Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
I first met Mark Essig while I was speaking in Asheville. I’d done some ZingTrain work for our long-time client Laurey Masterton, who sadly passed away a few years ago. We still miss her. Laurey had arranged on that trip for me to do a dinner around the then recently released Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon. As part of the brief, bacon-based talk I did for the dinner guests, I referenced one of my favorite learnings from the research I’d done for the book. I’m fascinated by professions that no longer exist. Ice harvesting is one of them. Another is droving. It’s so obscure you’ve likely never heard of it. But up until the advent of the railroads in the second half of the 19th century, it was the process to get hogs from the small farms where they were raised—usually only a handful per farm—to the city where they could be slaughtered to provide pork to the nation’s growing urban population. Since the pigs weren’t going to make the journey on their own, they needed the porcine equivalent of a chaperone. The men who did that were known as drovers.
In the moment, the point of this story is that wherever I went to present on bacon, I’d tell the story of the drovers. Not surprisingly, barely a soul had ever even heard of them. Not shocking given that they’d been essentially extinct for well over a hundred years. Anyway, when I spoke in Asheville that winter’s evening, a tall guy, to my right, raised his hand and mentioned to me that he was very interested in the drovers! He was doing research and wanted to share information. Excited to find someone else who was interested in obscure history, I invited him to speak at the spring’s Camp Bacon®. It was our second annual gathering, then as now, a fundraiser for the Southern Foodways Alliance and Washtenaw County 4H. Andre Williams came and played his marvelous 1956 hit single, Bacon Fat, that year (look it up online—it’s a great piece of music!). Mark came as well and gave a fantastic talk on the drovers.
Five years or so later, Mark’s research hit the bookshelves. Lesser Beasts; A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig is a fantastic piece work on the history of the pig, from prehistoric times all the way through to the present. It’s well-researched, well-written, and super informative. As you probably know, I’ve been paying close attention to culinary history, and pigs in particular, for over three decades, and I learned a LOT from it. If you like to read, you’re intrigued by pork and love to learn, add it your list ASAP. It’s a great Mother’s or Father’s Day gift for any pork-loving parents in your life. To add a little outside credibility to support my claim, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Lesser Beasts, “Splendid…Essig surveys the 10,000 year partnership of man and pig, a tumultuous affair full of accusation, fire and litigation… A pleasure to read.”
To whet your appetite, check out the excerpt below. It’s a just small piece of the book but it’ll hopefully pique your curiosity. If you’re really intrigued, Mark will be presenting at this year’s main event for the 7th Annual Camp Bacon® on Saturday June 4th. He’ll also be speaking at the Thursday evening Bacon Ball (June 2nd), our annual pork-focused special dinner at the Roadhouse.
Oh yeah, if you want read more about the drovers, you can also grab a copy of the Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon as well. A couple of good books and some good bacon can be a marvelous way to spend a nice spring day!
MARK ESSIG, AUTHOR OF THE AMAZING LESSER BEASTS; A SNOUT-TO-TAIL HISTORY OF THE HUMBLE PIG TO PRESENT AT 7TH ANNUAL PORK FEST
Excerpted from Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig by Mark Essig. Available from Basic Books, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2015.
An enormous pig, belly up, is wheeled into a banquet room in one scene of Federico Fellini’s Satyricon. Trimalchio, the host, accuses the cook of roasting the animal without first gutting it and orders him whipped as punishment. The guests call for mercy, so Trimalchio demands, “Gut it here, now,” where upon the cook swings an enormous sword and slashes the pig’s belly. The guests recoil in horror, but the steaming mass that pours forth is not the pig’s viscera but cooked meat. “Thrushes, fatted hens, bird gizzards!” one character calls out. “Sausage ropes, tender plucked doves, snails, livers, ham, offal!” The dispute with the cook has been all in fun. The guests applaud, then grab hunks of meat and begin to gorge themselves.
Fellini’s film, released in 1969, stays true to its source material, a work by Petronius written not long after the death of Christ. In depicting Roman dining, Petronius satirized but did not exaggerate: there was no need to embellish the extravagant reality. The dish portrayed in the film, a medley of meats hidden within a whole hog, was known as porcus Troianus, or “Trojan pig,” a nod to another great act of concealment. Petronius also describes a whole roast pig served with hunks of meat carved into the shape of piglets and placed along its belly, “as if at suck, to show it was a sow we had before us.” Another feast featured what appeared to be a goose and a variety of fish, all carved from pork. “I declare my cook made it every bit out of a pig,” the host exclaims. “Give the word, he’ll make you a fish of the paunch, a wood-pigeon of the lard, a turtle-dove of the forehand, and a hen of the hind leg!” Why he should do so is left unexplained.
In cuisine, culture, and mythology, Romans delighted in concealment and disguise, metamorphosis and transformation, and in this they could hardly have been more different from the Jews. The Roman Empire formed a vast, cosmopolitan civilization that embraced and absorbed dozens of cultures. Few identities— whether of meats or of people—remained fixed. Trimalchio, in Satyricon, is a former slave who has won his freedom and then attained great wealth. A man calling himself a Roman citizen might have been born in northern Europe, Africa, or Asia Minor. Jews, by contrast, were dedicated to marrying among themselves, defending their small homeland, and preserving their ancient ways.
The differences between Romans and Jews extended to food. One people defined itself by rejecting pork, the other by embracing it. One called the pig abominable, the other miraculous. One saw the pig as a carrier of pollution, the other as a sign of abundance. Between them, Jews and Romans set the terms that would define the pig throughout the history of the West.
Most people in the ancient world ate vegetarian diets heavy on grains and beans. This was the cheapest way to feed large populations. Rome was different. Although meat was expensive, Rome was rich, and a sizable class of people had enough money to eat it regularly.
Romans ate beef, lamb, and goat, but they preferred pork. Hippocrates, the Greek physician, proclaimed pork the best of all meats, and his Roman successors agreed. There were more Latin words for pork than for any other meat, and the trade became highly specialized: there were distinct terms for sellers of live pigs (suarii), fresh pork (porcinarius), dried pork (confectorarius), and ham (pernarius). According to the Edict of Diocletian, issued in 301 A.D., sow’s udder, sow’s womb, and liver of fig-fattened swine commanded the highest prices of any meat, costing twice as much as lamb. Beef sausages sold for just half the price of pork. After the Punic Wars, the percentage of pig bones in Carthage doubled, just as it had in Jerusalem under Roman occupation: Romans kept eating pork even in arid climates such as North Africa and Palestine, where pigs were more difficult to raise.
The richest source on Roman cuisine, a recipe book known as De re coquinaria, or On Cooking, confirms this love of swine. Pork dishes far outnumber those made with other meats. The section called “Quadrupeds” contains four recipes for beef and veal, eleven for lamb, and seventeen for suckling pig. Other sections of the book offer recipes for adult sows and boars and nearly all of their parts, including brain, skin, womb, udder, liver, stomach, kidneys, and lungs. Archeology confirms that Romans carved up pigs more carefully and thoroughly than they did other creatures: pig skulls found in Roman dumps contain far more butchery scars than the skulls of sheep and cows, evidence that butchers excised the tongues, cheeks, and brains of pigs but not those of other beasts.
More than half of the dishes in On Cooking are relatively modest—barley soup with onion and ham bone, for example— and within the means of much of the urban population, but others demanded greater resources. Apicius is credited with inventing the technique of overfeeding a sow with figs in order to enlarge the liver, much as geese were stuffed with grain to create foie gras. In Apicius’s recipe, the fig-fattened pig liver is marinated in liquamen—a fermented fish sauce central to Roman cuisine— wrapped in caul fat, and grilled. The recipe for pig paunch starts with this salutary advice: “Carefully empty out a pig’s stomach.” The cook is then instructed to fill the stomach with a mixture of pork, “three brains that have had their sinews removed,” raw eggs, pine nuts, peppercorns, anise, ginger, rue, and other seasonings. Finally, the stomach is tied at both ends—“leaving a little space so that it does not burst during cooking”—boiled, smoked, boiled some more, and then served.
Some of the more elaborate dishes in On Cooking fall under the heading ofellae, which literally means a morsel of food. In one recipe, a skin-on pork belly is scored on the meat side, marinated for days in a blend of liquamen, pepper, cumin, and other spices, and then roasted. The chunks of meat would then be pulled from the skin, sauced, and served, forming bite-sized pieces that a diner could eat by hand while reclining, the preferred posture for Roman feasts. Another of the luxury dishes involves boiling a ham, removing the skin, scoring the flesh, and coating it with honey, a preparation that would not be out of place at Christmas dinner today.
Romans had a taste for blended milk, blood, and flesh that could make even a Gentile shudder. The Roman poet Martial had this to say about a roasted udder of lactating sow: “You would hardly imagine you were eating cooked sows’ teats, so abundantly do they flow and swell with living milk.” (Elsewhere, after a meal, Martial suffers the glutton’s regret and remarks upon “the unsightly skin of an excavated sow’s udder.”) This preference veered into the bizarrely cruel. Some cooks, Plutarch claimed, stomped and kicked the udders of live pregnant sows and thereby “blended together blood and milk and gore,” which was said to make the dish all the more delicious. The womb of this poor sow was eaten as well, with the dish called vulva eiectitia, or “miscarried womb.”
Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and statesman, decried such dishes as “monstrosities of luxury,” and he was far from the only critic. Roman rulers passed sumptuary laws limiting the amount that could be spent on meals and forbidding the consumption of items including testicles and cheeks. But the wealthy flouted such rules because the social hierarchy couldn’t function without feasts: feasting provided the only way to learn who had grown richer and who had lost money, who was in the emperor’s favor and who had been cast out. To curtail extravagance was to deny the very reason to feast.
…
Rome created the most sophisticated agricultural system the world had ever known. Previously, farming had been a local affair. Even in the great civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, production and consumption occurred within a fairly circumscribed area defined by irrigated river valleys and surrounding rangeland. By contrast, imports from outside the Italian Peninsula constituted three-quarters of Rome’s food supply.
Rome brought all of the Mediterranean world and much of Europe within its orbit, pulling in grain from Egypt, cured meats from Spain, olive oil from Syria, and spices from further east. The wheat that satisfied Caesar’s bread dole was mostly imported from North Africa, where it was collected as tax. Grain sufficient to feed hundreds of thousands of people moved around the region by ship and filled large granaries that provided insurance against famine.
Although Romans imported grain by ship, they raised nearly all of their livestock within Italy. They kept sheep primarily for wool and secondarily for milk and cheese. Goats were rare, though sometimes raised for milk. Cows offered dairy products, and oxen pulled plows in the fields and carts on the road. Meat from these animals was eaten, but it was usually a by-product rather than the principal reason for raising them. Archaeologists tell us that most butchered cattle show stress injuries to their leg bones, meaning that they worked hard before ending up in the pot. Beef and mutton came from older animals—ewes and cows whose udders had dried up, rams and bulls who had become infertile, and oxen that could no longer pull a plow.
Only pigs were raised exclusively for food. They were eaten when young and therefore were far more tender than worn-out oxen. A popular saying held, “Life was given them just like salt, to preserve the flesh”—meaning that pigs had no reason for living other than to feed people. Given how much Romans loved to feast, this was no small consideration. According to Varro, Rome’s most important agricultural writer, “the race of pigs is expressly given by nature to set forth a banquet.”
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
For me, one of the beauties of Ann Arbor is the plethora of powerfully interesting, creative, cool people we have here in town. Many I get to work with, others we buy from, and still others we get to cook for. Fidel Galano is one of the latter. I first met him fifteen years or so ago. We did a day of ZingTrain work, teaching our approach to Servant Leadership at the local EPA office. His official role here in Ann Arbor is as IT Director of the EPA’s National Vehicle & Fuels Emissions Laboratory. We connected during the teaching, and it turned out, he was also a customer. Over the years I’ve happily seen him at the Roadhouse, the Deli, and the Bakehouse, and he’s always told me how great his family’s Cuban cooking is. Fidel grew up in Spanish Harlem. He’s an amazing guy; a highly inspiring success story.
Never one to pass up an opportunity for good learning and good eating, I’ve been suggesting for about a decade now that we bring Fidel in for a special Cuban American dinner at the Roadhouse. Finally, ten years later, it’s happening. In July, the Roadhouse’s annual BBQ dinner will feature Fidel’s family cooking. And, of equal import, it will feature Fidel, the man himself. He’ll share stories of growing up in Spanish Harlem, his mother’s, grandmother’s, and family’s (mostly aunts) recipes, the emotional connection with that cooking in the Cuban & Puerto Rican community, and the significance of pork in his family. I guarantee you will eat well, and leave wishing that you, too, had been born Cuban. The man is about as apasionado (passionate) as anyone I’ve ever met!
Fidel has also offered to speak and serve some amazing Cuban pork at Camp Bacon®. Which means that you have two chances to taste and savor his incredible cooking, and two opportunities to meet the man himself and hear part of his culinary and culturally inspiring story. I have a feeling that Camp Bacon® would be worth coming to just to hear him tell his story, and preach the positive attributes of Cuban pork cooking. Let me just say that of all the great people I’ve interviewed over the last three plus decades, Fidel might just be the most passionate about great pork of all of them! Here’s a little taste of what I’m talking about.
– ARI
Fidel Galano: ANN ARBOR’S KING OF CUBAN PORK
ARI: You grew up in Spanish Harlem?
FIDEL GALANO: My dad was born in Cuba and my Mom in Puerto Rico. I was born and raised in New York City’s Spanish Harlem community. I didn’t learn to speak English ’til I was in 2nd grade, ’til I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, mostly because I did not have to. Everyone in my neighborhood spoke Spanish, including the mailman. I was always trouble, mostly because I was bored—I was unusually smart and articulate for a Spanish kid growing up in the middle of the ghetto. I was smart enough to hang out with the tough kids, and I knew if I could keep ‘em laughing I would be alright. They called me “Fi” (“Fee”). I’m very lucky. I have a great life. I met my wife Nancy when she was 15. Our local priest got my mom to send me to a Catholic retreat when I was 14 or 15. It was a place called Grace House at 108th Street, not too far from home. A real nice brownstone converted into a Catholic monastery and they lock you in for the whole weekend, which seemed like weeks to a teenager. So this priest, Father Bill, he’s responsible for why I got out of the neighborhood. He went all out in trying to keep me from getting in trouble and I have to say he really helped me. Even though he gave up on me for a while and he didn’t believe me when he said I was gonna go back to school. Who would, when you consider I was in and out of school from the second grade on up and I completely dropped out in the 6th grade? Father Bill was blown away by my resilience when, at age 19, I told him I needed to go back to school so I could get my family out of the neighborhood. Years later, after getting a GED and earning a Bachelor’s degree, I invited Father Bill to my business school graduation. Right before taking a group photo at graduation he said, “Fi, you make me believe in God.”
I knew early on that I needed to get out of the neighborhood. A lot of my friends never made it out. I was 19, and Father Bill helped me get my GED. I really couldn’t read, but I took the GED book from his office and I studied and studied and I passed. My friend scored just a few points lower than I did and he didn’t pass. And our lives went in opposite directions. Right after getting a GED I went to college at SUNY Binghamton. I really struggled that first summer as I was taking prep courses. I was failing and thinking about giving up and going back to the City. But then I realized I knew what to do, because I figured college was like working. I’d been working since I was twelve and I knew that work meant get there early, work really hard, don’t watch the clock, and make the boss happy. So going to class and studying was like going to work, and listening to the professor was just like listening to the boss, including making the boss happy. So I applied myself as if I was working a job and I never looked back. In my first semester I got a perfect grade point average. I was featured in a school newsletter and I won an award. I went on to do very well, graduating with honors from SUNY Binghamton’s Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and given an offer to go to graduate school on a fellowship.
ARI: What about the food?
FIDEL: I can’t remember a time in my life that food wasn’t significant for us. Pork always represented prosperity. When there wasn’t food, specifically pork, it was always because things were bad. We had many hard times. Like when my parents got divorced. All I knew when I was a kid was we got eviction notices and I never knew if we were OK. But one thing I knew is that if we had pork, such as Pernil (slow-roasted marinated pork shoulder) or Chuletas (pork chops) with our staple rice and beans, then I knew that, for the moment at least, we were OK.
In our culture my dad didn’t hug you to reassure you or say anything about what was happening financially and my mother wasn’t gonna tell a seven-year-old kid about her stresses. But the indicators were always there, so if we were gonna have pork, life was gonna be ok. To us, pork was an index to prosperity and social enjoyment.
There are many traditional and religious holidays in both the Cuban and Puerto Rican communities where pork is the main dish used to celebrate. All the Saint’s days, Santa Barbara, San Lazaro, and Easter and Christmas. Lent was one of the only times I remember not having pork during a celebration, and that’s because we could not for religious reasons. So instead we have fish fries with the other fillers we normally had with pork, yucca chips, fried plantains and fried bananas (maduros).
When things were good in general, there was this fantastic, amazing piece of meat: pork. It was made in many different ways. From a Lechón (roasted suckling pig), to a Pernil. The idea that we could make a pork shoulder was soothing and comforting, because it meant things were good. When we were kids and we knew there was a pig cooking, we knew that there’d be all these derivative products coming. In addition to the main dish, the Lechón, we knew that Morcilla (blood sausage made with rice, culantro, cilantro, garlic, and chillies), Pasteles (plantain or yucca root patty filled with roasted pork chunks) and Pastelillos (flour-based flavor-infused turnover filled with roasted pork chunks, capers, and any other goodies you wanted to add), would follow. We knew having a pig was prosperous because so many dishes would be made from one, and everyone in the neighborhood was the same way. We had one African-American family and one American Italian family in the neighborhood, and even they wanted Cuban and Puerto Rican pork dishes.
ARI: Is all that carrying on to your kids here in Ann Arbor?
FIDEL: There’s a real nexus to what exists today. My mother, my grandmother, and many of my Aunts were known for their food, considered amazing cooks that were often hired by others. Their love for cooking was part of them (the soul) and so was maintaining their reputations. When we prepared and cooked food, especially for the holidays, it was to show love to your family and friends. That means you go the extra mile, you give it that extra something that only the heart and soul can give. I inherited their passion and abilities for cooking and have carried on with my family here in Ann Arbor, even though we are many miles and many dollars away from what I had growing up. My kids get just as excited as I used to about Cuban and Puerto Rican cooking. Although we are now economically removed from that poverty that I grew up with, my kids have been exposed to many of the cooking traditions and approaches I grew up on. Especially cooking pork and some of the amazing Cuban and Puerto Rican foods I was exposed to as a boy. So if you talk to my three children, who all grew up in Ann Arbor, are doing great with top educations, and pursuing advanced degrees, they will say many of the things I said as a boy when it comes to Cuban and Puerto Rican food. For example, when I say that I’m making a cultural pork dish, like Pernil, they all get really excited because they know what it means. Not only do they know the main dish will be filled with great flavor and accompanied by other cultural foods (Cuban black beans, saffron rice and fried yucca root), they also know the derivative dishes to follow, such as Pasteles or Patelillos. They love our cultural food, and that is what they crave. They never beg me to take them anywhere or anything like that, even though my wife and I have exposed them to some of the best culinary cuisine. They want me to make food at home! Now that I’ve slowed down a little with cooking, my daughter says, “Come on dad, I’ll do all the work! Let’s cook!” It’s wonderful to see how they’ve tied an emotional prosperity to our cultural pork dishes, just like I tied them to financial prosperity as boy growing up in poverty.
ARI: What are some of the dishes?
FIDEL: To me, roasted pork is the key. You acquire the pork, wash it in white vinegar and prepare it as you need to (family traditions and/or religious traditions). We always cleaned it really carefully. Then we’d strategically poke holes in the meat to get it to breathe the flavors in. Crush garlic, cumin, black pepper, Spanish paprika, and other dry ingredients to create a dry rub. Then we add extra virgin olive oil and wine or vinegar to make a pesto. Cut nice-sized holes, and insert crushed or whole garlic cloves into them along with a heaping of the pesto. When we made a whole pig or a shoulder, there were all these supporting things around it. You had to have slow-cooked black beans, red rice, double-fried plantains and yucca (boiled or fried). Everything has to be supported by the pork, because it is added in some way. We used pork to flavor almost everything, even the beans and the rice. You start with some pork belly where you almost burn it dark brown and then you deglaze it and then it becomes the base flavor of your beans and yellow rice. If you did not have a whole hog, then you make a pork shoulder (Pernil). Pernil is the poor man’s lechón. It’s the shoulder. If you buy it right, you still get the skin and the fat that help make the flavor we want.
I love the Pastelillos. Those are our turnovers. We make them with this dough that’s infused with saffron. You add the saffron to some oil, and then add that to the dough and then you make these discs and you fold them and seal them with the pork filling inside. Oh man! That’s prosperity! There’s no way to make the turnovers without doing the whole pork roast through. You have to truly get a roasted pork shoulder that you loved and you gave it that passion. You chop up the roasted pork and good distribution of dark and white meat. Red pepper, garlic, Spanish olives, whole capers. It’s the recipe I’ve perfected over the last few years. Season with cumin, salt, garlic. One of our secrets: we put sugar on everything. A little sprinkle to give that little extra…
I love Yucca! Especially Pasteles made of Yucca. Of all the starch family, yucca is it for me! During the holidays, my uncle, my mom, and my grandmother would make many things from Yucca, even though money was always tight. Their cooking was so good that people would front them the cash to get a dozen of these Pasteles. So my grandmother and my mother would turn the whole living room into a production environment. My job as a boy was to grate plantains. My older brother was stronger so he grated the yucca. They would make this base using a plantain or Yucca puree with some other ingredients. They take Achote (annatto seeds) with extra virgin olive oil and slowly cook it to release it, slowly strain it to make that reddish oil, and then mix that into the batter of the Yucca, and also to coat the inside of the rice paper or plantain tree leaf. Then you would take a big banana leaf or rice paper, and a couple ladles of the puree and you would make a round section of it. Then you would take that roasted pork and then you would fold it into this square. You would make a square in the leaf or on rice paper and you would boil it in the leaf. You would get this cooked plantain or yucca. Very soft to cut, but in the middle you had this roasted delicious pork. My grandmother would always add fat, because the flavor was in the fat. She would also add raisins, chickpeas and other things depending on how you liked them. That was a holiday thing! Oh man!
When you’re cooking this stuff in your home, you’re feeling like life is good. We knew life was good. We were gonna eat. We were gonna celebrate food. Pork really matters to us. When I think about my youth and what it meant to me, it was always pork as the holiday meat. I know a lot of people today think of Christmas and they think about beef. But I can’t imagine a rib roast at the holidays. It’s gotta be the pork. Without the pork it doesn’t feel like we’re alive. The beef rib roast means nothing to me. What really matters to me and my family is to have that Pernil or that lechón.
You can make Patelillos, Morcilla, and pig ears. My dad used to love pig ears with hot sauce. And Chicharrón (fried pork rinds). That’s where you take pork belly and then make a rind part of it. They’d cut these slices into it to make more surface area. Almost every dish, rice and beans, always had a little pork in it (mostly fat). It is pretty amazing how one product, the pig, leads to so many other products that would not be the same without pork. Pork is amazing. Man! It’s delicious! My grandmother ate pork skin with the fat every time she cooked a pig. She didn’t care. She ate, drank and smoked to the last day of her life. I don’t think she regretted any day of her life when it ended at age 80.
For dessert we used to make Coquito. It’s a coconut egg nog made with Bacardi 151. There was always Bacardi! We used to grate coconut. It was either to make coconut flan or Coquito. All of these things gave you a sense of we’re gonna be ok!!
Today, we’re very lucky. My kids are all doing well. They still have this great emotional connection to the pork and the other cultural foods we make. Pork means life is good! It means we’re doing well! It means it’s gonna be a great holiday! They have the same love of the culture and of the food. I thought this connection would only be for us, for our family that has been exposed to it. But now my daughters’ fiancé, a fantastic American boy who grew up in Canton, is into it. He asks me to cook, too. And my son’s best friend is Jewish and he wants it!
I know that Nancy, my wife, and I have done well. Better than any fictional story could predict. But I would not feel complete without that part of my culture—the food. The food with its flavors and smells link me to the memories that define me culturally. Without the food there is no celebration there is no feeling of prosperity, and there is no sense of culture. The memories of the food link me to who we are. If you abandon that, the food and the memories, there’s a real sadness for us. We love our culture for many reasons, but most of all because it defines us and links us to those that made us and raised us. Our true north is us, as Cubans and Puerto Ricans! Cuban and Puerto Rican culture, and Cuban and Puerto Rican cooking. And pork! For me, I can’t imagine success without the food of my childhood. We yearn it. Very importantly for the Cuban in me, “when you make a Lechón, we all know a Cuban sandwich is coming next!!”
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
An Interview with Mike Zoromski, Smokemaster at Nueske’s
*Note: Mike will be a guest speaker at this year’s Camp Bacon® where he’ll give us “A Look Behind the Smokehouse Door.” Recently, Zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig had a quick chat with Mike about his background, and the smoky magic that happens at Nueske’s.
Visit our website to reserve your Camp Bacon seat and find more info. Please join us!
Pretty much every morning for the last 34 ½ years, the Deli kitchen crew has begun its day by cooking many pounds of Nueske’s amazing applewood smoked bacon! The same can be said for the Roadhouse over the past 13 years. Their wonderful product graces the menus at the Deli and the Roadhouse, shows up on sandwiches, in Bakehouse breads and Creamery pimento cheese. It’s a regular feature in our Mail Order bacon of the month club. It’s safe to say that without Nueske’s, Zingerman’s would be a very different place today!
It’s also safe to say that without the work of Mike Zoromski to design, build, and manage the artisan smokehouses in which all that bacon gets smoked, Nueske’s would be a pretty different place as well. To get a look, so to speak, behind the smokehouse door we’ve gotten Mike to make a rare public appearance at Camp Bacon this year!! What follows is an interview with him, and a chance to hear some behind-the-scenes, behind-the-smoke, sense of what makes the Nueske’s smoking so special. Come to Camp Bacon® 2016 and meet Smokemaster Mike in person!
How did you get involved with smoking? How did you get involved with Nueske’s?
I was so young and foolish back in ‘83 when I was asked if I wanted to work here, that I had no clue of what I was getting into. But what I do remember was that everything that Bob and Jim Nueske, (sons of founder, Robert “R.C” Nueske), and my brother Jeff taught me about smoking this product stuck with me. Even back then it seemed like I had a knack for doing it, but I was young and still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I left to get back into the building trade.
After fifteen years in construction, Jeff asked me if I wanted to come back. He needed someone to tend the smokehouses, so I came back and it was amazing. Everything that I was taught in 1983 came right back to me, almost as if I hadn’t left. I knew I was where I belonged, and I took it very seriously. I was going to make these smokehouses my own. Soon I started to see that each one had their own personality, and I knew I needed to figure them out so that the all the products came out looking and tasting the same every time.
What are some of the things that go into building a great smokehouse?
A controlled heat source, which distributes and disperses the heat and smoke evenly through the product, and a good consistent draft throughout the house that you have control of with a good damper system.
Many consumers love bacon but don’t really understand the details of the smoking process. I know some of the details will be proprietary, but can you take us novices through the process of smoking?
There are three basic cycles in almost every smoke process. There is a drying cycle, where you might have more of an open damper setting with smoke, and you slowly bring up the temperature. Then there are some critical meat temperature ranges that you need to get through in certain amount of time for food safety reasons. During that time you would have a more closed damper to hold the heat and humidity in, and during that that time you are getting a lot of smoke penetration into the meat. I have looked at the product during these early cycles, and you never believe that the product will end up with the beautiful deep color that it does at the end, but the smoke and flavor is getting in throughout the night. The last cycle in this long process is to start bringing up the smokehouse temperatures slowly to reach your final meat temperature. I like to use this time to put my final touches on the finish color, adding more smoke or adjusting the dampers. There is a science behind what really happens during the whole smoke process and there is always something new to learn.
What are some of the things that distinguish artisan smoking the way you do it at Nueske’s from the commercially smoked meats that people are used to buying in the supermarket?
Our competitors probably think we are nuts when we keep building single truck houses. They think the way to increase production is to build fifteen truck houses and mass-produce. Well, that’s not the way to hold onto what we have done for 80-some years. We use real Applewood logs in our houses, they use smoke injectors that burn wood sawdust, or even liquid smoke that tastes fake. We have a 24-hour cycle to get that full flavor; their process is about half that. Our houses are seasoned with a year’s worth of smoke on the walls; theirs are cleaned every day. You could probably run product through ours without putting any wood on and they would end up with more smoke flavor than a normal cycle with wood at one of those other places. That special attention that each rack gets in our houses is something that no mass-producing smokehouse could ever duplicate.
Are there seasonal differences in the smoking?
Yes, very much so. In the cold winter months, you have to control the draft more. The air is dry and it wants to get up and out, and if you don’t make those adjustments, you could end up with lighter colored meats. Then when the cold nights switch to the spring thaw and the frost turns to dew, we again make adjustments. Then comes the heat and humidity of the summer. Thunderstorms are tricky; they are unpredictable and usually bring a quick change in temps outside. Then, when the summer air starts to change to fall, and at the beginning there is a lot of dew, you start to see the differences again, then when the dew switches back to frost again, the draft in the houses start to speed up, and then we are back to winter. If I had a choice as far as how the houses best perform, I would pick the winter, because we have more control over the air flow in the houses.
Nueske’s has long used the applewood—have you smoked with hickory? How are they different?
I have not used Hickory here at Nueske’s. I have tried products that were smoked with Hickory and I do like the flavor, but it doesn’t compare to Applewood. Applewood has a much sweeter flavor and produces a deeper golden color. Hickory is a much harder wood that produces a bitter nut, so I think the differences in smoke flavor are similar to the fruit they produce, not that hickory smoke is bitter, but the oils that are trapped in the wood from a tree that produces an apple compared to that of a nut.
With the new cherrywood smoked bacon… Was it hard to learn to work with a new wood?
It’s funny how much your past helps you in everything you do. I spent a lot of time with my dad logging, making pulp and firewood, and all that time he would teach me about the different types of wood we would be working with. One of the trees we had worked with a lot in our area, was the Wild Cherrywood we now use here. The Wild Cherrywood is a lot different type of wood than Applewood; it is a solid but light wood, with a closed grain and a very bitter berry. When we were kids we called it a choke cherry.
When we decided to try it for our Cherrywood smoked bacon, I knew it would probably burn away faster than Applewood does. So on my very first try in our smokers, I figured I might have to use a little bit bigger size piece of wood than I do with Applewood, and I was right on. We use that much all the time now and the color is very good. A little lighter than Applewood, which I thought it would be, but by using the bigger pieces we get very close the color of our Applewood bacon.
I think that having that knowledge that was passed on to me from my dad really helped me, and it still does every day when I’m picking wood for the houses. I go through and select only the higher quality wood and the rest goes home to my fireplace.
Nueske’s products are clearly very special. But so is the company. What’s it like working at Nueske’s?
It is pretty special to work for a company that produces the products we do, and it has always been like working for family. I always admired Bob’s toughness on how he ran this company, yet I considered him a friend. It is no different with Tanya, she too is my friend, and I would never let them down. It’s quite an honor to have the title of Smokemaster of Nueske Meats.
What else should we know about your work at Nueske’s?
I now have three guys working for me in the smokehouses, including my son Matt. I also now have Steve and Dallas, and I couldn’t be more proud of the job they are doing. Every day it seems like they learn more and more about these smokehouses. It doesn’t take four guys to do this work right now; it’s about a two and a half man job. But with expansion on the horizon, we need to train them now, so that when there are more smokehouses to run, the products will continue to get the personal attention they need. These three guys have shown a lot of passion towards this job already, so it will be in good hands when I retire…someday.
Are you excited about coming to Camp Bacon?
Yes and no. I never considered myself to be a very good public speaker, but this bacon and my smokehouses are not hard to talk about. So I’ll try and pretend that I’m walking around and giving a tour of my smokehouses.
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
Zingerman’s is very pleased to welcome our friends, Canadian spice importers, the Spice Trekkers (aka Épices de Cru, en Français) to Ann Arbor this week for a series of special events centered around the use of whole spices in cooking.
We still have seats for tomorrow’s In Pursuit of Pepper dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse. Reserve your seat here.
Or click here for more information about the other public events at Zingerman’s Deli, and Zingerman’s BAKE!
A Dozen Different Peppercorns
BLACK PEPPER TELLICHERY RESERVE
Philippe de Vienne says, “Tellichery is probably the most famous and abused name in the black pepper trade. The town is one of many harbours on the south-western coast of India known as the Malabar Coast. The justly deserved reputation grew during the British period when the town was the export point for the area pepper. Over time the word Tellichery became synonymous with quality pepper. In those days the pepper from the surrounding mountains was exported through the now disused port of Thalassery as it is now called. The great peppers still come from the hills, most notably from the Wyanad area. Today other ports are used but the name remains, a sure sign of the reputation of the black pepper from this area. As the name does not benefit from an A.O.C. protection, it is greatly abused by people who want to project a quality image for their second rate pepper.”
The real thing is an inspiration. How do you know you have it? One obvious answer is buy from people you trust, as we do with the de Viennes. Another is to learn to know the smells and flavors that accompany the authentic article. The aroma of the de Vienne’s Telicherry Reserve is BIG. Stick your nose inside the tin and take a deep breath. Surprisingly, it doesn’t make me sneeze. It reminds of burnished old wood, of eucalyptus, of walking through the woods in northern California. The flavor is big too. Supermarket pepper by contrast, is rather one-dimensional, hot in a narrow and not all that enticing if still better than nothing kind of way. . It’s spicy but it’s hardly habanero-hot. This is a spice that livens the tongue, that continues to resonate without really ever taking over. The heat is rich, well-rounded, well off, worldly.
MLAMALA BLACK PEPPER FROM INDIA
The Mlamala pepper comes from the Cardamom Hills, near where the great green cardamom we get from the de Viennes (try it in the Armenian coffee at Zingerman’s Coffee Company) is coming from. It’s harvested in the hills facing the areas near the Periyar river where the de Viennes semi-wild Tribal black pepper (also amazing) come from. “Unlike tribal it is from a domesticated variety of pepper vines; hence the larger berries. Similar terroir, different varietal,” Philippe explained.
Part of the quality comes from the altitude—these Mlamala pepper vines grow at 2500 to 3000 feet above sea level. The area gets a lot of sunlight which, along with the good local soil, naturally fertilized by the farmers, yields large and full flavored berries. Careful and timely harvesting and processing complete the picture. It’s a delicious, full flavored, spicy regional black pepper. Use it any way you would use other black peppercorns, which, if you’re like me, means on almost everything. Salads, pastas, meats, seafood, soup, tomatoes. Honestly it’s even good on vanilla ice cream.
SHIMOGA PEPPER FROM INDIA
An especially interesting, lively black pepper from the Shimoga district in the Indian state of Karnakata. Also known as Mysore, it’s north of the Telicherry region. At times we’ve gotten some terrific coffee from the region. Today it’s the leading location for India’s burgeoning biotechnology businesses. Where Tellicherry goes big, wide and deep, Shimoga is focused, narrow, intense with an almost electric set of high notes, a sensual spicy warmth and a very long and lovely finish.
WILD TRIBAL PEPPER FROM INDIA
Speaking of the Cardamom Hills, here’s a wild offering—wild grown, black peppercorns, hand harvested in the Periyar Tiger Preserve in the Cardamom Hills. Why “tribal pepper?” Philippe de Vienne explained, “The Tribals, as they are called In India (not in a pejorative way) are the indigenous or first nations of India. They are essentially animists and live a semi- settled life. The government affords them a degree of protection—outsiders are not permitted without passes to the areas. When the Preserve was established the people where hunting tiger for the black market. They were encouraged to grow pepper in their villages using cuttings from wild vines that still grow in the surrounding jungle. So essentially, when you eat tribal pepper you have the original taste and flavor of wild pepper. The ‘wildness’ explains its quick hot bite and rustic flavors.”
At the same time, part of what’s making this wild Tribal Pepper so engaging to me right now is that it’s new—as in, “new crop,” just harvested a few months back. There’s a freshness and liveliness to its flavor and aroma that comes from being new crop—it’s actually been air-shipped to Montreal for the de Viennes, then boxed and sent south over the border to us. It’s got a lot of deep, balanced, long lasting pepper heat. High notes in the nose, low notes to underwrite those, and a really long slow lingering finish.
MUNTOK WHITE PEPPER FROM SUMATRA
While white pepper is less overtly popular in the U.S., it’s highly prized in Europe where its more delicate flavor fits well with many dishes. It’s here in Indonesia that the process has been essentially perfected over the centuries. “It is impossible to ignore the fact that it is thanks to the ancestral knowledge and practices in places like Bangka throughout South east Asia, that we learned how to transform perfectly ripe peppercorns into white pepper. This product so intrigued the Dutch that they went on to monopolize the trade of this most sought-after commodity, which they called Muntok after the harbour from which it was transported beginning in the 18th century.”
You can use white pepper really any place you’d use black. It’s a bit subtler, softer, less likely to take over a dish. Be careful. It can creep up on you slowly from behind if you put too much in. Philippe adds, “White pepper is often used ground in white dishes where black pepper would show black fleck. The French love white pepper for that reason, cream sauces, white fish and for the lighter flavour that balances well with subtle ingredients.”
8-PEPPER BLEND
This might be the best of all peppercorn worlds for the cook who values diversity of flavor. Most pepper blends are a waste of time because they mix white, black, green and pink and it’s silly. They don’t work well because the black and the white overtake the delicacy of the other two. But I still really wanted a pepper blend. I bugged my dad for years. But he didn’t like the idea. And then, literally, it came to him in a dream. He had the idea to add allspice to the blend. I love it. It’s one of the few original blends we have but it works with everything because it has so many aspects it works with almost everything.
PINK PEPPERCORNS
These are actually not peppercorns at all, but the pinkish-red berries of another bush, Schinus molle. Many Americans are familiar with their flavor, which contributes to the spicy taste of Teaberry gum. The de Viennes have sourced some especially excellent ones from the east coast of Madagascar. An intriguing and enticing addition to fish dishes, fresh cheese, lobster, or cocktails.
VOATSIPERIFERY BLACK PEPPER
Voatsiperifery does have a bit of otherworldly flavor, an aroma that for some reason I associate with old and long abandoned stone churches. Like cubeb, black and long peppers, voatsiperifery is a true pepper. Voatsiperifery comes from “Voa,” meaning “the fruits” and “tsiperifery,” Malagasy for this pepper vine. I’ve yet to go in person but one day—from what I know, the wild pepper grows very high on the trees and the berries appear only on the new grown shoots that appear annually. The Voatsiperifery berries look a lot like Java cubebs (known as comet-tails)—small round spheres about 3 mm across with a thin tail that’s a bit longer than the ball is round. Voatsiperifery has been used in Malagasy cooking for centuries and is ideal for seasoning fish and seafood recipes. The woody, floral fragrance of these dense, red-brown, peppercorns evoke citrus. Its subtle sweetness and moderate heat are great for desserts and chocolate. For a great red meat seasoning, blend Voatsiperifery pepper with other pepper varieties. A rare taste of Africa’s biggest island and an exceptional way to add some magic to your cooking.
LEMON PEPPER BLEND
Most “lemon peppers” out there are made be seasoning black pepper with lemon extract. The Épices de Cru offering is something else altogether—an all-natural lemon pepper. A combination of black and green peppercorns with Szechuan pepper, Thai lemongrass and the citrusy Andaliman pepper from Sumatra. The aromatic blend was born from Ethné de Vienne’s obsession with the bold and pronounced citrus flavor of Andaliman pepper. Its tongue-numbing capacities combine beautifully with green and black peppercorns as with Szechuan peppercorns and lemongrass. Ideal for seafood, fish, salad dressings and poultry. I really love it on fried seafood—shrimp, clams, oysters, or fish are all fantastic when you toss some of this blend—ground of course—on top just before serving.
SICHUAN IMPERIAL RED PEPPER
This is one of Marika de Vienne’s favorites. “It’s remarkable!” she told me not long ago. Sichuan Province is surrounded by high mountain ranges which means its historically been apart from the rest of China, and its food is quite different as well. While black pepper enlivens, Sichuan pepper turns your taste buds upside down. It has a lively lemoniness that plays tricks with your tongue, numbing and it and opening it to other flavors at the same time. Its frequently used in the region in conjunction with some wonderful spicy chiles. The region’s food is based on seven flavors (rather than the five that are generally thought of elsewhere): salty, sweet, bitter, acid, pungent (generally from garlic and ginger), nutty and spicy. While its known for its hear, it’s really ultimately about harmony. Chef-owner Danny Bowien of SF’s renowned restaurant Mission Chinese says, “the more I dove into Sichuanese cooking, [the more I realized] it’s really about balance and restraint and not having things be over-the-top spicy.”
LONG PEPPER FROM INDIA
Long peppers are about an inch or so long series of little black “peppercorns” that merge together into one “cone” as they grow. You can use long pepper whole in anything you’d do with black pepper. The flavor is clearly in the same family as what currently comes out of the pepper mill that’s permanently ensconced on my dining room table, but with some seriously interesting high notes and a sweet, round fruitiness that’s really lovely. I keep trying to think of a good way to describe it but . . . where Telicherrry black pepper’s flavor is a bit more direct with nice winy undertones, the Balinese long pepper is more of a roller coaster ride, sort of an accordion full of exotic flavors that play out in twists and turns as you eat it. I don’t know . . . those analogies may not get the idea across. Let me just say that it makes for some very interesting, very sensual, very spicy eating.
To use it, a spice mill is your best option. Long pepper is too long to work in most pepper mills. A chef’s knife can do the trick too if you’re careful, and a hammer and clean towel can work fine. It’s great sprinkled on the rounds of the fresh goat cheese from the Creamery. Spice fresh fish with it or use it to make a steak “au poivre.” Get Medieval and make a sweet-spicy dessert by poaching pears in white wine, vanilla, a touch of sugar and lots of long pepper
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
Francois Vecchio’s 3 Rules About Eating Cured Hams (Plus One Of My Own)
Francois Vecchio is one of the most knowledgeable (and nicest) folks in the world when it comes to the subject of cured meats of any sort. He happened to share this list with me a while back, and I’ve found it very helpful in assisting everyone I know to gain more enjoyment out of eating cured hams and salumi of all sorts. Although #1 and #2 were long familiar to me, #3, although incredibly obvious once he said it, was something I’d never thought of. We’ll call these “Francois’ 3 Rules Not To Break When It Comes to Serving Cured Ham.” Being more proper and of Swiss-Italian origin, he calls them, “reprehensible activities.” He brought them up in the context of Prosciutto di Parma but they’re totally true for good cured hams. So . . . if you want to get the most out of your investment in any cured ham —Prosciutto di Parma, Jamon Serrano, acorn-fed (bellota) Iberico ham from Spain, Herb Eckhouse’s, Newsom’s or Edwards’ Country Hams —don’t do this stuff, ok?!
1. Don’t trim the fat off the Prosciutto
Francois and every other European ham aficionado will tell you the same thing. The fat isn’t a bad thing—it’s THE most prized part of the product. I always come back to the story of one ham maker in Spain who was showing me how to trim a ham. You do remove the fat on the very exterior of the ham, which has 
yellowed and turned slightly rancid. But that’s it—the rest of the fat is to be left alone because that is, of course, where the best of the flavor is at! “If you take away the fat,” the Spaniard said, smiling (sort of) “I will have to kill you!” I know this is a bit like pushing dark crusts—it runs so counter to most people’s mindset that not everyone is going to be receptive. And of course we don’t ever want to lecture a guest or come across as preachy about this stuff so we need to say it gently, or better still, in the right setting with humor. But really, the fat is where it’s at. I guess, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s akin to cutting the crusts off the Farm Bread; not inherently evil but sort of misses the mark in terms of getting the full eating experience.
2. Don’t hold sliced Prosciutto for any time in your fridge.
I guess the model for ham buying would more akin to buying fresh fish than to aged cheese. While cured ham won’t go “bad” in a day (it really won’t likely literally go bad for weeks or even months), good cured ham is definitely more something you’d want to eat the day you buy it, maybe at most the day after. Once the ham has been cut it’s exposed to the air, and it starts to lose aromatics and flavor. Nothing inherently evil about it, it’s just if you’re going to spend good money to get really good ham, why not eat it at its best? With that in mind, I encourage you to just buy a little bit at a time—even an ounce or two at time is fine—and then come back and buy a bit more.
3. Never wrap Prosciutto around melon
This is the one of Francois’ rules that got my attention. It makes perfect scientific sense but since I don’t really have a science mind, I just never thought about it. But once Francois put it in my mind a few months ago I’ve started to spread the good word. And this column will, I hope, help to do that. So here’s the deal—if you wrap cured ham around slices of melon (the way they do in all those fancy food magazine photos) the water in the fruit will naturally pull the salt out of the ham, which completely degrades the careful curing done by the ham maker and throws the flavor totally out of balance. That doesn’t mean that ham and melon (or figs or whatever) don’t go well together—they certainly do. “Just,” as Francois says, “…use both hands—one for the Prosciutto, and use the other hand to pick melon, pear, grape or fig bites.” And he adds, “Drop all for a wash of sweet Orvieto!”…
To Francois’ list I’m adding a fourth point:
4. Always eat cured ham at room temperature
When it comes to serving cured ham follow the same guidelines as you would with cheese—get the ham to room temperature before you take a bite. If you doubt the value of this small step, taste a piece of the same ham right out of the refrigerator and another that’s at about 65°F. I think you’ll find that the former is missing about 65% of the flavor. Since the cost to the consumer is the same in each instance, it’s strongly in everyone’s interest to serve at the warmer temperature. It won’t fix the economy overnight but it is a way to increase value significantly without adding cost in the least.
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
Zingtrain travels to Africa
In May, ZingTrain had the privilege of being invited to teach in Ethiopia. And we’re not using the word privilege lightly here. Dr. Senait Fisseha is an inspiring and inspired doctor. Among the many roles Dr. Fisseha plays at the University of Michigan is the Executive Director of the Center for International Reproductive Health Training (CIRHT). And it was in that capacity that she asked ZingTrain to be part of the life-changing work she is doing in her native Ethiopia. To quote from a University of Michigan press releases:
“Dr. Fisseha has learned that well-trained OB-GYNs work as leaders in the health system and generate positive public health impacts including increased family planning provision, better pregnancy management, more facility-based deliveries, and better surgical outcomes. Our center will help empower women to make their own decisions about their own reproductive health, thereby choosing whether and when to start a family. Our ultimate goal is to help train future generations of capable and competent health care providers in many parts of Africa and South Asia who can deliver comprehensive reproductive health services, and also be advocates for the safest and best healthcare possible at every stage of a woman’s life. ‘Today, our center begins its new role in the developing world as we work with our partners in Ethiopia to ensure that incoming doctors, midwives and other health professionals are equipped to provide comprehensive reproductive health care that will save women’s lives,’ says Dr. Fisseha.”
Our contribution to Senait’s amazing work was to share our thoughts on Leadership, Change, and Organizational Culture with the visionary and determined healthcare professionals she works with in Africa. It is our hope that we contributed in some small way to their massive and much needed undertaking.
I interviewed Ari and ZingTrain’s Ann Lofgren who traveled to Ethiopia to teach. It was clear to me as we spoke that our conversation could have gone on for days. They were teeming with recognitions and realizations that came from this amazing opportunity. They saw how cultural differences play a role when you are training in a different nation, and came to understand the challenge in translating our values and techniques across that difference. They recognized the role that access to resources play in our success and were humbled by the honor of being able to contribute to such great work. What follows is a distillation of that conversation that could have gone on for days.
_____________________________________________________
Gauri: What were you doing in Ethiopia?
Ari: We were teaching ZingTrain content in collaboration with the Center for International Reproductive Health Training (CIRHT) and the Center of African Leadership Studies (CALS).
We did 3 sessions at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College (SPHMMC) and one session for the directors of all the Ethiopian government ministries—from Agriculture to Transport to Health.
On Day 1 we taught Zingerman’s 12 Natural Laws of Business to about 35 members of the St. Paul’s Leadership team. On Day 2 we did 2 sessions on Servant Leadership—one for all the head nurses and the second for members of the hospital administration. What we presented to the directors of the ministries was a mix of the 12 Natural Laws and Servant Leadership.
How were those training topics chosen?
Ari: Well, the answer begins a while ago. Teddy Araya, who founded and runs the Center for African Leadership Studies, came to the U.S. as a part of his work with the University of Michigan. This was about a year and a half ago. He attended my ZingTrain Speaker Series session on Creating Creativity and after the session we got to talking and Teddy said to me, “ One day I will get you to Ethiopia.” And he did.
Teddy teaches Leadership and has been working with the cohort at the hospital on Leadership. He is an incredible teacher and trainer—he practically co-taught the session with me. And he’s doing great work with the team at St. Paul’s Hospital. Recognizing that the team he has been working with has not had the opportunity for extensive Leadership training, Teddy wanted to widen the range of Leadership ideas and concepts that they were being exposed to, he wanted to bring in a new perspective. And that’s the role we were playing.
Teddy is very committed to service—both internal service that co-workers give each other and external service to customers. The Ethiopian economy is booming and Teddy believes that for it to keep growing in a meaningful way, the next focus has to be on Service. Being a visionary, he is also very bought into the idea of Visioning and how we apply it to projects of all scales. That’s how Zingerman’s 12 Natural Laws of Business became part of the training we delivered. Because they touch on everything from Visioning to Service to Organizational Change.
Ann: I would reinforce that an important aspect for Teddy was to bring in someone from the outside because people listen and accept differently when they hear a fresh perspective from what they’ve been hearing over the years.
What resonated the most with your audience?
Ann: Going in we were just not sure how our ideas would translate across culture and language. We know that the way we use Visioning here at Zingerman’s is a pretty radical thing, Even when we teach it here in the US, with no cultural or language differences, we present the idea, we talk about how we do it, we set it all up and then we kind of hold our breath and wait.
We did the same at St. Paul’s. Ari explained it to them. Teddy translated it into Amharic and helped with some of the cultural differences. And then we held our breath and waited, unsure that it was going to work at all.
But it did! Visioning was definitely what resonated with the group the most.
Yemisratch Abeje is a lovely woman who was in our training session on Day 1. On Day 2 she stood up and said to the team, “Yesterday changed everything.” And then she explained what she meant. She explained Visioning to her team. It was all in Amharic and we couldn’t understand a word she was saying but we all had goosebumps. She was almost crying. We were almost crying.
Ari: That moment really reinforced the statistic that over 90% of what we hear and learn is not the words. It really was pretty great – when we presented Visioning, they said the same things people say here. “It changed my life.” “Nothing will ever be the same again.” “I can’t believe I got this far without it.” “I can use it for anything—even my personal life.”
What resonated the least? What was hard to translate? Where did you have to change how we typically teach something?
Ari: The hardest thing—and it wasn’t that different from teaching in Slovakia—is that the audience all speak English but they understand it better than they speak it. Learning new ideas in a group is awkward anywhere. Learning in a language that is not the language you speak in is more so. And on our end, teaching in a culture that is not our culture is challenging. Metaphors don’t translate well. You’re concerned about being respectful in a culture you don’t understand, even if you studied it. And the humor, the humor doesn’t translate well!
Ann: The way we introduce the Zingerman’s 12 Natural Laws of Business is by talking about the Energy Crisis in the American workplace. The Energy Crisis was a challenging idea to convey. The great thing was that when they got it they totally got it but we had to go about it a different way.
Ari: There’s also this. In any place that has a lot of poverty, the notion of Energy Crises and choosing to do good work is hard to translate because the opportunity for people to create good work for themselves is much smaller. Sheer necessity plays a much bigger role in your choice of work. Our support systems, our opportunities, our advantages here are just so much more significant. And consequently you find a lot of good energy being directed at the infrastructure rather than creating good work.
Ann: I think that despite the lack of resources, despite the language barrier, despite the cultural challenge, what came through to us was their determination.
They truly appreciated the opportunity to be at the training. Because their resources are limited, I sensed that they appreciated the opportunity far more than their American counterparts might have. And that was big. That made what they were hearing even more important and it is clear to me that they are going to do something about it!
Ari: The truth is that they are trying to change the face of healthcare in Ethiopia. Senait is an awe-inspiring person, a testimony to the what one single person can achieve with vision and determination and drive. As I was prepping to teach the Natural Laws, the obvious dawned on me. Senait is a living example of all the Natural Laws. She is living in harmony with all of them. She provides Vision. She does the hard work no one else wants to do. She envisions and values and brings together the contributions of really diverse resources. Under her leadership, they are clearly building a cathedral, not just laying stone. They are changing the quality and focus of healthcare in terms of both content and attitude. They are trying to treat patients with respect and competence.
And that is what we were contributing to.
