A brief history of really good coucous

In the mountains and valleys that stretch across North Africa, there’s no guarantee of a good harvest from year to year. That’s nothing new for the Berbers. They’ve been farming olives, wheat, vegetables, and fruits there since before Carthage was founded in 814 BCE. (The name “Berber” actually comes from the Roman name for the people: barbarians. In their own language, Berbers call themselves Amazigh, or Free People.) In a good year a Berber tribe would grow plenty of food to sustain themselves. But even in a good year, the farmers learned to look ahead to the future. What if the next year there’s a drought and the harvest is limited? And what if that happens two years in a row? Or what if, after a year or two of bad harvests, a hungry neighboring tribe invades and pillages their food supplies? Those were all common scenarios for the semi-nomadic Berbers.

The solution was to make the harvest transportable.

Like most people looking to preserve food before the days of refrigeration, the Berbers used what they had on hand: salt, oil, sun. In Tunisia, smack dab in the middle of Berber land, sun drying has always been the most important method of preservation. Drying not only preserves, but it also makes the food weigh less. Should the tribe decide to pack up and move, they could take it with them. The Berbers sun dried everything: tomatoes, stone fruits, peppers. And to preserve wheat, they would sun dry couscous.

The basics of making traditional couscous are pretty simple. You take semolina flour and mix it with a bit of salt and water, rub it together to form tiny balls of dough, and then dry ’em out. Today, though, most couscous is made with big, industrialized machines. The whole process can be completed in a couple of hours from start to finish, including just seven minutes for mixers to form the balls and then a whopping eighteen minutes to dry them in huge rotating ovens.

There are still a few producers out there making couscous the traditional, slow way that the Berbers would have made it. The best couscous I know of is made by Majid Mahjoub, himself a descendant of the Berbers, and his company Les Moulins Mahjoub. Mahjoub couscous is m’hamsa (hand-made, in Arabic). Using the Razzag variety of wheat that they grow organically on their own farm, they roll every little ball of couscous by hand, the way it’s been done for millennia. For that reason, this couscous is a little bigger than most, and you may notice that it looks a tad less uniform. That’s a good thing. After the couscous has been shaped, it dries in the sun. That drying doesn’t take minutes or hours—it takes days. All told, a batch of Mahjoub couscous takes about ten days from start to finish.

All that time drying in the sun has a huge impact on flavor.

It’s like the difference between bread that’s allowed to slowly rise and proof for most of a day versus the stuff that’s baked as quickly as possible. The longer drying time allows the couscous to develop deeper, richer flavor. In essence, couscous that’s produced as quickly as possible tastes like flour, while couscous that is made more slowly tastes like bread. The exact same thing happens with the flavor of traditional pastas that are allowed to dry slowly rather than being baked as quickly as possible. Mahjoub couscous is wheaty, toasty, nutty, earthy, with a chewy, firm, toothsome texture. This is no boring grain to be relegated to the corner of the plate and smothered in spices and sauces.

I still remember the first time I tasted Mahjoub couscous. It was a little more than six years ago. The first bite stopped me in my tracks. I had no idea that couscous could be so delicious. But once I got over the surprise, I went back for more, and more, and more. I still always keep a jar or two in my pantry and cook it at least a couple times a month.

Cooking couscous is as easy as boiling water.

Seriously. You bring a pot of water to boil, add the couscous, bring it back to a boil, take the pan off the heat, put a lid on it, and let it sit. After ten minutes, you fluff the couscous with a fork and it’s ready to eat. Majid visits us in Ann Arbor from time to time and he’s cooked up some some outstanding couscous dishes for us. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Couscous with tomato sauce and a perfect egg
  This is one of the simplest ways I know of to serve couscous, and conveniently, it’s also one of the most delicious. After cooking the couscous—roughly ⅓ cup per person as a side dish, or a bit more as a main dish—stir in a bit of good extra virgin olive oil to keep it from sticking. Dish it onto plates and then on top of the couscous spoon a healthy dollop of your favorite tomato sauce, warmed on the stove. Then top that with an egg. I’m partial to a poached egg with the yolk still soft and oozy, but you could use a fried egg, a diced hard-boiled egg, whatever kind of egg fits your fancy. Sprinkle with salt and a grind of fresh pepper, and serve immediately.
• Couscous salad
  To serve four to six people, use 1 1/2 cups of couscous. Once it’s cooked through, stir in a couple tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil, then let it cool. While it cools, dice a bunch of vegetables: an onion, two tomatoes, a sweet pepper, a cucumber, a little fresh mint, and a preserved lemon. When the couscous has reached room temperature stir in all the vegetables along with a few capers and a splash of white wine vinegar. Once it’s all mixed up, refrigerate it for half an hour or so to chill it and let the flavors meld. Just before serving taste and add salt if needed.
• Sweet couscous
  Majid uses three parts milk to one part couscous. Bring the milk to a boil, and add the couscous. Let it simmer for five minutes, then remove it from the heat and let it cool a bit. That’s it—it’s ready to serve. Majid likes to add a bit of jam to it, but he also recommends you could add a little sugar to sweeten it up a bit more. Since hearing about the recipe, I’ve made it with a little maple syrup and cinnamon and that turned out pretty delicious. Majid likes to eat sweet couscous for breakfast. In the summer he likes to make it the night before and keep it in the fridge overnight, then serve it cold, like a couscous version of rice pudding.

Did we mention that Sun Dried Couscous from Les Moulins Mahjoub is part of our annual Summer Sale? Hurry, sale ends 7/31!

See you soon! 

Summer sale goodie!

A friend and I went to the grocery one evening in search of ice cream and hot fudge. The ice cream part was easy; we picked a good one right away. The chocolate sauce was another story. We spent a lot of time reading all of the ingredient lists looking for the one with the fewest (and most pronounceable) ingredients. The one we finally settled on was okay, but nothing to write home about.

When I asked Marc Cooper—who goes by Coop—what he was looking for when he created his hot fudge , he told me he wanted something all natural. There’s no legal definition of “all natural” but Coop’s personal definition is that there are no chemicals used in any part of production, and all of the ingredients are processed as gently as possible.

Let’s start with the chocolate.
Cocoa powder is simply ground up, roasted cacao beans with most of the fat (in the form of cocoa butter) removed. To get “natural” cocoa powder, that’s all there is to it. The flavor ends up being very bitter and pretty acidic, much like cocoa beans themselves. However, around 90% of all cocoa used today is alkalized (also sometimes called Dutch processed, because it was invented by a Dutch guy). Alkalized cocoa has been treated with chemicals to make the cocoa less acidic. It has a milder flavor and darker color. Alkalization also makes cocoa more soluble, so it’s easier to mix it into liquids, making it especially popular for use in ice cream and with dairy products.

Coop uses a natural, unalkalized cocoa powder to avoid that chemical processing. Each new harvest of cacao beans is a little different from the one before due to weather and processing conditions, so periodically he’ll test out new cocoas to make sure he’s got one that gives the rich, complex, chocolatey flavor he wants. He’s opted for a cacao from Ivory Coast which is processed into cocoa powder in Holland. When he tried making his hot fudge with cocoas from Central and South America a few months back, he found it created a more fruity flavor that didn’t have the richness he wanted.

Besides the chocolate, there are only four other ingredients.

The first two are cream and butter. It took Coop a while to find the dairy products he wanted. Most commercial dairies these days pack the cows in tightly and then either feed them antibiotics to prevent disease or ultra pasteurize the milk to kill off any pathogens. (Take a look the next time you’re picking up milk at the grocery; nearly all organic milk, which comes from cows that haven’t received preventative antibiotics, is ultra pasteurized.) Ultra pasteurization is different from regular pasteurization in that it heats up the milk much hotter for a shorter period of time. The process can make the milk shelf stable for months, but it changes the flavor and texture of milk. In particular, it can alter the whey proteins that give milk its creaminess, requiring the addition of congealing agents like guar gum or carrageenan to achieve the original texture. Coop uses cream and butter from a local Massachusetts dairy that pasteurizes more gently. There are no congealing agents, nothing added, nothing removed.

The last two ingredients are white cane sugar and brown cane sugar (which is actually just white sugar with some molasses mixed back in). Coop prefers to use cane sugar rather than beet sugar since all beet sugar in the US is GMO. He’s also careful to only use sugar that is processed in the US because a lot of the cane sugar processed in other countries is treated with charred cow bones (which help to take out the natural tan color of sugar to make it snowy white; American-processed cane sugar uses charcoal instead). Most chocolate sauces contain corn syrup (either instead of or in addition to sugar) which helps to keep them from recrystallizing and becoming grainy; Coop uses the molasses in the brown sugar to achieve this effect.

Coop is a poster child for small batch production.

A while back, one of those TV shows about how things are made gave Coop a call. They were interested in featuring his hot fudge production in an episode. “They like to see a lot of production lines and machinery,” Coop told me. “When I told them all I have is two vats that each produce about four gallons of hot fudge at a time, they decided not to come and film us.” Coop and his three employees produce three or four double batches of fudge per day, four days a week—that adds up to about 1,200 jars weekly. On the side of each jar you’ll find the hand-written initials of the person who made that particular batch.
Coop’s hot fudge business was actually an off-shoot of the ice cream shop he opened a few decades ago. “I wanted to be able to keep my staff busy in the off-season,” Coop told me, so he started playing around with a hot fudge recipe. His plan worked, and the hot fudge became so popular that about five years ago the fudge production split off from the ice cream shop to become its own business.

And how does it taste?

Coop’s hot fudge is thick, luscious, intensely chocolatey. It’s insanely good heated up—microwave the whole jar or a smaller bowlful for a minute or less and you’re good to go. And then what to drizzle it on? “Our hot fudge will make any ice cream better,” Coop told me proudly. Then he added, perhaps a bit apologetically, “even Zingerman’s gelato.”

There are a lot of products we sell that I’d say you could eat on a spoon out of the jar. This one tops that list; I never put the spoon in the sink without licking it first. I’ve drizzled it over coffeecake and strawberries. It’s killer slathered on toast. Or chocolate covered pancakes?!

Coop’s Hot Fudge is part of our big Summer Sale at Zingerman’s Deli and Zingerman’s Mail Order through July 31. Try this chocolate wonder today! 

a challenging year for olives

Our spring shipment of imports arrived at our warehouse a few weeks ago. Each year, this delivery is the one that includes our newest harvest of olive oils—in this case, we just got the 2014 harvest. It takes until May for the new oils to arrive because after the olives are picked and pressed around November the oil is left to settle for a few months to naturally decant out any sediment, and then it takes several weeks for the oil to make its way across the Atlantic on the boat. This year our import was missing a lot of the oils we usually bring in.

It wasn’t a surprise that the oils were missing. 2014 was an epically bad year for olives in Europe. Spain’s olive harvest was down 50%. Italy’s harvest was down about 35% overall, and in some regions, like Tuscany, it was down nearly 90%. What happened?

Blame it on the weather.

Let’s talk about Italy. The winter of 2013-14 was mild. So mild, in fact, that it did not kill off the insects that chow down on olives. Then summer 2014 was rainy and humid, giving the insects the perfect conditions to proliferate. The larvae hatch inside olives, feasting on the fruit and boring holes that let in fungi and bacteria that give the olives an off, moldy flavor. As if all that weren’t enough, in September a hail storm hit the countryside and knocked much of the not-yet-ripe fruit to the ground.

With all this bad luck, it seems like an olive farmer should pray for a cold, insect-killing winter and a hot, dry summer. But not too cold. Tuscans still talk about the winter of 1984-85, when three weeks of frigid weather killed off most of their olive trees. (They also tell me that winters like that come around about every 30 years or so—which would mean we’re due to have one any time now.) And not too hot and dry, either. The south of Spain had a terrible drought last summer that decimated their olive harvest.

Too little water, no olives. Too much water, no olives. Too cold, no olives. Too warm, no olives. Rather than being a surprise that there was such a horrible harvest in 2014, it’s beginning to feel like it’s a miracle there’s ever a good harvest.

OK, I get it, the harvest was terrible. But what does that mean for an olive oil enthusiast?

For the majority of inexpensive grocery store olive oil there probably won’t be a huge impact. The price may go up a bit, but most olive oils on the market—including most extra virgin oils—are made with a blend of olive oils from who knows how many sources. Take a look the next time you’re in the olive oil aisle at the store. While the bottle may proudly announce that it’s “imported from Italy” on the front, if you turn it around to the back it may say something like, “Made with select, high quality extra virgin olive oils from Italy, Spain, Tunisia, and Greece.” There’s also no clear indication of when any of the oil was pressed. Those oils—from different countries and possibly even different years—are all blended together to get a consistent (read: boring) oil without a whole lot of flavor. If one of their sources of oil had a bad harvest, they’ll just supplement the supply from somewhere else.

For olive oils grown and produced on a single estate the situation is far more dire. It doesn’t just mean that there’s less oil available. In many cases it means no oil at all. Nearly all of the oils we sell come from a single estate, so there was a huge impact for us. By the time farmers went to harvest the olives, there wasn’t much fruit on the trees. And in many cases, like at Tiburtini in the Italian region of Lazio and at Cacchiano in Tuscany, what little fruit there was made oil of such poor quality that they shut down the mills and decided not to press any oil at all. We have a collection of a couple dozen or so olive oils that we have sold every year for a decade or more, but this year we don’t have nine of our regular oils because none was produced last year. With other oils, such as the crowd-favorite Maussane, we have our whole year’s supply in stock right now, and when it sells out, it’ll be gone ’til May 2016. (That is, assuming this fall’s harvest is a bit more successful!)

Rather than leave our olive oil shelves empty, we’ve decided to bring on a handful of new oils in a one-time-only olive oil pop up shop.

We taste dozens of new olive oils every month. We bring on maybe two new ones a year. But right now in our pop-up shop we have eleven new extra virgin olive oils. It’s unprecedented! We’re excited about the newcomers, but they’re only here for a limited time. When they sell out, that’s it, they’re gone. I just tasted all of ’em; here are a few notes on some of my favorites:

Ol Istria Leccino Olive Oil comes from the Porec region of Croatia. Made from just one kind of olive, Leccino, it’s soft, fruity, and buttery. Outstanding on simple dishes, like fresh mozzarella with a few ripe tomatoes.

Weka Olive Oil comes to us from New Zealand by way of some former New Yorkers. It’s made with the varietals of olives you typically find in Tuscany and is likewise bold, grassy, a little bitter, yet soft and supple in the finish.

Capirete Olive Oil comes from the Andalusia region in southern Spain. It’s made from picual olives and has a nice green banana aroma and a mild but bright flavor that’s an excellent match for fresh greens—or a grilled steak.

Tondo Olive Oil is from the southeastern corner of Sicily. Made from Tonda Iblei olives, this one is complex and nuanced, starting soft and sweet then building to big, fruity, and finally slightly bitter notes.

Read more about all of our new oils in our pop-up shop on the Zingerman’s Mail Order website.

Val Neff-Rasmussen recently travelled to Italy on a buying trip for Zingerman’s Mail Order. This essay recounts her visit to the island of Pantelleria, source of some of the best capers in the world. 

Capers: From Field to Fork (pt. 2)

Val Neff-Rasmussen recently travelled to Italy on a buying trip for Zingerman’s Mail Order. This essay recounts her visit to the island of Pantelleria, source of some of the best capers in the world. 

Capers: From Field to Fork (pt. 1)

I grew up in the American midwest, where a farm means lush fields of corn and soy stretching as far as the eye can see. With such expectations, a caper farm is not very impressive. Low-lying caper plants resemble scrawny green octopi sprawled across the dusty soil. Passing by, you might not realize this was a farm at all if not for the linear arrangement of the plants and the stocky stone walls outlining the field.

The capers themselves are hardly more impressive. The capers we eat are the unopened flower buds of the caper plant. On the plant, they’re little green balls at the tips of short stems sprouting upwards between coin-shaped leaves on spindly branches. They don’t look like a very promising source of food.

But they’re eaten throughout the Mediterranean, where caper plants sprout from rocky crevices that have no business growing anything, let alone anything edible. In fact, that’s how you’ll find capers most frequently: wild bushes growing in unlikely spots. They’re not farmed very often, but one of the few places you do find caper farms is the Italian island of Pantelleria.

Pante-what?
I have a colleague who discovers a lot of the foods we sell at Zingerman’s Mail Order. He’s visited Italy several times, but has never seen any of the major cities. “I’ve never been to Rome or Florence, but I have spent a lot of time in the Kentucky and Arkansas of Italy,” he jokes. If the back roads of Puglia are the Kentucky of Italy, then Pantelleria is the Guam of Italy. A tiny, remote, forgotten island, largely unknown even to most of the Italian populace. Though it’s a part of Sicily today, the nearest land to Pantelleria is actually Tunisia, some 37 miles to its west.

Pantelleria isn’t exactly a tourist destination hot spot. There are no beaches. There are no picturesque historic landmarks. There’s not even a source of fresh water. What they do have are blustery winds that gust across the island year round, uprooting tender plants and blowing your hair in your face when you pose for seaside pictures. There’s a brackish lake where you can slather yourself with silty, stinky, wonderful mud. There are secluded resorts that have hosted the likes of Madonna and Sting. They cultivate a grape called Zibibbo, which they press into sweet moscato and sweeter passito wines. And they grow lots and lots of capers.

Pantelleria is best known for its capers. (In fact, when I first learned I was going there, I was told I’d visit Caper Island. Only later did I think to ask about the real name of the place.) Capers are ubiquitous on the island: they sprout wild from boulders along the narrow paths up to the natural volcanic saunas; they pop unbidden out of chinks in the stone walls that outline the endless terraces carved into the steep mountainsides; they are carefully grown in neat rows in sun-baked fields.

Cultivating capers
It’s the cultivated capers that Pantelleria is known for. They’re the only capers with an I.G.P., or protected geographical denomination, a government-sanctioned guarantee that a product is produced in a particular area and according to particular conditions. To qualify for the I.G.P., Pantescans grow and produce their capers the same way they have for generations. They grow a special varietal of capers called Nocellara Inermis that’s unique to the island. The capers must be grown low to the ground and without any irrigation. Every caper is hand-picked, one by one.

From mid-May through August farmers pick capers daily, visiting each plant roughly every 10 days. Work starts at 4 AM and continues until around 10 AM, when the harsh Mediterranean sun becomes too hot for outdoor work. As they pick, the farmers kneel at each plant, reaching out to the hold the branches as if in a pose of supplication. They leave the tiniest buds to grow larger, collect the rest of the buds and berries, and pluck and discards any flowers in blossom. Over the course of the harvest, each mature caper plant will produce about two kilos of capers.

If the caper buds aren’t picked, they’ll blossom into dainty white flowers with delicate purple stamens. Left on the plant, the flower may go on to produce a caperberry: a small, hard, olive-shaped fruit packed chock full of seeds. The berries aren’t very popular with the Pantescans. In fact, they consider them shameful: any flower or berry is the sign of a lost opportunity for a caper, and therefore the sign of a lazy farmer. However, lately caperberries are becoming trendy in the US, making their way into swanky charcuterie spreads and hipster cocktails.

Part Two of this essay will appear tomorrow.