Week of February 12th, 2008

1. A Mess of Greens
Someone who just moved to town this year asked me when locals here start getting sick of the winter. I think it's about that time for me — I'm ready for the markets and ready not to have to wear so many clothes when I'm out running. And I'm ready to get back to going the farmer's markets. In the mean time, if I'm going to get a sense of good vegetable eating this time of year, a mess of greens is good way to go. I'm not really sure why they always say "a mess" but that's what most people down South call 'em. In fact, Angie Mosier who's a food writer, cake decorator, photographer, singer, baker, incoming chair of the Southern Foodways Alliance and one of my good guides through the once totally foreign world of Southern food told me that "you always refer to greens as 'a mess of greens' and given that she's never steered me wrong, we'll just go with what she says. Aside from the drag of the mid winter blues, a good half a dozen customers have commented to me on the greens being really good lately which is a lot for something that's generally considered up here just an afterthought on the plate alongside the barbecue they come with.

I guess in truth, though, the even bigger reason I got focused on the greens was probably because of the potlikker. For those like me who didn't grow with it and don't know it, potlikker is the "broth" in the pot from the cooking of the greens. One afternoon, a few weeks back, I was at the Roadhouse when Ted (who you've pretty much all seen, quietly and very effectively cooking the grill if you've been out there) brought out the next pan to prepare for dinner. He took the old, nearly empty sixth pan of greens out of the steam table and started to drain off the potlikker. I just happened to look over and saw that, having carefully and appropriately taken out the remaining bits of greens to serve, he was about to dump the potlikker. Without really thinking about it I blurted out, probably way too loudly, something along the lines of "Wait! No! That's the best part!"

(I was going to leave this story anonymous so as not to in any way embarrass Ted, but I realized that, of course, he'd know immediately that it was him — he and I have been joking about the incident ever since it happened a few weeks ago. And because, in truth, the fact that he's such a diligent, effective and skilled long team member of the kitchen crew actually makes the point all the more effectively — up north hardly anybody knows about potlikker. But hey, there was a time that people here didn't know about pimento cheese, piquillo peppers, hamentaschen, or a million other things that we now sell tons of. So why not potlikker?

In truth, it was very clear to me right off that the fault in this narrowly avoided potlikker pour off incident lies with me for not teaching better. Most every time I unexpectedly get mad like that, I've learned that I have a unspoken expectation, and this was no exception — I had potlikker and greens very much on my mind because of the feature on African American foods but I hadn't really talked all that much about it to everyone else. So all Ted was doing is what every northern born, potlikker-deprived line cook or just regular person (LIKE ME, and like Ted) would have done. Take out the greens, dump the liquid. Fortunately, in this case, I caught Ted before he threw the potlikker away. Instead I sent it out as samples to a bunch of good customers, all of who (not surprisingly) loved it (cuz it's really good!)

While most everyone in the South generally seems to like greens, there's no question that they play a particularly big role in African American cooking there and then anywhere where southern blacks moved out to the rest of this country. Having learned a bit (a LOT, lot more to learn still) about the historical role of greens in the Southern kitchen I realized that all Ted and I were unknowingly doing was recreating what used to go on in the plantation kitchens; white masters wanted the cooked greens, but they ignored the potlikker. By the slave cooks who — a) were understandably always working to provide food for their families, and b) understood the high nutrient value of potlikker — happily drained it off the greens and used the broth to feed their own folks. Today it's worth having a bit of the potlikker just because it tastes so good. But I think it's also worth raising a shot glass of it as a respectful toast to the slave cooks who did the unglamorous work to develop the roots of African American eating that the rest of us get to enjoy today.
read more...

back to top

2. Sbrinz
In the globalization of my mind, it's time to go from the South over to Switzerland; I tasted this cheese about two weeks ago and I've gone back to buy it a couple times since. Literally it caught me with one of those mental "wows" that I really like to have (for obvious reasons) in a good way when I taste. In this case the cheese is pretty special — it's a bit over two years old. Very dense and intense, though not at all strong. I've been writing a bunch about Irish butter, and I really think that the Sbrinz tastes like a really good butter that's been concentrated down a cheese with texture, richness and complexity of great Parmigiano-Reggiano.

The flavor of this particular wheel is pretty lovely... sort of a bit like lightly browned butter... maybe for some reason cashews come to mind, and it sounds strange but it struck me as having a hint of sesame so I'm writing that down here. The cheese has no bite at all which is no mean feat in an offering of this age. Texturally it's got a touch of those really nice crystals in it that, as you probably know, one only gets when the cheese (or the ham) is over 18 months old.

While Sbrinz is a little known here in the States, it's likely the oldest of the Swiss cheeses historically — the Swiss are sure that Sbrinz actually predates Parmigiano. Their story is that Sbrinz was being made and traded in Switzerland for centuries and that Italian traders picked it up and brought it back to Parma. Of course I'm sure Italian cheese enthusiasts will quickly "correct" that version by reversing the historical flow. Regardless the two are clearly related and both can be excellent. For context, Sbrinz is maybe slightly softer, a bit butterier — whereas Parmigiano-Reggiano is made from partly skimmed milk the Sbrinz starts with whole milk. Additionally Sbrinz makers cut the curd much smaller which yields a finer textured, creamier cheese.

Sbrinz comes in pretty monumental 100 pound-plus wheels, crafted in small mountain dairies in eastern Switzerland. The size is one reason we don't get it all that often. This particular Sbrinz was matured for us by Rolf Beeler, the Swiss affineur who's been getting us such great Gruyere, Hoch Y Brig, Appenzell, etc. It's made on a farm that has a herd of Reggiana cows (aka, "red cows") that are more typically known as being the old breed of the Parma area. These small reddish-colored cows have been around for thousands of years, but during the last century, their number has dwindled down to fewer than two thousand head. The animals have a lower yield per cow, and the composition of their milk is not the same as the more popular Friesians; the casein in the milk forms into bigger globules, which makes for flavorful, but slower maturing, cheese. This wheel has been aged for over two years.

You can use any way you would Parmigiano or Piave — grate some on a bowl of home made vegetable soup, or onto some spaghetti topped with fresh herbs, chopped hazelnuts and olive oil. It's very buttery, very smooth, and very soft in its intensity. Personally, I'd probably just eat it as is. Like Parmigiano-Reggiano it's best "broken" instead of cut, by using those small almond-shaped Parmesan knives. It's really good if you crumble it onto a thickish slice of French Mountain Bread spread with a good bit of Irish cultured (silver foil) butter.

back to top

3. Askinosie Chocolate; From the Bar, to Beans, to Better Bars
Sorry, I couldn't resist the puns — Shawn Askinosie is a now retired (because he tired of it) trial lawyer who left his very well paying work at the bar to pursue his passion for chocolate making. Working to buy amazingly good beans at the source and then to bring them back to his hometown of Springfield, Missouri (you read that right) and make them into incredibly good chocolate bars. I say "better bars' both because the chocolate itself is exceptionally good, and because it's pretty clear from what he says it's very clear that the work with the cacao has been far more rewarding (spiritually, at least) than what he was doing before.

Shawn's chocolate is written up in the current issue of Zingerman's News but I wanted to get it in here too because I've learned more about it since I wrote the newsletter piece, and also because the more I learn and the more I taste, the more I like it. Anyways you can get the full story in the newsletter or read it online here but here's the gist of it:

Here's the gist of what's getting me going:
1. The Flavor
This chocolate tastes really amazingly good. I keep going back and tasting and retasting, sort of expecting to be underwhelmed at some point. But I'll tell you, I actually like the chocolate more now than I did three months ago when I first tried it. The flavors are long, big, wide, complex, and compelling without being in the least being overly extreme in any one direction. In fact, I'll just say that this chocolate fills the bill in terms of our definition of "full flavor" — it's extremely complex, it's very, very well balanced and it's got a really great finish that stays with you with ever more appeal for a long, long time, even if you only eat a single square. It's just really, really good.

2. The Raw Material
Every one that makes good chocolate says they "buy the best beans" but of course there are huge variations in quality — saying it and doing it are two very different things. But because it's pretty much impossible to make a great chocolate like this from mediocre cacao, I feel pretty confident saying that this guy's actually doing just what he says. Unlike most small chocolatiers, he's actually going straight to the agricultural source and buying cacao beans from the growers. Shawn has spent significant time in South and Central America in order to meet every single one of the farmers from whom he's getting cacao in order to get to know them and what they do. "Because of that," he explained, "I'm able to literally evaluate the beans before we get them delivered. I direct the exact fermentation and drying specifications of my beans and this is the greatest influence of taste that there is." The fermentation piece of this is huge — every really great chocolate maker talks about it at length, but few consumers yet understand how much difference it makes. It's a credit to Shawn's work with teaching fermentation techniques to the growers that the chocolate is as good as it is.

3. The Chocolate Making
Shawn is nothing if not fanatical about the attention to detail in each piece of the production, a trait which probably makes his wife crazy sometimes J, but from which the rest of get to benefit. All that little itty bitty detail stuff is what takes something from pretty good to the really amazing level of greatness that I that these bars are at (which I still attribute somewhat warily because they're so relatively new) (or the Zzang bars from the Bakehouse — see below for more on those).

"There are only a few places to effect taste," Shawn said on the phone last fall. "The farmers have the first three — growing, fermentation and drying. Then we have the rest — roasting, conching and the finishing. That's where we try to not mess up what the farmers have created." To focus his chocolate on the pure flavor of the cacao, Shawn decided not to use any of the lecithin or vanilla that are commonly used in most commercial chocolates. He does add a bit of cocoa butter, which, quite remarkably he makes himself in Missouri. The latter is almost unheard of in a production this small. Only a handful of chocolate producers — all much bigger than Askinosie — do it. I'm glad he is — it makes a small but very significant difference in the flavor and quality of the chocolate.

4. Connection
So much of what we do here in the ZCoB is about connection — hooking up the people who make the food, with the people who sell it, and then on to the customers (and us!) who actually eat it. It's what I've come to call Six Degrees of Connection (I don't like the negativity of "Six Degrees of Separation" though the alliteration of the latter is clearly better.) Our original connection with Shawn came, as many of you already know, through Jack Stack who runs Springfield Remanufacturing and co-wrote Great Game of Business (with Bo Burlingham)... maybe today I'll call him the Babe Ruth of Open Book Finance — it's not a place I've ever before learned about a really good new food, but, hey, connections are connections and good karmic stuff comes back to you many times over so it's great that a hook up we've had for so many years in the finance and world went on to lead us to one of the best new chocolates I've had in ages.

Shawn takes that connection thing seriously too. Unprompted by me he said, "Part of what I want to do is to connect the people who eat the chocolate with the people who grow the beans." He's doing it. Like I said, the guy's been to visit every single one of the farmers he buys from in Ecuador and in Mexico. Not only did he buy their beans though — he also later brought them finished chocolate to taste. Many had never had finished conched chocolate of any sort; and certainly hardly any (if any) had ever had finished chocolate made from their own beans. He also went down to meet them and thank them for all the work they were doing. He said that they uniformly were shocked to see him and that no chocolate maker — no one — had ever before come down to thank them for what they were doing.

5. Sustainability
While I'm starting to feel like the word itself is quickly becoming an "over-used resource," I don't have a better one to offer right now so let me just say that pretty much everything about this chocolate is set up to be sustainable. Shawn is paying over Fair Trade prices for the cacao, which I think, is great. As so many of our other like-minded producers have done, he's committed to those prices as long as the quality of the beans is good. At an equal level of amazingness, Shawn went back later to actually review Askinosie's early financial performance and deliver the first set of bonus checks to the growers — you can imagine the shock (in a good way) from them over that one. The packaging is all environmentally sound. He's open book finance all the way back to the growers and has gone back down to Mexico and Ecuador to give the farmer's their first bonus checks. And he's doing some really great work with kids in need in his hometown of Springfield to teach them about chocolate as well.

So with that as background, here's the details on the actual chocolate. There are four bars and I really think that they're all amazingly good.

First up is the one from Mexico — it's a 75 percent dark chocolate made with cacao from the area of Soconusco in southern Mexico. While today it's just a tiny town on the country's Pacific Coast, six or seven centuries ago Soconusco was to cacao what Bordeaux is today to grapes; in fact, the Aztecs took over the region simply because the cacao beans that came from there were so darned good. The area long ago fell off the radar of most everyone in the food world, but now, thanks to Shawn's work, we all get to taste the fruit of the labor of Soconusco's farmers — this is the first time this cacao has been used to make chocolate outside of Mexico in over 100 years! And it's darned good stuff. (Through Shawn's educational efforts the Soconusco growers have begun to ferment their cacao, something that wasn't done in the old days but is one of the keys to making great chocolate from any cacao today.)

The more I eat this chocolate the more I like it. It's got a very wide flavor that spreads out across your mouth side to side — not to sound stupid, but it's just pretty darned delicious. Lots of really good, long lingering low notes accompanied by mellow but meaningful liveliness, very long finish with sort of dry red wine textures in the mouth maybe? It's definitely not too sweet at all, which I like a lot. Little bits of flavor keep coming out long after you finish eating it. I like the not overly finessed feel it has in the mouth. I like the finish too — low and centered and very pleasant, lingering nicely long after you've finished eating it.

The second bar is the one made with nacional cacao (the variety of beans also known as Arriba) from Ecuador. The cacao it's made from comes from the tiny, centuries-old village of San Jose Del Tambo, which lies in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. It's got a cacao content of 70 percent, so it's slightly less dark than the Mexican bar. As Shawn aid at the tasting session when he was here a few weeks ago, "it's a completely different in taste from the Soconusco bar. It's 70% cacao but in one of those nobody ever believes it but it's true anyways, sometimes (like this time) lower percentages of cacao might taste "stronger" than others that have more simply because the beans are different. This is a good example of that because although it has less cacao in it, it really does taste darker than the Mexican bar above. It's got a really big flavor, a big creamy mouthfeel, not too sweet in the least. Lots of delicious, dark low notes, really long finish.

The third and fourth bars are simply the two chocolates above, but each with the addition of cacao nibs from their respective home regions. I really like both of them, in part because the addition of the nibs makes the flavor slightly darker and deeper and less sweet, and because I really like the textural contrast you get from their crunch.

PS: Zzang!
Shawn came into town on a Sunday evening before going to the Zingerman's Experience Seminar the next day, and went by the Deli to get some food. Among the many things he bought to take back to his hotel room he bought a Zzang bar, figuring he'd have a bite or two at the most for dessert (given that he eats a lot of chocolate it's not like he needs more). He ended up eating the whole thing that night, and announced in the ZingTrain seminar the next day that the Zzang was the best candy bar he'd ever had. High praise from a very picky chocolate person with very good taste.

back to top

4. Fruit Jellies vs. Pate de Fruit? Really Good No Matter What You Call 'Em
I'm pretty sure that the first time I tasted fruit jellies was when I was a kid and we got boxes of them to serve at Passover. Anyone who grew up with them, I'm sure knows what I'm talking about. If you aren't familiar with Passover foods of the past they're these thick semi circles of colored candy with white lines that ran around the border that, I guess, in hindsight, were supposed to make the candy look like citrus slices. Having no context in which to judge them and not paying much attention other than the fact that they were fine and we were allowed to eat them even during Passover, I can't really say much more about them than that. They were sweet, we ate 'em, and they tasted fine.

By contrast, I think it's about twenty years ago at a Fancy Food Show in NY I tasted the proper French version of fruit jellies. They were made by a small producer from Provence by the name of Monsieur Doucet, who was and is a very nice guy making a very nice product. He took great delight in explaining the humor of his name when you translated it from French into English — "I am 'Mister Sweetie,'" he told me about eight times in ten minutes. It is a pretty good name for a confectioner, and the name is fitting as much for his gentle friendly nature as well as for his profession. Tasting his product, I remember being really surprised at how M. Doucet's fruit jellies actually tasted like fruit, and they weren't anywhere near as sweet as the low-end stuff we used to get for Passover. Texturally they were much softer and significantly more appealing. These, I learned, from Mr. Sweetie, were called "pate de fruit;" in French, literally "fruit paste" or "fruit dough."

I honestly don't even remember what we called the ones I grew up on but I guess the proper American confectionary name would be "fruit jellies." While we had half moons, they actually appear in all sorts of other shapes at candy counters too — big rounds, berry shaped balls, small individuals in plastic wrap and others in just about every color one could think of and then some, all usually dusted in sugar crystals. Though they always look good most aren't — the problem not surprisingly is that they're almost all sugar, gelatin, at most a little bit of fruit, some food coloring and that's about it. As Chuck Siegel who makes the really good ones we have here, said with a smile but not a whole lot of subtlety, "Most fruit jellies in America contain around about zero real fruit."

Whatever you want to call them I have to say though that I've never really liked the name in either language. In French, if you say it right (which I probably don't)... it's "pot de froo-eey" which by the time you roll the "r" and soften the ending as you should just doesn't sound like something all that many Americans are going to get excited about buying. By contrast, the English term — "fruit jellies" — sounds so low end and inane that I can't imagine anyone getting very excited about that either. So... I don't know what to call them. Thoughts are welcome. In the meantime though... we have some very good ones on hand — courtesy of Chuck Siegel and his company, Charles Chocolates — so the main thing would be to just eat them and appreciate them.

The main message here is just that Chuck are extremely, extremely, good. Like so much of what we do here at Zingerman's, there really isn't anything all that fancy about making them as good as Chuck's are. It's sort of obvious really — mostly just that he relies on a large percentage of good fruit, and then stays away from all the shortcuts that reduce costs but also diminish flavor. He's running at a rate of 45% fruit, sweetened just with cane sugar and then just enough apple pectin to get the fruit to set up. The finished confections are rolled in moderately coarse sugar to keep them from sticking together. Like I said, it's very simple, and very good. By contrast most commercial versions of these rely on stuff like corn syrup, large amounts of gelatin, and some sort of added flavors and colors (as opposed to actual fruit being cooked down and strained off).

Of the many flavors he makes, Chuck's top choices are the Blood Orange and the Meyer Lemon. I'm down with both, although if I had to pick just one I'd probably go with the latter just because I love Meyer lemons and we don't get them often enough out here in the Midwest. Either of the two is a great way to brighten a cold winter's day. His third pick is Passion Fruit, an obvious choice for giving away on the 14th of February. If you're looking for a Valentine's gift for a non-chocolate eater, or just a way to enjoy something sweet but not over the top in its richness, pick up a couple of these... whatever you want to call them and enjoy!

back to top

5. Bialys from the Bakehouse
Like the greens above, they're one of those really good foods that most folks take little or no notice of.

Even around here, where we make them, I'll bet very few people know what a bialy is — if you don't work Tuesdays or bake on the Monday night bagel shift at the Bakehouse you might go years without ever seeing one since we only sell them on Tuesdays. So, backing up a bit, if you aren't familiar with them, I can tell you that bialys are the traditional "roll" of the Polish town of Bialystok, brought to this country primarily by Polish-Jewish bakers around the turn of the last century. Back then they were very much an every day bread. In NYC they're still sort of readily available, but out here in the rest of the country a bialy (let alone a good bialy) isn't something you'll find every day. And, as far as I know, Lender's hasn't come out with frozen version yet so...

In context I could share that one of the first things that drew us to wanting to work with our bread mentor, Michael London, back in 1992 was that we discovered early on that he had the bialy recipe from Kossars, my favorite Lower East Side bialy bakery. Because I avoid comparisons to classic producers (and especially any in NY) I definitely don't want to get into whose bialys are better. Kossar's is the classic spot to get bialys and you should definitely go next time you're in NYC. The key to me here is that the bialys that the bagel crew every night at the Bakehouse is crafting are really good. And definitely something you want to check out.

I like the way John Thorne described them a few years ago in "Simple Cooking." A bialy, he wrote, "is a bagel that's lost inside a Polish joke: it's outside is crusty instead of glossy and the hole in the center doesn't make it all the way through. But, fresh from the oven, it is a delicacy unique to itself, crisp and chew at once, the center dimple stuffed with translucent onion bits..."

More directly, with a bialy, the "hole" in the center isn't really a hole; it's more of an indentation, a thumbprint of an impression, which is filled with lots of fresh, diced onions and plenty of poppy seeds. And since a bialy isn't boiled before being baked, it doesn't have as thick a crust. And as Mr. Kossar (from the above-mentioned Kossar's) was quoted as saying in Joan Nathan's excellent Jewish Cooking in America, "... they'll never be like bagels, because you still have to use your fingers to make that special shape, to make that hole."

You can do a lot of the same things with a bialy as you would a bagel. Eat 'em out of hand, or toasted with a little butter or cream cheese or smoked salmon. Or having read Mimi Sheraton's very nice book, "The Bialy Eaters," I learned that back in Bialystok people generally ate bialys by simply spreading butter across the top, not slicing them in half as we do with bagels. They're even better if you warm them in the oven for a few minutes before you eat 'em. Spread the word, and spread the Creamery's really good hand made cream cheese on them.

REMEMBER: Tuesdays are also Bagel Tuesdays which means you can get six free bagels when you buy six. And you can count your bialy buying in with your bagels.

back to top