets. Though he acknowledges that managing people requires a unique skill set that not all cooks are lucky enough to possess, he says that careful hiring is the trick. "If you find people who believe in what you're doing and want to take your standards as their own," he says, "then managing is easy."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Ambrosial Granola]

Hariclia Makoulis came to the United States from Greece as a young adult, but her culinary heart remained in her homeland. So when she started a company to sell her granola in 2000, she named it Ambrosial Granola after the mythical food of the ancient Greek gods.

"The Mediterranean diet has been proven to be one of the most healthy ways to eat," she says, "and I pay a lot of attention to our ingredients for nutrition."

All of her products are certified USDA organic, a process she says was "very difficult and time consuming." In addition, all ingredients are verified non-GMO. She uses no refined sweeteners and no added oils, though she says, "I trust the oils in nuts, seeds, and grains." All of her products display detailed nutrition information.

"I'm passionate about giving the best," she adds. "This is what I made for my children when they were growing up."

Her Grecian Grove Granola contains apricots, cranberries, and golden raisins, along with pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, and flax seeds. The Venetian Vineyard Granola, which was declared Prevention magazine's Healthiest Cereal 2011, is packed with walnuts, dates, and cashews in addition to flax meal and sunflower and sesame seeds.

Though Ambrosial originally only made granola, Mokoulis realized that there were not many good, domestically made muesli products available, and introduced Athenian Harvest Muesli. The cereal is raw and not sweetened with anything other than dried fruit. The goji berries,apricots, dates, golden raisins, hazelnuts, and pumpkin seeds make up 37% of the muesli.

"Some granolas, you just see specks of this, specks of that," Mokoulis says of the nuts, fruits, and seeds, "We like to see the whole thing."

To purchase directly or for a list of suppliers, visit Ambrosial Granola.

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

When Sara Marshall moved from Texas to New Jersey in 2000, she was disappointed by the Mexican food options available in the Garden State. So she started making her own, and got into the habit of bringing Tex-Mex style salsa with her to parties and giving jars of it as gifts. Then when she lost her banking job, a friend suggested marketing her salsa. Marshall used the members of her darts league in Hoboken as taste testers for several months before she was ready to launch.

Saucy Sara's Salsa, the resulting business, sells three kinds of Tex-Mex salsa: spicy, mild, and verde. "Tex-Mex salsa is not chunky," Marshall explains, "It's a little more processed. People in the Northeast are used to the chunkier style."

In addition to the textural differences, Marshall says that the salsas she tended to find in New Jersey were much more dependent on tomatoes for the bulk of the salsa than her products. "Two of my flavors are tomato based," she says, "but there's so much else in there. You really taste the peppers and the onions and spices just as much."

The non-tomato salsa verde is made from tomatillos, which are not indigenous to this part of the country, but which have a bright, fresh flavor that goes well with jalapenos and cilantro. Marshall is especially fond of using her salsa verde with chicken enchiladas.

She plans on keeping her product line to three salsas for the time being, partly to avoid overtaxing herself, but mostly because she feels strongly that she's putting out the best Tex-Mex salsa she can and there's no reason to mess around with them. "Simplicity works," she says, "Pineapple or mango in your salsa is not really Tex-Mex."

One area where she sees a bit of potential expansion, however, is in the tortilla chip department. When she sells at markets, she serves a particular brand of chip that's available in Texas, but not here. She hopes to partner with them in the near future and complete the Tex-Mex snack experience for deprived northeasterners.

"I'm making the highest quality salsa for the lowest possible price," she says, "I would love to provide a chip that works on the same premises."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

When Ann and Janet Chung were growing up in Texas in the '70s, "being Korean was unusual." So the sisters are thrilled that Korean food is gaining a foothold in mainstream food culture. "When we see kimchi in an American supermarket, it just knocks our socks off," Ann says.

Generally, though, Korean food is still something that people go out to eat, "We throw a lot of Korean barbecue parties, and we thought it would be great if we made Korean barbecue something people could make at home," Ann explains. They called the business We Rub You because, as it says on their label, "the Korean alphabet lacks a distinct L/R or V/B, so 'We Rub You' is a cute way to say 'We Love You.'"

They've launched the business with two marinades: the original flavor, a sweet, soy-based sauce that is traditionally used with beef, and a spicy variety, which is more often used with chicken or pork. But there's no reason not to switch up which proteins are used with which sauce, Ann says. Their customers report plenty of even less traditional uses: with codfish, as the seasoning for beef jerky, or as the basis for stir-fried noodle dishes.

It's a phenomenon that delights the Chung sisters. "Our business is about the friendship of Korean culture, American culture, and the merging of the two," Ann explains, adding, "It's our mission to make the Korean word for friend, chingoo, as well known as amigo."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

The idea for the Right Tasty vinaigrette company was born when Josh Mizrahi pickled some ramps and one of his coworkers, Duncan Adams, used the pickling liquid to dress his salad. They decided to develop a ramp vinaigrette, and launched the product at Smorgasburg.

Because of what Mizrahi calls "the extreme seasonality of ramps," they're an extraordinarily popular ingredient, but it can be hard to make enough of a product dependent on them during the season to sustain a growing business for the rest of the year. In fact, they're sold out of the ramp vinaigrette until this year's crop comes in.

And so they've since introduced two new flavors that are easier to produce year round: Meyer Lemon and Smoked Heirloom Tomato. The citrus dressing was Adams's brainchild. "I'm a vegetarian, so I eat a lot of salads," he explains, "I like to just squeeze a Meyer lemon over them." Non-vegetarians might like to use it on fish or roasted potatoes.

Mizrahi contributed the idea for the latter dressing. "I had a friend in culinary school who smoked tomatoes," he says, "and he did a bad job of it. But something about that bacon-y, smoked flavor really stuck with me." Originally, the idea was for a buttermilk-based dressing, but they wanted a product that would be shelf stable, and opted for a vinaigrette instead.

Mizrahi does suggest customers add some buttermilk to it themselves, though, for a creamy, tangy, smoky dressing. In addition to salads, he suggests using the vinaigrette on chicken or black-eyed peas, or adding a little to tomato sauce or aioli for a touch of smoke.

"Or just with some bread and cheese," he adds, "We can go through a whole bottle like that."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: The Regal Vegan]

When this column last spoke to Ella Nemcova, of The Regal Vegan, she was focused exclusively on producing and promoting Faux Gras, her delicious vegan walnut-lentil pâté.

In the two years since then, Nemcova has added another product, cashew-based Basilicotta. "People who have gone vegan understand cashew cheese," she says, but for those who don't, she explains that the nuts are soaked, then processed with fresh basil and Himalayan pink salt "for the mineral content." The result is a creamy, spreadable product that tastes like a cross between pesto and ricotta.

Nemcova spent a lot of time as a caterer, and developed numerous products that she could have added to her line. She opted for this one, she says, because they work together so well to satisfy vegan snack cravings. "Faux Gras is the meaty, Basilicotta is the cheesy," she explains. "They can sit next to each other on the shelf and make sense."

In addition to product development, Nemcova spent the last few years learning how to run a business, which she calls "the biggest learning curve of my entire life," adding, "There are just so many variables. You might be great at marketing but terrible at customer service or financial analysis, and it's all equally important." Adding an employee or two or an intern to the mix complicates things further. "Being a manager is a whole other skill set," Nemcova says, "You have to be good at all of it."

She believes that the smartest thing she did, business-wise, was to establish a very clear mission for her company from the outset. It's threefold: Regal Vegan aims to love the person (both one's palate and one's health), love the planet, and love the animal. "It made it much easier to make decisions" to have these guiding principles to consider, she says. So when confronted with a question—whether to add canola oil to a product to reduce costs, for example—she could look to her mission and say, no, that's not going to improve the health of my customers and, therefore, not something I do.

An article last month on the Atlantic Wire called Nemcova out for what the author believed was an off-putting focus on love, a complaint that Nemcova believes is more than a little disingenuous. "Obviously, I'm not saying I'm in love with everyone who eats my products," she says, "Secretly putting superfoods in delectable treats, that's how I love people. When someone emails, you write them back. Or if someone is unhappy, you reimburse them. That's all loving people."

While every successful small food company starts with a good product, that ends up being a very small part of the endeavor is the end. "Making something good is easy," Nemcova says, "It's about figuring out your passion and principles and sticking with them. If you still make money at the end of the day, then you have a business."

For more about Nemcova, including information about upcoming vegan cooking classes, visit her site.

About the author: Stephanie Klose acknowledges that you might have more mustard than she does, but she loves you anyway. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

After spending time in Thailand and Japan, Nayana Pornchewangkul, and Victor Yee returned to the States and started looking for a good source for the fresh, unadulterated soy milk they'd enjoyed in Asia.

"The soy milk in the U.S. is made to taste like cow's milk," Pornchewangkul explains, "It was hard to find one that tasted like soybeans."

So they started experimenting with making their own, eventually starting a company, Soy Hound, to bring fresh soy milk to the masses.
The process begins with whole, organic, non-GMO soybeans, which are washed and soaked for eight to ten hours. After the soaking, they're ground with water in a stone grinding machine and filtered through fine mesh. The resulting liquid is boiled, at which time a flavoring agent such as fresh ginger or tea leaves might be added, strained again, and bottled.
Their milks come in original, green tea, Thai tea, ginger, and peanut butter, with a chocolate flavor in the works. Though the different flavors are easily distinguishable and recognizable, the bean itself is the main thing you taste. You know you're drinking soy milk that's been flavored with ginger, for example, not a ginger beverage.

"We just want to keep it simple and natural," Yee says, "and let the flavor of the soybean shine through."

That taste is something that will likely prove surprising to most people who are used to the widely available soy milk that comes in shelf-stable boxes, and has been treated with thickeners and preservatives and ingredients designed to mask the way it tastes.

"[Soy Hound] is what soy milk is supposed to taste like" Pornchewangkul says, adding that they urge samples on passersby at Smorgasburg and store visits because the subtly sweet and vegetal beverage "changes people's perceptions." (Truth be told, I detest most soy milk, but think theirs is great, especially the fragrant, lightly spiced Thai tea flavor.)

They make soy milk weekly and will deliver directly to customers the day after it's made, generally collecting orders by Friday, cooking on Saturday, and making deliveries on Sunday each week, though they're willing to be flexible for larger orders.

While they like the original flavor with cereal or granola and suggest making smoothies with green tea, peanut butter, or original, Yee and Pornchewangkul generally prefer just drinking their soy milk. In addition to the 12 oz. bottles, they've recently begun selling a 32 oz. size on their website and hope to have it in stores soon. To order or for a list of stores and websites that sell Soy Hound, visit their site.

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Scott Ketchum]

Scott Ketchum and Steve Gonzalez were trying to raise money to open a pasta restaurant and market when they realized that few New York-based companies were making dried pasta for the retail market. So they started one.

Sfoglini makes dried pasta that's more or less to order; when a store or restaurant places an order, Ketchum and Gonzalez make whatever's needed then. Skipping out on inventory allows them to both keep costs down and provide the freshest possible products to their customers.

This also allows them to do short runs of seasonal flavors, or try out unexpected ingredients. They have a particular interest in working with "things people are just getting rid of"; among those they've incorporated into pasta are Eagle Street Farm's late-season basil that's going to seed, spent grain from Bronx Brewery, grape skins from Red Hood Winery,* and Brooklyn Grange' otherwise compost-bound tomato leaves. The latter are actually edible, says Gonzalez, despite persistent rumors to the contrary. "We read a lot of Harold McGee articles about it," before experimenting with tomato leaves, he says, "and we ate enough ourselves to prove [the rumors] wrong."

* They only got their hands on a small quantity of sauvignon blanc skins before the winery was severely damaged in Hurricane Sandy, though Ketchum and Gonzalez are looking forward to working with the skins from red wine grapes next year.

Any non-flour ingredients get pulverized in a Vitamix blender, then sifted carefully through a tamis to remove any fibrous bits that could cause problems for their extruding machine. Once they develop a dough they're happy with, they pick the best shape to show off the flavor. It may be a familiar shape, like fusilli, or one that's less common, like reginetti or spaccatelli.

Once the pasta shapes are extruded, they air dry for anywhere from 48 to 96 hours, depending on the air temperature and humidity, and are packaged in bags that are stamped with the date the contents were made.

It's all in keeping with their company's mission; sfoglini, Gonzalez explains, are generations of "ladies in Bologna who make pasta by hand." By naming their company after these women, Gonzalez and Ketchum hope to make clear their connection to the tradition of handmade pasta, but they also aim to convey their desire to pay it forward—they hope to begin teaching pasta-making classes soon. "I didn't know how to make pasta when I was born," Gonzalez says. "Someone had to teach me." By mentoring others and passing along their knowledge to people who have an interest in learning how to make pasta, Sfoglini aims to honor the sfoglini.

Sfoglini pasta is currently available at shops and restaurants around the city, as well as at the New Amsterdam Market. They launched a pasta of the month club around the holidays, though one can join at any time, that brings one bag each of their organic and specialty pastas along with a quick recipe for using them. Ketchum and Gonzalez are also excited about making their pastas available through CSAs this spring and summer.

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: P&H Soda]

Since the last time this column looked at Anton Nocito and P&H Soda, almost exactly two years ago, the company has experienced what Nocito calls "a nice, steady increase."

One area of the greatest growth has been P&H's restaurant business, which Nocito believes reflects well on his products. "Retail is such a weird animal. Sometimes people will stock the syrups because they love the labels, and they never taste them," he says, "Restaurant people don't care what it looks like, just what it tastes like." There's a full list on their site, but Nocito confesses to a favorite: "The Modern is just killing it with a hibiscus cocktail they have."

The company has been working with a distributor for its northeast retail business, which requires producing large volumes of product and adjusting to a tighter margin, since they're now selling to someone who has to make their own profit on the product. And if the distributor goes out of business, you can lose a lot. When this happened to P&H, they lost some product; friends who used the same distributor lost more than $40,000.

Nocito is still doing all of the production himself, despite the increased volume. "Once you go to a co-packer, the quality really goes down," he explains. Plus, soda syrup is pretty easy to scale up as recipes go. "If you were using three pounds of hibiscus, you'll be using 30 pounds," he says, "And a bigger kettle."

The product line itself has remained pretty much the same since 2011—sarsparilla, cream, hibiscus, lime, ginger, and, the one new kid, Cel-Ray-esque lovage—though Nocito is looking to shake things up a little. Once his recipe for grapefruit syrup is approved by the Cornell Food Safety Lab, he'll swap lime out for that one.

Anyone who'd like more flavors, though, would do well to get their hands on Nocito's first book, Make Your Own Soda (Clarkson Potter, May). With recipes for his regular line, plus syrups Nocito wouldn't bottle for one reason or another—sour cherry would be too expensive—and recipes to use them, the book is, he says, "a short version of what I'd carry if I had a soda fountain."

Those who'd just like to taste the sodas can find Nocito slinging this regular flavors and limited edition seasonal ones like Concord Grape or Chocolate Maple at New Amsterdam Market.

Nocito is looking to open a brick and mortar restaurant this year (investors welcome!), but mostly, he says, the plan is to just keep going. "I want to make something my new little son can be proud of," he says, "We're still small, but we're still taking over the world."

About the author: Stephanie Klose likes all things sarsparilla. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

After a German friend complained about not being able to find good soft pretzels in New York, Alexis Faraci did a lot of research and a lot of tasting, eventually determining that, as she says, "most pretzels in the city are just white bread in a pretzel shape." So she set out to make a traditional lye-dipped pretzel. Once she was satisfied with the product, she started Bronx Baking Co., working out of a commercial kitchen on City Island, to make them available to the pretzel-starved masses.

The idea, she says, was to make the pretzels themselves delicious on their own. "I wanted people to be able to enjoy it without having to slather it with stuff," she explains. But once she was satisfied on that score, she started experimenting with variations, currently offering a bacon-wrapped version. Other flavors, including stuffed pretzels and pretzel rolls, are in the works.

The pretzel dough is shaped, dipped into a food-grade lye solution, then immediately baked. The lye dip is "where the shine, the slightly bitter taste, and the dark color come from," Faraci explains. "Those pretzels you can buy from street carts may just have an egg wash." The lye actually begins "cooking" the outside a little before it goes into the oven, which contributes to the texture of a traditional pretzel, that thin shell of a crust surrounding the dense dough. The pretzels are currently available only in the five boroughs, since freshness is so important to the flavor and texture.

Bronx Baking Co. also makes cookies, a combination of classics like salted chocolate chip, chocolate peanut butter sables, nods to Faraci's Italian heritage like the rum bomb, "a two-bite rum cake," and a cookie currently known as "cannoli cookie" while she thinks up a new name. It combines cannoli flavors like pistachio, orange, and chocolate, but doesn't have any cream.

One thing Faraci is hoping to do with her new business is to help promote her borough, as well as other small food businesses in the Bronx. "There's a lot to see in the Bronx," she explains, much of it informed by the rich food traditions of both long-time residents and newcomers. "Burek have popped up on every corner because there are so many Albanian immigrants," she explains. "Brooklyn has such a positive connotation because of its food," she says, "I want to draw that kind of attention to the Bronx."

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

"My dad always had to explain to customers that hummus isn't actually Greek," Socrates Xanthopoulos says. His father, Thomas, had brought the family to the States from Greece in 1988 and spent close to 20 years working in the restaurant industry, including a stint as the executive chef at Periyali.

Then, seeing the rise in popularity of both hummus and Greek yogurt, Thomas decided to start a business making healthful, flavorful Greek dips and spreads, one of his specialties, for the home market.

The initial product launch includes tirokafteri, a creamy, spicy feta dip; fava, a yellow split pea purée with onions and capers that's like hummus with a more bean-y flavor; melitzanosalata, a roasted eggplant purée with roasted red peppers; and skordalia, a smooth, bread-based garlic and almond dip.

When it came time to choose a name for the venture, the Xanthopouloses thought long and hard about it. They wanted something recognizably Greek, but easy for those not familiar with the language to say and remember. Gefsi (pronouced YEF-si) was the name that stuck. "It translates to 'flavor' and 'taste,'" Socrates explains, "which is what he really wanted people to enjoy about that dips."

The elder Xanthopoulos insisted on high-quality ingredients along with authentically Greek recipes. "My father wants to stay true to what he'd put on a plate in a restaurant," Socrates explains, adding, "People get a lot for their money. They're about the same price as hummus, but chickpeas are cheap and feta can be $10/pound."

It's been fun for the father and son to work together too, and their skills balance each other nicely. "My dad's not a shark," Socrates says, "but I know a lot about business. He's glad he has family support."

Gefsi products are currently available in around ten grocery stores in Astoria, but thanks to a recent distribution deal, will be more widely available throughout the northeast in early 2013. Thomas is thinking ahead to new products too, including new flavors of skordalia and fava.

"When he comes up with something good, he just wants to share it with everyone," he says, "People are getting a little bit of my dad's passion."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

Greenpoint Trading Co. got its start when Evan Hoffman got a job cold-calling for a bulk wholesale spice company. Eventually, he transitioned into sales, then started his own wholesale spice company, Brooklyn Spice Co., with Kimmee Arndt. When they decided to break into the retail market with the kinds of spice blends and rubs they were already making for their own use, Arndt says, they got a permit from the city to package in their living room and stored all of the product in their hallway, though they graduated to a warehouse in Greenpoint soon after.

They developed their product line with input from friends, who quickly got used to being sent home with a pocketful of baggies anytime they saw Hoffman or Arndt. One principle that guided all of their blends, however, was a certain healthy approach. "So many rubs are high in salt," Arndt explains, adding, "All of ours are low in salt and two—Herbes de Provence and Dracula's Nightmare—are completely salt free."

Arndt's own favorite is the roasted garlic pepper blend, which she likes on roasted corn with lemon juice, or on roasted chicken. "It makes an amazing sauce with just the natural juices of the chicken," she says, "no butter or oil." Hoffman's favorites are the coarse butcher's rub they call Sedona Red and the barbecue rub El Capitan. When it comes to their customers though, the mulling seasoning is the clear winter favorite. "We literally can't make it fast enough," Arndt says. All of the blends make fantastic popcorn seasoning as well, which is how they sample the spices at markets like Smorgasburg and the Brooklyn Night Market.

Mostly though, Arndt suggests that people just play around with the blends and try using them in unexpected ways. "Chicken Little is amazing on fish and mashed potatoes," she says, "Just experiment, use them liberally, and don't worry about following directions."

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.

[Photograph: Farm to Table Foods]

Among the fifty-some local food artisans I talked with in 2012, there were some real standouts, products I purchase again for myself and as gifts. Some of them are straight-out-of-the-package delicious, while others play a shining supporting role in preparing other foods, but they're all pretty spectacular.

Best Breakfast: Farm to Table Oatmeal

Farm to Table sells organic "ancient grain oatmeal." It's nutritious, full of interesting grains that are purchased from responsible farms, and delicious. Comfortingly familiar with a bit of maple syrup and milk, but still a little unusual.

Best Hot Sauce: A+B American Style Pepper Sauce

[Photograph: A + B Hot Sauce]

There are a lot of small-batch hot sauces on the market, but A+B is my favorite. Their motto is "Flavor, not just heat," and the product backs it up with thoughtful pepper choices and plenty of vinegary tang.

Best Snack: Pipcorn

[Photograph: Pipcorn]

Pipcorn's signature rosemary flavor hits a lot of my personal high notes: I love a reasonably healthy snack, I like my popcorn nongreasy, I love rosemary, and I have a soft spot for sibling-run businesses.

Best Meat: Charlito's Cocina

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

All the truffle flavor in the Charlito's Cocina Black Truffle Salami comes from the truffles themselves, not oils or extracts. Even those who don't fetishize truffles succumb to its fragrant, savory charms; those who do will flip out.

Best Non-Meat Product: Monk's Meat Seitan

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

I actually thought I hated seitan until I tasted Monk's Meat Chipotle Adobo Seitan—a pox on all the fake duck in Chinatown! Now I use it at least a couple times a month, sautéed with vegetables, on pizza, or in soups.

Best Cookies: Servus Cookies

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

I love Servus Cookies, especially the almond hearts. They're the kind of straightforward, simple cookies that I can eat any time of the day. Plus they keep remarkably well.

Best Spice Product: Chulita's Famous

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

I use Chulita's Famous sofrito in maybe half the things I make these days: beans, soups, salad dressings. A spoonful of sofrito adds a savory brightness that really lifts a dish up.

Best Pickled Product: Mrs. Kim's

[Photographs: Stephanie Klose]

Specifically, Mrs. Kim's Soy Pickled Peppers, Radish and Garlic. The jalapenos and garlic in this jar are the closest thing I have to a secret cooking weapon; one pepper and a couple cloves of garlic chopped finely and mixed into a pound of ground beef makes the best burgers I've ever had at home. The brine has some real heat too, which makes it handy for adding to all sorts of things. (Mrs. Kim's kimchi's no slouch either.)

Best Pasta Sauce: Spicy n Sweet

[Photograph: Stephanie Klose]

Nonna's Spicy Sauce from Spicy n Sweet. Unlike Mrs. Kim's products, this sauce has a gentle heat that should be safe for all but the absolute weeniest of the people in your life. I could eat it with a spoon.

Best Sweet: Sucre Mort

[Photograph: Sucre Mort]

Butter and sugar and pecans in the form of Sucre Mort pralines: what could be better?

About the author: Stephanie Klose has more mustard than you. You can follow her on twitter at @sklose.