Let’s start off by addressing the elephant in the room. Eels get a bad rap. We think of them as slippery, ugly, mean, slimy, snaky. They’ve held an odd fascination for us since Aristotle’s time; he wrote that they emerged from earthworms. (They don’t—European and American eels all leave their homes to migrate thousands of […]
Continue Reading →
Our spring shipment of imports arrived at our warehouse a few weeks ago. Each year, this delivery is the one that includes our newest harvest of olive oils—in this case, we just got the 2014 harvest. It takes until May for the new oils to arrive because after the olives are picked and pressed around […]
Continue Reading →
The first thing to know about Rangpur limes is that they’re not really limes at all. They’re a hybrid of mandarins and lemons that look like clementines: smallish, bright orange, with a smooth, thin peel that comes off easily to reveal segments that readily pull apart. The resemblance stops, however, when you pop a piece […]
Continue Reading →
Admit it: for years, you’ve had a jar of capers sitting in the door of your fridge, forgotten amongst the mustards and jams. They’re packed in cheap vinegar and that’s pretty much all they taste like. It’s no wonder you never used them except for that one recipe you now forget. Why bother? I used […]
Continue Reading →
Pop Quiz: what’s Kentucky’s biggest foreign export? Horses? Bourbon? Coal? Nope. It’s barrels. Specifically, used bourbon barrels. Most are shipped to Scotland where distillers use them to age scotch. Fifteen years ago, there weren’t too many other people interested in buying the used barrels. But since then they’ve come into vogue. Suddenly it seems like […]
Continue Reading →
In the last two decades, piquillo peppers have taken the culinary world by storm. From nowhere they became the darling ingredient of chefs across the world, including Michelin-starred gastronomic titans Alain Ducasse and Ferran Adria. What’s different about piquillos from nearly every other vegetable making it big time (I’m talking to you, kale) is that […]
Continue Reading →
Right now, somewhere in northern Florida, I bet there are a bunch of trucks filled with bees headed to the Apalachicola river. In the next couple of weeks ogeechee tupelo trees will erupt in blossom along those river banks. It’s not a showy blossom, like the cherry trees that will soon bloom here in Michigan. […]
Continue Reading →
In Spain, drinking chocolate is as common as drinking coffee. Just like we have coffeeshops, Spain has chocolaterías serving drinking chocolate and churros to dunk in it. Some of them are open 24 hours a day, just in case of 4 AM chocolate emergencies. When you find good Spanish drinking chocolate it’s a far cry […]
Continue Reading →
Imagine if your job was to taste cheese. Sounds pretty great, right? But what if, instead of snacking on lots of different kinds of cheeses with maybe some wine, you tasted only one kind of cheese. Dozens of samples from identical wheels, one after the other, all day long. The wheels were all made with […]
Continue Reading →
This Sunday, March 15, Zingerman’s Delicatessen celebrates its 33rd birthday. When Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw started talking thirty-some years ago about opening a deli, they were clear on what eating a sandwich in their shop would be like. They wanted to serve sandwiches so stacked and packed that you’d have to use both hands […]
Continue Reading →