Amazingly good anchovy sauce from Italy’s Amalfi Coast

If you, like me, have a high affection for anchovies, this special sauce from a tiny village on the Amalfi Coast could take your affection for these fine little fish to new heights!

About an hour south of Naples, Cetara is known in the food world for having some of the best seafood in Italy. Old-school anchovies are one of its specialties. Fresh little fish are cleaned as soon as they’re off the boats (which are out fishing only a single night at a time), filleted by hand, and then layered with coarse sea salt into barrels. When the barrel is full, the top is replaced, and rocks are set on it to add steady, gentle pressure. The curing takes at least until the next season a year later, sometimes longer. As the weights press the slowly curing anchovies, liquid collects in the barrels. (Colare means “to drip” in Italian, hence, “colatura.”) Before the finished anchovies are taken out to sell, the slightly fermented liquid is drained off, aged in wood for a bit longer, and then you and I can buy it.

You could actually call colatura convenience food. With a small bottle of it on your counter, some pasta, and a salad, you can craft an exceptional, really world-class meal in minutes. Our colatura comes from the Delfino family, who began bottling the centuries-old “local secret” in 1950. On this side of the Atlantic that year, the McCarthy hearings were starting in Washington; in Asia, the Korean War was under way. In Cetara, though, things were pretty much as they’ve always been. Fishing every day, good cooking every evening, and church every Sunday. The Delfino family are the same folks who make the inspiring IASA peperoncino that I love so much, the beyond amazing spicy red pepper sauce I wrote up last week on that wonderful IASA Taco at the Roadhouse. We also have another colatura on hand from the small family-owned firm of Rizzoli Emmanuele as well.

Using colatura really couldn’t be simpler. Cook some pasta with less salt than you usually would since the colatura will bring its own salinity to the supper. I like bucatini—Rustichella or Gentile brands. Meanwhile, mix some extra virgin olive oil in a bowl with some colatura (at about a two-to-one ratio). Add chopped fresh parsley, some slivered garlic, and some peperoncino. Add a touch of the pasta cooking water and whisk until it’s smooth. When the pasta is very al dente, take it right out and mix it ASAP with the oil and colatura mixture. It’s very good topped with toasted breadcrumbs.

Alternatively, try brushing the bread of a grilled cheese (fresh mozzarella is marvelous) with colatura while it’s still hot, right after it comes out of the pan. Toss cubes of olive oil-fried Paesano or Rustic Italian bread with colatura and black pepper to make the best Caesar salad croutons you’ll come across. Rolando Beramendi, my friend, food guru, author of Autentico, and all-around really good guy, has a wonderful recipe in his book for a thick, hearty farro soup that gets finished with a drizzle of colatura. Colatura is also excellent drizzled over fish, sautéed or roasted vegetables, or mashed potatoes.

Anchovy elixirs

Send Colatura to your cousin in California

How a lost pup united a community of givers at Zingerman’s SafeHouse fundraiser

When we lose a loved one, we grieve not only the loss of their presence but a loss of meaning and identity. We may wonder who we are without them. What matters most might not be as clear as it was before. As we search for answers, we can lean on the communities we belong to and find new ways to make meaning — and even joy — within them.

Jelly Bean Jump Up, Zingerman’s annual charity fundraiser, grew out of this quest. In addition to honoring the beloved canine companion of Zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig, this event supports Ann Arbor’s SafeHouse Center, which protects and empowers survivors of sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. The 10th rendition of the campaign, which raised more than $21,000, included a March 25 dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse, donation drives, sales of pet-themed calendars and corgi cookies, and more.

Dinner attendees enjoyed a family-style meal designed by renowned chef and award-winning cookbook author Molly Stevens and cooked by Roadhouse chef Bob Bennett. Many took part in a silent auction featuring donated goodies such as a CSA share from Tantré Farm, line-caught fish from Shoreline Wild Salmon, and a pizza kit from Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Meats. Everyone celebrated the power of friendship and community by breaking bread – or biscuits, in this case – with new acquaintances.

Breaking bread, building community

Ari introduced Jelly Bean Jump Up by reminiscing about the event’s namesake, a sweet and curious corgi who was a minor celebrity on Ann Arbor’s Clark Road. That’s where she and Ari would often go for a jog, passing SafeHouse on their route. Over the years, the perspicacious pup earned nicknames such as Jelly Bean the Jogger Dog and Zinger-man’s Best Friend. Ari organized the first Jelly Bean Jump Up in 2016, a few months after she passed away.

Ari also highlighted his friendship with Molly, which began at an American Cheese Society in the late 1980s. Over the years, she has appeared at five Roadhouse dinners and Camp Bacon, a bacon-themed festival with special classes, speakers, meals, and more.

“Molly is a great cook and a great cookbook writer, which are different things. But I don’t think of her for her cookbooks, like a lot of people do. I think of her as my friend,” Ari said.

Molly’s cookbooks include All About Braising, All About Roasting, and All About Dinner. She also hosts the Everything Cookbooks podcast with Andrea Nguyen, Kate Leahy, and Kristin Donnelly. 

The menu Molly devised reflected several special moments from her life as a chef. For instance, a vegetable course dubbed a “mess of bitter greens” was a nod to Zingerman’s other co-founder, Paul Saginaw, who she cooked with during a trip to Greece.

“I would relive that trip if I could, especially the experience of cooking with other people. I find the idea of this dish so comforting,” Molly said.

The menu also featured several dishes that incorporated cultured butter from one of the event’s sponsors, Vermont Creamery. These included butter-poached shrimp with tomatoes and garlic, butter pecan gelato topped with brown butter hazelnut shortbread, and a warm dip made with artisanal olive oil, garlic, and Fishwife anchovies. The centerpiece of the meal was braciole, a pasture-raised flank steak stuffed with SarVecchio parmesan, Newsom’s country ham, pinenuts, and raisins, all of which were braised in a savory tomato sauce.

During the meal, Molly shared some of her family’s Thanksgiving traditions and quirks with her tablemates, who shared details about their own holiday meals in return. Micki Maynard, a food writer at the table, said she was excited to see Molly Stevens’ name attached to this year’s Jelly Bean Jump Up.

“I’m a huge fan of Molly Stevens. I have come to her special dinners in the past, and Molly was super helpful to me when I was writing Satisfaction Guaranteed, my book about Zingerman’s,” Micki explained, adding that the dinner’s menu was “delicious from top to bottom.”

Micki also noted the positive energy the event’s crowd brought to the Roadhouse. 

“It’s a treat to see everybody come here because they’re so fired up for SafeHouse and so generous. There are such interesting people to talk to, and there’s a real feeling of community,” she said.

Showing up for vulnerable neighbors

Christine Watson, SafeHouse’s executive director, gave a short speech during the dinner. In addition to acknowledging the generosity of Zingerman’s and several community partners — Plum Market, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Dollar Bill Printing, Old National Bank, and Probility Physical Therapy — she thanked the audience for showing up for abuse survivors.

“You remind me we have a community around us who genuinely care. SafeHouse exists because of people like you,” she said. “There need to be places for survivors of abuse and assault to tell their stories, because we don’t always get to hear them. You help make that happen.”

In the United States, families and communities lose more than 1,300 of these survivors to violence each year. Pets also get caught in the cycle of abuse. Sometimes people stay in dangerous living situations because they can’t find shelter for an animal companion. In addition to increasing survivors’ access to counseling, legal advocacy, and temporary shelter, Jelly Bean Jump Up has helped SafeHouse expand its capacity to house pets fleeing violence.

Jelly Bean Jump Up reflects the hard work of Melaina Bukowski, Zingerman’s community giving coordinator. She’s proud that this event has benefited SafeHouse for a decade, becoming one of the center’s main sources of financial support.

“Our pets give us a sense of security and safety, and SafeHouse serves this need to feel safe in such a deep and fundamental way,” she said. “It’s such a crucial space within our community, and the people there do lifesaving work advocating for so many people.”

This relationship with SafeHouse inspired Melaina to create Nonprofit Spotlight, a blog that introduces readers to charitable organizations the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses supports. So far, more than 50 groups have been highlighted.

Jelly Bean Jump Up continues to be one of Melaina’s favorite events because it shows how pain can spark generosity and transform lives.

“It’s a remarkable thing to take the grief of loss and turn it into a big, loving act to take care of other people,” she says. “I’m always honored to be a part of it.”

A spicy and simply delicious way to start your day

After eating one of these the other morning, I was reminded that, to my biased palate, this Texas breakfast taco at the Roadhouse is one of the tastiest foods you’ll find in the ZCoB! I could happily eat a couple a day!

It’s one of a trio of different Texas breakfast tacos on the Roadhouse menu right now during the week. A warm flour tortilla, filled with freshly scrambled eggs, dressed up with some freshly grated Monterey Jack cheese and a bit of that zesty IASA Peperoncino from Italy.

What makes it so good? Like so many things we make here, each of the ingredients is lovely on its own, and then they all come together in a singular, super tasty way. The Monterey Jack might be one of the more underappreciated of the exceptional ingredients we work with. We’ve been buying it from Vella Cheese in Sonoma—just a couple miles from Sam Keen’s house for over 30 years. While probably thousands of dairies make Monterey Jack, to my knowledge, only TWO make it using old-school artisan methods. The cost, of course, is far higher, but the result is radically more flavorful. The Roadhouse probably pays 20 times more to get the Vella Cheese than it would to get some standard commercial offering, but man, is it good. At every level, our determination and dedication to this special cheese, I believe, is one of the many ways we turn our food philosophy into real-life values.

From the time we started buying the cheese in the late ’80s until he passed away a bit over a decade ago, Vella Cheese, for me, was almost synonymous with the man who ran it. Ignazio (Ig) Vella was an amazing supplier with whom we shared so many guiding principles. Now that I think about it, in Sam Keen’s context, Ig was very much an insightful if informal philosopher of what we could call “the world of curd.”

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, journalist Valerie J. Nelson described Ig as:

The elder statesman of artisanal cheeses … He was a gruff straight shooter, and the salvo was his way of warning that success required a willingness to toil for uncertain financial gain. Once that caveat was spelled out, Vella invariably became an unselfish teacher and tireless advocate for small-scale producers of cheese, according to those in the industry.

I would agree. To me, he was also a friend and mentor. Ig passed away in the spring of 2011 at the age of 82. In reflecting on his life and work, I find a kind of spiritual calling—a reminder that dedication, integrity, and craftsmanship matter. A reminder that when we do our work well—honoring our values and staying true to the hard-working, down-to-earth, community-conscious commitment to quality that Ig embodied—special things are very likely to emerge. In that sense, each of these tacos is more than just food—it’s a testament to the values that Ig Vella lived by his whole life.

The IASA Peperoncino is what really takes this taco to a special place. It comes from Italy, where Ig’s father, Tom Vella, was born. IASA is an outstanding “spread” of spicy red peppers in olive oil. At our house, we buy quart jars and use it nearly every day! At the Roadhouse, it’s already appeared on a number of specials. It’s also on the menu as an optional condiment and as a part of the Bakehouse artisan bread appetizer. The eggs, the creaminess of the cheese, and the umami-spice of the IASA all come together on the taco to make for what I think is a wonderful way to start your day.

If you like a bit of spice, you’ll love it. Swing by the Roadhouse during the week for breakfast, order a cup of that really good Roadhouse Joe coffee, and get your day off to a solidly delicious start!

Really good chocolate made from raw cacao in the world’s happiest place

One place that we don’t—yet—take you on a Zingerman’s Food Tour is Finland. I forecast that down the road, there may well be one. About a year ago, BBC Radio reported that “for seven consecutive years, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world, followed closely by its Nordic neighbours Denmark and Iceland.”

While we’re thinking about making our way to Helsinki to try out the terrific local food scene, here’s an easy opportunity to try a really tasty artisan offering. Made in the city of Sisu (the almost mystical Finnish term that is something akin to “inner strength”), Goodio is a craft bean-to-bar chocolate with a really good brand name. Goodio was founded a decade ago by designer Jukka Peltola, who also developed games at Rovio, the company responsible for Angry Birds. After a creative career in technology and entertainment, Peltola came to food through a personal journey for better health. He started by thoughtfully challenging himself to answer the question: “What if there was a food brand you could trust?” Goodio was his answer.

The chocolate line was designed around the principles of sustainability, well-being, and supply chain transparency, with the idea of incorporating Nordic-inspired ingredients and flavors into artisan chocolate bars. All the bars are made with organic raw cacao, which means they’re especially high in antioxidants. They sweeten the bars with raw coconut sugar, which also gives a subtle difference in the flavor profile from the majority of chocolates made with cane sugar.

The Dark Chocolate 71% is my top pick. It’s made with hard-to-find Nacional heirloom cacao from Peru. Highly prized for many years, the already rare Nacional beans suffered tremendously in a blight back in 1916. They were thought to have essentially disappeared until some trees were found growing wild in the jungle. From that small source, the bean has been brought back. It has a creamy, non-astringent flavor.

We also have a Finnish Wild Blueberry Chocolate—in a great way, the blueberries are present in the flavor, but chocolate remains what you taste first. We also have their lovely, lighter caramelized Finnish Rosemary Chocolate, very creamy Coconut Milk Chocolate, and Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt. All are vegan, gluten-free, and very good. Each, in its own Finnish way, is wonderful! Eat some and see if, indeed, a small bit of happiness doesn’t follow.

Available at the Candy Store, inside Zingerman’s Coffee Company, on Plaza Drive!

Deliciously beautiful bread made with freshly milled grain

One of the great things about artisan food is that every day, or every batch, is just a little bit different. And while the Country Multigrain Bread (formerly known as Country Miche) is always really good, every once in a while all of the many elements involved conspire in the best possible way to yield an exceptional loaf. For that to happen, the weather, the grain, and the culinary spirits over on the Southside come together to create a loaf that is over the top, amazingly good!

I had one of those especially excellent breads last Friday evening. It was from the bigger, 4-pound loaf, which comes as a round miche (French for “loaf”)—which, to my taste, offers an even deeper, more complex flavor and moister interior crumb than the smaller size. It had a beautiful super dark crust like I like—the darker crusts have far, far more flavor thanks to the caramelization of the natural sugars in the grain, aka “the Maillard Effect.” The crust, the crumb, and the salt level were so terrific that they made me want to write about it here and remind everyone just how darned delicious this bread is.

The Country Multigrain Bread might be a near-perfect manifestation of French food writer Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat’s statement in History of Food: “… really good bread makes you feel happy just to smell it, look at it, bite, chew and swallow it.” It is one of the breads that debuted after we began the wonderful work of milling our own grain at the Bakehouse in 2018. It’s a blend of four grains: Regionally grown and stone-milled organic hard red spring wheat, organic rye and organic spelt from Janie’s Mill, and organic buckwheat from Natural Way Mills. While the first one is slightly sifted (i.e., high-extraction flour), the other three are whole-grain flours, all capturing the true essence of the grains they come from. Like I said above, the quartet comes together to make for a compelling set of flavors.

The Bakehouse’s Country Multigrain Bread is so exceptionally marvelous it would be wholly at home in a top-notch French country bakery circa 1880. Beautiful chestnut-colored crumb with big holes (which artisan bakers are always working to make happen) with lovely flecks of bran. The aroma is lively, slightly sour, substantial but not strong, and comforting. The bread’s flavor is big, almost meaty, very wheaty, complex, and fascinatingly full. I love it simply as is, toasted with great olive oil. Perfect for sandwiches. It’s terrific with the Creamery’s Cream Cheese, olive oil, and our 5-Star Black Pepper blend. Being naturally leavened (with nearly 20 hours of rise time), the Country Multigrain stays marvelously moist for days. You can buy the 4-pound loaf as a quarter, half, or whole, or choose the smaller 1.5-pound batard. All of which also makes the Country Multigrain Bread perfect for Mail Order shipping or for taking to cottages or on cross-country drives.

If you’re feeling stressed these days, good bread could be a big help. As the great Spanish scribe Cervantes once said, “All sorrows are less with bread.”

Marvelous multigrain