Tag: ZINGERMAN’S DELI
Sensational smoked, cured ham from the Sud Tyrol
While Prosciutto di Parma rightly wins raves all over the world, and while American country ham has gained great attention in the last few years, there are traditional regional “country hams” to be found in almost every part of the world that eats pork and has a temperate enough climate to cure a ham properly. Little known outside its home region, speck is the unique cured country ham of the Alto Adige region in the Dolomites, near the Austrian border. It’s a lightly smoked and lightly spiced cured ham that you enjoy however you would any other cured ham.
The speck process is unique to this particular ham. Unlike with other dry-cured hams, speck makers take the bone out of the fresh hams before the pork is cured and rub them with spices before aging and smoking. Exactly which spices they use is a closely guarded secret that no ham curer seems willing to divulge. Speck smoking is always done at very low temperatures so that the meat is never cooked, but simply seasoned, by the smoke. Hold a freshly cut slice up to your nose, and it smells sweetly of smoke and subtly of the spices used to cure it. Taste it, and you’ll work your way through layers of flavor. First, there’s the spice—a bit of pepper, some juniper, and additional secret spices—which brings a liveliness (almost a touch of the medieval!) to the experience. This is followed on the palate by the smoke, and then, beneath all that, you come back to the light and delicious pork. It reminds me of eating great smoked salmon in the way the fat and the spice spread nicely over the tongue and linger.
Speck goes well on buttered slices of any of the Bakehouse’s excellent breads, but particularly the Vollkornbrot (read on for more), as well as Country Miche, Roadhouse, or Farm bread. You could also make that stellar sandwich I wrote about last week—cured ham and Emmentaler Réserve cheese on a fresh Bakehouse baguette spread generously with Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter.
In its home region of the Sud Tyrol, speck is utilized a fair amount in cooking, too. Small pieces of speck are used to season soups and sauces, or chopped and added to salads, noodles, or rice. I like it eaten alongside slices of melon, fresh pears, and apples. (But don’t wrap the ham around the fruit—it will absorb the fruit’s juice, ruining the ham’s texture.) It pairs really well with mountain cheeses—the Comté from France and the Emmentaler Réserve from Switzerland are both at the top of my list this month—and is terrific paired with those Rancho Meladuco dates. It’ll also be a fine culinary companion when asparagus hits the market in a couple of weeks!
Snag your slices
P.S. Remember that when you eat cured hams like speck, they’re radically more flavorful when you don’t serve them straight out of the icebox. This truly makes a big difference—just as it does with cheese, cake, pie, wine, or most anything else.
Really good raw milk cheese from Quebec
I’m not totally sure what the current status of American trade tariffs on Canada is, but I’m very confident in expressing my enthusiasm for this newly arrived artisan raw milk raclette from Quebec we’ve got on hand at the Deli. Full-flavored but still surprisingly gentle at the same time, it has a lovely light layer of pink peppercorns running horizontally down its center. (For those in the know on traditional French cheese, that makes it look, from afar, a little like a Morbier.) Whether it’s for formal raclette-making, sandwiches, or snacks, Raclette de Compton au Poivre Rose is a really good choice!
The Raclette au Poivre is crafted by the folks at Quebec’s Fromagerie la Station, located, per the cheese’s name, near the village of Compton, to the east and slightly to the south of Montreal. The cheese won Best of Show at the American Cheese Society competition in 2024—its buttery, nutty flavor marries well with the fruity, floral, gentle spice of the pink peppercorns. The flavor combination comes together even better when the cheese is heated, either to make raclette, a grilled cheese, or an omelet.
The Raclette au Poivre is made by fourth-generation farmers—the farmstead was founded nearly a hundred years ago when Alfred and Aglaé arrived to work the land. The farms’ 150 Holsteins graze in the open on their organic meadows. The complexity of the flavor and the clean, long finish speak volumes about the care and skill of the farmers—they’re crafting some darned good cheese!
Carole Routhier, part of the third generation at the creamery, says,
The land does not work, does not operate. She devotes herself. Agriculture is the fruit of collaboration with stakeholders such as sun-wind-rain-forests-sky-lakes-rivers-moon-birds-insects-ground-animals-humans etc. In order to nurture, to protect, and care for each of the stakeholders.
Pierre Bolduc, president and also part of the family, says,
Soil in my hands makes me smile! I just can remember how old I was when I removed my first stone from the field to make it better. Since I was a child, nature was and still is my world; I have air from Compton in my lungs and blood from Beauce in my veins. I walk my land to give a message: take care, take good care of the land. Working on the land is my great passion.
I say, grab a good-sized chunk, take it home, and enjoy. Be sure to let the cheese get to room temperature before you eat. Great with the Bakehouse’s True North bread and Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter!
Ring up your raclette
A contributor to happiness at so many levels!
In 1980, while I was still learning to cook the line, Mother Teresa’s team in India rescued a small orphaned boy from the streets of Calcutta. He was adopted in the U.S., where he grew up with the name Jaime Illien. Determined to pay back the world that had given him grace and a second chance at a good life, Ilien began years of work to start what is now recognized worldwide as International Day of Happiness. It has happened every year on March 20, ever since its formal inauguration in 2013. The idea is to actively encourage people to embrace happiness and spread positive feelings in small but meaningful ways, wherever we can. The work is to “encourage and advance the primacy of happiness, well-being, and democracy.”
It turns out that March 20th is also my good friend Shawn Askinosie’s birthday. I can think of no one better suited to have paired happiness and a birthday! I had the pleasure of seeing Shawn, without question one of the kindest, most generous human beings I’ve met, while I was in Austin for the conference on Perpetual Purpose Trusts. As I do everywhere I go, I tasted any number of chocolate bars I happened to see in local specialty shops. To my taste, none came close to the quality, complexity, balance, and finish that I find in every one of the bars I’ve bought from Askinosie.
As he so often does, Shawn’s exceptional spirit of generosity has given us all a gift to mark the occasion. Not surprisingly, it’s chocolate. It’s actually the darkest chocolate bar he’s ever done: 88% cacao! That means that only 12% of every bite is not cacao; a bit of natural sugar and a tiny hint of organic vanilla bean.
This delicious bar is also a first for Shawn because it’s a dual-origin bar. Cacao from two of his longtime sources—the co-op farmers at Mababu, Tanzania, who provide the hard-to-find but delicious Trinatario cacao, and at San Jose Del Tambo, Ecuador, which grows the unique-to-the-region Arriba Nacional. Try each of the single-origin bars on their own—they’re terrific. I eat them both regularly.
To be clear: if you don’t like dark chocolate, definitely skip this one. The Super Dark Blend bar pushes chocolate to its limits. It’s darker than dark—delicious, edgy, and far from milky. Not for the faint of heart. Think of it as the heavy metal of the cacao world—but without the pounding bass. Surprisingly smooth and gentle, it still delivers some of the richest, most intense chocolate you’re likely to try. You could call it the heart of chocolate darkness. I love it. Bold, big, and full of terrific tannins, like a fine, full-bodied red wine. Notes of dark caramel and rich sorghum syrup linger on a long, clean, impressively gentle finish.
If you want to read more about Shawn’s superb work, check out his great book, Meaningful Work, co-written with his daughter, Lawren Askinosie—we have copies on hand at the Roadhouse. Or read about him in Part 4 of the Guide to Good Leading—he’s in Secret #45, “A Six-Pointed Hope Star”! If you like really dark chocolate, I hope—and believe—that you’ll love this bar!
Grab a bar at the Candy Store
Or at the Deli
One of the tastiest things about winter in Ann Arbor!
For over 15 years now, the Deli has kicked off the new year with our annual Pot Pie Fest. It’s a great example of how sticking with something you truly believe in can evolve into what many now consider a cherished tradition. The anticipation for this yearly celebration has grown into quite a thing.
Andrew Wilhelme, a longtime member of the Deli’s kitchen team and now also a historical archivist who once worked at the Graduate Library—home to the anarchist Labadie Collection—wrote a beautiful note years ago celebrating the annual arrival of our pot pies. Rather than try to rewrite it, I’ll let his words cast the same inspiring spell on you as they did on me at the time. Here are some excerpts from Andrew’s pot pie piece:
New Year’s Day kicks off our annual Pot Pie Fest. For two months, through February 28, the Deli is awash in a collection of six kinds of handmade pot pies. Each pie is made from scratch. Vegetables, herbs, and meats are chopped and minced, then cooked in butter, thickened with a roux, and drenched in broth and cream to make a rich, savory sauce. As the filling stews, we start preparing the crust. Butter cuts into flour and is bound together with ice-cold water and a pinch of sea salt to make a rich dough. We usually make two or three batches a day from December through February. Once the filling is cooled and the dough rolled, we then set upon the task of assembly. Each pie is made by hand, enveloping a heaping scoop of filling between two folded layers of buttery crust.
For those who aren’t already well familiar with the now-famous pot pie phenomenon, here are the half-dozen varieties we do. All are excellent. Mix and match as you like!
Classic Chicken – Our most popular pie, featuring diced chunks of cooked Amish chicken, chopped celery, carrots, onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, and potatoes, seasoned with some fresh thyme and tossed with housemade chicken stock and heavy cream from Calder Dairy down in Carleton.
Tasty Turkey – Made with pasture-raised turkey from Ferndale Farms. We also add a bit of the uniquely flavorful Turkish Urfa pepper—it’s sundried by day and wrapped and “sweated” by night for over a week to bring out a rich, mellow, earthy flavor and smoky aroma.
Fungi Mushroom – A quartet of Michigan-grown mushrooms (maitake, shiitake, oyster, and button), seasoned with a bit of Balinese long pepper.
Dingle Lamb – A pastie-shaped pie, filled with the wonderful local lamb, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, and some rutabaga, seasoned with a bit of cumin and rosemary. The idea for this pie was originally inspired by Darina Allen, friend and teacher to both Ari and Rodger, and owner of the famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland.
Red Brick Beef – Basically a hearty beef stew wrapped in a buttery crust. We cut local beef into small pieces, then stew it slowly with dry red wine and diced carrots, chopped celery, onions, fresh garlic, some bay leaves, and a bit of fresh thyme.
Cheshire Pork – This special pie combines sweet, sour, and savory. Chunks of local pork are braised in fresh apple cider along with onions, rosemary, freshly grated nutmeg, lemon zest, and large bites of apples from Alber Orchard. It’s wrapped “miner style,” so no pie tin.
The idea to do pot pies at the Deli started small many years ago, but over time it has become anything but. Today, the Pot Pie Fest is eagerly awaited by a coterie of loyal fans. You can buy the pot pies frozen and uncooked to heat up at your house. You can also order them baked and ready to eat at the Deli. They have a LOT of loyal fans—many of whom buy big! Like one or two dozen at a time! We even have a great group of families who drive up every year from Cincinnati. They make a weekend out of it—shopping at the Deli, visiting the Bakehouse and Creamery, having dinner at the Roadhouse, and, most importantly, driving home with dozens of frozen pot pies to fill their freezers!
Next Wednesday evening, Feb 25, from 5-7pm, the Deli is holding a Pot Pie Pop Up. Preorder is highly encouraged! Pot Pie Fest runs ’til February 28. Stock up now on frozen pies, chow down when you want: the more you buy, the more you save. 10% off 10 or more, 20% off 20 or more, 30% off 30 or more!
Whether you live here in Washtenaw County or a couple hundred miles away like our friends from southern Ohio, you can do the same. Sitting here today, getting ready to run later in drizzly cold weather, I at least can use all the heart and hearth-warming help I can get!
Stock up (and save!)
The “Thirteenth Apostle” from a family-run dairy in Quebec
About halfway between Montreal and Quebec City is an artisan dairy that’s worth driving well out of your way to visit.
The Fromagerie du Presbytère began about 100 years ago, when the Morin family began construction on the first buildings of the Louis d’Or Farm. The dairy is now run by the fifth generation of Morins; four of Monsieur Morin’s kids work there. The farm provides all the milk needed to produce their cheeses. The cheeses are aged in an old church, and there’s a shop where locals and travelers alike can grab a bite to eat and buy cheese. Two decades after the modern-day cheesemaking began, the dairy is producing some of the most highly respected cheeses in Quebec.
While the Treizième Apôtre cheese is new to us, cheese is anything but new to Quebec. There are over four centuries of dairy tradition in the province. French colonists, settling on what had been indigenous land, brought cows, sheep, and goats by ship and soon began to make cheeses akin to what they had known at home. In that era, cheesemaking was mostly a home-based activity, so most of the settlers would have been familiar with how to make it. After the British took Canada, many farmers shifted to making cheddar for export to Britain. Over the years, the region became known for its aged cheddars and also for the Trappist-type, washed-rind Oka cheese, which was originally made by monks settling in the area after being expelled from France. When we opened the Deli in 1982, that’s pretty much all there was to be found in the province. Cheesemaking gradually grew, though, and by the late ’90s, there were about 30 dairies in Quebec. Today, the number is nearly double that!
In total, Fromagerie du Presbytère makes a dozen artisan cheeses. This one, Treizième Apôtre, or “Thirteenth Apostle,” is especially awesome! It’s made from raw, local goat milk, in form that resembles a Swiss Raclette: semi-firm, creamy, modest but full of flavor. The Fromagerie actually has winter raclette events, which apparently sell out incredibly quickly.
The quality of the milk is, of course, critical to the cheese. The fact that this is a farmstead cheese means that Monsieur Morin and family manage the process all the way through. They have a herd of Holsteins and Brown Swiss (the same special cows that are used for the remarkable Valserena Parmigiano Reggiano). Morin understands the import: “It all starts with the milk, and the care we show the cheese as we make it.”
Treizième Apôtre is especially versatile: a terrific table cheese and great in cooking as well. It’s got hints of hazelnut and a lovely clean finish that make it intriguing to fans of artisan cheese and a nice offering to novices as well. It melts beautifully in a grilled cheese or a raclette. Melt it over potatoes or grate some on gnocchi. I often just eat it as is, or with some True North Bread from the Bakehouse, a bit of Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter, and some fresh fruit on the side!
Given the situation with American-Canadian trade at this time, supplies are somewhat limited. Swing by soon and grab a wedge to bring home for you and yours! Bon appetit!
Try the Treizième
An exceptionally easy dish to prepare and enjoy
If you read what I write regularly, you won’t be surprised to hear me say that the flavor of this dish depends wholly on the quality of the ingredients. They, too, have to be true to themselves. If you like tinned fish, this recipe is a super-simple, really delicious, and very versatile option for your menu at home. The prepared dish can be an appetizer or a main course for either lunch or dinner. I like it at room temperature, but it’s also great heated up.
To make the dish, I start with the following:
- A jar of El Navarrico beans from the Basque Country. They’re cooked, ready to consume, and so tasty that I have eaten them straight out of the jar with little more than salt and pepper and some olive oil. We have two varieties at the Deli. Alubias are smaller white beans, and Judion are big butter beans. Both are tender and terrific!
- A jar of El Navarrico roasted Piquillo red peppers, also from the Basque Country. These small, triangular peppers have been unique to the region for a few hundred years. Other places have started to grow them, too, but they’re not as good! The Basque peppers are so special that they have a Denomination of Origin label on them! They’re smoked over beechwood and peeled by hand—skilled staff wipe the roasted black skin off with small white cloths.
- A tin of top-notch sardines. Ortiz from the Basque Country in Spain would be my top pick, but we have a whole array of amazing offerings on hand at the Deli. All would work well in this dish.
- Full-flavored extra virgin olive oil.
To put the dish together, make sure all of the ingredients are at room temperature. Spoon the beans onto a large plate or a series of small ones. Chop the peppers coarsely and sprinkle them over the beans. Lay the sardines over the top. Pour a fair bit of extra virgin olive oil on top, too.
From there, the options are almost endless. Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper are my go-tos. If you like garlic, add slivers of the fresh stuff to the mix. A handful of chopped fresh herbs would be a nice touch, as would caramelized onion or fennel—or both, if you’d like. A sprinkle of Pimenton de la Vera, the oak-smoked Spanish paprika, is tasty, too! Serve with a lemon wedge on the side.
The smooth texture of the beans, the luscious meatiness of the sardines, the hint of smoke and slight spice of the peppers, and the fruitiness of the olive oil are a super combination. Serve with some good Bakehouse bread (preferably warmed so it soaks up the juices on the plate). If you’re a big bread eater like I am, consider toasting a thick slice of Paesano or Rustic Italian and then putting the beans and the rest on top of it—a beautiful Basque version of British beans on toast!