Amazing artisan offering from the Italian Dolomites at the Deli

One of my favorites from the many great vinegars we have at the Deli is probably among the least known. It’s not that surprising—very few folks walk around Ann Arbor, angsting that they haven’t been able to score some quince vinegar. If I can convince enough vinegar lovers to try this one though, that could all change! This exceptional naturally converted, barrel-aged quince vinegar from northern Italy is something truly special!

Food writer Faith Durand wrote, “Quince is a tough fruit, not well known, and often hard to come by. But it has the most amazing, sweet, and secret reward.” This vinegar is one of the best ways I know to access that reward, one that takes no work at all on our end. The labor that goes into this is all done in northern Italy, in the region of the Alto Adige by the folks at the acetaia (vinegar maker) Pojer e Sandri. I think all of their vinegars are amazing, but I can’t seem to get this quince vinegar out of my mind over the last few months. Or off our counter at home. There’s something so elegant, so exceptional, so light, but still so lovely, about it that I’ve been putting it on pretty much every salad I make of late.

Fiorentino Pojer and Marco Sandri have been making vinegar in the Trentino region of Italy since the mid-’70s. They do what they do with dignity for their raw materials, the region they come from, their products, and the people they work with. For their wine vinegar, they use the not-well-known, but really wonderful regional varietal grapes. Their fruit vinegars—like this one—are made solely from fruit. Most ‘fruit vinegars’ on the market are made by mixing wine vinegar with fruit extract. But as Michael Harlan Turkell wrote in his terrific book, Acid Trip, “The best vinegars are made from the best ingredients.” In that spirit, Pojer e Sandri uses local fruit to make fruit wine, the way it’s been done for centuries, then converts that over a period of 18-24 months to vinegar using old-style, natural-conversion methods. The juice is placed in oak, cherry, or acacia barrels to acetify for up to 2 years before bottling.

Rolando Beramendi, friend and importer of amazing artisan Italian foods (of which Rustichella pasta is probably the most famous) for almost 40 years now, shared this from his apartment in Florence:

I can’t think of a better vinegar to welcome Autumn than quince vinegar… especially splashed all over the Thanksgiving turkey! I used it last week when I taught a cooking class for a group of wonderful people I co-hosted with our wonderful mutual friend Miss E! (Elizabeth Minchilli!) I used it in making the recipe in my book Autentico “Cipolline in Agrodolce” Sweet and Sour Cipolline (Page 302). I’ve been using the quince vinegar instead of white wine vinegar because I think it gives it another dimension… sweeter, softer, gentler, and a flavor that not many people are familiar with. 

I think the vinegar is especially perfect for everything with onions! I love it on stewed caramelized onions, on a simple onion salad. I love it on even pork roast, a drizzle before serving it! It tones down the acidity and it’s not a sweet stupor as balsamic does, especially the ones used in salads. The other day I made a nice mixed green salad and used Fuji persimmons sliced very thin. I cut the persimmons thin and then marinate them in the quince vinegar, a touch of great olive oil, and salt and pepper… delish! I have also sneaked a few drops on crema gelato… YUM!

The quince vinegar has been very good on every sort of salad I’ve tried it on, and is particularly wonderful with blue cheese or walnuts. It’s super nice as a deglaze for scallops. A little bit sprinkled into a bean salad adds a bit of brightness and sweetness. It also enlivens any apple pie, salad dressing, or fruit salad. In fact, I’ve been sipping it a fair bit straight from the bottle—it’s that good!

Bag your bottle

A rare treat pops up at the Deli

One of the Deli’s most delicious treasures comes in a modest, two-inch-tall jar—so unassuming that most people are likely to walk right past it. Still, there it sits on the retail shelves, a short, squat little glass bottle, holding some of the most incredible roasted peppers you’ll find anywhere. If you’re like 99.7 percent of Americans who haven’t yet tasted Cristal (pronounced “kree-STAHL”) peppers from Spain’s Basque Country, consider this your invitation to explore. If you enjoy roasted peppers even a fraction as much as I do, it’s worth it to treat yourself to these deep, dark-red jewels. They’re a special treat that might just elevate your day. I’ve been known to finish off the entire jar in one sitting!

Oddly enough, I actually discovered these for the first time about 25 years ago when I was in, of all places, Australia. I’d never heard of Cristal peppers, even though we’d been buying from the supplier for something like years! Piquillo peppers had become pretty popular but I’d no idea that Cristals existed. Even in Spain, the Cristals are hard to come by.

Although they come from the same area (Navarre), the Cristal is a completely different pepper from the Piquillo. In their fresh state, the Cristal peppers are actually larger, with four little bumpy points up at the top. After being picked each autumn, they’re roasted over beechwood as they have been for many centuries. “Everyone makes Piquillos,” one local told me. “But only a few do the Cristals.” Their high cost is, not surprisingly, tied to the rarity of the pepper, and even more especially so, to the labor involved in preparing them. “When it’s roasted the flesh is so thin it’s like paper,” my source said. “We use tiny little knives to scrape the skins off.” And it’s a lot of scraping—each little jar contains an entire kilo (over two pounds!) of raw red peppers.

To get to the heart of the matter, the Cristals are super rich and delicious. When you take one or two out of the jar to eat, the rest look a bit like a deep red rose in a bottle. I like to empty the bottle into a white bowl (the better to appreciate their color), sprinkle on a pinch of fleur de sel and some great black pepper, and drizzle a bit of olive oil. Try it with Marqués de Valdueza oil from further west in Spain, or with some of that inspiringly good Navarino Icons oil I wrote about last week from the southwest of Greece. Put them on slices of toasted Farm bread if you like. Or add them to softly scrambled eggs. They are great with the Detroit St. Brick cheese that the Creamery crafts so carefully. That’s it. You could also just eat them right out of the jar with a loaf of warm Paesano bread alongside to tear pieces off of. They’re smoky, rich, and buttery. Something special to grace any table.

Pop open some Cristal (peppers)

Newly Arrived Olive Oil from Western Greece

Captain Vassilis Constantakopoulos was born in 1935 in the small village Diavolitsi in Messenia in the southwest of Greece—due north of the town of Kalamata, and due east of the island of Sicily that I wrote about last week. As a young man, he was forced to flee the village for Athens during the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s. From the port of Piraeus in Athens, he went out to sea for the first time at the age of 13. Constantakopoulos quickly fell in love with the ocean. He went on to become a leading Greek businessman, most of his work centering around shipping, sailing, and the seacoast. Navarino was one of the capstones of his long and creative career. It’s the leading sustainable resort on the Mediterranean. That commitment to the environment is at the center of their work. They reduced carbon emissions by 80% between 2019 and 2022 and they devote almost 10% of their annual spending to making ecological improvements in all facets of the work.

The Navarino Icons segment of their work is very aligned with our longtime focus here at Zingerman’s on full-flavored and traditional foods. Offering, as they say, “Authentic food products inspired by the culinary history of the Peloponnese region” they are true to Captain Constantakopoulos’ hope to honor the kind of simple and delicious country dishes he grew up on. All are made using regional recipes and local ingredients. We’ve carried many of their products over the years, and each has been excellent.

Last month, we scored some of their limited-edition, single-estate extra virgin olive oil. It’s made from the beloved, native-to-Greece, Koroneiki olives. The trees are farmed organically, without any chemicals. All the olives are hand-picked, which is super labor-intensive and very costly but makes for exceptional oil. They are then pressed within two hours at a local mill—the impressively short time between the tree and pressing is a significant contributor to keeping the oil’s quality so high. The flavor is fantastic. Big, bold, and peppery, but not overpowering. I’m impressed anew each time I eat it.

Our wonderful longtime importer, Vivianna Karamanis of Hellenic Imports, is the one who makes it possible for us to get this special oil. She shared that “the project has hired the local community and the local, family producers, giving them work and building a community and almost like a security for them by packaging and selling these great traditional foods.”

The oil is terrific on toast, and great on the many autumn salad greens at the market right now. I used it the other evening to finish a dish of Mancini spaghetti, sautéed radish greens, and Fishwife anchovies. I added a bit of the IASA pepperoncino as well! Great on sautéed fresh fish—swordfish is still in season, and would be fantastic. It would be great, as well, in my friend Aglaia Kremezi’s classic Potato and Olive stew.

Nab your Navarino

Made in Milwaukee since 1880

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a piece by Dan Berry that ran with the title, “Farewell to a Lost Love of Lunches Past: Liverwurst.” The headline was sad, but in truth, caught me by surprise. Barry writes that his beloved liverwurst “is disappearing right in front of me.” As is so often the case, the perspective from New York is not exactly holistic. If you live here in Ann Arbor you can just walk into the Deli pretty much any day of the week and find plenty of wonderful Usinger’s liverwurst displayed front and center in the specialty foods meat case. If you live out of town, we’re happy to ship you some as soon as you order it!

Going back to the first few months of 1982, I’d read about Usinger’s as we were getting ready to open our doors. Back before the web, research was a lot more challenging, but nevertheless we were determined to assemble the best possible selection of full-flavored and traditional foods. All signs seemed to point to Usinger’s being pretty terrific. “The best in the country,” many said. The week we opened, the New York Times ran a piece by renowned food writer Mimi Sheraton about her search for high-quality liverwurst. After looking nationwide but finding few great products, she’d almost given up. Then she said, she stumbled on Usinger’s:

Made without preservatives and still in natural casings, the varieties produced by this 102-year-old concern in its Milwaukee factory can still be considered gastronomic triumphs.

As you might imagine, I called for samples. The flavor backed up all the advance PR—Usinger’s liverwurst was lovely. Delicious. Down to earth, definitely traditional, and very full flavored. Forty-two years later, Usinger’s stuff is still terrific.

Fred Usinger came to the U.S. in 1880, right around when cream cheese was first being made in upstate New York, from his hometown of Wehen in southern Germany, northwest of Frankfurt. In Milwaukee, Mr. Usinger began making sausage at the butcher shop of Mrs. Julia Gaertner on what was then the high end of Milwaukee’s shopping district. A few years later, he bought the shop from her, changed the name, and it has been Usinger’s ever since.

We regularly stock both Usinger’s Braunschweiger and Hessiche Landleberwurst. The former is the more lightly smoked of the two. Braunschweiger is bigger in size, but milder in flavor. Basically, it’s a pâté in a natural pork casing; a finely ground pork version of chopped liver; it’s just fresh pork liver, pork, onion, beef fat, and spices, smoked lightly over hickory.

Hessiche Landleberwurst, which is listed on our website as “Smoked Liverwurst,” is made of pork, pork liver, pork fat, salt, onions, and spices. It’s “double smoked” in the style of the German state of Hesse, with plenty of good pork fat and a healthy dose of cracked black pepper, and comes in a golden-colored natural casing. Spicier, smokier, and a bit moister than the Braunschweiger, it’s terrific for sandwiches or snacks, for casual picnics, or very fancy get-togethers.

At the Deli we also have Usinger’s Liver Sausage, listed as “Fresh Liverwurst.” The same pork liver and sweet onions but not smoked! All three are amazing!

The natural casings Usinger’s uses are rarely seen these days but are critical to the quality of the finished product. They allow the pork and liver to breathe and smoke to properly penetrate. Same goes for the old school, careful grinding that Usinger’s does. Modern industrial versions extrude the meat leading to a pasty, bitter product.

All of the Usinger’s liverwursts go great on sandwiches with some Swiss mountain cheese, Raye’s yellow mustard (from the last stone mustard mill in the U.S., in Eastport, Maine), and a slice of sweet onion. Great too on the Caraway Rye bread from the Bakehouse with some long-cooked, caramelized onions!

Dan Barry wrote in the Times, “I know, I know. I know that liverwurst is still out there to be found, in some delicatessen display cases … but its gradual vanishing feels like something removed from life’s menu.” Here in Ann Arbor, thanks to the folks at Usinger’s in Milwaukee, great liverwurst is very much alive and well. Maybe I should ship some to Mr. Barry to lift his liverwurst-loving spirits! Or I might suggest he go back to the New York Times pages to the winter of 1997, when another writer in the “paper of record” shared with readers that Usinger’s, though not in New York City, was nevertheless “generally considered to be the Tiffany’s of sausage makers.”

Usinger’s at the Deli

And at Mail Order

Super for your salads at home
and in the Roadhouse pulled pork barbecue

This great apple cider vinegar might well be one of the humblest ingredients we have on hand in the ZCoB. It gets very little attention, and it’s almost never written about in articles, yet its quality contributes quietly to the full flavor and deliciousness of any number of better-known Zingerman’s dishes.

It’s probably been over 30 years now since I tracked down this vinegar. As I was doing the research for the little pamphlet that became “Zingerman’s Guide to Good Vinegar,” I kept reading about how apple cider vinegar was at the core of colonial cooking. It was in every old American cookbook. And yet, when I looked around the modern-day marketplace—filling up as it was with artisan offerings from Europe—I couldn’t find traditionally made cider vinegars. This is, of course, in the days before the internet, so tracking down obscure items took more than two minutes. Eventually, I got the name of Pierre Gingras, a vinegar maker in Montérégie, about 45 minutes to the southwest of Montreal.

Get to Know Gingras

The Gingras family has been doing pretty much everything a vinegar fan would want for over a century. Organically grown apples are hand-picked specifically to be made into vinegar. No windfalls are used; if you hadn’t realized it, the name windfall originally had nothing to do with finance—it’s about fruit that falls from the tree in heavy winds. Windfalls are easy to gather but have been bruised and begin to oxidize immediately thereafter. By contrast, most commercial cider vinegar is made by repressing the “dregs” left behind after a first pressing is done for fresh cider. With the Gingras’ vinegar, it’s just the juice of whole fresh apples that’s used.

The crew of vinegar makers at Gingras use the old-school natural conversion process (known as the Orleans method after the French city on the Loire River). It takes place in what they call “The Founder’s Cellar,” which has 36 very large casks made from French oak, each of which holds 5400 liters. The Gingras Founder’s Cellar is apparently the largest vinegar aging cellar of this sort anywhere on the planet. During the aging, the vinegar is given room to breathe and evaporate out of the wood cask. They mature the vinegar for over a year and it is unpasteurized and unfiltered. Most importantly, it tastes terrifically of apples! In 2017, Vinaigrerie Gingras was bought by the Levasseur family, owners of Au Coeur de la Pomme not far from Montérégie in Frelighsburg, where they have been producing apples and artisan apple cider vinegar for over 30 years. They have diligently continued on with all of Pierre Gingras’ positive vinegar-making practices!

Gingras packs in glass bottles so you can see the natural mother of the vinegar floating inside. It’s a wispy bit of a white cloud that you may—or may not—see in each bottle depending on how the vinegar comes out of the barrels. If you do see it, know that it’s totally edible and actually packs extra enzymes, minerals, and vitamins.

For your own use at home, you’ll find the Gingras vinegar for sale at Zingerman’s Mail Order and on the shelves at the Deli. Here, we use the vast majority of what we buy in the kitchen at the Roadhouse. It’s been the core vinegar in the Eastern North Carolina barbecue at the Roadhouse since we first opened in 2003. With the wonderful new Michigan-raised Red Wattle hogs that the Roadhouse has sourced over the last six weeks or so, the pulled pork has increased in flavor even further still. The Gingras vinegar costs us about 10 times as much as the mass-market commercial cider vinegars that nearly everyone else uses. But it tastes sooooooo much better!

Get your Gingras

Great to eat, no meat, and handmade on the island of Evia

Looking for a lovely confection that’s well suited to the summer heat? I’m happy to report we have a fantastic new arrival from Greece that will fill the bill beautifully! Made to do well in the very hot Aegean climate, dried fig salami is super tasty!

We get them from longtime friend and importer, Vivianna Karamanis at Hellenic Imports. Everything we get from Vivianna is very, very good and these dried fig salami are up there with my favorites. Here’s a bit of the backstory:

My husband Theo loves figs and whenever he was visiting me in the U.S. he would always buy fig cakes, but he really didn’t enjoy the quality or firmness of the product. He would go on and on about the quality of dried Greek figs, specifically from the island of Evia. Upon heading back to Greece, he started researching the local fig farms and their products from Evia. He met with a lady who was making fig salamis by hand with her partner. We worked closely with them, but with a twist. Instead of just a pack of dried figs, we made them into these great salamis.

The woman who works with the figs is based in a small facility in Athens. She controls everything from beginning to end, meaning she visits the farms/farmers on the island and checks the harvest, she works with very specific producers, and it has helped as they commit their harvest to her—many Greek farmers feel most comfortable working that way. She handles the production and oversees the packaging. Despite how popular the product has become for us she still insists on doing most of the product using traditional methods.

We only use figs from the island of Evia which I believe is the key ingredient to the “juiciness and sweetness” of this product. Only simple, raw ingredients are used to make the product making it a high-fiber, healthy snack. There are no added sugars or salts and they are certified by the Non-GMO Project. It makes for the ideal cheese companion.

Evia is the second largest island in Greece, as Vivianna says, “just a bridge away” from Athens. It lies off the country’s east coast, in the Aegean Sea. The figs come from various farms, but they are all grown in and around the town of Kymi on the central east coast of the island. Evia has a long history and has, at various points, been ruled by Athens, the Roman Empire, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and more! Since early in the 15th century, there has been a sizable Albanian population.

We have four of these fantastic, dried fig salami on hand. All are great. The Aleppo pepper with orange is probably my favorite but they’re all fine! Each has a touch of sweetness and a bit of spice and all are excellent!

• Cinnamon + Pistachios
• Aleppo Pepper + Orange Zest
• Almonds + Black Pepper
• Aleppo Pepper + Smoked Paprika

I love them on their own, and they’re beyond terrific on cheese boards—I’ve yet to find a cheese they don’t pair well with. A nice little gift, a great addition to your provisioning for a camping trip, something special to keep on the counter for late-night nibbling, and a wonderful sweet to serve while trying to channel the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers during consensus-seeking meetings.

 Snag this fig salami