1. Irish Butter
I've written a million words on this so I'm not going to add many more here. For those of you who want to get the in depth story, the whole essay is in the current issue of Zingerman's News.

Very briefly:
a) This butter tastes great! If you haven't had it... Ask for a taste!

b) We have two Irish butters on hand — both are excellent.

The silver foil butter is a cultured butter. This is the old style of butter. To my taste it's more flavorful and my personal favorite. It has no salt added.

The gold foil is sweet butter. That means that the cream hasn't had time to ripen (so it's "sweet" in the same way that a "non-sour baguette" in San Francisco will be sold as a "sweet baguette.") The sweet butter does have salt.

c) The texture of the Irish butters is very soft. Why? Because butter made from cream from grass fed cows is notably softer in texture.

d) Same is true for the bright, golden, "sunny" color — grass grazing means more beta carotene in the milk, so the cream that's skimmed off will be more golden in color.

e) The Irish butter is great tasting but also affordable enough to use for everyday butter. Whether it's for toast, topping potatoes, melting on just cooked meat, or especially for baking, this Irish stuff really should/could be on your counter all year round.

Ps: the butter is particularly good with the Irish Brown Soda Bread. When you sample the two together... it's pretty much a guaranteed hit. The Bakeshop has had great success with this really simple but totally traditional pairing.

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2. Acquarello Carnaroli Rice
I first tried this rice probably seven or years ago or so — I can't quite remember but I'm pretty sure that I met Rinaldo Rondolini at the first Salone del Gusto in Turin, I think back in like 2000. I remember being impressed with his passion and about all the good things that he and his family were doing to grow great rice on their farm in the Piemonte. He was nice enough to send samples of the rice, which, being the regular risotto maker that I am, I was happy to get. Eager to try it, I cooked it a few days after the tin arrived. But while I went into the cooking wanting to like the rice — everything Rinaldo had told me sounded fantastic — in truth I didn't fall in love with it. And since we were already very happy with the also very good Principato di Lucedio rice we already had on hand, we held off on bringing it over.

I continued to cook and taste the Acquarello rice off and on for the next few years to make sure I hadn't missed the flavor boat in my cooking taste tests. It was always fine, but I still stayed with my original conclusions each time. Despite all the good things they were doing, the rice was good but not better than what we had — a solid 7 I guess I'd say now in hindsight on my flavor scale, but not the 9 or 10 that was going to really grab me and make me want to sell the stuff.

And that's the way it was... up until about a year ago. When I cooked from a newly arrived tin of the Acquarello last fall it struck me that this time it seemed really darned good. Notably better than before. Of course, at first I figured I was probably imagining the improvement so I cooked it again to confirm and the quality held up, impressively so. What had been good all along now seemed to be pretty special. Something was better, though I wasn't sure what. Not fully trusting myself, I checked with Gauri to see what she thought. Since she grew up eating rice, and since she also has a very good palate, I trust her sense of it. She concurred — the Acquarello was tasting impressively fine. I really had no idea what had changed — the cause of improvement in artisan food and agriculture is often hard to pinpoint, and I didn't really know that the Rondolinis had knowingly done anything differently in the last few years. But it tasted really remarkably good.

Coincidentally, before I could finish writing this piece I unexpectedly ran into Rinaldo's father at the Alimenataria food show in Barcelona this week. I politely told him this story, mostly just saying that in the last year or so the rice seemed really to be great, better than it had early on. I said it carefully because I didn't want to imply anything bad. He immediately got really excited. Sure enough, something had changed, and he was very eager to explain.

When I'd first tasted the Acquarello like eight years ago, he told me, the family had been sending their rice out when it was ready, and it was milled by someone else. But in the last few years, Piero said, they'd put in their own milling equipment. And, he added, with this very big smile, "it has made a very big difference."
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3. Aged Bluefin Tuna from Spain
Funny to be finishing this from Spain where I first found out about this tuna nine months or so ago. While it's not super limited in the moment, it is a very special, one time only, Ortiz family offering of bluefin, arguably (by me at least) the most flavorful of the tinned tunas you can buy.

If you go to Italy you'll find this fish sold as Tonno Rosso (or literally, and confusingly, "red tuna"). There, bluefin is the most prized, totally considered the best of the best of the tinned tunas. In Spain though, for whatever reasons, bluefin is barely ever eaten, which is odd because the Spaniards eat some humongously large quantity of tuna in tins. There really are whole aisles in the supermarkets here that are filled with nothing more than cans of fish, of which tuna takes top billing. That said, they're partial in Spain to bonito, or albacore; after that they like yellowfin (known as atun claro). But for some reason I can't really explain they do almost nothing with the bluefin.

Given that the bluefin tuna is ever harder to find, that's probably not a bad thing. This particular batch is available really only because two years ago this past summer a couple big bluefins seem to have wandered out of the Mediterranean into the Cantabrian Sea. Local fisherman caught one, brought it in to the docks and the folks at Ortiz smartly snapped it up.

If you like tuna, you'll definitely want to check it out. To me, it really is the top of the top of tinned tunas, the one that you want to eat when you want to eat something superbly special — richer, meatier, more full flavored. This batch is particularly good because it's actually been aged for two and a half years, meaning it's even richer and better now than when it was first released. Aging tinned tuna, like Italian rice, is a good thing!

It's pretty darned affordable really. In honesty I think I like the $50 tins of Sicilian tonno rosso we have at the Deli may a bit better, but at ten dollars a tin, this stuff you could afford to actually eat it more often than once a year. Personally, at this price, I'd just eat the stuff pretty much as is — a bit of good olive oil, some sea salt, maybe some roasted piquillo or crystal peppers. If you want to add any vegetables, or boiled potatoes, olives, etc are going to be good too! Especially with good with a bit of good olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt on top.

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4. Kulich — Russian Easter Cake from the Bakehouse
While over here in the US kulich may seem "just another cake", be warned that in Russia it's a big deal — akin, I guess, to pannetone in Italy, plum pudding in England, or round challahs for Rosh Hashanah — of high interest historically and culturally, as well as, of course, culinarily.

If you haven't had it before, kulich (it's pronounced, kool-ich — the "ch" is pronounced as it would be in "sandwich," and it's no relation to Mike K who works at the Roadshow). A light golden cake, about ten inches tall, it's made with (what else?) lots of butter, fresh eggs, rum, Red Flame raisins, golden raisins, currants, dried cherries, candied citron, candied orange, candied lemon, whole toasted almonds, lemons, oranges. Be warned that once opened the kulich's light airy structure means it will dry out relatively quickly — no preservatives, no diglycerides,...

Also it's traditional to send your Kulich out with a red rose tied to the top — doesn't add to the flavor at all but it does enhance its gift giving value. Ours comes with a dried rose already attached.

Alina Makin, who teaches Russian at U of M, shared both personal experience and Russian culinary history that helped me get a handle on the kulich. "When I was growing up," she told me, "kulich was baked only for Easter and was the centerpiece of the festivities. It's the first thing that you eat to break the Great Lent on Easter Sunday and it's eaten throughout the whole Easter week." The name is likely derived from Greek — "houlihi" meaning round or oval shaped loaf. Alina's belief is that going back more than four or five hundred years the kulich was likely a simpler form of cake, probably sweetened with honey and maybe touched up with a few chopped hazelnuts. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries there was a move to 'fancify' Russian cuisine — many more exotic ingredients came to represent the high end of culinary prestige and many of those ended up in the Kulich — raisins, spices, candied citrus, etc. And because eggs, butter (and other rich foods) are often not eaten during the Lenten fast period, kulich is part of the celebratory ending of that fast, often also considered as a way to use up all the eggs that were stored up during the weeks of abstinence.

Having food superstitions on my mind from all the work with Irish butter, I can't say I was surprised to hear from Alina that the same sort of stuff came down with Kulich too. "The way kulich came out of the oven was widely used as a predictor of family's health and wealth in the coming year: cracked or burnt (or even collapsed) kulich was the omen of death of the master/mistress of the house." On an up note, the use of eggs in the kulich came in part from their role as representative of the complete universe, and also the resurrection. The sweetness of the cake is, not surprisingly to represent a sweet year and a sweet afterlife. The round shape, like Rosh Hashanah challah, is meant to symbolize a full, complete life. Alina also told me that in ancient times, the empty seat left at Russian families holiday meals to be "filled" by Jesus would have a whole kulich placed in front of it. In Russian Orthodox belief, the kulich was to replace the unleavened bread (matzo) eaten I so often is associated with Biblical Jewish eating (though I'm not sure, why that is...) and it then symbolized the move from the Old Testament to the New.

This year Russian Orthodox Easter isn't until Sunday April 27. But you don't have to celebrate Russian Easter to eat a kulich. In fact Orthodox Easter is still weeks away, but you can eat it now.

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5. Spanish Tortilla
Well, I didn't really have these on my mind 'til I got over here to Spain, but having been here all week, it'd be hard not to think about them. Along with cured ham and olive oil, tortillas are probably amongst the most commonly eaten Spanish dishes you're going to find. They're served in pretty much every bar; most everyone grow up with them, almost everyone I've ever asked has strong opinions about how to make one properly.

For clarity's sake, let me say up front that in Spain tortillas are made of eggs, not cornmeal, so, despite the common name, forget for the moment about the Mexican tortillas. The term for tortilla most often used in translation is "omelet," but for me at least, omelets are a pretty different dish, both in the execution and in the eating. The closest thing I can use for visual comparison is probably an Italian frittata, but the process for making the two is different, as is the way that they're eaten.

In Spain tortillas seem to have much the same sort of emotional and family food memory associations as something like grits do down south in this country. Here in Spain country people tell stories of taking tortillas out into the fields with them. Chef Toño Perez of Atrió restaurant, one of the best known chefs in Extramadura, told me that, "if somebody in Spain closes their eyes and thinks about food, they would always like to eat tortilla, it is something that comes to their mind." "Tortillas," another Spanish acquaintance conveyed, "remind me of when I was little. Every time I prepare one and it turns golden-brown, I remember how I used to gaze with admiration and intrigue at the final result that my grandmother used to get. It was truly an adventure, and the reward was to discover at the end the golden-brown and perfectly round surface; it was fascinating."

Another friend told me how her mother "used to leave me with a slice of tortilla to eat at three a clock in the morning, after I came from a walk." Even newcomers to Spain come to love them passionately — check out Ann Arborite Adam Pasick's piece on the subject in Foods from Spain's spring newsletter. I think the last word on this go to Carlos Galtier, who works at the Commercial Office of Spain in New York. Sharing the dilemma of any cook who's grown up in a home run by a good cook, he said, "I'll never be able to make a tortilla as good as my mother's. Her tortillas still taste better than mine. But," he added, "I keep trying, and my friends keep thanking me for letting them enjoy my efforts!"

Legend has it that the tortilla was invented by a peasant who sought to serve a particularly hungry king and that they've been made on the Iberian peninsula for many centuries. They were a big part of Sephardic Jewish cooking, prominent in the communities of Tunisia and Algeria where they were known as 'marcoude." Similar styles of egg dishes are found in the Sephardic communities of Greece and Turkey, though they're usually made with mashed, instead of whole-sliced, potatoes. (For more on this subject see Joyce Goldstein's excellent book "Saffron Shores.") In the early years of the 20th century, the tortilla was a practical way for people without much money to eat. It called on only onions, potatoes, olive oil, and eggs — probably the ingredients most commonly available all over Spain, and allowed for the addition of most any other ingredient that the poor might have on hand.

What you really need to know though is that a well-made Spanish tortilla is one of the best things you'll eat in Spain, or anywhere. On top of that, they're really easy-to-make, and the kind of carefully crafted comfort food that few Americans have ever had the chance to experience.

Although the traditional potato version can take about 45 minutes to make, other tortillas with other ingredients can be ready in less time than that. And because tortillas keep well I always make more than I really need in the moment and save the rest for supper the next day — I actually like them better after they've been allowed to rest for a while.
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