In This Intallment:

Bazaar Baharat

Baharat Carrot Mezze Recipe

Sardines in Coconut Curry

Caplansky’s Old Fashioned Mustard

Caplansky Potato Kugel Recipe

Miller’s Damsel Black Crackers

Kilted Farmer’s Traditional Egg Pasta

Egg Fettucine with Wild Mushroom & Truffle Oil Recipe

Pork Shank Ramen Base

Ramen Noodles

Tingly Sichuan Pepper Peanuts

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Bazaar Baharat Spice Blend from Massachusettes

Regardless of the image above, we didn’t sent you a bunch of spices…it was just the closest image I could find that best fits the exotic, alluring appeal of this spice blend from Curio Spice Company in Boston. In many ways, they’re doing the same thing that Patagonia is doing with tinned fish, but for Curio they’re investing in spice producers who do it ‘the right way’ and bringing those spices back to folks like us.

But there are more than a few folks out there blending spices together and trying to make home cooking more accessible and flavorful, so what sets Curio apart? Well, over the summer my cohort Alex and I had the chance to attend the Good Food Mercantile show in New York City and we got to chatting with Carmen, a member of the Curio team, and it came into focus for me. Carmen didn’t talk down to the customer. It was the difference between “I’m going to tell you what to do” and “I want to share our passion with you, and maybe you’ll want to try it, too.”

So without getting too technical, this blend is mostly cumin, cassia, nutmeg and mint. Like gumbo down in Louisiana or harissa of northern Africa, there are a million iterations and recipes throughout Turkey for Baharat. But as fall descends and our flavors turn towards warming and filling, this blend speaks to me. Try it as a dry or wet rub for grilled meats. Lamb is traditional but it’s great with beef, pork, and anything else you come across. But try this vegetarian recipe first. It’s awesome:

Baharat Carrot Mezze Recipe

Ingredient:
2 pounds carrots, peeled, cut into chunks
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon Bazaar Baharat
3/4 – 1 teaspoon Maras chile
1 teaspoon tomato paste
6 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
Sesame-almond topping (recipe below)

Put the carrots into a large, heavy saucepan and add 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and
enough water to just cover the carrots. Set the pan over medium-high heat until
the water boils, then reduce heat to medium and gently simmer until the carrots
are tender and easily crushed, 15–20 minutes.

Drain the carrots, then return them to the saucepan. Set the pan over low heat to
further dry the carrots, about 30 seconds. Turn the heat off.
Roughly crush the carrots with a fork or potato masher. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning, if needed. Before serving,
sprinkle generously with sesame-almond topping (recipe below).

Sesame-Almond Topping
3 tablespoons slivered almonds, toasted and roughly chopped
3 tablespoons sesame seeds, lightly toasted
2 tablespoons coriander seeds, toasted and crushed
Big pinch flaky sea salt
Put the ingredients into a small bowl and stir to mix.

Sardines in Coconut Curry from Spain

One food trend that’s definitely not a fad is the explosion of tinned fish popping up at speciality stores all over the place—and we’re not talking about the chicken of the sea, here.

Let’s start with what many of us in America think of when we think of “tinned fish”: cheap tinned tuna. At best, these shredded flecks of tuna (we assume?) might end up in a wet tuna salad sandwich some day. It’s a good way to make friends with the neighborhood cats, but it really gives tuna—and by extension, tinned fish—a bad wrap. Often the fish that ended up in cheap canned tuna was more than just tuna…remember when ‘dophin safe’ tuna came around? That was a slow, reluctant response to the fact that all sorts of animals were being caught in trolling nets and all processed together. No wonder a lot of us grew up less than enthused about fish in cans.

But in other parts of the world, tinned fish was and is revered. Turns out when you fish sustainably, harvesting the fish only when they’re in season and not every day of the year, you can create a product that’s not only good morally, but delicious, too. Enter Patagonia. Yes, that Patagonia. The one that makes Nanopuff Parkas and board shorts and thermal wear and the like. They’ve been trying to use their wealth and influence to encourage sustainable practices around the world in all sorts of areas, and in the last decade or so they’ve been honing relationships with tinned fish producers. In exchange for “doing it the right way,” Patagonia pays tops dollar to processors who work with the right fishing boats at the right time of year. These sardines come from the Cantabrian Sea, off the northern coast of the Iberian penisula in the Atlantic.

The fish are packed in a curry sauce with organic potatoes and peppers. It’s an instant meal! Simply prepare rice or pasta and empty the entire tin on top. You can heat the tin, but dropping it into a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. Carefully remove the tin with tongs and oven mitts, and then very carefully open the tin and dump the contents over the rice or pasta or couscous or whatever you like!

Caplansky’s Delicatessen Old Fashioned Mustard from Canada

Note: that’s an image of the early days at Zingerman’s Deli circa early 1980s, but it evokes a certain golden age of our Deli’s history and Caplanky’s certainly had a golden age…it was just in the early 2000s.

And instead of Michigan, Caplansky’s started up in Toronto in 2007. Founded by Zane Caplansky, it started out selling house-cured meats sandwiches and knishes and general, classic (or what we call ‘Traditional’ in the marketing world) Jewish Deli dishes. And when you have a deli, you gotta have mustards. And when you’ve been working in a deli since 1994 (like me) and you’ve tasted hundreds if not thousands of mustards over the decades, you come to recognize a good mustard when you eat one. This is a good mustard.

Mustard is made by grinding mustard seeds with vinegar and a bit of spices mixed in. Mustard seeds are usually spicy/hot, but when they’re ground into a paste to make mustard, the volatile compounds that give mustard its heat can be cooked off in the process, making it rather mild. Traditional stone mills, however, don’t heat up the same way a stainless steel mill does and that extra heat cooks off the elements that give mustard its character. The heat, the slight eye watering, the feeling in the cheeks—that’s the heat that comes from the mustard seeds and Caplansky’s perfectly captures that flavor/experience in each bite.

It’s the fall so I’m sure more than a few of us are still outdoors grilling hot dogs and making burgers and tailgating and having a generally jovial time, but you don’t have to be a sports fan to enjoy this mustard. Zane Caplansky has shared his recipe for potato kugel (which sounds a lot like making latkes) and his kugel goes great with his mustard. Imagine that.

Zane Caplansky’s Potato Kugel Recipe

Ingredients:
4 lb white potatoes, grated
1 onion, grated
6 eggs
~8 Tbsp schmaltz, or butter or ghee (divided)

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 475º F place a dutch oven or 2 muffin tins in the oven to heat. 
   
2. Squeeze all of the excess liquids you can from the grated potatoes. Cheese cloth works well – you can use your hands or a tea towel to accomplish this.
   
3. Place half of the potatoes back into the food processor and process into a smoother mixture.
   
4. Place all the potatoes in a large bowl, add grated onion, eggs, and ~6 Tbsp schmaltz or butter.  Salt and pepper to taste. 
   
5. Carefully remove headed pan(s) from the oven. Add remaining 2 Tbsp of schmaltz or butter to bottom and sides of the pan.
   
6. Pour in mixture and place back in the oven. Bake, uncovered 45 – 50 minutes until cooked in the centre.

Miller’s Damsel Black Crackers from England

It’s true: we put as much effort into finding the right type of cracker as we do the right cheese or the right olive oil or any other artisan food we sell and love. Crackers, it should be said: deserve a lot of love.

Crackers have a pretty long and important history, really, and these crackers are both innovative and traditional in their way as a result. Here’s a Cliff’s Notes version: back in the day, crackers were just the form of bread that lasted a long time without going bad. Sure, they were hard as a tack (there are even crackers called ‘hard tack!’) but they had nutritional value that kept you alive when there wasn’t much food to be found. It was also a good form of food for sailing and long sea voyages since they didn’t go bad during the long trip. Heck, there are even some styles of “bread” that Sardinian fisherman would take out with them on the bread that was intended to be submerged in the ocean water to reconstitute it and give it a bit of salty flavor.

So it was a good way to store food for long durations. Check. And then crackers were used to treat digestive issues and some even claimed to heal what ailed ya. As a matter of fact, the inspiration for these black crackers are the activated charcoal crackers made and enjoyed in England, where this company (The Fine Cheese Co.) is based in Bath. Activated charcoal (though flavorless) is supposed to combat toxins and cleanse the system from the inside out.

Through some bureaucratic reasons, the FDA doesn’t allow activated charcoal as an ingredient in foods anymore, so the folks at The Fine Cheese Company retooled the recipe for an American audience. Instead of charcoal, they use cocoa powder to give the crackers their color and provide just the slightest bitter note, but definitely not sweet or chocolatey.

We’ve been looking for a gluten-free cracker for sometime and this checks all the boxes, especially with flavor. Try ’em with softer cheese, charcuterie, tinned fish (like the sardines in this installment).

Kilted Farmer Traditional Egg Pasta from Michigan

About an hour west of Ann Arbor off I-94 (on your way to Kalamazoo) is the small town of Parma, Michigan and that’s where Justin and Jessica Fairchild run a wonderfully varied business called The Kilted Farmer. And yes—they often wear tartan kilts while they do their deliveries to private homes and businesses in the Mid-Michigan area. I wasn’t there when they delivered the pasta for this club, but their methods are just as resourceful as you’d expect from folks that are hustling. They use what’s available—be it an empty oranges crate or cucumber case from a local grocer. They make do and they make really delicious pasta.

As a matter of fact, it was that no-nonsense-down-to-earth character that first caught my attention and my tastebuds. This is a traditional, hand-made egg pasta that uses just three ingredients that are all sourced locally (flour, eggs, water) and from fellow farmers they know and love. They keep their money in their community instead of ordering in bulk from large national operations and they believe (and I concur) their pasta is better for the effort and expense. Justin and Jessica do the one thing big industrial operations never do: they take their time.

In contrast, large industrial pasta productions (think Mueller’s and the white/blue box we know here in America or even Barilla, Italy’s largest maker) can make a finished, dried, ready to box pasta noodle in an hour or two. From mixing to rolling to extruding to drying to boxing up (all of which is done behind the stainless steel walls of a very large and very expensive machine), the whole process takes a couple hours. These large producers make literal tons of pasta every day and night and that’s why it costs a couple bucks in the supermarket.

Making pasta by hand takes (not surprisingly) a lot more time. Justin and Jessica use a mixer to combine the flour, water, eggs, and then they roll out the dough into long sheets. You have to keep rolling it out to make the dough thinner and thinner until it’s about the thickness you want for your finished noodle. Then they cut the dough into strips (noodles) and hang the noodles to air dry until the noodles are ready to be packaged and put into repurposed produce boxes. Instead of taking a couple hours, it can take a couple days to make a batch of pasta…it just all depends on how long it takes for the noodles to dry, and that depends on the environment around them just like it does in Italy. (My favorite egg pasta producer in Italy would just open the windows of their facility to help dry the noodles and if it was raining or snowing or whatever it was doing that day, it would affect how long it took for the noodles to dry! It’s the same thing for Justin and Jessica.)

The Kilted Farmer make a ton of flavored pastas, too, using local ingredients from those around them (not powders and flavorings out of a catalog), but I opted for their most traditional egg pasta so you can appreciate the straight up, pure flavor of well hewn pasta. And if you’re looking for a seasonal recipe to use for the noodles, give this recipe a try, straight from Jessica and Justin!

Egg Fettucine with Wild Mushroom and White Truffle Oil

Ingredients:

• 8 oz Kilted Farmers Egg Fettuccine (half the bag)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 lb mixed wild mushrooms (such as cremini, shiitake, and oyster), sliced
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon white truffle oil
• Fresh chives, chopped, for garnish
• Shaved Parmesan for garnish
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Cook the Egg Fettuccine:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Cook the Kilted Farmers Egg Fettuccine according to package instructions until al dente.
3. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water, and set aside.

Prepare the Mushroom Sauce:

1. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and butter over medium heat.
2. Add the chopped shallot and minced garlic, cooking until fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook until they release their moisture and start to brown, about 5-7 minutes.
4. Pour in the white wine and let it reduce by half.
5. Stir in the heavy cream and bring to a gentle simmer, cooking until the sauce thickens slightly, about 5 minutes.
6. Add the white truffle oil and season with salt and pepper.

Combine Pasta and Sauce:

1. Add the cooked fettuccine to the skillet with the mushroom sauce.
2. Toss gently to coat the pasta evenly with the sauce.
3. If the sauce is too thick, add some of the reserved pasta cooking water to achieve the desired consistency.

Serve:

1. Transfer the pasta to serving dishes.
2. Garnish with fresh chives and shaved Parmesan.
3. Serve immediately with a glass of Chardonnay or a full-bodied white wine like Viognier.

Tips:

• Alternate Proteins: Substitute wild mushrooms with button mushrooms for a more accessible option. Add grilled chicken, shrimp, or tofu for additional protein.
• Enhancement: Add a sprinkle of red pepper flakes for a spicy kick.

Pork Ramen Broth from Japan

Every now and again, I’ll bring a product to an installment that we actually currently sell, but has been flying under the radar for awhile. Usually it’s flying under my own radar, and then I encounter it again and fall in love all over again and want to share it with everyone again—just like the first time. Perhaps I’m getting older and it’s harder to keep the thousand or so SKUs we sell straight in my mind. Perhaps—like you, I’d wager—I go through phases with my cooking and cuisine and what sounds good and then something shifts and I rediscover how much I love a product.

Well, it’s fall. I’m into soups and feeling warm inside, but I still want something delicious.

Real ramen—not the 20 packs for $1 stuff we lived off of in college—is a culinary treat. It’s also one of those meals that takes time to do right. We’re talking hours, even days for some recipes. So it makes sense most of us have never enjoyed real ramen at home (or even at all).

Enter this ramen pork broth. Unlike the thin, salty broth we “enjoyed” when we were young, this pork shank-based broth is velvety smooth with a porky, savory flavor with undertones of roasted veggies. It’s made by the Ramen Master, Tsuki, in Japan and imported by some friends on the west coast before coming to us. Its flavor is deep and even a little intense for broth. In fact, it’s so rich you may choose to thin it out with a bit of water. As a matter of fact, when I make this ramen I dump the contents of the bottle into a pot, and then I fill the bottle up with water and add that as well. For my tastebuds (and those of my family) that’s a good mixture to capture the complexity without losing the nuance or being rolled over by its flavor.

Using the broth and the accompanying noodles is nearly as easy as those cheap-o packets. Heat the broth in a bot on the stove, add any and all ingredients you want like protein or veggies or both, to the pot and allow it to come up to a simmer. Everything marries together. It’s easy and really, really delicious. Just like how I remembered it.

Ramen Noodles from Japan

And here are the noodles! As you can see they don’t come in a cup, but they’re only about 5% harder to prepare—and about 500% more flavorful.

Made with wheat flour, a bit of egg, and a touch of salt, they taste nutty and a little toasty, with a nicely chewy texture. To make an excellent ramen at home in minutes, add them to the simmering broth above. The noodles cook quickly and take on the flavor of whatever broth you pick…like, two to three minutes quick.

When I make ramen for the family, I will often saute vegetables in a separate pan, let ’em cool, then add them right at the end after the noodles have cooked and serve!

Tingly Sichuan Pepper Peanuts from China

Yao Zhao is the founder of 50Hertz Tingly Foods. I first met him back in 2018 when he introduced me to his Green Sichuan Pepper Oil from China which was exquisitely spicy with a ton of heat and an addictive flavor…as long as you didn’t mind having numb limbs for the day.

Why “50Hertz”? It’s all about the tingling brain. Apparently at the Cognitive Neurosciene Institute at the University of London, scientists were studying the effects of sichuan pepper on the brain and they discovered that the “frequency of the tingling induced by sichuan pepper was consistenly at about 50 Hertz.”

It’s all caused by a certain aromatic molecule that can only reach our nerve receptors where our skin is at its thinnest: like our mouth and lips. But why are folks like myself (and hopefully you) drawn to things that activate our nerve receptors so aggressively? The folks at the University of London didn’t answer that question. Maybe because the discomfort is worth the flavor? Maybe.

These peanuts aren’t exactly like eating straight Sichuan peppers, but the do deliver a bit of a tingly kick to your senses. There are certainly plenty of reasons to snack on peanuts like these, but if you’re not a “purist” in that regard, try chopping them up and adding ’em to salads or casseroles or dishes of all kinds. Wherever you think a spicy, nutty punch would put you over the edge, do it!