All About The Crunch

The Mayflower Inn is a destination of sorts in Washington, Connecticut—in the hills of Litchfield County. It has lately undergone a renovation and re-styling, and its restaurants have been revamped by chef April Bloomfield. Before all that, though, the Mayflower was a quietly upscale, slightly stuffy New England Inn where we would go for the occasional brunch on Mother’s Day or for a birthday dinner. In spring and summer, its best feature was the formal garden you could wander, getting lost in the boxwood mazes and stumbling upon Shakespearean quotes among the flowers. In colder months, a visit was guaranteed maximum coziness thanks to intimate little libraries and sitting rooms where you could take a glass of wine, commandeer your own personal fireplace, play a game of chess with your kid.

When Ben and I were married, many moons ago, a lovely bridesmaids’ luncheon was thrown for me at the Mayflower by my godmother and her daughter, and we most certainly had the Bibb Salad to start, because there was a time when that was the iconic salad at the Mayflower. A bit of a 90’s throwback, the dish was notable for its perfect balance of flavors and crunch: soft lettuce leaves, blue cheese, diced tomatoes, and crispy shallots. That’s it. (A journey into the internet’s memory tells me it was also dressed with truffle oil vinaigrette, but nooooo that can’t be, I’ve already overwritten that part.)

That salad was always, first and foremost, about the crispy shallots, and after receiving a huge order of shallots from OurHarvest recently*, I’ve become re-obsessed with their sweet, sublime crunch. If crunch were a food group, crispy shallots would give bacon bits some stiff competition. They are outstanding on any salad and even more so on Vietnamese noodle dishes, as a mix-in for a sour cream-based dip, a topping for your most decadent mac-n-cheese. A plus is that they are vegan so make a fine substitute for crumbled bacon on many plant-based things.

In the process of re-working this beloved salad recipe I tested out different techniques for making the crispy shallots. I tried the deep-fry method, where you heat the oil to a high temperature first and then let the shallots frizzle in it. It’s fast but also stressful, due to the vigilance needed to keep the shallots from burning. Another method—found on Bon Appétit and other sites—is to cover the shallots with a quantity of oil, adding both to the pan at the same time and cooking in a longer, more controlled manner. I was worried at first this would yield oil-sodden shallots, but my fears were allayed by a batch of perfectly browned and sweet little frizzles, which magically crisp up as they drain on paper towels. This is now my method of choice. Something I highly recommend if you are making this is using a mandoline to slice the shallots. They allow for even thickness, which translates to even cooking (i.e., you won’t have bitter burnt pieces mixed in with undercooked ones). If you’re not using a mandoline, just slice as evenly as you can. Instructions, plus the salad recipe, are below.

The Mayflower Salad lives on

Crispy Shallots

Adapted from Bon Appétit

• 1 cup or a bit more of vegetable oil (grapeseed, canola, refined sunflower all work)

• 3-4 large shallots, peeled, sliced crosswise to the approximate thickness of a dime

• Salt

Set up a tray covered with a couple of layers of paper towels. In a high-sided skillet or saute pan, put shallots covered in oil and turn heat on to medium high. Stir the shallots around with a fork to separate the rings. The shallots will cook slowly and begin to take on a golden color; once they do, watch them carefully and remove once they are golden brown—around 20-25 minutes. Pour the shallots and oil through a strainer with a bowl underneath to catch the oil. Allow to drain for a minute or two, and then spread shallots onto the paper towels and sprinkle with salt. They will crisp up after a few minutes. Store in a sealed container for a couple of days.

Reserve strained oil—which is now toasted shallot oil—for dressings and stir-fries.

Mayflower Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch Boston Lettuce, Bibb Lettuce or Butter Lettuce, washed and patted dry (keep leaves whole)

• 1 medium tomato, diced, excess seeds and goo removed

• Blue Cheese, crumbled (Bleu d’Auvergne or Arethusa Farms Blue both work great)

• Crispy Shallots

• Tarragon vinaigrette (below) or other basic vinaigrette

• Salt and Pepper to Taste

Instructions:

Assemble Salad as you like! Toss greens and tomatoes with a couple of tablespoons of vinaigrette then scatter blue cheese and shallots on top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Tarragon Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

• 1/2 tsp. honey or agave, or a pinch of sugar

• 1 tsp. Dijon mustard

• 2 TBS tarragon vinegar or just white wine vinegar (I make my own tarragon vinegar by inserting a clean bunch of fresh tarragon into a bottle of white wine vinegar and letting it infuse indefinitely).

• 1/4 cup oil: grapeseed oil, olive oil, a mix, or your choice of neutral oil

• Salt and pepper

Instructions:

Whisk together honey, mustard, and vinegar to blend. Slowly whisk in oil until it’s evenly blended. Season with a pinch of salt and a couple cranks of pepper to taste.

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*OurHarvest, the source for the shallots I used, is an online farmer’s market and grocery that delivers to NYC, Long Island, and Southern Connecticut. You can use the code SHALLOT to get 25% off your first order plus free delivery…or just follow this link.

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The Hamover

The star of my childhood Christmases was a ham I refused to eat. I’m not talking about the honey-baked variety or the pineapple-and-maraschino studded roasts that beckon from soft-focus holiday ads. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, they’re just not real hams. They’re not Virginia hams—a regional specialty that people who have lived in certain parts of the state know well.

The ham I speak of is a country ham that has undergone a months-long curing and smoking process and, if done properly, is a smoky, nutty, salty delicacy that gets sliced paper thin and practically melts on the tongue. In my opinion—and my opinion is not unique—the best way to enjoy it is to bake heaps of small buttermilk biscuits, cut them in half crossways, spread each side thick with butter, then lay either a thin slice or minced shards of ham in between the biscuit halves, and make yourself a delightful little sandwich. Or two. Or five dozen.

This type of ham is a form of charcuterie dating back to 17th century Virginia, when English newcomers found that hogs thrived in the pine and poplar forests where they could shelter from the summer sun and fatten themselves on acorns in the fall. Later, Virginia pigs enjoyed a diet of peanuts long before they became a popular American snack (tangent: peanuts are native to South America but zigzagged across the globe and reached North America via slave ships from Africa—as did many of the finest “Southern” ingredients). In the Virginia Tidewater, country ham quickly became a staple not only because of its deliciousness, but because pigs were plentiful, and curing and smoking the well-padded hind legs was a way to preserve the meat year-round. Similarly iconic hams from Parma, Italy and Serrano, Spain are close cousins, though they bear the distinctive marks of regional terroir and technique.

When I was growing up, Virginia country hams were commonly referred to as Smithfield hams, after the town near the Chesapeake Bay that was long the epicenter of ham production in Virginia. Unfortunately, the megacorporation that now bears that name was purchased by overseas investors and became infamous for environmental and safety issues. The best hams now come from family producers that have stayed small and adhered to traditional techniques. Edwards makes a very fine ham, as does Nancy “The Ham Lady” Newsom in Kentucky (yes, neighboring states make wonderful country hams, as well).

My father worshiped at the altar of the Virginia ham and mail-ordered one every year, several months in advance of Christmas. It would arrive at our home in Alexandria in a handsome cloth sack, artisanally mummified, its skin stretched taut and maroonish. But because Dad always had to take things a step further, he would embark on an additional ripening period himself. In our basement.

A quick side tour of this basement, which even now, years after my father’s passing, remains a strange, chaotic shrine to him. The house is old, and its sublevel was always meant to be an unfinished space that is home to the furnace and washing machine and other mechanics. The concrete floor becomes a riverbed every time it rains, and there’s no stopping it, so you just go with it and step over the waters. The ceiling was once crisscrossed with a network of asbestos-lined pipes, but when in the 80’s the city of Alexandria mandated expensive remediation, Dad donned an N95 mask and ripped out the friable asbestos casings with his own hands (no he was not a professional contractor—he was an ad man).

Apart from the nuts and bolts of the basement, it has a back room that was and still is a cabinet of curiosities of all things Dad: gym, art studio, wine cellar, time capsule. The first thing you see is a weight machine and a treadmill, on which he used to take leisurely strolls while watching 60 Minutes and sipping a glass of wine, a pair of beat-up leather topsiders on his feet. Staring out from behind the workout equipment is a ginormous, 80’s era photograph of himself that was presented upon his retirement; it still makes me jump every time I walk in there. Opposite the workout equipment is an analog TV propped up on a long, paint splattered workbench strewn with crusty brushes and tubes of paint, canvases and colonial-era nails and leaking cans of mineral spirits.

But of all the rare and imperfect gems that basement holds, its crown jewel is the wine cellar: a space of barely 50 square feet that contains multitudes. Wine was one of Dad’s many hobbies, and soon after we moved into the house he enclosed the back quadrant with drywall to create a hermetically sealed, climate controlled chamber lined with wooden racks, laid with threadbare oriental rugs, and lit with a brass chandelier. A deep and mysterious recess in the rear brick wall—one of those quirks of old houses—was put into service as “The Port Hole” and stored bottles of vintage port for friends. At one point, while browsing in a French flea market, Dad stumbled upon what just might have been the original lock to the Bastille—a baronial oak and iron contraption with a key the size of fireplace poker. He bought it for nothing, lugged the hefty rig home in his suitcase, and mounted it onto the cellar’s aluminum Home Depot entry door, which he painted a high-gloss crimson. He built the room 100% by himself, and it was his man cave extraordinaire. Over the years he collected wine and oenological paraphernalia: antique corkscrews and silver wine tasters, decanters and framed posters from his friend Mark’s wine bar, Willi’s, in Paris. Wooden wine crates piled up outside the door like cubist snowdrifts and no doubt made a cozy nesting spot for several generations of mice. For additional ambience he wired speakers down there that usually blasted classical music but which in August of 1997, while I happened to be visiting, delivered the unforgettable news that Princess Diana had been killed.

From the ceiling near the Port Hole hung an ancient iron “S” with a wicked sharp point; this was the ham hook. The wine cellar apparently provided the ideal environment for a ham to age, and so it did, each year for several months. As it mellowed, it lazily dripped an oily, iridescent fluid onto the floor, adding to the general patina of the room. And whatever mass the ham lost in moisture it more than replaced in mold. A marbled moldscape of fuzzy white, blue, and green grew on the exterior, cloaking the ham thickly. Sometimes, while hosting playdates, I would lead an unsuspecting friend down for a tour of the musty and mood-lit basement: through clanking pipes, past retired Halloween props and the realistic rubber rat that Mom placed among wine racks for kicks, and ending with a flourish at the ghoulish ham swaying on its hook. No one ever believed me that it was destined to be consumed.

But consumed it was, every December, after an intense soaking and scrubbing in the slop sink of our laundry room. I can’t vouch that any part of the process, or in fact anything about the basement, would pass health inspection, but after a day or two the ham would ascend spotless into the kitchen above after going a few rounds with a wire brush.

The ham cleaned up pretty nicely, and after more soaking, boiling, and a final baking, it was ready for showtime at our Christmas day open house, sliced with a surgically sharp carving knife on a silver platter with a host of flaky biscuits waiting to envelope it. I never could bring myself to eat any, as its sordid basement past was burned in my mind’s eye. I hung back slyly as the grownups clustered around the sideboard, cramming ham slices into biscuits, loading up plates of seconds, washing it all down with wine as they chatted and laughed excitedly. I thought to myself as I watched them: “Oh, you have noooo idea.”  

But it was I who had no idea. No idea that some of the best things are touched and shaped by time and mold and rot. That while the grownups really were digging the ham, they were mostly in it for the company. I got it years later, when removed from Virginia and—maybe sentimental, maybe curious—began incorporating ham biscuits into my own family’s Christmas tradition. At first, I bought it sliced to order from the excellent and sorely missed Stinky cheese shop, where you could get different kinds of ham carved by the pound. Later, I started mail-ordering entire hams that were larger than any of my babies at birth (which is saying something). We had to have a few people over to help eat the ham, and those few people became more, and the vibe really got quite merry because the thing about eating salty ham is that it makes you thirsty, and then you drink whatever is in your hand to slake the thirst, then eat more ham, refill the glass, and so on. Our friend Tim coined the term for what happens the next day: a Hamover.

A few years ago, I think it was the year Dad died, we reluctantly let this tradition slide because, honestly, it just felt too overwhelming; quiet and order were the balm that was needed in the holiday leadup. We stopped ordering a whole ham because there would be no one to help us eat it, and our home was empty of the familiar briny, primal scent of the ham soaking and simmering on the stove: a smell, it took me many years to realize, I had always connected with the holidays. This year, in our small merry pod, we will probably make a batch of sausage rolls: a tradition from my husband, Ben’s English family. They’re a delicious substitute, but they’re not quite the same.

It’s common to talk about 2020 in terms of things we’ve lost, and it’s true we’ve lost so much—some of it irreplaceable. But I also like to remind myself of what we have gained, and for me it’s a deepened appreciation for those things that were so easy to take for granted before: hugging our parents, laughing around a close table, seeing each other’s smiles, having enough people over to make nice work of a Virginia ham until all that remains is the hock and the promise of a big batch of smoky split pea soup on new year’s day. May 2021 be the year we can enjoy those things once again with renewed gratitude. May 2021 bring the Hamover back.

Seeds of Change

Dan Barber and the Rise of the Honeynut Squash

Dan Barber has a thing for seeds. He was nerding out about them on a recent Saturday at the Food Tank Summit, a conference aimed at bringing together some of the biggest leaders in food to discuss the problems and possible solutions of today’s troubled food system. Barber sat down onstage with journalist Jeff Gordinier as among the last but surely most anticipated speakers at the summit.

The Chef

Dan Barber made his name as a chef—first at Blue Hill restaurant in New York City, then presiding over the kitchen and fields at the idyllic Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, NY. His restaurants collectively hold three Michelin stars and he appears in the hit Netflix series Chef’s Table, but he’s also passionate about agriculture, biodiversity, and breeding more flavorful crops. That’s what led him to urge Michael Mazourek to develop the pint-sized, big-flavored honeynut squash—the vegetable that kicked off the conversation at his Food Tank panel.

The Breeder

Mazourek, a vegetable breeder at Cornell university, was visiting the kitchen at Stone Barns in 2009 when Barber challenged him: “why don’t you breed a butternut that tastes good?” His gripe was that the butternut, that voluptuous, khaki-colored staple of supermarket shelves, was watery and disappointingly bland. Flash forward to 2015. Working with Barber, Mazourek had developed and brought to market the honeynut: a shrunken-down, concentrated version of the butternut. The honeynut’s tan skin conceals a brilliant orange flesh so sweet and flavorful it needs no embellishment in the roasting—plus it’s lighter in water and richer in beta carotene than butternut squash.

A Tasty New Variety

The honeynut’s rise has been precipitous. They’ve carved out a presence at Whole Foods and Costco. On a recent Wednesday at Union Square farmers market, nearly every squash-growing farm displayed the cute cucurbits. According to Barber at Food Tank, Blue Apron this year purchased 2.3 million pounds of them for its meal kits—up from 1.89 pounds in 2017.

Subversion Through Seeds

But it’s not just about the taste, it’s political too. Out of the honeynut’s success Barber, Mazourek, and seedsman Matthew Goldfarb launched the company Row 7 last year. Their website’s homepage announces “A Seed Company Dedicated to Deliciousness,” but as Barber explained at the conference, it’s also dedicated to disrupting the status quo. Today, consumers and chefs have access to far fewer varieties than in the past, and those that dominate the market have been mostly bred for efficiency in yield and transportability—not actual flavor. Barber further explained that seed companies are incentivized to breed weak plants that need lots of inputs to thrive—not so great on the gustatory or environmental fronts. Mega corporations in large part control what gets to consumers, and according to Barber, “Big seed and big chemical are the same thing.” It’s all part of the industrialization of our food.

By nurturing collaborations between seed growers and chefs, Barber stated that his goal is to “upend the idea that [big agribusiness] can dictate and own the seeds.”

Gordinier chimed in: “Seeds are punk rock.”

Roasted Honeynut Squash with Mascarpone-Maple Cream and Brown Butter Toasted Seeds

Interview with Michèle Kim of La Petite Occasion

Michèle Kim’s station wagon trunk is crammed, crate on crate, with macoun apples. Macouns, she tells me, are her crisp go-to for caramel apples, which she is in the thick of producing for her company, La Petite Occasion—also a purveyor of caramel candies, toffees, and other confections. We meet in the parking lot of Arethusa al Mano, a café in Bantam, CT whose flagship dairy is across the street. Michèle has just picked up her haul of apples from the orchard and intends to sample Arethusa’s dairy products as potential ingredients for her candies. In between errands, we sit down for coffee and talk grilled cheese, bodybuilding, CBD, and of course candy-making.

Hey Michèle, what’s in season now?

Right now, apples are in season, so we make a wonderful apple cider caramel that uses reduced cider from an orchard called Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard in North Salem, New York. We also, for the farmers’ markets and the orchard, make caramel apples…300-400 caramel apples a week for this particular orchard.

What is your earliest food memory?

Probably the open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches that my mother used to make with gruyère cheese. Sounds totally mainstream now, but I grew up outside of Detroit, so gruyère cheese was not mainstream at the time. However, I’m half Swiss, so my mother remembered the wonderful nutty flavors of gruyère. I was probably one of the most popular kids in the area because it was something new and different. Kids in the mid-70’s didn’t usually have (that).

How do your early food memories and experiences inform your company and what you make now?

I have a very European sensibility. The whole small batch, small producer, small product is just kind of ingrained in me. Even though we went to grocery stores and did the mainstream stuff, our small batch products are definitely created from my memories as a kid.

Where did you learn the art of confection?

The very first step was definitely in culinary school. I went to the Institute of Culinary Education—which started as Peter Kump’s. I remember making truffles, and the pastry chef was incensed because I was always covered in chocolate, and as we know the art of confection is supposed to be very neat and exact. I was diving in! Chocolate, all the way.

And then professionally?

I continued to expand my knowledge of confections when I worked at Eleven Madison Park for chef Nicole Kaplan in 2000 until the beginning of 2001, and I worked in pastry, so I made toffee, and I helped her with ganache, and we made caramels and just everything. I personally found at the time that I just was more interested—and I have to say better—at doing candy than dealing with gluten. Gluten and I don’t get along, we are just not friends, we don’t work together well. But me and sugar, well that’s a completely different thing. I always had a sweet tooth.

You spoke earlier about seeking out local ingredients. How has your relationship with your suppliers evolved over the life of your business?

In culinary school (in 2000) we were introduced to the Slow Food movement. Back to my childhood, it reminded me of when I would go to Switzerland to visit my father, how he would have a little shop for everything. He would get dairy one place, he would get beef another place, he had a relationship with all these small shops, he knew the owners. My great-aunt actually owned her own restaurant in a little town called Colombier, in Switzerland. So all of that adds together to form this desire to become more locally connected with small-batch producers in Westchester, Dutchess County, Putnam County. When we moved up (from New York City to Mahopac) it was great, and immediately it just kind of clicked together. Probably my closest relationship with a dairy producer is with Hudson Valley Fresh, a co-op of 10 farms in the Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley area. Literally the cows are milked, it’s pasteurized and homogenized, put on the truck, the truck delivers it to the main facility, it’s bottled, then put on the delivery trucks and then we get it, so it’s a really fast process, and it’s just extremely fresh. I love that. I love the fact that every single batch we make is a little different based on what the cow’s been eating that day. I call myself a candy farmer because I believe that we literally use so many local farm ingredients that we kind of farm our candy! 

What has it been like selling at farmers’ markets?

In the fall and the winter especially, we sell our caramels at a different farmers’ market each weekend. And because we’re not at the same spot more than once a month, our sales do really well. Because we’ve developed a following, they’re waiting for us. And we have a wonderful relationship with the other vendors at the market. We trade caramels for cheese, and greens, and produce, and amazing bread like Wave Hill Bread in Connecticut. It works really nicely.

Part of your identity is small batch. Do you ever think of scaling up?

I would like to continue being small batch but scale up, which sounds crazy, but I think that one issue that a lot of people like myself have is that when they start getting bigger they lose a little bit of that personality in their product. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve stayed small, because I refuse to do that. One thing is that our caramels have no stabilizers in them at all. I’ve always wanted to have a caramel that is literally a five-ingredient base, and we’ve been able to do that. However, once you get into distribution and you’re starting to ship West Coast, or even mid-country, it gets tricky, so my goal right now is just permeate New York State. Right now, I just want to make sure that whatever we do, we can maintain the integrity of our product. 

Just for example, today, I am shipping a care package to a body builder! A female body builder in Gilbert, Arizona. People who are really into fitness, they want clean ingredients, they want something that’s simple, they want something that’s five ingredients. So it’ll be interesting to see how that package holds up shipping to a state where it’s 90 degrees right now.

How did you link up to a bodybuilder in Arizona?

Harvest Moon Orchard, who provides us with the apples (and) apple cider…the sister of the manager is a fitness nut, and she started to get into bodybuilding. After her first competition I sent her a little care package. Well, she took this great photo in her bikini, onstage, eating a caramel and it was awesome, so all these people started to follow us that were in that fitness world, so that’s how that started. It’s really strange how all these things are interconnected.

On another wellness note, can you describe a bit about the new product that you’re developing?

Well, right now, we’re testing only; we’re working with a local hemp oil manufacturer that is based upstate. I’m not putting out their name because they haven’t launched yet. We’re testing an organic, vegan caramel. We’ve had a couple people test it, and so far it’s going well. Right now, New York State is very strict; you are not allowed to sell CBD (cannabidiol) food products and that’s actually an FDA thing, so once the FDA gets everything all set up, then we’ll be ready to go. Right now, we’re just preparing, we have no idea when this is going to be—it could be in a year, or it could be five. But a lot of states, especially Kentucky, are really pushing to get FDA approval for edibles—and that is hemp edibles, not cannabis. It’s different! Hemp does not have THC, or it has extremely small quantities.

Food production tends to be repetitive, and at times monotonous. Do you have any tricks to get through a big order?

I actually prefer the bigger batches, because it’s easier to focus when you have a large order. Normally each batch that we produce is about seven pounds. A couple years ago, we had a tasting box company use our caramels. This is the largest we’ve ever done: approximately 8000 pieces. That takes about a week to do. So we hire extra people to help cut and wrap. The production itself I don’t mind, but to actually pack it up, that’s the monotonous, horrible part. I hate packaging! I am very lucky because I have a woman who works with me who is very into that, and she literally produces the same amount as like two people, and she’s English and so she’s always got some funny, salty comment, so it’s great, it keeps everything interesting.

Any playlists or podcasts you use during production?

There are very few people who can talk and work at the same time. When (I) get music involved it’s basically my way of saying “shut up and focus,” but in a nice way. Keeps the energy going and most people like that.

How do you get new ideas and inspiration for your products?

I’m married to a copywriter who runs a small ad agency, so he’s throwing stuff out there all the time, so it’s not very difficult to get new ideas. It’s more of me picking from his giant list of ideas what I think is going to be appropriate.

How do you maintain the same enthusiasm you had when you first started La Petite Occasion?

I just really enjoy what I do, and I think one thing that I realized about myself, I am a perpetual tweaker, so I’m constantly trying to perfect the recipe, I’m always trying to change it. We now have a small distributor, so we have our products out there, which is a great thing for me, because it’s like oh good, now I get to tweak it, again, so it has the appropriate shelf life, because now we’ve got it going on trucks and stuff. I love to constantly update the product and try and make it better and more sustainable all the time. It can be exhausting, but that’s what I enjoy doing. So as long as I can do that I’m great, I’m happy.

Find Michèle online and order her products at lapetiteoccasion.com

Instagram: @lapetiteoccasion; Facebook: La Petite Occasion; Twitter: @Chefmlkim