Handmade Tunisian Harissa combined with handcrafted Creamery Cream Cheese

Fifteen years or so ago, we did a T-shirt at the Roadhouse to promote our then-new Pimento Cheese. In a bit of one-line visioning, we wrote “Pimento Cheese Capital of the Midwest.” (The T-shirt is a Zingerman’s classic and one of my favorites, and as of last month, you can buy one!) At the time, we were just getting going with Pimento Cheese and hardly anyone in Ann Arbor even knew what it was. Today it’s one of our top-selling items at the Roadhouse and Deli. Mail Order ships it regularly, and the Creamery wholesales it to retailers and restaurants all over the country.

Given that there are many thousands of pimento cheese recipes in the U.S., I started to think about other cultures that have created similar spreads that combine cheese and chiles. They don’t call them “pimento cheese,” but they could. Our long-standing love for Liptauer at the Creamery, I realized, was actually an affinity for what we could well be calling “Hungarian Pimento Cheese.” What follows is a “recipe” for a pimento cheese we aren’t yet selling, but I’m pretty sure we probably ought to be. In the meantime, you can make it at home in a matter of minutes, as I did the other day. It’s incredibly easy to make something so delicious that you might well find yourself, as I have, making it over and over again.

The “Tunisian Pimento Cheese” calls for two world-class ingredients, products that are so special that the choice of brand to be used will, to be clear, make a BIG difference. Each is exceptional. First up is the handmade Cream Cheese from Zingerman’s Creamery. Using milk from the herd of the good folks at Calder Dairy in Carleton, it’s made simply with rennet (to separate solid curd from liquid whey), a bit of added cream, and sea salt. I had some again the other day for the first time in a few months and was reminded anew just how amazingly excellent it is. Creamy, full-flavored, mouth-filling, and a really fine long finish.

The other ingredient is the traditional Harissa from the Mahjoub family in Tunisia. It’s a family recipe that goes back for generations. Majid Mahjoub shares, “From a very young age, my parents taught me that this recipe comes from very far away. We, the children, learned a lot, but I believe that our parents learned even more, from theirs.” Other than the spices, all of the ingredients in the harissa are grown, organically and sustainably, on the Mahjoub family farm. Three different peppers, all carefully hand seeded and sun-dried; tomatoes handled similarly (the sun-drying makes a big difference); extra virgin olive oil (the one Tammie and I cook with daily at home); with a small bit of garlic, coriander, caraway seed, and some sea salt.

If there is one star of this savory confection, it would probably be the Baklouti pepper. While all chile peppers arrived in Africa only after Columbus’ first encounter with the Americas, over the last few hundred years the Baklouti has become as integral to Tunisian cooking as the Piquillo to the Spanish Basque Country or Paprika to Hungary. It’s named for the town of Bekalta, on the country’s east coast, which, since it’s a port city could well be the place the pepper first made its presence known on Tunisian shores. Large red tapering pods, hot but not mind-blowingly so, and appropriately very flavorful.

The creamy mildness of the cream cheese is an ideal foil for the spicy complexity of the harissa. Making the spread is about as simple as it gets. I like a ratio of about two parts cream cheese to one part harissa, but you can vary that up or down depending on how intense and how spicy you like your food. Thin with a small bit of extra virgin olive oil. Garnish if you like with some chopped fresh herbs—dill, mint, basil … any or all would be good. Eat and enjoy!

Because both of these products—the Creamery’s Cream Cheese and the Mahjoub’s Harissa—are made very much as they would have been a hundred years ago, what you and I will taste when we try this is much the same as we would have experienced back in 1896 when the Mahjoub family first started to sell the public what they had long been making and eating at home. It’s great as is on crackers. Beautiful on a baked potato. Lovely stuffed under the skin of roasted chicken. Super tasty on a sandwich and it makes a great grilled cheese. You can even use it to toss with pasta. This “Tunisian Pimento Cheese” is spicy, creamy, and, like the original Pimento Cheese, pretty much darned good on everything! It’s also, I’ll warn you, addictive!

You can find the Cream Cheese at the Creamery, Bakeshop, Deli, and Roadhouse, as well as on Zingermans.com. The Moulins Mahjoub Harissa is both at the Deli and online for shipping as well.

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Great tastes made with two ingredients in under two minutes

If you’re having folks over to watch football or celebrate the New Year, are making something for someone special, or just want to treat yourself to some great flavors, here are five appetizers you can put together in minutes and eat with your fingers:

Anchovies and potato chips—an awesome bar snack that shows up around the Mediterranean. Made with those amazing Zingerman’s Tellicherry Black Pepper Potato Chips and some of the outstanding anchovies from the Ortiz family in the Basque country. If you like anchovies like I do, you’ll be very happy to have these. Lay an anchovy (at room temperature) on a chip, eat, and enjoy!

Rancho Meladuco dates with ’Nduja—the spicy spreadable Calabrian-style sausage made for us in Chicago by Tony Fiasche and friends at Tempesta with pork from heritage hogs and Calabrian chiles. Pit the date, spread on a bit of ‘Nduja. The spicy richness of the pork is a beautiful foil to the rich sweetness of the dates. The dates from Rancho Meladuco in California are beyond world-class. If you’re not eating meat, skip the ‘Nduja and use the Georgia Grinders Almond Butter!

Bakehouse bruschetta—It’s a simple formula: Good bread + good olive oil = one world-class treat! Buy Bakehouse bread of your choice; cut into thick slices. Toast until golden brown. Pour on a bunch of really good oil. The Paesano and the Marqués de Valdueza oil from western Spain would be wonderful, but really so would any of the Bakehouse breads and amazing oils at the Deli.

Creamery Cream Cheese with the spread of your choice—The handmade Cream Cheese is so good! All you have to do is top it with whatever is to your taste. If you like spicy, the Mahjoub family’s beyond-belief-good traditional harissa would be great. We have our long-time ZCoBber Tara Stowe’s new handmade Blueberry Chutney on the shelves at the Cream Top Shop which would be marvelous. The American Spoon Pepper Jelly is lovely this way!

Olive oil and honey—Put some great honey in the center of a plate. I think this works best with a thick, creamy one—that newly arrived, excellent orange blossom honey from the folks at Miele Thun would be marvelous. Then pour some good olive oil around it. I guess the third “ingredient” is warm bread, preferably to my taste, the Paesano. Scoop up honey and oil on the bread—a sweet and savory to start your year!

Send some snacks to someone special

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A wealth of wonderful creamy cheese to enrich your table

I’ve been eating and loving the ricotta from the Callahan family’s Bellwether Farms for probably fifteen years now. For most of that time, I could only get it when I was out in the Bay Area. Happily, a few years ago we started to have access to it at the Cream Top Shop. Now, we’re barely ever without it at our house.

Although I’d read about ricotta many times, I really understood it for the first time thirty years ago last month. Here’s what I wrote a few years later:

I can almost tell you to the day when it was that I had this ricotta revelation. It was the first week of November 1992, right before Bill Clinton defeated George Bush I for president. I was down in Rome to visit the people who make our Pecorino Romano. As we toured the Pecorino production, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a couple of workers stirring a large, steel, steam-shrouded kettle off to one side of the room. A few minutes later they start to slowly scoop out small mounds of soft white cheese from the kettles. These in turn are set softly into a series of small baskets—some white plastic, some natural wicker—sitting alongside each vat.

“What are they doing over there?” I asked my host, not wanting to seem as if I hadn’t been listening to his presentation. “Oh that? That’s ricotta,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Of course. That’s ricotta. I’d read about it two thousand times but seeing it in person it finally started to hit home what ricotta was really all about.

Longtime specialty food guru Darrell Corti from Sacramento told me years ago that “eating great fresh ricotta is like eating clouds.” Light, fluffy, creamy, and delicious, I often just eat a bit of the Bellwether ricotta by the spoonful. Terrific on toasted Bakehouse bread of any sort—and I love ricotta on rye. Or just eaten for breakfast, a small bit at a time with olive oil and/or honey and fresh fruit. It’s also great both on pasta, and in pasta (super great for stuffing ravioli or tortellini). Topped with a bit of honey (the Deli has some amazing ones—we have an incredible new orange blossom honey from the folks at Miele Thun) it’s a fabulous dessert! Michael Zyw, the artist-farmer who makes the equally delicious Poggio Lamentano olive oil from western Tuscany, told me that his father, the Polish-Jewish-British-Italian artist Alexander Zyw, used to mix ricotta with finely ground espresso (before it’s brewed, to be clear) and honey and eat it for dessert. Delicious!

It’s no accident that the Bellwether ricotta is so special. Everything about it is done with care and a huge commitment to quality. Liam Callahan says:

When ricotta is made in the traditional way it is one of the most delicious dairy products you could have. We buy all of the milk from our neighbor just down the road from us. They milk all Jerseys and feed mostly grass/silage grown on the farm. This ricotta gets its flavor and necessary acidity from being cultured rather than adding acid (vinegar, citric acid, etc.) I think this lets us have the best texture and by far the most flavor of any ricotta out there. Ricotta is a deceptively simple cheese. Each time I see the expression on a person’s face the first time they try it I am reminded how fortunate I am to be able to do what I do.

How to Enjoy Ricotta

The next time you’re entertaining, consider taking their suggestion to simply turn a basket of the Bellwether ricotta over onto a decorative platter, take off the plastic basket in which it’s packed, and then surround it with olives, roasted peppers, cured ham or salami, some toasted Bakehouse bread (True North would be terrific). I’d drizzle the ricotta with a great olive oil and a bunch of really great cracked black pepper. Or, sprinkle on a handful of the Marash red pepper from Turkey and pour over a good bit of that outstanding olive oil from the Moulins de Mahjoub and a wreath of fresh basil leaves. Or if you prefer sweet to savory, use some American Spoon Early Glow Strawberry preserves instead of the red pepper.

While you’re at the Cream Top shop scoring some ricotta, consider handmade Cream Cheese for your bagels at breakfast. We also have gelato for dessert (my top pick is the Sicilian pistachio), really cool custom-made Gelato Cakes, a range of other artisan cheeses, wine, beer, and a wealth of other good things to eat!

Right this way for ricotta!

P.S. The Bellwether Jersey Yogurt at the Cream Top Shop is equally amazing!

P.P.S. Check out this post about Blu, the amazing dog Tammie rescued earlier this year, that she just happened to post this week!  As you’ll see, he is gently and happily eating Bellwether Ricotta off her finger!

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Local canines and cats star on this annual calendar!

This week marks the start of the 8th annual Jelly Bean Jump Up, our yearly fundraiser for SafeHouse Center. The bulk of the event will actually take place in the winter—February and a couple really cool events in March—but we’re getting things moving now by putting out the Jelly Bean Jump Up Calendars for 2023. They feature a whole host of dogs and cats from around ZCoB, including four from our house (Pepper is the cover boy; Blu, Eva, and Chance Edward Chance are inside) as well other wonderful pets from around the ‘CoB, like Stacy Walsh’s super cute little pup Mocha in December and Melaina Bukowski’s Frankie in October.

The earliest paper calendars date back to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Three years before American independence, publisher Robert Aitkin invented what’s said to be the first commercially available planner. Paper calendars became popular during the Industrial Revolution, after the end of the American Civil War. In ancient times, calendars had mostly been painted on walls, carved into stones, etc.; the early paper offerings were really only for those with enough money to afford them. Industrial scale printing on paper—both calendars, and their personal corollary, “the planner”—was a way to democratize what had previously been pretty much an upper-class resource.

The Jump Up started in the winter of 2016, after the death of my much-loved Corgi, Jelly Bean, the previous spring. If you’ve lost a beloved companion (person or pet), you will likely have some sense of what I was going through. She and I had been together for a remarkable 17 years. (If you want to see the obituary I wrote for her, drop me an email.) Although grief can feel overwhelming, there are ways to slowly, gently, shift it—painfully, at times—into something constructive.

I wanted to take the pain and put it into a positive program that would benefit the greater good. Marsha Ricevuto, who knew Jelly Bean well and cared for her so many times when I went out of town over the years, suggested the idea of a “Jump Up.” Nine months later it happened. Tammie and I wanted to do it for SafeHouse, in part because we live nearby and all the staff would see Jelly Bean and me jogging every day, but more importantly, because providing a safe space for the victims of domestic abuse as SafeHouse does is so important. And now the Jelly Bean Jump Up is an annual tradition to help support those whose lives and safety are under threat in our community.

Looking ahead, this year’s Jump Up will wrap up on March 14—the day before our 41st anniversary— when we will do a special dinner at the Roadhouse, featuring Marie Rose and the wild Alaska salmon from Shoreline that I wrote up last week. Marie, who found her vocation in fishing, is also a big supporter of this cause:

Just as we aim to be mindful of how we harvest and handle wild salmon in Alaska, we also strive to foster partnerships that help to support the safety and well being of the communities in which we operate. Organizations like the SafeHouse Center that provide resources for survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner domestic violence are essential for fostering a healthy community. We are grateful to work alongside Zingerman’s to help fundraise for this important cause.

You can find the calendars at the Coffee Company, Deli, Bakehouse, and Roadhouse. If you’d like to have some shipped, send an email to Melaina who coordinates all our community giving and she’ll get you set up. In fact, right when they came back from the printer, Jenny Santi at the Deli said:

A guest from New York called the Deli about Jelly Bean Jump Up calendars. We didn’t have them yet, so I’ve been emailing with him and finally was able to sell him one and get his mail address so we could put it in the mail for him. He thanked me and said the calendar was a gift for his daughter, who is “obsessed with this calendar and its cause!”

The calendars sell for $20. If you want to give more, that’s great. If you can’t afford the $20, we’ll figure out a way to make it work together. ALL the proceeds go to SafeHouse. Every dollar makes a difference!

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The classic way for Dutch kids to start their day

Although it’s not a combination that has historically been given much thought on this side of the Atlantic, the practice of eating bread and chocolate in tandem has long been hugely popular in Europe. The Pain au Chocolat I wrote about last week is one of the most famous French versions. Alternatively, many French folks will put a chunk of good chocolate into a piece of freshly baked baguette and eat it as is. The Chocolate Sourdough bread at the Bakehouse is one of our American adaptations, and the Roadhouse’s new pancakes made with freshly-milled spelt and laced with French Broad chocolate chips are another awesome addition.

If you go to the Netherlands, the combo is altogether different. There you’ll see slices of buttered white bread that have been covered liberally with chocolate sprinkles. You read that right—chocolate sprinkles are the star of the morning meal. While we think of sprinkles here as something kids like to see on cupcakes, in the Netherlands, sprinkles are serious business. The formal “invention” of sprinkles in this way came in 1919. How did sprinkles show up on the Dutch culinary scene? One version (as Ted Ownby of the University of Mississippi told me 20 years ago, “All origin stories are disputed”) is that they were invented in Amsterdam by a candymaker named B.E. Dieperink. Dieperink, it seems, was inspired by bad weather. One day when it was hailing outside, he came up with the creative idea to make a confection that resembled the pellets that were falling from the stormy Dutch sky. The original version was crispy, anise-flavored sprinkles. Dieperink named them Hagelslag, meaning “hailstorm” in Dutch.

The chocolate sprinkles seem to have followed about 15 years later. They quickly became a huge commercial and culinary success.​ Since the middle of the 20th century, Dutch kids have delighted in eating slices of generously buttered bread, covered completely with chocolate sprinkles, for breakfast. Sprinkles in the Netherlands are serious business—they take up the same sort of significant aisle space in Dutch supermarkets as tuna, anchovies, and sardines do in Spain. To illustrate the seriousness with which they’re taken, many families with kids will pack a box of them for travel abroad, in much the same way some children bring stuffed animals. For folks who grew up with them, the Hagelslag offer a sense of continuity and calm comfort.

Unlike the kid-style sprinkles they sell here in supermarkets, the Dutch ones actually have flavor and are made from good chocolate. The Dark Chocolate are my preference. I have happily eaten them out of hand, as well as made myself a slice of buttered bread and Hagelslag to have as a snack. We also stock the Milk Chocolate version for those who are so inclined. Assembly couldn’t be easier. Stop by the Candy Store to buy a box (or two). Pick up a loaf of Bakehouse White bread (which is far more flavorful than standard supermarket white breads). When you get home, cut a thick slice. Spread on a fair bit of room-temperature butter. Cover generously with the sprinkles! Smile. Eat. Enjoy!

Go for the Dark Chocolate

And maybe the Milk Chocolate, too

P.S. You won’t see chocolate sprinkles on the Zingerman’s Mail Order site, but we’d be super happy to send some of the Hagelslag your way. Email us at [email protected] soon!

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Great Zingerman’s gift for a T-shirt lover you love!

Given that he was born and raised in Japan and I grew up in the American Midwest, author Haruki Murakami and I seem to have a surprising number of things in common. As I wrote about last summer, we each run every day, write a lot, and got our career starts in food service. We both, I’ve learned from reading, also have prodigious piles of books and music. The thing I didn’t know until Tammie told me last year is that he and I both have a LOT of T-shirts. Murakami, much to my happy surprise, even did a book about his—Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love. He writes that:

T-shirts are one of those objects that just naturally pile up. They’re cheap, so whenever an interesting one catches my eye, I invariably buy it—plus people give me various novelty T-shirts from around the world. Which is how, before I even realized it, the number of T-shirts in my life has skyrocketed, to the point where there is no room in my drawers for them anymore. 

It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud when I read it. Maybe you can relate. If you, like me and Haruki Murakami, have a hard time turning down a great T-shirt that you know you don’t exactly need but really like—or if you know someone like me or Murakami who has a hard time resisting a good T-shirt—we now have a great way for you to have at it.

This new option came online thanks to the creative thinking of the folks at Underground Printing here in Ann Arbor. Rishi Narayan, the co-founder, has been a big Zingerman’s fan for years and we’re very appreciative of Rishi’s work as well. As you’ll see in this piece, we have a great many shared values. I smile too when I think about Underground Printing because they originally opened up at 1114 S. University in Ann Arbor, the same building in which, back in 191l two young anarchists, Abraham Seltzer and Eugene Chatterton, ran a restaurant for a year called “Seltzer and Chatterton.” Underground moved across the street a few years ago when the building was going to be replaced by a high rise, but the positive anarchist spirit still resides in their organizational culture.

Last year Rishi and crew came up with this creative new program: We put the T-shirts on these sites. You order. They print what you want and ship it straight to you!

There are two Zingerman’s T-shirt stores up right now, and maybe more on the way. On the Deli site, there’s the long-popular Zingerman’s Deli Rainbow Unicorn shirt, illustrated by Ian Nagy. And I’ve always loved the one from Next Door with a lovely visual listing of coffee drinks across the front, illustrated by a former Deli staffer named Kayo. Just this week, we added a special new hoodie, also beautifully done by Ian, that’s dedicated to my late, deeply appreciated, and much-missed friend Daphne Zepos. You can read about Daphne’s far too early passing in the Epilogue of Part 3. Part of her legacy is the Daphne Zepos Teaching Endowment—it was created out of a vision she dictated when she was in her final days. $10 from each shirt goes to the fund.

The Roadhouse T-Shirt shop has the new and beautiful “Blacks in Culinary” T-shirt that I and others have been wearing of late. It’s taken from a section of Patrick-Earl Barnes’ amazing art piece of the same name that’s hanging on the north wall of the Roadhouse’s “Fireplace Room.” We donate $10 from the sale of each shirt to the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County! You’ll also see the great Roadhouse “cartoon” shirts—the Biscuits, the Nashville Hot Chicken, and the New Mexico Green Chiles. Additionally, you’ll find, for the first time, a new, black and blue version of the Belief Cycle T-shirt some of you have seen me wearing. The original was created by Underground as an appreciation for me after I spoke to their leadership team about beliefs a few years ago! Many folks have asked to buy a shirt with the Belief Cycle, and now you can!

If you’re looking for a different gift, or you just, like me and Haruki Murakami, have a hard time passing up a good T-shirt, check out these two sites and order up soon! Maybe, now that I think about it, I’ll order some to send to Mr. Murakami in appreciation of his wonderful work!

Shop Deli T-shirts

Shop Roadhouse T-shirts

P.S. Here’s a podcast I did with Rishi! For historical context, it was recorded in January 2020, and released two weeks after the start of the pandemic!

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