Here’s an interesting article about dolphin-safe tuna fishing. It throws into relief the unintended consequences of fixing the surface of a problem without addressing the root cause. It turns out that no matter how you lure tuna, whether it's safe for dolphins or not, if you’re fishing in a mass-attack style you’re going to kill a lot of other fish “unintentionally”.
Read the article through to the comments at the end. You’ll see the writer is restricting his conversation to one kind of fishing method. It’s not the only way to fish for tuna.
I checked in with Iker Fernandez, one of the folks behind our tuna from Ortiz. I thought his response was funny because the kind of tuna that Ortiz buys are fished traditionally. As much as we might be desensitized to expect these acts of aquatic carnage, he’s surprised, almost incredulous. He wrote, “I can assure 100% that our tunas are fished by line, one by one. I’d like to know what kind of tuna this writer is talking about!”
From the moment I tasted Benton’s Bacon I was in love with his bacon. I have never in my whole life had bacon taste that amazing. The smoky flavor, the thick cut of meat that doesn’t shrivel when you cook it, and, ohhh boy—does it flavor a pot of beans like no other bacon I know of.
Allan Benton is one America's most lauded bacon makers. He's been curing and smoking ham in Madisonville, TN since 1973. Southern food writer John T Edge called it "the country's best bacon." His bacon is dry cured—a rare practice among modern bacon makers—and has a very intense flavor.
Below is a brief, casual interview I conducted with Mr. Benton in August 2009.
Jen: How do you like to eat your bacon?
Allan: Either pan fried or on a BBLT (Benton’s Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich).
Do you have a favorite recipe?
Not really sure. I would say wrapped around a Lamb Chop and grilled, or draped across the top of a turkey. I also like it for breakfast in Red Eye Gravy over high quality grits. My favorite grits are either Anson Mills or Falls Mills from Belvidere, Tennessee.
What other types of bacon or cured meats do you enjoy?
Hickory Smoked bacon and unsmoked bacon, dry cured, close to pancetta. I love country hams that have been cured at least twelve to eighteen months.
Do you ever get tired of eating your own bacon?
No. [Chuckles] I have been eating it my entire life. I have had to cut down a bit because I take cholesterol medication but I still eat it a couple times a week.
If you weren’t making bacon what would you do?
I’d give Obama a run for his money! [laughs] I’m just pulling your leg, I have been making bacon since I was very young and plan on doing it forever!
If you were going to eat someone else’s bacon, who’s would it be and why.
I seldom if ever travel. If I were to eat another, it would need to be a top quality dry cured bacon. I was a senior in college before I ever tried “store brand” bacon. I was living in a dorm and purchased the meal plan. The first time I tried that kind of bacon I only finished it because I was paying for it.
Does everyone like your bacon?
You either love it or hate it. There is not a big in between.
A first time purchaser’s trip to the Fancy Food Show. By Susan Ederer
The Javits Center is two full levels jam-packed with a thousand or more vendor booths. Some are organized by country or state and other aisles put a packaging vendor between a ham distributor and a chocolatier. Traveling companions: Brad and Eric. Also there: Ari plus folks from the Deli and Bakehouse.
Day One 10:30 a.m. Attavola, one of our import vendors who represents a host of producers themselves. We sampled (pretty much in this order): food allergy friendly biscotti, fruit spreads, preserves, lemon blossom, sulla, rosemary and thyme honeys, more preserves (sweet and savory), roasted mushrooms, artichokes, balsamic onions, rolled eggplant and tomato, pesto rosso, and olives.
Zuercher, one of our cheese wholesalers. I meet Jason Hinds, our Neal’s Yard Dairy contact. We sample Ticklemore, Stratham Blue and Ogleshield. Then Landoff, Crawford and Cabot cloth-bound cheddar aged by Jasper Hill.
Kitty Keller, whom I can only describe as a sort of Julia Child of food importing. She’s outspoken, passionate and infectiously funny. We sample flavored salts, mustards, hard candy caramels, olive oil banyuls vermouth vinegar and vin agrodolce.
Nueske’s is next, where I meet Tanya Nueske. We taste bacon and talk about the bacon book. Brad heads off for a meeting with Grace and the Italian Trade Commission while Eric and I keep walking the aisles.
Manicaretti, another importer of Italian products. Eric & I sample some new sauces being produced by the woman who makes our Mugolio. While they’re all green, the flavors are disparate and delicate. Problem is, these have not yet gotten through the USDA approval process.
3 p.m. We meet with Jason Hinds to talk about our Neal’s Yard order process to gear up for the holiday. It seems a little strange to talk about Mail Order’s holiday cheese needs in the middle of a convention hall in New York City at the end of June, but there we are anyway. Since we’re sitting in the Larkin booth (they’re a big importer and warehouser), their staff keep slipping us samples of cheeses. We call it a good day’s work at about 4:30 p.m.
Day Two 10 a.m. Essex Street Cheese Company. Daphne, who you may have met on one of her regular visits to Ann Arbor, meets us at the booth. While we talk about holiday cheese volumes, we sample our way through a 2-year aged Gouda, an 18-month Comte and a 2-year Parmigiano Reggiano.
Licorice is next, at Gerrit Verburg’s booth. Gerrit talks to Brad about how he thinks we should market licorice while Gerrit’s wife is plying me with tastes. Anise is not my favorite flavor, but I can’t say no. Into my mouth go sample after sample of soft and hard, chewy and sticky licorice bites.
I spot Herb Eckhouse form La Quercia next. We talk about his new pre-sliced packaging while I sample some prosciutto Americano and speck.
12:15 p.m. William Wallo from the Deli introduces me to Thibaut from Euroco. They’re another one of our importers, this one French. After chatting a bit, we taste some preserves, including a cashew one. Immediately followed by Corsican goat and sheep milk cheeses.
Next up, a meeting with Grafton Cheese folks, the Deli and me. We talk about some staffing changes at Grafton and new packaging opportunities for the 1, 2, 4 & 5 year cheeses we sell.
2:30 p.m. At the Hammonds Candies booth, I talk with an eager staffer about how they’d like to do private labeling for us. I look around the booth for a possible substitute for the lollipops we buy.
Vosges. I can’t help myself, I have to sample a little of a bacon chocolate bar while I’m chatting with them. Wait until you see the cool containers the chocolate dipped tortilla chips will be in come fall.
French Farm. I try the caramel sauce Giselle offers (don’t worry, Beth, it isn’t as good as dulce de leche) while we talk about honey forecasts for the holiday. I follow that up with a salt taste.
Virginia Diner tells me how much they love our new private label while I sneak a peanut or two.
At the Edwards booth, I meet Sabra, our sales rep, who reaches beneath a table draping to offer me a sample of the surry-ano ham (think really good American prosciutto from Surrey pigs) we’ll be buying starting in the fall.
Rick’s Picks is next. I’m plied with pickled products a-plenty.
Peeled Snacks is in the adjacent booth. We already carry their mango, but I taste my way through three of their five other flavors.
4:30 p.m. Cheeseworks. Raymond Hook, our new sales rep, offers up a really great blue cheese.
We finish the day back at Kitty Keller’s booth, where she is pouring cava and has assembled a little spread.
Day Three 10 a.m. Creminelli’s wild boar salami is the first thing I taste. Brad and I talk with Scott Frank about their plan to distribute this product nationally in mid-November. They’d like to work with Zingerman’s on an early launch.
Back to Manicaretti with Brad, who wasn’t there with Eric & me on Sunday. He samples the Primitivizo sauces and then we both try a hazelnut oil plus the hazelnuts. We end this visit with olive oil and chocolate-hazelnut biscotti by Mattei, who makes our blue-bagged biscotti.
We reconnect with Raymond Hook at the Cheeseworks booth and taste our way through membrillo, a sugarplum and walnut log, Morello cherries in syrup, and boquerones from Ortiz. At the Seitenbacher booth, I meet Debbie Roberts while we taste a few new flavors (raspberry jets, peach chicks, green apples) plus a chocolate-nut spread they’re now carrying.
Aaron at the Forever Cheese booth offers us samples of buffalo and goat milk cheese. Some harder, some softer. In between cheeses, we comparatively taste a couple varieties of almonds.
Askinosie, where I meet Shawn Askinosie in person (we talk by phone every time I order) and get a sneak sample preview of their holiday peppermint bark. It is the perfect mix of white and dark chocolate – and won’t disappoint!
The gastronomic and introduction tour ends at the Ritrovo booth, where I meet Catie. After sampling a pomegranate confit, she introduces us to a man who makes confetti. Confetti are a candy coating (some were lustrous like pearls while others were bright and shiny) covering delicious chocolate, which enrobes a center made of a nut, raisin, bit of orange peel or some other bite of flavor.
The TV show Top Chef started last night. If you didn't know this already, there's an Ann Arbor restaurateur in the group: Eve Aranoff, of Eve restaurant in Kerrytown. She just avoided the axe. If you don't know what Top Chef is you can probably move on and not lose much sleep. Instead, I suggest you stop by Eve on a Thursday evening when the restaurant turns into something more and Aaron Lindell and his partner spin good music late into the evening.
I first went to Italy almost two decades ago. Back then there was only one café in Ann Arbor, Espresso Royale on State Street. It was half the size. As students we all called it Café Pretentious and you could smoke there. This made it an instant substitute for the library. It was always busy.
Things are a lot different now. Yet while cafés have become a fixture across America, there’s still an aura surrounding Italian cafés and, along with it, a lot of myths and legends. It got me thinking and observing on my last visit as I made the trip to an espresso counter three or four times a day. Since American cafés have basically copied a lot of Italy’s espresso style and culture I thought it’s worth it to check in on some typical myths — and truths.
Myth or Truth: Italians only drink cappuccino in the morning, after that it’s espresso only.
Myth! Italians order every coffee drink every time of the day. At the end of dinner, though, espresso is definitely the norm.
Myth or Truth: Italians never order coffee To Go.
Truth. I’ve seen it once, maybe twice in a thousand coffees. There are no paper cups at an Italian cafe.
Myth or Truth: Italians drink coffee really fast.
Truth. I sipped a cappuccino at normal speed and the counter turned over three times. Once I was on a bus that made a stop at a red light and — no shit — the driver got out, bought and drank an espresso, and got back on the bus before the light turned green. The whole bus burst into applause. In Italy this is considered an act of athleticism.
Myth or Truth: Italians drink their coffee standing up.
Truth. Most cafés have no seats. If they have them, no one is sitting at them. (The coffee costs more when you’re seated.)
Truth or Myth: Italian coffee is affordable.
Truth. A shot of espresso runs about a euro ($1.40). A cappuccino, 1.40 ($2).
Myth or Truth: Italian espresso drinks are the best in the world.
Myth. This may have been true twenty years ago. Perhaps even ten years ago. But in the last few years I’ve had better coffee in London (Monmouth), Portland (Stumptown), Chicago (Intelligentsia), New York (Gimme!) and Ann Arbor (Zingerman’s). I would say, on average, you can get a better espresso drink in Italy than America. But the best cafés in America beat the best in Italy. And I hear New Zealand beats all of us, though I’ve never been there.
Truth or Myth: Italians don’t order coffee at a restaurant. They go hit a café after dinner.
Myth. Six Romans ordered espresso at a pizza joint next to me. Then three more next to them. They’re ordering coffee all over the place, all the time, restaurant or not. That said, an Italian may still hit a café on the way home for a post-espresso espresso. The shots are all singles.
Truth or Myth: Italians don’t drink drip brewed coffee.
Truth. In restaurants and cafes it’s not available. If an Italian doesn’t have an espresso machine at home they have one or two of the ubiquitous silver Mokha makers.
Truth or Myth: the foam on an Italian cappuccino is different.
Truth. They don’t heat the foam as much. It’s lighter and cooler than ours. Because of this and the fact that they use less milk overall, coffee lines in Italy move super fast. You never wait more than a couple minutes.
Morelli’s factory is a connected series of five rooms. The pasta comes in as raw grain in the first and leaves as case packs of pasta in the fifth.
The durum grain, primarily from Italy with supplemental grain from Canada when necessary, is held in three silos in the warehouse. Vacuum hoses pull it to room two.
Room two. Here the durum semolina is mixed with water and, for the pasta we buy, wheat germ. The germ is perishable and held in their coffin freezer, which looks just like the one we have on the pick and pack line. When I visited there was one man mixing chiles for a spicy pasta. He’s one of only two men I see in the factory, both doing heavy jobs. The rest, about twenty more, are women.
Room three is very hot. It feels like the Bakehouse bread side. The pasta is coming through the machine in cut pieces of penne, red from the chiles that were mixed in. I can see the big bronze die that forms them. It looks about ten inches across, a couple inches thick. The bronze die is traditional and key to the pasta’s exterior texture. Feel a piece of Morelli pasta and its surface is rough, not slick like the pasta you get from newer Teflon dies that are widely used. Its more pleasant in the mouth and holds sauce better. My understanding is bronze dies cost more, need to be replaced more often, and produce pasta more slowly, hence their demise.
The penne falls already cut out of the machine onto drying screens. They’re about the size of half a screen door, wood-rimmed, with a nylon screen. They stack on top of each other like bread racks. Two people do the stacking and one — the other man in the building — wheels them away. It takes more people when they’re making a long shape, like linguine, because they have to cut that kind of pasta by hand.
I quickly learned the heat comes from the drying chambers which line one side of the room. They look like walk-ins, silver with big doors, colorful buttons, blinking lights, inscrutable numbers. There are about six of them, each eight feet square.
The dryers are the other key to the pasta’s interior texture. They are set at 44 Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) and the pasta spends 24-36 hours there. It can be dried faster if the temperatures were higher. The slow drying enhances the texture and flavor, though, to be honest, I’m not quite sure how yet. Our Italian and English translation wasn’t doing the job there. More to come.
The fourth room is full of people, twelve women, all packing pasta. No big machines or anything. Just trays, scoops and bags. Each bag is filled, weighed, and riveted shut. This was pretty remarkable to me. I mean, this business has been around 150 years. These guys are obviously smart business folks to stay around for that long. Giovanna told me the great grandfather moved the factory to this location in 1907 in part to be close to the rail line — it’s across the street — to save on costs. Pretty savvy move. All that time and smarts, though, and they still haven’t found a better way to package pasta than a person working by hand. It reminds me of what lean guru Eduardo told me early on when we were working together. “Mo, the most flexible machine in the world is a human being.”
The last room is, you guessed it, inventory. Cases of pasta stacked everywhere, though in reality it was probably only a few hundred cases and they looked to be leaving soon. From here it’s out the door to the loading zone, which is so tiny it makes the back dock of the deli look luxurious. The door opens on an alley about a dozen feet wide with tiny Fiats parked on one side against a wall. It’s Italy, though. That's a huge amount of space, so of course a giant eighteen wheeler delivering grain has found a way to wedge itself between the door and the cars.
I took a trip to San Romano last week to visit the small pasta facory of Morelli. It’s about an hour due west of Florence in western Tuscany. They’ve been making pasta there for about a hundred years — and that’s their second location! They moved here after a fifty year run in a small village nearby. Now if a hundred year old factory has you thinking cobwebs and cobble stones, you can scratch that image from your mind. While not exactly high tech — they still bag everything by hand, as you can see in the picture — it’s bright and shockingly clean, with a glossy green floor.
Even though the Morellis have been making pasta for almost 150 years we just started carrying them this summer, in the current catalog. I was especially excited about their pasta with wheat germ. It’s the only one of its kind that I’m aware of. Most pastas are made from fully refined flour where the germ is removed. In other words, most pasta is kind of like white bread. For a few of their pastas the Morellis add germ back in. The quantities of germ are relatively small — 3.2% for the tacconi and over double that for the ricciolina, which also has bran — so it is not overwhelmingly wheaty. You can catch wafts of wheat aroma when you boil it. The flavor is what I might call “gently rustic,” something you don’t want to cover up with too many other flavors .
Morelli is collectively run by siblings Antonio, Marco and Lucia, the fifth generation to have the honors. They are in their 40’s and 50’s, slim and trim (take that, Atkins diet). They split up roles. Marco handles the wheat buying side of the business. Antonio, the pasta making and sales. Antonio’s wife, Giovanna, manages all the export. Their father is still involved — he popped his head in and said hello — and there was even a teenage regazzo (boy) hanging around. Pretty solidly a family business.
I take it as a good sign that the family totally loves their pasta and eats it, as Giovanna told me, “every single day, often twice.” How do they like to serve it? I wasn’t surprised that the recipes were very simple, usually the case with folks who make foods with a lot of flavor on their own.
Antonio likes the ricciolina best, tossed with a bit of grated pecorino, olive oil and black pepper. Kind of like the Roman dish, cacio e pepe(sheep cheese and pepper), which is something I make a lot. Giovanna likes the paccheri (available at deli) with cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil. She tosses the pasta in the olive oil that’s been cooked with a clove of garlic that then gets tossed out. She also really likes the tacconi simply with olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Tomorrow I’ll take you inside the factory for a quick tour.
Here’s an interesting article about dolphin-safe tuna fishing. It throws into relief the unintended consequences of fixing the surface of a problem without addressing the root cause. It turns out that no matter how you lure tuna, whether it's safe for dolphins or not, if you’re fishing in a mass-attack style you’re going to kill a lot of other fish “unintentionally”.
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