In This Installment
Another holiday season has arrived, which means it’s time to share some of our latest and greatest food finds we’ve been holding onto throughout the year (or stuff I just discovered in Italy when I went in September).
There’s sweet things, savory things, products to make dinner with and stuff to enjoy with some coffee or tea and dessert at the end of the day. All can be shared and (if you’re having a party this season). You might appreciate having some extra nibbles around to help broaden your guests horizons while introducing them to something really, really delicious. Happy holidays and enjoy!
Supec Spice Blend from Massachusetts
I’ve been loving the spice blends from Curio Spice Company in Boston. They invest in spice producers who do it ‘the right way’ and bring 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.”
Once a person is comfortable using spices (which isn’t all of us), the world opens up with all sorts of flavor possibilities. This blend in particular is like nothing I’d used before, but I can’t stop using now. I guess it’s because it’s a wonderful blend of umami and spicy flavors. They pack a lot into a little.
Supec is a mix of seaweed, shiitake mushroom, ginger, nettle, chile all of which is grown in their home state of Massachusetts. I sprinkle the blend on everything from eggs to roasted pork, but here’s a grilled cabbage recipe that’s really great with the Supec:
Roasted Cabbage & Supec Dressing
For the cabbage:
1 head (2–3 pounds) green cabbage
1½ tablespoons olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper
Fresh lemon juice (a few drops, to finish)
For the mayonnaise:
1 egg
¾ teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
¼ teaspoon freshly grated garlic (from 1 clove)
¾ cup canola or other neutral tasting oil
4 teaspoons Supeq Spice
For garnish:
Sliced scallion or minced chives or parsley
Preheat the oven to 450° F. Set aside a rimmed baking sheet.
Prep and roast the cabbage
Remove any tough or discolored outer leaves on the cabbage, then cut the head in half, top-to-bottom, through the stem. Cut one half into 4 wedges, trim (but don’t remove) the stem on each wedge. Save the other half cabbage for another use.
Set the cabbage wedges on the baking sheet and brush them (all sides) with oil. Arrange the wedges cut-side down on the sheet, making sure they’re well separated from each other. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the cabbage, to taste. Roast for 10 minutes. Pull the baking sheet out of the oven, gently flip the wedges over and return the sheet to the oven, roasting until the edges of the cabbage are browned and crispy, another 10 –12 minutes. Sprinkle a few drops of lemon juice over the wedges.
Make the dressing
You’ll need an immersion blender and a clean jar with a diameter that just barely bigger than the head of the blender. Put egg, mustard, lemon juice, vinegar, and garlic into the jar; pour in the oil and let it stand for 30 seconds to settle. Submerge the blender into the jar with the head resting squarely on the bottom. Set the blender to high speed and process without moving the blender — you’ll feel it pull against the bot- tom, which is good, that vortex is crucial — and you’ll see the mayo starting to form. At this point, slowly start to slowly tilt the blender and lift it toward the surface of the mayo. Stop when all the oil has been incorporated. Stir in the Supeq Spice, taste the mayo, and add more lemon juice if needed.
Serve
Put one wedge of cabbage on a small plate, top with a generous spoonful of mayo and sprinkle on a few scallions or some herbs (or both!).
Bottega Ditalia Organic Reginelle Pasta from Italy
This pasta comes to us through friendship and the community of the speciality food world. Back in September I traveled to Torino, in the Piedmont region of Italy for a tour of food producers that was organized by the Torino Chamber of Commerce. It was an amazing trip and a big part of its success was the group of people: we were all fast friends. We’re all in food, but different areas—and I’m happily at the ‘end of the line’ being a retailer. Many of my new friends were importers who bring in pallets of products from all over Italy, and this pasta is one of them!
My friend Vince Di Piazza has a company called “Ditalia” in St. Louis, Missouri, where he imports artisan foods from all over Italy to distribute to retail stores and restaurants all over the country. For this pasta, he works with Pastaficio Marella in Bari, Puglia…the heel of the boot. They extrude their pasta through bronze dies, which gives it a rough texture that’s great for grabbing sauces. The noodle is toothsome with nutty, bready notes. In short: it’s delicious and Reginelle is a shape we don’t see too often on the shelves. It’s a long ribbon of a noodle with a curl on one side. Use this pasta as you might fettucine.
Chili Lime Cashew Brittle from California
Pay no attention to the illustration above…well, you can notice it but please notice that it’s for the wrong flavor of brittle, though the maker is the same: Hway-ling Hsu and her company Sweetdragon Baking Company. As a matter of fact, Hway-ling collaborated with another mutual friend in the food world—Cyrilla Suwarsa and her company NUTS+NUTS—for this brittle in particular!
This brittle marries together two different products that we currently love and sell, so it was a no-brainer when Cyrilla introduced the collaboration earlier in the spring. We’ll start with Cyrilla and her cashews:
Cyrilla Suwarsa and her family make one of my favorite food finds of the last few years. It’s a big Indonesian family affair—Cyrilla’s sister made the recipe, her brother-in-law built the roasting machine and her mom hovers above it all, checking that the flavor is right.
They take several steps that others rarely do when processing nuts. For one, all the cashews are hand harvested and slowly sun dried. As with other sun dried foods like rice, couscous and tomatoes, the flavor is much more developed this way compared to furnace drying (it also uses no fossil fuels).
She also sources nuts in shells, taking the extra step to peel them only as needed, which goes a long way to preventing rancidity—a common affliction of many packaged nuts.
Finally, Cyrilla’s cashews are slow-roasted. The roasting makes the cashew have a firm pop to its texture. These don’t have the chewy fleshiness you might be used to with typical cashews and you’re not going to miss it. Roasting also brings out more flavor—these have loads of it.
Then, there’s the spicing: chile and lime leaves. It’s not terribly hot, but there’s a little sizzle and the lime leaves give a bright gleam of green flavor. On their own, these spiced cashews are addictive and delicious. I usually eat ’em by the handful when no one is watching.
Taking these savory, spicy nuts and turning them into brittle is the work of Hway-ling and her team at Sweetdragon Bakery in San Jose, California. To my mind, they’ve mastered the two tricks of brittle making: taste and texture. The brittle that holds the spiced cashews in place is light, sweet, nutty, and the perfect pairing to the slightly spicy kick of the cashews. This is a very limited production and only available for the holiday season. If it goes well, maybe we can talk them into making it again next year, but for now consider yourself among the precious few to enjoy them.
Colorado Green Chile Beef Salami from Colorado
Okay. Yes, I know the image is of New Mexico and not Colorado, but those are the green chiles they’re using—the famous Hatch green chiles of New Mexico—so it’s pretty close. Plus Colorado is right above (geographically) New Mexico, so it’s the same neighborhood. And frankly I can’t commission a new illustration for every product I write about in this club so we have to make do with what we got. Back to the salami.
I’m not one for exotic or inventive spicing of salami—some salt, pepper, and garlic is usually all I’m interested in—so when this all beef salami spiced with green chiles crossed my path, I had certain expectations. Needless to say, this salami blew those right out of the water and thus you get to enjoy it now! Plus with the “green” and the “red” it sorta felt festive: like the perfect salami to serve for the holidays (just not with any cinnamon inside).
This stick in particular comes from the meat mavens of Denver, Colorado: River Bear American Meats. We’ve discovered and loved a lot of the new charcuterie being made across the country lately (I’ve included a salami in my last three months of the Food Explorer’s Club just so I could feature them all) and it’s been hard to pare down our favorites. This salami is easy to choose. It’s unique. Nothing else out there tastes like this…and it tastes good. Fantastic texture, too. The reason—as is usually the case—boils down to one key ingredient: time.
They start with humanely raised and G.A.P. certified pork and beef. For this salami, they use Angus beef exclusively. It’s ground with Hatch green chiles, garlic, white wine, and toasted cumin seeds. Then they add starter culture to the mix (like in making cheese) which starts to develop the rich, robust flavors right away. Not all cultures behave the same, and this one moves slowly. In comparison, fast-acting cultures tend to leave salamis and other cured meats with a high, acidic, tangy type of flavors.
The mix is stuffed into natural casings (so be sure to remove that before you eat) and then allowed to slowly ferment (deepens the flavors) and then slowly dry (adding even more depth to the flavor and most especially giving it a soft texture) before being wrapped up and sent along to folks like us.
They work in 500 pound batches, which is small to be sure, but allows them to stay focused on their process and perfect their skills as salume makers. There are a lot of new salami makers nowadays, but River Bear is standing tall amidst the crowd.
Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds from North Carolina
Last December I spent some time with Jael Skeffington (pronounced ‘jail’) during her visit to Ann Arbor. The founder and proprietor of French Broad Chocolates in Asheville, North Carolina—Jael felt more like an old friend coming through town than a potential vendor. I shouldn’t be surprised: we’re all working in the food world for similar reasons, I guess…and none of them are about money!
Jael and crew have been making chocolate since the late aughts in Asheville, so it was a little embarrassing to be so late to the game, especially since this bean-to-bar chocolate maker knows all the same chocolate people I do and is equally inspired by all of them. Jael even owned a chocolate plantation in Costa Rica at one point in time, so cacao is in her blood, as they say. They put a ton of effort into sourcing cacao beans they think taste fantastic, then they bring them back to Asheville, roast them, and turn them into chocolate thus running the whole production from “bean to bar.”
I love all she makes, really, but I’m sharing these dark chocolate covered caramelized almonds with you now because of what happened earlier this fall. As you may recall, western North Carolina especially was rocked by flooding in the mountains, including Asheville. At one point in time, the flood waters were rushing through their production facility, almost cresting their front door. Times have been hard for everyone there as they attempt to clean up, rebuild, and get their lives back—but things are moving slowly and every little bit helps. Including sharing these amazing confections with you in the hopes you’ll fall in love with them, too, and want to visit their site for more. Or even visit their shop…they’re ready for you!
Without digging into the private tragedies of the people who lived through the ordeal, the best thing we can do is patronize and enjoy and shop and give our time, attention, and even dollars to the folks of the area, staring with Jael and her crew. Tis the season to keep such people in our hearts, and these chocolate covered almonds are the sweet tasting way to do just that.
Thai for Two Red Curry Cooking Kit
Following the colors of the season and to match the green chiles, we have our Red Curry cooking kit! Okay, maybe that’s a stretch to tie it to the holiday season, but if you’re like me—and I imagine most of you are like me when it comes to cooking dinner—time is at a premium these days and we simply can’t get everything done that we hope to. That’s why “kits” like this are a secret weapon for home cooks like us: they’ve done the hard part already (sourcing hard to find ingredients, herbs, spices) and with easy to follow instructions we can produce a meal at home that I consider restaurant quality. Of course, the Thai restaurant scene here in the Midwest can be slightly spotty, so take that with a grain of salt.
Red curry originated in Thailand and its vibrant red, creamy sauce is one of the most recognizeable. It’s made from red chiles which are definitely spicy, but you can always dampen the spiciness by diluting the sauce or adding less of the paste to the dish. As you can tell by the size of this satchel, not everything you’ll need is inside, just the ingredients you’ll need that you won’t find at home. But the vegetables and/or protein will come from you, so pick things you enjoy. You can and will cook both the protein and vegetables in the sauce you create, but you can also cook your protein separately and add it in at the end. I like to bake boneless chicken thighs, for instance, and then slice and add them to the mix.
So pick your meat and veggies (or just your veggies) and follow the instructions included with the kit. It’s a simple type of recipe and what I learned was: you can’t do it wrong. Unlike baking where your measurements and timing have to be precise, this is a process that allows for your own feelings, tastes, and creativity without being intimidating.
Gingerbread Shortbread from Brooklyn, NY
Laurie Ellen is a baker in the highest regard. She made a splash on the west coast at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco before heading to the east coast and setting up her self-titled bakery in Brooklyn. But unlike her time at Tartine—where she kept the hours of a bread/pastry baker, meaning no time off for holidays or really ever—her shop in Brooklyn is not a retail space. You can buy her items from her website and I’m sure there are other speciality stores that feature and sell her wares, but not at her own retail shop.
In other words: Laurie Ellen is finally getting to enjoy the holidays.
That might not seem like a big deal to many of you, but to those of us in the artisan food world, it’s quite a thing. I’ve worked every Christmas Eve since I was 18 years old because folks were picking up pies or coffee cakes or dinner from Zingerman’s Deli or Roadhouse or breads from the Bakehouse. While folks are scrambling around on Christmas Eve to get everything ready, we’re there to help make it all happen and to come up with a new solution when the plan goes awry.
Oh, and if you’re a baker (like at Zingerman’s Bakehouse) than you’ll be working on Christmas Day, too, because that’s when you make the loaves that everyone will want to buy on the 26th, and it’s not like you can turn off the ovens for a day because it takes multiple days for the ovens to come back up to temp!
That was Laurie Ellen’s life for years. Then she decided to make shortbread. Well, there were a few steps in between of course, but she’s one of the few top drawer bakers that turned to cookies and crackers (she makes some wicked good crackers) as their main avenue of expression. Most want to knock you over with gloriously intricate pastries or lavish cakes, but not Laurie. She decided to corner the “crisp” bakery market and I’d say she’s done exquisitely well.
I think shortbread is hard to pull off, but it’s one of my favorite cookies when done well. Probably because it’s rich with butter and not overly sweet. These gingerbread beauties are exactly that: buttery, rich, flaky yet melt in your mouth—but then they have the added kick of pumpkin spice blend, molasses, and some citrus zest to keep things bright and sunny. The pieces of candied ginger are the coup de grace, making this luscious cookie one with style, spice, and personality. Perfect for the season.
Cascina Oschiena Carnaroli Rice from Italy
I had the great pleasure of meeting Alicé Cerutti back in September (just before they harvested carnaroli rice) and it struck me that she represented a change in Italy and the tradition of farming. Up until very recently it seems, whatever the family business, that’s what you did. So many of the olive oil producers and pasta producers and vinegar makers we work with are in their fourth or fifth generation, right? But shockingly the youngest generation wasn’t interested in staying on the farm. They wanted to move to the city or to another country or try anything else that wasn’t farming and traditional. In short: they wanted out.
When I visited Italy last year and met with producers from central to southern Italy, that was the story they told: the kids don’t want to continue with the company. They don’t know what the future holds.
When I visited Italy a few months back in September, I encountered the solution. Maybe the younger generations didn’t want to continue the family business, but other young people did. Young, industrial, passionate entrepreneurs and food makers were coming to these generational farms and companies and joining up to learn the ways. In some instances they helped keep the business open for others in the family. In some cases they bought the company outright and began a new chapter.
Alicé Cerutti falls somewhere in the middle of these extremes, but she’s a helluva posterchild for a new generation of Italians returning to the countryside and being good stewards of the land and its people.
Alicé’s grandfather bought the rice farm in the 1950s, but the farm had been growing rice since it first came to the area in the 12th century. While the farm wasn’t exactly in disrepair, it was close. It took years of renovating and cleaning and demolishing before it was ready to be a working farm again. The silver lining of all that work was it gave them time to allow the land to return to its natural state (i.e. not chemicals and fertilizers) so that when it was time to restart the operation they would use the historical, natural methods to make the most flavorful rice possible.
It starts in the spring. Shepards bring in close to 1200 sheep to clear out the rice paddies from grasses and weeds and wild flowers and herbs so that nothing will compete or choke out the rice. For two months the sheep live a happy existence, eating clover and grasses and—most importantly—fertilizing the feeds, naturally. Then they harrow the fields, flood the field using the same 300 year old irrigation system that’s been bringing mountain spring water down to the valley for centuries, and put the seeds in the field. The seeds germinate in the water, which makes them heavier and they sink to the bottom where they find purchase in the soil and start to grow. Come the fall, we have rice!
Alicé Cerutti and her family have also done something no one believed possible: the brought back an entire ecosystem on their property. One of the ‘natural’ solutions they needed for preventing insects and pests from eating too much of the rice was to encourage birds to nest and live in the area. The only problem was, there were no trees as far as the eye could see because they’d all been cleared to maximize the area where they could grow rice. So they planted trees. Lots of them. 5000 to be exact. They actually took 60 acres of prime-rice-growing land and converted it into a Nature Reserve. Now the area supports amphibians, bees, helpful insects and especially birds! Migratory birds that haven’t been seen in Italy for decades are now flitting through the Nature Preserve. Alicé ended our tour their and it was the highlight of a very inspiring day. They recreated an essential natural space and gave new life to an area desperate for it. All in the name of rice.
I’ll leave you with Alicé’s tips for cooking delicious risotto…good luck!
Choose the right vessel: a wide pot with a heavy bottom, so the heat is evenly distributed during cooking.
In order to toast the grains, heat the pot over medium-high heat and add olive oil and a small finely chopped onion when the oil simmers. Sautè for 2 to 3 minutes or until slightly translucent. As you will read in the recipes of the amazing Chefs who embrace and enhance Cascina Oschiena’s rices and philosophy they “dry” toast the rice: heat the pot, pour the rice alone and add olive oil when the rice has been toasted for a couple of minutes (stirring the rice and not letting it turn brown)
Add the Classic Arborio/Classic Carnaroli rice to the pot, allowing it to absorb the oil. Stir constantly to prevent sticking.
After a minute or so, the rice will begin to release a distinct nutty smell and will become hot to touch. At this point, the grains are toasted.
Cook your risotto on a low, simmering heat and add the stock gradually, one ladle at a time. This gives the rice time to fully absorb the liquid and flavors. If you pour in the stock all at once, you are just boiling rice. By slowly adding stock, you allow the rice grains to bump up against each other, creating that creamy starch. Wait until the rice absorbs all the stock to add some more. Keep in mind the ratio: about 3 cups of stock for every cup of Arborio/Carnaroli rice. Keep the stock simmering in a small pot so everything stays hot and cooks evenly.
Stirring the rice is important, because a risotto’s creaminess comes from the starch generated when grains of rice rub against each other. So stir it often, but feel free to give your arms (and the rice) a break.
When the rice is creamy and soft but with a little firmness remaining in the centre, the rice is done. When you bite into the rice, your teeth should meet with some resistance.