Zingerman's Newsletter March-April 2015

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Raw milk, spices, Camp Bacon, Passover and Easter specials, tons of new events and more!

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Content

Don’t worry. We’ve just got so much going on around the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses
that we needed two whole pages to list everything. Find out what’s happening on pages 6 and 7!

An Interview with the Candy Master and Managing Partner at Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory:
Charlie Frank explains what makes great candy great
Ari: Not all candy is the same.  Most Americans have some-

Charlie: The flavors haven’t faded. The textures are what

thing of an emotional sweet/soft spot for all those commercial candies we grew up with.  Is that commercial product really “great candy”?

they are meant to be. Zzang!® bars were born in the pastry
department of the Bakehouse where freshness is everything.

Charlie: Marguerite Wildenhain once said, “A pot without

Eating candy bars right off the line is a flavor experience
not to be missed. We ship directly to our accounts so they
can have it as fresh as possible. I haven’t found a single
distributor willing to take us on because we don’t want our
candy to be warehoused. At the Candy Manufactory we do
not use ingredients solely to extend shelf life or make a
distributor’s job easy at the expense of flavor.

a soul is just clay around a hole.” Candy—hard confectionary—is entering its renaissance. To be “great,” food needs
to be crafted according to tradition and made with great
ingredients. Candy made by the billions can’t be great. At
the large companies, the focus is on mega profits alone.
Their product has no soul. It is empty. Sweet, but otherwise
flavorless. I think those Goliath corporations are banking
a lot on nostalgia. All they can come up with now is more
fancy packaging. Great candy can have fancy packaging,
but fancy packaging does not make great candy. Tradition,
taste and care all together equal great candy. Great candy
should be inspiring. It should speak to you on many, many
levels. Not just on a singular memory.

Ari: What is the difference between commercial candy and
an artisan offering like what you make?

Charlie: One is produced by a machine. The other is made
with human hands guided by a creative and caring mind. It
is mechanized profit versus craftsmanship. Artisanal candy
has a lot more flavor going on. Our candy isn’t just sweet—
it tastes good! The flavors deliver a lasting impression. The
freshness delivers a great eating experience. Yes, it means
putting in more time and effort and sourcing great ingredients like Charles Poirier’s cane syrup in the Poirier Poppers. He takes so much care crafting traditional cane syrup
in Louisiana with a method that has been all but lost to
mass production. But his labor pays off in the flavor of his
syrup and then in the flavor of the candy we make with it.

Ari: Charles’ cane syrup IS amazing! He grows the cane,
cuts the cane, mills it, and boils the juice himself to make
the syrup. People can get the syrup at the Deli. But you’ve
also been making an incredible filled chocolate with it, the
Poirier Poppers, and selling them at the Zingerman’s Coffee Company on Plaza Drive. Food writer John T. Edge tried
them and said, “those Poirier bonbons . . . may be the best
sweet burst of flavor I’ve ever tasted.”

Charlie: Charles’ cane syrup is so good I really didn’t want
to do anything more than “package” it in chocolate.

Ari: Zingerman’s Candy started out with the Zzang!® Candy
Bar and that’s still sort of at the core of what you do. Tell
us about those.

Charlie: They’re all made by hand and, just as importantly, made to order. There aren’t tons of bars lying around
waiting to be sold. When a retailer orders from us we start
making the bars. I think very few people have ever had a
fresh candy bar, but there’s a huge difference in flavor so
we make all our candy to be sold fresh, not after months
and months of sitting on a shelf.

Ari: I’ve rarely heard anyone talk about the importance
of freshness in candy. It seems like the quiet secret of the
candy world? What’s so different about it?

Ari: Can you walk folks through all the steps that go into
making a Zzang!® Bar?

Charlie:

We start by toasting Jumbo Runner peanuts in
fresh butter and sea salt until they’re golden brown. Then
we start boiling cane sugar and Muscovado brown sugar
for caramel, adding fresh butter and local heavy cream
near the end. Then we beat egg whites and cook honey for
the nougat to which we add peanut butter.
All of that then gets layered into custom frames on small
slabs. After setting for a day the new bars are dipped in
65% dark chocolate from Colombia. This bar we call The
Original. It was the first flavor we did because I love each
component. I’m constantly snacking on the peanuts, the
caramel is truly divine, and chocolate is one of my food
groups. The love comes with the sugar. You can do so many
different things with it. In the nougat it supports an aeration created with the egg whites. In the caramel it creates
new flavors as it cooks. Every time it is a thrill.

Ari: How about the peanut brittle?
Charlie:

We start with plain white (purified) cane sugar
and corn syrup. With higher cooking temperatures we really can’t have impurities that would easily burn. We need
the acidic syrup to counter the sugar’s strong desire to
crystallize at the intense concentration we go to. Historically—like 150 years ago—we’d have to clarify the sugar and
make the syrup ourselves. This boils in water, the water
boils off, and the sugars—first broken apart in the water—
now reorganize into new and complex compounds.
While the sugar is doing its thing, we add raw peanuts and
some salt at a particular moment. The peanuts toast as
the sugar caramelizes, and we arrive at a flavor meeting
point for the two. They soak in this heated state briefly.
Then we add butter, vanilla, baking soda, sea salt. What
happens next has to be quick and deliberate. It’s dramatic.
The foaming is fast and if you don’t get it out of the pot at
the right moment it will overflow and be a dangerous mess.
You really have to see it to believe it. Even though we are
making brittle in relatively small batches, 23 pounds is a lot
of really hot sugar to be stirring fast and safely.
Once it has spread out and cooled a bit we pull slightly
hardened brittle off the edges. All the tiny bubbles produced by the reaction of the soda get elongated into tiny
tubes. This is the structure we are after. It resembles a honeycomb. It is both fragile and strong in different ways. It
is brittle. It shatters when bitten. I can get pretty poetic at

Charlie’s chocolates and other candy are
available at every Zingerman’s location.
Next time you’re in, ask for a taste!
this point, so do yourself a favor if you think you don’t like
peanut brittle. I’ve gotten a lot of people turned on to it
again. It is complex and simply delicious.

Ari: Let’s go back to those delicious little filled chocolates
you’ve been doing for the Coffee Company like the Poirier
Poppers. You also have the Peanut Butter Crush and the
Orange Oil chocolates, right? 

Charlie: I didn’t plan on any of those originally. When we
started making candy I was asked about whether or not we
were going to do them. My answer at the time was that a
lot of other candy makers were already doing them well.
But years down the road, Coffee Company Managing Partner Steve Mangigian asked if I’d consider making a small
chocolate to complement his espresso.
I adore orange butter ganache. You don’t often hear about
butter ganaches, but I think their silkiness is elegant beyond belief, and the orange/chocolate combination is one
of these match-made-in-heaven experiences. The Peanut
Butter Crush has been a gift for my wife for many years. To
get her off the “corporate cups” I began making her own
version—just sweetened peanut butter in chocolate shells.
The Poirier Poppers are an homage to Charles Poirier who
makes that incredible cane syrup.

Charlie: Zingerman’s businesses sell the most so their turnover is the fastest. They buy from us every week—sometimes more than once a week. We want a shopkeeper to
have it as freshly made on their shelves as possible. And
we date all our candy, so look for when it is best by. If you
are in town and want to try one fresh off the line, call me.

Ari:

What are some of the new improvements/offerings
you’ve got in the works?

Charlie: I am working on the next flavor of Zzang!® bar.
The Deli wants us to make artisan chocolate bark. And
there is a new Easter Fudge Egg this year. Those have been
a huge hit for us since we started making them.

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

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Raw milk Appreciation Week
at Zingerman’s
As you might already have realized over the last thirty
years, I love cheese. Especially really well-made, full-flavored, true-to-tradition cheese. And I have a special spot in
my cheese-loving heart for the oldest of old school dairy—
cheeses made from raw milk.
While raw milk cheese hardly ever makes headlines, it
has been the subject of a fair bit of government agency
agitation over the years. Seemingly every five or six years,
someone high up in the scientific hierarchy in Washington
gets the idea that it would be safer for consumers to ban
all raw milk cheese from the market. I’m not really sure
why they like to focus on raw milk cheese. To be clear, I’m
not a scientist. But I have been eating, studying and selling
raw milk cheese for over 30 years now. I’ve heard dozens
of talks, read probably hundreds of articles and had well
over a thousand discussions. All of which have left me, not
with anxiety over eating raw milk cheese, but rather, evergreater appreciation of its wonderful flavors!

Which is an excellent fit for the year’s effort by the Bostonbased Cheese of Choice Coalition to promote raw milk appreciation in April. They picked a day—April 18. I think that’s
too short a window, so I thought, why not make it a week?
What’s the story behind all this? Pioneered by Louis Pasteur in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France in the
second half of the 19th century, pasteurization heats milk
to high temperatures, in the process killing off the bacteria
in the milk. Pasteur’s process was a big boon for cheesemakers tired of the variability of working with milk as it
emerged from the cow.
The problem with pasteurization, in the context of cheesemaking, is that it kills all bacteria in the milk, both desirable
and undesirable. How can getting rid of bacteria possibly
be bad? The truth is that there are both “good” and “bad”
bacteria at work. Good ones in our digestive tracts help,
bad ones cause problems. When we eliminate the good
ones, the bad ones run rampant. When the bad ones get
out of control, trouble follows. The key is to keep it all in
balance.
The challenge in cheesemaking is that the desirable bacteria Pasteur’s process eliminates are the same ones that
would typically contribute much of the flavor to the finished cheese. Without them, cheesemakers are fighting an
uphill battle, trying to obtain an exceptionally full-flavored
cheese from less then full-flavored raw material. Many
cheesemakers also argue that pasteurized milk results in
weaker curd, which can inhibit texture and flavor develop-

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ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

ment of more mature cheeses. Pasteurization is prone to
removing much of the complexity and character that make
great cheese great.
Mind you, pasteurization isn’t necessarily a horrible thing
for cheese either; there are certainly some very good
cheeses being made today from pasteurized milk. And without question, it’s contributed consistency and safety to the
world of mass-market milk production. Since the process
kills off all bacterial activity, pasteurization makes it possible to make passable cheese from mediocre to poor milk
with fairly high bacteria counts, increasing “efficiency” and
reducing economic waste. Additionally, the process helps
create consistency in large cheese plants, where milk arrives from a series of different farms and is then blended.
Ironically though, pasteurization has probably actually allowed milk standards to go down. I don’t mean that all pasteurized milk is of low quality. To the contrary, there are
many folks producing excellent milk which is then pasteurized. But because the process kills off all the bacteria in the
milk, there’s far less pressure for dairy farmers to deliver
exceptionally clean product. If the milk is to be pasteurized
you can get away with much higher bacteria counts than
you could if you were going to make raw milk cheese from
it. With raw milk the cheesemaking process simply won’t
work when you have that high a level of bacteria in the
milk. Makers of raw milk cheese marvel at how high the legal levels of bacteria are in milk used to make mass market
products. They know that if they tried to work with milk
like this they’d never be able to make cheese.
So why would anyone advocate milk pasteurization for
cheese? Some scientists say that all cheese should be made
from pasteurized milk; that raw milk cheese is a health hazard. American law prohibits sale of raw milk cheeses that
have not been aged at least sixty days, in theory, to kill off
any harmful bacteria that might be left in the cheese by the
maker’s choice to use unpasteurized milk. Some scientists
say that raw milk cheeses that aren’t aged for this twomonth period can be a health risk. But this claim has never
even come close to being proven. In fact, the vast majority
of incidents of cheese-borne illness have come from cheeses made from pasteurized—or more accurately and most
often, improperly pasteurized—milk!
So how do raw milk cheesemakers make it work?
First, by strict adherence to sanitation standards. Small
dairy farms can control the sanitation of their herds and
the milk much better than big ones, hence have no need to
rely on bacteria killing pasteurization to ensure the quality of the milk. Instead farmers just do their job very carefully. Traditional farmhouse cheeses—those made from the
milk of the animals on a single farm—can be made with milk
that is only hours old. The farmers know the animals. They
manage the entire process from field to finished cheese. By
using top quality milk in its natural unheated state, a cheesemaker has ready access to the full range of natural bacteria which can help to create an exceptionally flavorful,
traditional cheese.
Mateo Kehler, co-owner of Jasper Hill Creamery in Vermont
which makes Bayley Hazen and other raw milk cheeses,
talked about how the milk quality, well managed and combined with great cheesemaking work, will yield complex,
full-flavored, delicious cheese. “There is a direct and linear
correlation between the microbial diversity in milk and the
diversity of flavor in finished cheese. At Jasper Hill we milk

cows, but farm microbes. The microbial ecology of raw milk
is the sum of the practices on the farm and as cheesemakers, we curate and foster the microbial ecology of our milk
by managing herd health, our cows’ diet, their bedding and
the sanitation of our equipment. Our practices produce the
fundamental flavors and define the potential and deliciousness of our cheese.”
Without pretending to persuade anyone who wasn’t previously on one side or the other, I will say that in my experience cheeses made from raw, unpasteurized milk are often
(but definitely not always):
a) those which are more carefully made;
b) made from more carefully monitored
milk production; and
c) much more flavorful than most of their
factory counterparts.
For a bit of inside expertise I turned to cheesemaker Andy
Hatch, whose fabulous raw milk Pleasant Ridge Reserve is,
I believe, one of the best cheeses produced on the planet.
“My priority as a cheese lover,” he said, “is to make sure that
we don’t restrict our access to the depth of flavor offered
by raw milk cheeses. I worry that future restrictions will
force my children to grow up in a country of two-dimensional cheese.” I would agree. And he added, “My priority as
a farmer, cheesemaker and small business owner is to make
sure that our industry is governed by clear, science-based
regulations. All sectors of the economy deserve this.  Nobody values food safety more than those of us who rely on
it for a living, and our industry’s long history of producing
safe, raw-milk cheese can be extended through reasonable,
science-based food safety. Many other countries share in
the proof that this is possible.”
How do you find raw milk cheese? You can start by asking. Our crew would be happy to tell you which cheeses
are made from raw milk and which are not. If you can see
the labels, look on the label for the words “lait cru,” “leche
cruda,” “roh milch,” all of which mean “raw milk” in their
respective languages. In truth though, you may have been
buying raw milk cheese for years, but not have known it. All
Swiss Gruyere and Emmental, Parmigiano-Reggiano and authentic French Roquefort must, legally, be made from raw
milk. Remember that this is nothing new; before Pasteur all
cheeses were made from raw milk. Also on the raw milk list
is French Comtè, ironically, the classic cheese of Pasteur’s
home province.
One thing to consider when buying cheese made from pasteurized milk is the method of pasteurization used since
different producers pasteurize differently. More desirable
is a lower temperature, slower pasteurization, which brings
milk to 145°F for thirty minutes. This tends to cause less harm
to the flavor of the milk. The more flavorful cheeses made
from pasteurized milk are usually those that use this longer,
lower temperature method. Alternatively, bigger producers,
for whom time is totally money, move much more quickly—
161°F for a mere 15 seconds—creating kind of a cooked flavor in the milk. Ultra-pasteurization which is used primarily
for liquid cream (giving it seemingly unlimited shelf life, but
severely limiting its whipping capabilities and its flavor)
takes the temperature up to 280°F for a mere one second,
but leaves little in the way of fresh cream flavor in its wake.

Cheese of Choice Coalition
CheeseMatters Q&A

crafted, full-flavored cheese.
That the cheesemakers
and retailers and distributors involved are making a
reasonable living doing it.
And that great cheese has
become an accepted element
of good American eating!

Below is an interview I did with the Cheese of
Choice Coalition on the subject this year.
Cheese of Choice: With humble beginnings as a
neighborhood deli, how did specialty foods and
specifically artisan cheese become such a strong
focus?
Ari: We’ve always been focused on full-flavored
and traditional foods. That was true from the
beginning! And it’s still true now. Over 33 years we’ve learned a LOT! Which of course
means that we’ve been able to raise the quality bar on everything we make and sell.
C of C: You were awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Cheese
Society in August. CONGRATULATIONS! How have you seen the American cheese community grow through the years and what has motivated you to invest so much passion
and energy into it?
Ari: It has changed enormously! When we opened there were very few American artisan
cheesemakers left. A few that come to mind are Vella cheese and Franklin Peluso in
California, the Widmer family and Albert Deppeler in Wisconsin. Crowley and Grafton
in Vermont, And a few folks starting to make artisan cheese. Laura Chenel comes to
mind. Paula Lambert, Vermont Creamery, Westfield Farms came along around that time
as well. I remember our first air-shipped order of Laura’s goat cheese arriving at the
Deli. Back in ‘82 imports dominated. Today there are so many good American cheeses
that we can’t even come close to stocking them all!
C of C: You are an outspoken proponent of traditional and raw-milk cheese. Why are
they important?
Ari: Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset said, “A people
that abandons its traditions is like a tree with rotten roots. It
ends up getting blown away by the wind.” We work hard to
be true to tradition and that means, when we can, working
with raw milk cheese. It’s clear of course that one can make
good cheese using both pasteurized and unpasteurized milk,
and also bad cheese with both pasteurized and unpasteurized
milk. But as a broad general statement I think most folks in the
artisan cheese world will agree that great raw milk cheese is
a pretty special thing. Consider that the traditional cheese of
Louis Pasteur’s home region of Comté must still by law be made
only with raw milk!
C of C: I love that you describe yourself as an anarcho-capitalist, which means among other things, that you believe in the
importance of free choice. What is the relationship between
cheese and choice?
Ari: I’ve focused a lot on choice on an internal level. To be
mindful of the reality that we’re all making choices all day
long, often about things we don’t even realize that we’re doing. Smiling or not smiling? Being empathic or not, being kind
or not, forgiving or not. But clearly free choice in the physical
world is of equal import. Given that there have been so few
real problems to come from properly made raw milk cheese
over the years it seems like the consumer ought to be able to
make the choice for his or herself. If you look at all the things
we’re legally allowed to do that seem more dangerous than
eating cheese, it seems very reasonable that consumers would
get to make the call themselves to continue to enjoy some of
the world’s best cheese!
C of C: In your Lapsed Anarchist book series you talk about the
overwhelming importance of vision on both the professional
and personal scale. Could you elaborate on what “vision” is
and why it’s important? What is your vision for the ideal future
of traditional cheese?
Ari: A vision, as we define it here at Zingerman’s, is a picture of
what success looks like for us at a particular time in the future.
It’s not just a set of financial targets, though it may include
some numbers so that we have sense of scale, scope and clear
sense of where we’re headed. Nor it is just nice platitudes or
a couple of inspiring, but not particularly meaningful, phrases.
For us, an effective vision needs to be:
a) Inspiring to all that will be involved in implementing it.
b) Strategically sound, i.e., we actually have a decent shot at
making it happen.
c) Documented.
d) Communicated.
I’ve written a lot about it in Part 1 of the Zingerman’s Guide to
Good Leading series.
My vision for traditional cheese? That there is ever more wellmade, traditional cheese, matured, sold and eaten in the US and
around the world. That in the process we’ve helped to restore
sustainable agriculture in the countryside, helped consumers
and chefs and caterers have access to some amazing, hand-

C of C: For individuals who
want to help support traditionally produced cheese,
traditionally
produced
foods in general, what can
they do?
Ari: Other than supporting
the Cheese of Choice Coalition? I guess buy and serve a
lot of it!! And then certainly
speak to local representatives.
And sing their praises far and
wide!!
C of C: Like you, as a youth I was much more likely to be found eating Kraft Macaroni and
Cheese than hand-crafted Camembert, and powdered parmesan than Parmigiano.  Do
you have an all-time favorite traditional recipe or pairing that’s uses raw milk cheese?
Ari: Wow. There are so many. Aged Emmental Swiss with a really good mustard. Parmigiano Reggiano with a great honey—I love Italian chestnut honey but really any of
the amazing varietal honeys we’ve got at the Deli would be delicious. Fondue Comtoise
(made with Comte cheese)Aged Tuscan sheep cheese with pears.

Raw Milk Cheese
at Zingerman’s
We feature many raw milk cheeses at Zingerman’s on a regular basis. The folks at Zingerman’s Delicatessen
and Zingerman’s Creamery are more than happy to offer samples and guide you to your new favorite, or,
if you can’t come by the store, call 888-636-8162 and the Service Stars at zingermans.com will offer you a
virtual guided tour of all their amazing raw milk cheeses.
Here is a short list (really, we have a LOT more) of some of my favorite
raw milk cheeses that we routinely carry:

Zingerman’s Creamery’s Great Lakes Cheshire

Bayley Hazen from Vermont

The only raw milk cheese made in Washtenaw
County for over half a century, the Creamery’s
Great Lakes Cheshire is a tangy, tasty piece of terrificness. As recipes tend to go this one is a variant
of a variant—traditional raw milk English Cheshire,
adapted by Welshman Leon Downey to make what
he called Llangloffan, taught in turn to our own
John Loomis who started making his version back
here in Michigan. Easy to eat, easy to enjoy and the
best way to help keep the raw milk flag flying here
in our home town.

See page 7 for details on our Bayley Hazen
tasting at the Deli in March!

French Comté

Parmigiano-Reggiano

The classic of Louis Pasteur’s home region, which
must (despite Pasteur’s work) by law be made from
raw milk. This is a particularly special version, aged
for over 18 months and selected just for us by the
maturing exports at the Fort St. Antoine. Nutty, delicious, one of my favorite cheeses ever!

Stichelton (Raw Milk Stilton)
Made in Nottinghamshire by Joe Schneider with the
support of the crew at Neal’s Yard Dairy in London.
Partner Randolph Hodgson got the Stilton show
back on the road about a decade ago—no raw milk
Stilton had been made for nearly twenty years. The
results of their efforts have enhanced the lives of
cheese lovers worldwide—Joe and Randolph’s authentic raw milk has a bigger flavor, creamier texture and longer, more buttery finish. If you want to
taste the real stuff, this is the one.

Pleasant Ridge Reserve
from Wisconsin
One of the best cheeses made in
America or anywhere. Andy Hatch
is using the fresh raw milk of his
own herd of cows and making a
marvelous, semi firm, full-flavored, savory, nutty, magical piece of cheese in southwest
Wisconsin.

One of the country’s best blue
cheeses, made skillfully from
raw milk by the Kehler brothers and they’re dedicated crew in
the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
Based on an English Stilton recipe its got a big blue
flavor, a natural rind and a long finish. I like it on its
own with slices of apple and a few toasted walnuts
and a glass of big red wine.

One of the world’s best-known cheeses it’s justly
known for its wonderfully great flavor—nutty,
milky, buttery, subtly sweet and assertive and independent but never overwhelming. Again, by law,
it must be made from raw milk. Ours comes exclusively from a single dairy we selected in the hills
outside of Modena (home, of course, of traditional
Balsamic vinegar, which is also unpasteurized) and
we’ve loved its elegance and full flavor now for
nearly twenty years. I love it with honey as a dessert, on pasta and salads, or with sparkling wine.
Parmigiano Reggiano: Not all the wheels that bear
the world famous Parmigiano-Reggiano name are
created equal. There are big differences from one
to the next. This cheese is made by a dairy nearly
2,000 feet up in the hills outside of Modena, Italy.
The high altitude makes for plenty of diversity in
the grasses, herbs and flowers growing in the cows’
pastures. This means that the milk—and subsequently, your cheese—is full of each pasture’s complex flavors. The wheels are aged for a minimum
of two years (33% longer than the Consorzio minimum). Most important, the finished cheese has a really rich, wonderfully complex flavor with a lovely,
long finish.

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

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6th Annual

welcomes you to our

Every spring bacon lovers, bacon makers, cooking school teachers, culinary historians, writers, statisticians, sociologists, chefs, roller derby professionals and other
pork-driven people from all over the globe get together to talk, taste and toast the terrific flavors and cultural iconography of all things bacon
(and bacon-related). Every year’s lineup seems to surpass the excellent group of speakers from the previous season, and this spring’s session promises to be
another transcendent step in cured pork’s rising profile.
As always, this year’s Camp Bacon is a fundraiser for two of our favorite non-profit organizations—the Southern Foodways Alliance and the 4H Club of
Washtenaw County. Southern Foodways, based in Oxford, Mississippi, has been celebrating and honoring southern food traditions for 15 years now. Pork, of
course, takes a prominent place in the Southern culinary pantheon. Many of our best bacon connections have come from through our work with SFA. The 4H
Clubs have been supporting the work and study of young people in agriculture since the early years of the 20th century. Our commitment to community-based
agriculture makes them a natural fit for Camp Bacon. The higher the quality of American hog rearing, the better our bacon is likely to be! All the monies raised
by Camp Bacon will go to help support these two important community non-profits.

Potlikker
Film Festival
at the Deli

Wednesday, June 3 • 7pm • $30
Zingerman’s Events on 4th
415 N. Fifth Street, Ann Arbor
The folks down at the Southern Foodways
Alliance have done an incredible job
capturing the stories behind some of
our most beloved Southern food makers
in a series of award-winning short
documentaries by filmmaker Joe York.
Join us as we watch a few films and enjoy
foods from the producers featured. Come
with an appetite and be ready to fall in
love with Southern Foodways!

6th Annual
Bacon Ball at
the Roadhouse

Pancetta, Pasta & Passion

Thursday, June 4 • 7pm • $75
2501 Jackson Rd., Ann Arbor
A celebration of Southern Italian pork
dishes featuring leading culinary light,
innovative importer and cooking teacher
Rolando Beramendi.

Bakin’
with Bacon­

Hands-on baking class at BAKE!
Friday, June 5 • 1-5pm • $125
3723 Plaza Drive, Ann Arbor
We’ll use the power of bacon to flavor
three amazing baked goods, . You’ll make a
similar version of our wildly popular peppered bacon farm bread, bacon cheddar
scones found in the book, and sweet and
salty bacon pecan sandy cookies. We’ll
take you to hog heaven with a demonstration of our maple glazed bacon apple
doughnuts. Try and contain yourself.
You’ll leave BAKE! with our recipes, the
knowledge to recreate them at home, two
loaves of bread, a dozen scones, three
dozen cookies and great coupons.

Saturday Night
Pig Pickin’
Dinner
Saturday, June 6, 6-9pm •
$30 a person

(proceeds benefit Washtenaw County 4-H)

Pig Picking’ Menu:
Whole Hog Pig Roast
Bakehouse Rustic Rolls
Yellow Mustard Slaw
Fresh Fruits
Bakehouse Jumbleberry Pie

Saturday, June 6, 8am-4pm
(breakfast starts at 7:30am) • $150
Zingerman’s Cornman Farms
8540 Island Lake Rd., Dexter, MI
An all day marathon of meaty speakers, lots
of learning, a whole lot of laughing, and, of
course, all the bacon you can eat!!
This year’s lineup includes:

Camp Bacon is going whole hog at
Cornman Farms on Saturday night!

The Kitchen Sisters

Kat Gordon

Join Zingerman’s and local 4-H students
for an evening of music, games, fun and,
of course, pork. For the first time this
year, we’re bringing a southern tradition way up north just in time for camp;
we’re roasting an entire Cornman Farms
hog right here on the farm, and y’all are
invited!

Nationally known radio culinary personalities
Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva come to Camp
Bacon to share the power of pork on the radio.
Colorful bacon stories culled from twenty years
of broadcasts!

Cupcake Queen of Memphis, Kat’s colorful
cupcakes at her Muddy’s Bakery are a Memphis
institution. Her flair, style and way with points
of view to pork are one of a kind.

The fine folks at Zingerman’s Roadhouse
are handling this one, and they’ll serve it
pulled right off the bone along with your
choice of three amazing sauces: Eastern
North Carolina Vinegar BBQ, Alex’s Red
Rage Tomato BBQ, or South Carolina
Mustard BBQ. Bring your family, friends,
and neighbors for this brand-new Camp
Bacon tradition!

Bacon
Street Fair

Sunday, June 7 • 11am-2pm •
Ann Arbor Downtown
Artisan Market • FREE!

(donation to the Washtenaw
County 4-H encouraged!)

The smell of bacon will fill the Kerrytown
area as bacon makers and other bacon
and pork purveyors offer up tastes of
their products and sell their wares. We’ll
also have an assortment of kid-friendly,
bacon-related games!

thanks to our sponsors!

­4

THE MAIN EVENT

Bacon Buzz on the Radio

Rolando BerAmendi
The Most Powerful Culinary Pairing
Possible—Pancetta and Pasta
Innovative importer, cooking teacher and
expert in all things Italian, shares the secret
behind his favorite bacon dish.

Susan Schwallie
Bacon by the Numbers

By popular demand Susan returns to share a
plethora of pork-based consumer statistics:
Who’s eating bacon? How? How much? How
was that consumption changed?

Leo Landis

Baking with Bacon

Fred Bueltmann

Bacon, Beer and the Wizard of Oz
The man, the myth and the well spoken legend
behind New Holland Brewery waxes pork and
poetic on three subjects close to his heart—bacon, beer and L. Frank Baum‘s Wizard of Oz.

Greg Laketek

Salumi—The Italian Tradition ­
of Pork Curing
Co-founder of West Loop Salami, one the country’s leading young salumieri, Greg will share
tales of curing traditional culatello, Stroghino,
Finnochiana, Lonzino, Ciauscolo, Guanciale,
and other Italian pork delicacies.

Local Bacon in a State ­
with 20 Million Pigs

William Marshall

Leo brings his love of his home state of Iowa,
agriculture, history and hogs to the Camp Bacon
table telling tales of Iowa’s hog history and
bacon!

Zingerman’s Deli’s own William Marshall, one of
our most passionate pork promoters, tells the
long and savory story of the Bacon, Lettuce and
Tomato sandwich.

Adam Seger

Antonio Fiaschi

Bartending with Bacon
Chicago’s Godfather of craft cocktails shares a
series of entertaining and slightly inebriating
bacon cocktail recipes and stories.

Mitch Einhorn

The Art of Bacon Tempura
The Chef/Owner of Chicago’s Twisted Spoke
reveals the secrets to most decadent tempura
you’ll ever have in this cooking demo.

The Story of the BLT

The Magical Spicy Pork Spread ­
of Southern Italy
There’s nothing in the world like N’Duja. It’s a
unique, spreadable, very spicy Calabrian pork
salamiisthat
has to
been
shown
Lineup
subject
change
ok?to be dangerously
addictive. After learning the recipe from his
grandfather in Calabria, Antonio Fiaschi set to
work crafting this traditional spicy, spreadable
Southern Italian specialty in Chicago.

In memory
of Bob Nueske
In honor of
Bob Nueske
This year’s Camp Bacon 2015 is dedicated to the memory of
Bob Nueske, much-loved patriarch of the first family of bacon,
who died unexpectedly this past January. We’ve had the great
pleasure of cooking, serving and eating Nueske’s bacon every
day at Zingerman’s for over thirty years, and we were graced
by Bob’s passion, stories and love for pork at Camp Bacon the
last two years. Long esteemed by pretty much everyone in the
specialty food industry, Bob was intelligent, quiet, and determinedly committed to quality in all he did. He helped take his
father’s work to ever greater heights. His love for Johnny Cash
was legendary amongst friends and family members. Like his
hero he generally wore all black. His soft voice but strong
opinions, dedication to perfecting his craft while walking his
own way, caring for community and those in need, all combined to lead me to start referring to Bob as a “the Johnny
Cash of Bacon.” Two years ago when he spoke at Camp
Bacon for the first time we played Johnny’s version of
“I Walk the Line” when Bob came up to the podium.
Imagine it playing, if you like, as you start to
read the interview with Bob that follows. Done
two years ago, it still conveys the powerful character, quality conscious, quiet but opinionated
leader he was, in both business and in bacon.

In learning how to do a product like my dad taught us it was
time consuming and it wasn’t like I took notes. Day in and
day out you learn it and you don’t even know you’re learning
it. But my dad had these little books that he used. And they
weren’t just sitting on the shelf. They were well read, well
worn. And he would take a lot of notes.
My dad was a good student of bacon. Making bacon like ours
is like making fine wine. You don’t hurry the process. I remember him saying, “You know Bobby, we do it this way because of
. . . . ., but, not this way because . . . “ There were good reasons
why each piece of the process happened. I remember thinking
“There has to be a faster quicker way to make bacon!” But
eventually I realized that he really knew what he was doing.

didn’t want you to think. I learned I could get done 8 hours
work in 3 hours and kept pushin’. But then I was told “Don’t
do that again.”
People that work here like what they do, and they’re having
fun. That’s the key. What your people do. How they smile. How
they work. That’s what makes a great company. It just seems
to work.

Ari:

We love your bacon here at Zingerman’s. It’s gotten great
press in the New York Times and just about everywhere else.
What makes the bacon so great?

Bob:

Well, what really makes the difference how the hogs are
fed. How they’re grown. How they’re treated as far as stress.
You don’t want stress in the hogs. You have to find companies
who know how to slaughter and cut and sort correctly. And
then how you cure and smoke the meat properly. We taste test
constantly. Even though there are strict formulas, there’s still
always the human side. If something doesn’t seem right when
we taste the product we pull it off.
We all know that our bacon is a natural product and
the whole production system can run a little off one
way or another. Pretty much it means the standards
of where you want it to be even though the flavor profile never changes. Something comes in
wrong and you have to make a point and send it
back. Consistency is key. Don’t accept anything
that’s less than what you really want.
Our hogs are raised in Canada. They’re the Belgian Pietrain breed and some others. We cure
the bellies and then give them 24 hours in the
smoker. We use real Wisconsin applewood.
We actually have one man who’s responsible
to select the applewood. We buy full trees, not
wood already cut in pieces. He actually cuts it
as we need it. When you select the wood it has
to be the right balance of dryness and greenness.
We use wild cherry wood and it’s the same thing
there. We start with a full tree.

Good Bacon,
Good Business;

An Interview with Fourth
Generation Wisconsin Bacon
Maker Bob Nueske
Bob Nueske’s great-grandfather came to the
small town of Wittenberg, Wisconsin in 1882.
Shortly thereafter he started to cure and smoke
meats in the style of his German heritage. Located
up near Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, they’ve been
making their bacon using basically the same family recipe for nearly a century and a half now. We’ve
cooked off Nueske’s applewood smoked bacon at the Deli
every morning for over 31 years now. I have no idea how many
tens of thousands of pounds it adds up to but I know it’s a lot.
Bob Nueske is a marvelous story teller, a very grounded and
forward thinking business man, a “Small Giant” long before
Bo Burlingham wrote the book, a master bacon maker and a
bacon lover. We’re excited to have successfully enticed Bob
to leave northern Wisconsin for the wilds of Ann Arbor and a
few days at Camp Bacon.

Ari: Can you tell me a bit of the Nueske story?
Bob: I hardly know how to begin. When you’re born and
raised into something that becomes your life it’s hard to know
where to start. The only way I can explain it is that if you’re
born in a cooler and raised in a smokehouse it permeates
into your being and you don’t even realize it. I’ve been part
of Nueske bacon literally my whole life. I had a good father.
He smiled a lot. He was a good man and a good businessman.
He was really firm and fair. And yet as a kid, you know, when
you’re 16, 17, 18, and you have all the answers. Back when I
was 16 I had a car. Back then Wittenberg was a town of 895
people. (Today, it’s totally taken off—the 2010 census said it
had 1081 people). It’s all a farm community. I figured the best
way for me to see the world was to head down to Chicago on
my own. So I drove south. I got downtown by myself. I’d never
been there. I was looking at all these great big buildings and
I noticed there were a whole lot of good restaurants. But I
couldn’t afford to eat in ‘em. And I thought to myself, I’d love
to understand ‘em. Now, who’d have ever thought that bacon
would take you to places like that? But today our bacon is in
some of the best restaurants and stores in the country.
As I remember growing up, my dad had put four hours in at
work by the time we kids got up in the morning. We were always eating the odd shaped pieces he didn’t want to sell to
other people. My mother would say, “I’m married to the man
who has the best bacon, but you always bring home the other
stuff!” He’d say, “We don’t sell those odd cuts, we eat ‘em. It
tastes the same. It just don’t look the same!”

Ari:

It’s pretty impressive that Nueske’s has stayed
small and focused for four generations. Why do you
think it’s worked so well?

Bob:

Ari: Where did your great grandfather come from?
Bob:

Wilhelm Nueske. He was from Germany. I’m still trying
to figure out exactly where. No one really knows. I’m starting
to discover that it was up in the northeast area of Germany
and what’s now Poland. There are still some Nueskes up there.
It’s not that common a name. I literally know most everyone
of them in this country.
I learned all this after I got drafted into the military. I got my
medical training at Ft. Sam Houston and thought for sure I was
headed for Viet Nam. It was not a pretty time. But somehow I
was the only one in our class that ended up stationed in Germany where I did some research. So through a fluke of luck I
learned the heritage of the meat.

Ari:

You and I both read a lot of business books. Were there
any that were particularly helpful to you?

Bob: I was remembering a book called Beyond World Class.
It’s by Ross Alan. It was written about the way I think a business should be run. It said that if your suppliers don’t treat
you like you wanted to be treated, and if someone in your
company or a customer doesn’t fit the way you want to work,
then you just say, “We’re not interested.” You just don’t stay
with them. You need to work with people who care like you
do and who want to work the way you do.
When I left the family business at 18 I had two really good experiences. One was in a small printing company. And then I
was wooed away to American Can Company. It was a huge corporation. I actually got that feeling of putting your brains up
on the time clock when you punched in. They didn’t want your
thoughts. And then you picked them up when you left. They

Let me tell you another story. There’s a man around
here who started a very large nationally-known meat curing
company around the time my father was getting going. He and
my dad knew each other pretty well. The companies were just
about 45 miles a part. Our location was on a dead end street.
We didn’t really have a retail store. We just were wholesaler
but my dad would let people in when they knocked on the
door. Finally he put in a tiny little counter. Anyways, Fritz
would come in to that little counter and buy our bacon and
smoked liver sausage. “I said why are you buying our bacon
when you have your own?” He said, “I want to buy the good
stuff for our big shots coming up to my cottage up north.”
Well, Fritz is probably in his 70s now. He came in one day quite
a few years ago now and he asks one of the retail clerks in our
shop if I was there. I asked him the same question I would ask
every time he came back when I was 14. “What are you doing
buying bacon here?” And he said the same thing he said back
then: “I’m going up to my cabin and need the good stuff.”
But then he said, “I want to tell you a story about your dad and
me. You know, I would tell your dad, ‘Robert, I’m gonna build
the biggest meat company I can. And your dad would look at
me and say, ‘Well Fritz, I’m gonna become the best meat company I can become.’” Then Fritz said to me, “I succeeded. I sold
out to a big company. I made a lot of money. But I don’t like
what the big company did with our products. And you know
what? Your dad was right and I was wrong. I would never do
that again.” When I think of the decisions I’ve made over the
years. You gotta know when to say ‘No!’

Ari: What’s your favorite way to eat bacon?
Bob:

I love it best when you lay it on parchment paper and
bake it in the oven. It comes out sort of crispy and soft in the
middle. I love it that way.

­5

Cheese Classes, Tastings & Tours!

2501 Jackson Road • 734.663.3663 ­
www.zingermansroadhouse.com
Zingerman’s Roadhouse hosts regular special
dinners that highlight old favorites, new finds, celebrated chefs and traditional American foodways.
Our dinners are family-style affairs that deliver
really good food with a little history on the side.

THE EDIBLE SOUTH

Special ­
Dinner #175

The Power of Food and the
Making of an American Region

Tuesday, March 10th • 7pm • $55 a person
(price includes dinner, tax and gratuity.
Beverages are additional)
“Food is history. Food is place. Food is power.”
—Marcie Cohen Ferris
In The Edible South, Marcie Cohen Ferris, associate
professor of American studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents food as a new way to
chronicle the American South’s larger history. Ferris
tells a richly illustrated story of southern food and the
struggles of whites, blacks, Native Americans, and other
people of the region to control the nourishment of their
bodies and minds, livelihoods, lands, and citizenship.
Roadhouse Chef Alex Young and Marcie have created a
menu that weaves through decades of Southern food,
each course telling the story of the people and the
region of that time. Marcie will lead us through tasting
and learning about The Edible South, and you’re sure to
leave the dinner with your stomach and your mind full.

ALL SPICE ROUTES LEAD TO THE
ROADHOUSE
Tuesday April 14th • 7pm • $55

This is the beginning of what I’m guessing will become
an annual Roadhouse tradition. Carried round the globe
with great fanfare and usually at great cost, spices
became the color that livened culinary palettes, the
nuance that took recipes from common to compelling.
Today, of course, finding spices is far easier. But this
dinner is about the best of the best, the hand-selected,
carefully curated spices that our friends from Épices
de Cru have been searching for and selecting for over
thirty years now. These are spices the likes of which
supermarket aisles will never see. Combining the
culinary talents of our own, James Beard award-winning
Alex Young and Montreal-based spice-trekker Philippe
de Vienne this dinner offers a bit of spice history, a bit
learning about how to use spices in your own kitchen, a
good dose of spicy storytelling, a bit of laughing, a lot of
love and a really good meal! If you’re thinking life could
stand a little spicing up, don’t miss out!

3723 Plaza Drive • 734 929 0500
zingermanscreamery.com

Our events are intimate affairs where our cheesemakers and cheesemongers share their passion for great cheese and great cheesemaking.
We hold these classes right next to where we make our cheese and
gelato, and sometimes bring in our favorite food makers from around
the area to share their stories with you. To get the inside scoop on
all of our events, sign up for our enews at zingermanscommunity.
com/e-news.

TRANS-ATLANTIC SHOWDOWN

FIRST SUNDAY TOUR

Many American artisan cheeses are modeled on European
classic cheese styles. In this head-to-head tasting we will
pit these American cousins against the traditional European
cheeses that inspired the New World cheesemakers. We’ll
talk about the such classic styles as Cheddar, Gruyere, Brie,
and blue cheese as we try to answer the question of which
continent’s cheese reigns supreme!

Join our cheese and gelato makers for an hour-long adventure as we transform local milk into delicious cheese and
gelato. You’ll watch our fresh mozzarella stretched into
shape, taste our cow’s and goat’s milk cheeses while our staff
explain the cheesemaking process, and sample our delicious
fresh gelato. After the tour, make time for tasting our selection of American cheeses and provisions, as well as house
made gelatos and sorbets in our cheese shop.

Friday, March 6th • 6-8pm • $35.00

CANDLELIGHT WINE AND CHEESE
Friday, March 20th • 6-8pm • $85

Wine and cheese are a classic pairing - just like you and your
partner! This couples evening will feature a selection of fine
wines from around the country, complemented by a perfect
pairing of some of our delicious cheeses. We’ll include
bread, fruit, and other tasty accompaniments to complete
the plate, and afterward we’ll end on a sweet note with a
scoop of our handmade gelato. Don’t miss this romantic
tasting at Zingerman’s Creamery! *Cost for this event is per
couple!

CHEESE MASTERY CLASS #6
PRESSED CURD CHEESES
Friday, March 27th • 6-8pm • $35

Creamery Managing Partner Aubrey Thomason takes you on
a tour of this often unknown category of cheeses. Chemistry
wise it lies somewhere between semi-lactic and hard cheese.
These cheeses are small and large format, the common factor is that the curds are large enough and soft enough that
the cheeses must be pressed. There are many favorites in this
category American and European. The textures remain fairly
soft, they can be longer aged because of their size. Come and
taste some great cheeses and learn how process contributes
to the flavors and textures of pressed curd cheeses.

MASTERING MOZZARELLA

Learn to make fresh mozzarella cheese!
Saturday, March 14th
Saturday, March 28th
Saturday, April 11th
Saturday, April 25th
2-3:30pm • $45
Come and learn the secret to making terrific fresh mozzarella
from the experts! Stop by the Creamery and we’ll show you
the ins and outs of making this simple, yet delicious cheese.
You’ll learn how to pull balls of fresh mozzarella from curd,
stretch string cheese, and create rich, creamy burrata.
Perfect on pizza, super on a salad, or amazing on its own,
this versatile cheese is as much to make as it is to eat. Adults
and children over 12 are welcome. Don’t miss it!

Hands-on Baking Classes
BAKE! is our hands-on teaching bakery in Ann
Arbor, tucked between Zingerman’s Bakehouse and
Creamery. At BAKE! we share our knowledge and love
of baking with the home baker community, seeking
to preserve baking traditions and inspire new ones.
We offer dozens of different bread, pastry and cake
classes in our very own teaching kitchens. All of us at
the Bakehouse know the joy and excitement of baking
something really good and sharing it with friends
when it’s hot out of the oven. You’ll leave BAKE! with
the food you made in class and the inspiration and
skills to bake at home!

­6

ISSUE # 249

BONUS MARCH SUNDAY TOUR!
March 29th • 2-3pm • $10

On the first Sunday in April (when we’d normally hold our
April First Sunday Tour) we’ll be waiting for the Easter Bunny,
so we’ve moved our monthly Creamery tour ahead one
week!

SINGING ‘BOUT THE BLUES
Friday, April 10th • 6-8pm • $35

Join cheesemonger Ben as he hosts an evening of exploration of piquant and delicious mold-ripened (aka ‘blue’)
cheese. Blue cheese is, for some, the most challenging category of cheese to fall in love with, but well worth the courtship, in our opinion. From the dreamy and creamy, to the tart
and the sharp, we’ll sample some of the best blue cheeses
around, cheeses that will have you singing ‘bout the Blues!

AN EVENING WITH BURGDORF
WINERY
Friday, April 17th • 6-8pm • $45

Nestled away in mid-Michigan just east of Lansing, Burgdorf’s
Winery has been crafting unique, award-winning wines for
over 30 years. Burgdorf’s specializes in wines made from
Michigan-grown fruits, and we are very excited to add this
selection of local wines to our shop. Join us in welcoming
the winemakers from Burgdorf as we pair their excellent
vintages with some of our favorite cheese!

CHEESE MASTERY CLASS #7 PRESSED COOKED CHEESE
Friday, April 24th • 6-8pm • $35

Creamery Managing Partner Aubrey Thomason takes you on
a tour of one of the most loved categories of cheese. Cooked
pressed cheeses are Parmigiano Reggiano, Comté, Gruyere,
Beaufort, and of course the American counterfeits of those
cheeses! This category evolved independently in nearly
every mountain region of Europe, involving very fine curds,
cooked! These cheeses keep for a long time, and the flavors
brought out by the cooking process are only found in these
cheeses. Come and taste cheese and talk chemistry.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY BAKING

ZINGERMAN’S CLASSICS

Celebrate the holiday with some great tasting food (sorry, no
green food coloring). We’ll bake two traditional Irish breads,
Bakehouse brown Irish soda bread and also a sweeter white soda
bread with currants. For fun we’ll top it off with Guinness Stout
chocolate cupcakes with Bailey’s Irish Cream frosting.

Learn to make our Jewish rye bread, black magic brownies and
hummingbird cake. Find out what a rye sour is and the secrets
behind our rye bread’s flavor. We’ll serve our Deli meats and
sandwich fixins’ to go with your bread and end the class with
iconic Zingerman’s treats: a sandwich, a pickle, a brownie and a
toast to many years of great customers.

Sun. March 15th • 8am-12pm or 1:30-5:30pm • $100

3723 Plaza Drive • 734.761.7255
bakewithzing.com

March 1st • 2-3pm • $10

NOODLING ABOUT STRUDELLING
Wed. March 25th • 6-9pm • $75

Stretch your strudel dough until you can see through it and finish
it off with sweet and savory fillings. This is just about the most
fun you can have making food.

WHOLEY WHOLE GRAIN PASTRIES
Sat. April 11th • 8am-12pm • $125

In this class we’ll be using whole grain flours to make delicious
and more nutritious pastries. You’ll make great-tasting whole
wheat cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies and apple ginger
muffins. We’ll also demonstrate a tender whole wheat biscuit.
These are great everyday recipes you’ll go to again and again.

Fri. April 17th • 1-5pm • $125

ADVANCED CAKE DECORATING
Sat. April 25th • 8am-5pm • $275

Decorate a two-tiered cake! We’ll show you how to fill, ice,
support and stack your cake. Then we’ll make our own fondant,
cover the cakes with it, learn how to form decorations and put
the finishing touches on your design. You’ll leave class feeling
like a pro with a dazzling celebration cake you created yourself.

Find more classes & register at bakewithzing.com
or events.zingermanscommunity.com. Sign up
for our enews to get the early word about our
classes.

MAR-APR 2015
BOOK
A SPOT AT ANY ZINGERMAN’S EVENT

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Fuller St.

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8540 Island Lake Road
Dexter, MI
734-619-8100

Tuesday, March 24th • 6:30-8pm • $20
at Zingerman’s Events on 4th, 415 N. Fifth St.

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CHEESEMONGER’S CHOICE:
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Zingerman’s Deli tastings are designed to give you
an insider’s view of the foods that we’ve searched
the world for. You’ll often meet the folks who make
it and leave with a mouthful of flavor new understanding of everything from olive oil to sardines,
cheese to chocolate.

Ann St.

Jackso

E. Huron St.

Observatory Dr.

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W. Huron St.

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E. Huron St.

Washington St.
Liberty St.
William St.

2501 Jackson Ave. • 734.663.FOOD

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How To Find, Store, And Serve The
World’s Best Spices!

Wednesday, April 15th • 6:30-8:30pm • $30
at Zingerman’s Events on 4th, 415 N. Fifth St.

E. Stadium Blvd.

E. Stadium Blvd.

Pioneer
High School

Scio Church Rd.
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3723 Plaza Dr. 3723 Plaza Dr. 3728 Plaza Dr. 3756 Plaza Dr.
734.929.6060 734.929.0500 734.277.1922

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3711 Plaza Dr. 3711 Plaza Dr.
734.277.1922 734.277.1922

Friday, March 13 • 7:00-9:30pm • $65.00

Ellsworth

Farm Tours, Special Dinners and Classes
You don’t have to be part of a big corporate event or lavish wedding to enjoy Cornman Farms (although we certainly host those, too!)
Throughout the year we host numerous tours, dinners, classes and more
that allow people to experience our unique event space in Dexter, MI.

The days are getting longer, the temperature is slowly rising, and
the maple sap is flowing. Settle in at the barn, help yourself to
some fabulous food prepared by Cornman Farms talented chefs,
and get ready to create three cocktails that celebrate Michigan
maple syrup. We’ll begin with the sweet and spicy Nor’easter; try a new
take on the classic tequila cocktail with a brunch-appropriate Maplerita; and finish up with a hearty Maple Bourbon Smash. Guests will leave
with recipes and instructions for the cocktails featured in this class.
Join us as we celebrate the sweet beginning of spring!

FROMAGE IN THE FARMHOUSE

An Udder-to-Table Dinner at Cornman Farms,
featuring Zingerman’s Creamery
Sunday May 3rd, 3pm • $120/person, includes
beverage pairings with each course

We’re hosting a farm-to-fork dinner using the best of the farm’s spring
goodness and featuring our talented and knowledgable friends at
Zingerman’s Creamery. Each of the five dishes will include Zingerman’s
Creamery cheeses and the cheese makers will be on-hand to tell us
about how they craft each cheese. Cornman Chef Kieron will be on
hand to discuss the dishes he has created. As an added bonus, we’ll visit
the goats at Cornman Farms that contribute to the goat cheese-making
operation at the Creamery, and learn how they’re milked and cared for.
The whole experience will be informative, interactive, and full of delicious dairy! If you’re a cheese-lover, you don’t want to miss this!

610 Phoenix Dr. Phoenix
Dr.
888.636.8162

FRESH FROM THE GARDEN:
MOTHER’S DAY LUNCH AND TOUR
Sunday, May 10 • 10:30am • $65

Join us for our first annual Mother’s Day Event at Cornman Farms.
A lovely luncheon awaits you, along with an introduction to what
makes spring the most exciting season on the farm! We’ll visit our
goats (many of whom will be brand-new mamas themselves!) and their
babies, and learn a bit about goat milking and the breeds we raise
here at Cornman Farms. We’ll also head into the gardens to discover
what’s growing—herbs, greens, carrots and more! After a tour of our
historic buildings and grounds, you’ll have a seat in our charming,
sunny farmhouse for a family-style luncheon, prepared with love by
Chef and Managing Partner Kieron Hales. Menu items will be inspired
by his homeland of England, with Radish Tea Sandwiches and Clotted
Cream Strawberry Jam Scones, as well as locally influenced “Little
Ypsi Quiche” (made with Zingerman’s Creamery Little Ypsi cheese)
and Cauliflower-Fried Steak with Herbed Pesto. Of course, there’ll be
plenty of quality tea (and coffee) for you and Mom to enjoy! See you
at the Farm!

Varsity Dr.

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d.

Zingerman’s Southside

briarwood malL

8540 Island Lake Road, Dexter
734.619.8100 • cornmanfarms.com

COCKTAIL CLASS:
MARCH IS FOR MAPLE LOVERS

Geddes Ave.

ve.

Seventh St.

S

U of M
Student
Union

W.
S

THE INS & OUTS OF SPICES

Visiting spice trekkers Marika, Philippe and Ethné de
Vienne voyage from Montreal to share over thirty
years of incredible spice travels, travails, and terrific
tastes with us. The results of their work are an almost
overwhelming list of special stuff that we’re privileged
to offer for sale at the Deli and for tasting on this exceptional, educational and enlightening evening. You’ll
discover rare, specially selected cloves from Southern
India, wild cumin from Uzbekistan, wild cubebs from
Madagascar, special 00000 grade true cinnamon from
Sri Lanka, and carefully chosen black pepper from a
single Indian village. And there are the blends—amazing
and exotic Ethiopian Berbere, Silk Road Spice Blend,
White Curry, Kashmir Curry, and so much more! If you’re
ever wondered how to add flavor to your kitchen; how
to use some of those spices you’ve seen, but had no clue
how to cook with; or wondered what you could add to
your culinary repertoire to really jazz up your cooking without having to go to school, this class is for you!
Seats are limited so sign up soon!

ty

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Lib
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uNiverSity of
Michigan
CentraL
CamPus

wA
ena
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Wa

I-94

What is the best raw milk cheese in the world? What
is the life-cycle of a cheese? What is “deliciousness
factor?” If these questions pique your interest (or your
appetite) then join us for a deep dive into Bayley Hazen
Blue, a unique cheese crafted by Jasper Hill Farm in
Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Cheesemongers Steve
and Mike are working with Jasper Hill to provide a tasting flight of Bayley that follows the cheese’s maturation
cycle. We’ll share with you the production process as
well as technical tasting procedure and pairing suggestions. A light salad, bread, and a few choice accompaniments will be served alongside copious amounts of
cheese. Oh, dear Bayley, prepare for a tasty night.

N. Main St.

N

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s

AmtrAk
Station

Depo

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uth R

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ide
Ma

www.zingermans.com

422 Detroit Street • 734.663.3400 ­
www.zingermansdeli.com

nti
a

M-14

Map of Zingerman’s
Community of Businesses

Ellsworth

3723 Plaza Drive
734.929.6060
zingermanscoffee.com
Whether we’re pulling a shot for you
in our café on Plaza Drive or sending
you off with a bag of fresh roasted
beans, our passion is to source, roast
and brew great coffee. Our classes
are designed for the coffee novice
and nerd alike and aim to help
everyone learn about everything
it takes to turn a great bean into a
great cup of coffee.

BREWING METHODS
CLASS

Sun., March 8 & Sun., April 12
1-3:00pm • $30.00
Learn the keys to successful coffee
brewing using a wide variety of brewing methods from filter drip to syphon
pot. We will take a single coffee and
brew it 6 to 8 different ways, each
producing a unique taste. We’ll learn
the proper proportions and technique
for each and discuss the merits and
differences of each style.

ISSUE # 249 MAR-APR 2015
T AT ZINGERMANSCOMMUNITY.COM/EVENTS

­7

While spices have rarely been featured in the headlines that
make up the Zingerman’s story, they’ve been there all along, sitting somewhere comfortably in the subtext of our daily cooking
and eating. The truth, I suppose, is that seventy or eighty percent
of everything we make serve and eat has some herb or spice to
them. In some cases their presence is obvious. Gingerbread cake
and the chernushka (nigella seed) rye from Zingerman’s Bakehouse, spiced pecans and curried turkey salad from the Deli,
Liptauer cheese from Zingerman’s Creamery, the four different
chiles (amongst two dozen total ingredients) that go into in Alex’s
Red Rage barbecue sauce at the Roadhouse, etc. But in most cases
the spice’s work is “behind the scenes,” a supporting actor rather
than a headliner.
If you read the interview and article I did last fall in Zingerman’s
News about the good folks from a little family-run company
called Épices de Cru up in Montreal, then you might already know
that we’ve got ourselves a new spice supplier here. Working with
Philippe, Ethné and Marika de Vienne has been eye opening, intellectually fascinating, educational and of course, delicious. Better quality spices flat out taste better! And hearing tales of the
terrific amount of study, travel, care and connection that have
gone into making the de Viennes little quality-focused business
so special has drawn me into the mix.
Over the last six months, I’ve come to realize just how much
the subtext of spice quality actually matters. For the first time
I’m paying as much attention to where and how we source our
spices as I do our cheese, olive oil, honey or cured ham. The more
I learn, the more excited I’ve gotten, the more I’ve been cooking and eating spices. The de Viennes have decades of study and
travel stories to share—there’s so much more to learn, so many
ways to put the benefits of their work into culinary and cultural
action here in our own cooking at Zingerman’s and for us to help
you to do the same in yours.
Five centuries ago, before embarking on his search for India
(which he never found) Christopher Columbus said, “. . . should
I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I
collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding
solely in quest of them.” I, honestly, am not much motivated by
gold. But getting ahold of great spices is increasingly exciting for
me. As award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson says, “Even just a
few spices or ethnic condiments that you can keep in your pantry
can turn your mundane dishes into a culinary masterpiece.” The
best news, I think, is that this is just the beginning. There’s so
much more to learn!!!
Although we’re only about six months in, I thought I’d share some
of my early learnings. Below are six things that have come clear
to me already—each has helped improve my own cooking and
changed the way that I think about, and use, spices in my own
kitchen. As you might imagine, I’ve been eating pretty well for a
long time now, so when I tell you that the impact of stocking and
using better spices in my own kitchen has been meaningful you
know I’m not messing around. Here’s to many years of spice tastings and traveling to come.

1. Quality Counts
I don’t know why this spice stuff should have surprised me so
much. “You really can taste the difference!” has been the theme
of our work here at Zingerman’s for over three decades. I guess,
intellectually I knew all along that there was a difference in quality among different spices. And my learning over the last half a
year has born that out.
Mind you, we’ve always bought pretty good product, paid more
attention and money to get what was certainly much better than
average options into our kitchens. But having been around these
super-high-end, exceptionally great spices from Épices de Cru for
the last six months or so, I’m pretty much blown away by how
much difference there is. And just as every little production detail makes the difference with coffee, cheese, bread baking, olive
oil, tomato growing or anything else, those differences play out
in the world of spices.

­8

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

So if I knew intellectually that there had to be better, A++ quality
product out there on the market, the question that I need to ask
myself (or you can ask of me as well), is “Why did I wait 33 years?”
I guess what’s held me back is that I’ve never really traveled the
spice trails. While I’ve been to most countries in Europe, all over
North America, and to some of Central and South America, and
even Australia and New Zealand, I’ve done little travel in Africa
or Asia from whence so many spices are sourced. Without going
to the source, without talking to the people who do the growing,
without watching how they eat the spices in their own areas and
without listening to them explain their growing and harvesting
processes, it’s tough to tell the difference. Having spent decades
doing that work with olive oil, cheese, vinegar, honey, etc. I know
that it’s not an overnight activity. And when you multiply the
amount of time it takes to do that study and combine it with the
number of spices there are to learn about, even I, who am rarely
intimidated by learning, was overwhelmed.
Which is where the de Viennes come in. While I’ve been studying all those other good foods we sell, they’ve been immersing
themselves in the spice world. Where I’ve been reading about
spices here and there and cooking with them on occasion, the de
Viennes have been going to straight to the source. And one thing
I’ve learned over all these years of studying food and culture is
that there’s really no substitute for seeing and tasting and experiencing food (or drink) of any sort, in situ. When you visit the
farmer, walk in the fields, put your hands onto the plants, smell
the harvest, watch the cleaning, sorting, sifting and grading that
goes into any agricultural product first hand, LOTS of new insights
come to life. Same goes for the kitchen. Cooking shows, YouTube
videos, classes and cookbooks are all great learning tools. But
when you watch the locals do their cooking in their own kitchens, then eat their food with them, and ask them questions in
the moment, then things that were only one-dimensional recipes
come alive in ways that make them multi-dimensional and infinitely more meaningful. I know because that’s what’s happened
to me when I went to my first olive oil harvest, visited the barrelfilled attics of balsamic vinegar makers in Modena, went to the
cheese market in the Franche-Comté or saw Stilton being crafted
outside of Nottingham or country ham being cured in Kentucky. I
just understood everything at an entirely different level of depth.
Given all that we have going on at Zingerman’s today, the reality
is that I probably am not going to spend a few years doing nothing but studying spices. (I’m already working hard on Part 4 of
Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading and trying to keep up with
the rest of my work while I’m at it.) The de Viennes are very much
the culinary equivalent to me of a godsend. I trust their palates
and I give enormous weight to what they have to say. When you
hear the story of how the cloves we get from them have been
grown and harvested, and then you smell and taste the difference between those cloves and what everyone else has to offer,
you’ll understand what I mean. We share the same sense of taste,
we have common values, a commitment to terroir, a love of good
food and cooking, and a passion for the places and traditional
cultures that the food comes from.
While I was studying cheese in the Alps, they were in India immersing themselves in the world of pepper, cloves, and cumin.
“One advantage of us being caterers in Montreal,” Marika told
me, “is that in the summer there’s no catering to do so we could
travel for six weeks as a family. My parents (Philippe and Ethné),
and my brother and me. And wherever we would go to visit we
would find were all these spices that you couldn’t find here in
Montreal. Everything here was ground and not very flavorful.
But we’d go to Trinidad or Mexico or other places and we’d bring
back these amazing spices. My dad would share them with other
chefs and that’s really how Épices de Cru started.“
The truth is that they weren’t really intending to become spice
experts. “At that point we were still primarily caterers with good
spices, not spice sellers,” she went on. “And then one day my dad,
who’s a chef, went on a cooking show with a woman who turned
out to be like the Oprah of Montreal. And then our spice business
exploded. People were calling us like crazy. But for a long time
we resisted getting into the market. We didn’t want to be part
of a fad. We wanted to be part of a movement. To teach people
that for a very little money they could significantly enhance their
cooking.”
One side note I should mention—although the Épices de Cru spices often cost a bit more, their quality and freshness mean you
can often use less in your recipes. If I have been using a tablespoon, I start with half that and then slowly increase to get to the
intensity of flavor I’m looking for. The point of all this is that, as
we’ve believed from the beginning, whether it’s spices or smoked
salmon or sea scallops, you really can taste the difference. Which
means that using Épices de Cru to up our ante on cumin, cloves,

cinnamon, and all the rest is already taking our cooking here at
Zingerman’s up a notch. It’s had similarly positive impact in my
kitchen at home. And, best of all, it can create the same sort of
improvement in your home cooking. As Philippe de Vienne adds,
“Good spices are like good wine. Once you get over the initial
surprise of the intensity of the flavours, you’ll eventually use as
much as before, but will enjoy it a lot more and find that you rely
on spices more often.

FreE SmelLs

Part of what impressed me most when I walked into the
Épices de Cru retail shop in Montreal for the first time
three and a half years ago was that any time a customer
would ask about a spice the staff member would enthusiastically pour some into a mortar and pestle and grind a
bit to let the guest experience its amazing aromas for him
or herself. We’ve tried to recreate that same experience
here—any of the Épices de Cru spices or blends or herbs
that you have a hankering to test out, just say the word—a
sniff or a whiff are yours for the asking!

Just to confirm that you really would be able to tell the difference, I sent some of the spices to my friend, award winning cookbook author Molly Stevens. Mind you Molly has travelled, cooked
and taught cooking all over the world so she knows what she’s
talking about. “I get what you mean about the  spices  being so
pungent that you use less. Each of the ones you sent me are just
BETTER expressions of whatever we’ve gotten used to in the past.
More pungent, more intense, more focused flavor. Fresher. All
the things you’re already saying. It’s like when you hear a chorus
and there’s one clear voice that reaches you—this is how I feel
about the Épices de Cru spices.”

2. Spices At The Table—There’s More to
the Magic than Just Black Pepper
Let me be clear—I LOVE good black pepper. I grind it at the last
minute and put it on almost everything I eat. I love the way it
adds aromatics, enhances the flavor, brings a bit of sharp wineyness to an already good dish, and awakens the palate. It livens
up and lengthens the finish of salads, sauces, stews, pastas, and
almost everything else.
But of late, hanging around—both in person and on email—with
the de Viennes and their terrific products, I’ve realized that my
exclusive use of black pepper for this post-prep, pre-eating addition to a dish has been way narrower than it needs to be. Thanks
to the de Viennes I’ve realized that pretty much ANY spice—or
spice blend—can be used in just the same way, with equally interesting impact. As Ethné directed: “People are waiting for permission to ease the path and say it’s OK—I say, ‘Just do it!’”
What does that mean? Really just what it sounds like! In the last
six months I’ve begun to grind all sorts of different spices and add
them to . . . pretty much everything! I’d imagine this was what it
was like to be cook who had access to the best spice markets of
Marrakech. The range of options is almost overwhelming but the
good news is, it really couldn’t be easier. My hope here is to help
end the intimidation that so typically goes along with unfamiliarity, and help folks realize that my much loved black pepper is
just one of literally hundreds of ways to enhance the intricacy
and interest in what we’re eating. To drive this point home about
casual, down to earth simplicity home, I tell you that I’ve been
doing this spicing mostly at the last minute, right before they go
to—or actually already are at—the table. All of the items I’ve written about below are great candidates. But really almost any spice
can work well.
It doesn’t take much. A small bit of freshly ground allspice will
awaken almost any salad. A pinch or two of freshly ground wild
Voatisperifery cubeb from Madagascar makes a remarkable difference. A spoonful or so of the Épices de Cru Ethiopian Berbere
blend brings sensuality, a bit of heat and a whole lot of fragrance
sprinkled onto a salad, a bean soup, a rice dish or just about
anything else. I love cumin and I’ve discovered that, ground in
the moment and sprinkled onto almost everything is amazing.
Whether it’s the wild Uzbek black cumin, the Syrian cumin. Both
are fantastic on fish, shrimp, salad, vegetables, steaks, roasts,
rice, and beans. Anything you put pepper on, I’d say, give it a
second thought. Don’t leave the pepper off, but now try adding
one of other spices as well! Even just a slice of Bakehouse bread,
toasted then topped with olive oil and spices is superb! Scrambled eggs, fried eggs, pasta, soup or fresh goat cheese all become
even livelier when you add a bit of freshly ground spice. It works,
really, with almost anything. If you doubt that, do as Marika does:

“Put the spices on popcorn and you can’t go wrong. I eat a lot
of curry popcorn. People will only need one piece of popcorn
to taste it.”

3. You Can Cook with Them—and You
Don’t Need A Recipe to Do It!
If you look back at spice history you’ll see almost immediately
that back in the Middle Ages, only the wealthiest of wealthy
in Europe could experience spices. The middle classes might
have gotten hold of a bit at the holidays, hence the tradition
of spice cookies and cakes at Christmas. As the middle class
grew, some spice-centric dishes become more popular—plum
pudding, mulled wine, spiced ginger bread in Alsace.
When she came to visit last fall Ethné de Vienne pointed out
something I’d never before considered. “Mostly we buy spices
because we’ve decided to prepare some recipe out of a book
which calls for a spice we don’t have on hand. And then after we
make the dish once it sits in our cabinet for many more years.
At most, we use spices when we’re preparing some special dish
once or twice a week.” I think she’s right. Unless your family
came from a country with a spice-rich history (as many whose
families came here from Asia or Africa or the Caribbean will
know) spices are not really a huge part of our cooking. They’re
more accouterments, accessories, culinary hood ornaments.
Ethné proposed a very different spice reality. “The idea,” she
said, “is not to wait for a special occasion. It’s to use spices
all the time in your cooking not just to meet the needs of one
recipe.” Her point was so well taken that I couldn’t quite figure
out why I’d never thought of it before.
“Why do you think that you should only eat well once or twice a
week and then just settle the rest of the week? I think I deserve
better,” Ethné said with her typical Trinidadian-French Canadian flair. “For that, you have spices.” And as Philippe added in,”
Indeed you do not need a recipe to use spices. It’s probably the
tyranny of “one spice, one recipe” that is responsible for the
predominance of so much bland food.  Use your nose and let
the smells inspire you and transform your everyday cooking.”

4. Fresh Grinding ­
Makes A Huge Difference
Thirty years ago the idea that everyone you knew would be
grinding fresh beans to make coffee most every time they
brewed it home was almost unimaginable. In those days, only
the most determined of coffee drinkers would have gone to so
much “trouble.” Why bother, when coffee came to pre-ground
in convenient tins. Folgers and Maxwell House were mainstream. Even aficionados, while they might have made a point
of going to a specialty shop to buy their beans, often had the
coffee ground at the store for them. Grinding to order at home
hardly seemed practical, and hardly anyone did it.
Today of course, you probably barely know a soul that still buys
commercially produced, pre-ground coffee in tins. And I’ll bet
the majority of your coffee-drinking friends and family (at least
the more food-focused among them) will have a grinder on the
counter or in the cabinet that they put to use regularly before
they brew.
All of which leads me back to spices. While coffee grinding has
come a long ways, the majority of home cooks (me included until I met the de Viennes) didn’t think much about buying spices
in ground form. It was the way it was done. But the same reason
that we no longer buy pre-ground coffee applies to spices as
well. Grinding ahead means that the aromatics of the spices are
evaporating into the atmosphere, the essential oils are drying
up, and the flavor, aroma, and freshness are all being lost.
The truth, I’ve discovered in the last few months, is that grinding spices is no harder than grinding coffee. In fact, once you
get used to it, it’s about as easy as you can get. Really, other than
opening a can or slicing a piece of bread it might be amongst
the easiest of all things you can take on it order to improve the
quality of your food. Other than unfamiliarity there’s really no
reason not to—the only equipment you need is a simple spice
grinder and/or an old school mortar and pestle.
While the abacus has long since lost its relevance, the mortar
and pestle remains as useful and effective today as it was two
thousand years ago. As Marika says, “There’s nothing more primal than stone on stone. If you want to control your grind, it’s
ideal.” Generally the larger the mortar the easier it is to do it,
though of course bigger ones take up more space. The key I’ve
discovered is generally not to try pound the spices, but rather
to grind them by making a soft circular motion with the pestle

against the sides of the mortar. More like if you were to pick
up a whisk, handle facing away from you, whip facing towards
you, and then beat an egg dish or salad dressing that way. It
really doesn’t take even half a minute to hand grind enough of
a spice to use on your dinner. If you don’t want to bother with
stone, buy an electric grinder. As Marika says, “I’m the laziest
and cheapest person you’re going to meet. Coffee grinder, zup!”

5. Try Toasting
For some dishes and some occasions and some palates you’ll
want to consider toasting your spices before you use them.
Toasting spices is, of course, not news. But it seems like if
you’re soon going to be buying more spices it’s a good time to
bring it up!
Molly Stevens says, “I do pretty much always toast spices. Most
often I dry toast them in a small, cast iron skillet. It’s about
5-inches across and pretty much sits on the stove all the time.
I find for cumin, fennel and coriander especially it makes a
world of difference in deepening their flavor. I like to toast
them, shaking the pan so they toast evenly, until the color
changes and they get super fragrant. I immediately dump them
out of the pan to stop the cooking. Then let them cool a little
before grinding. Sometimes I toast them in the Indian style—in
ghee or peanut oil. Julie Sahni writes about this process—she
talks about how most people get shy and stop the toasting process before you really get the flavor you want.”
Ms. Sahni, one of the best known of Indian food writers, does
indeed seem to call for toasting regularly. But it’s not something to do every time. Turns out that there are a lot of strongly
held opinions out there! In fact, it’s almost controversial! Given that my mother used almost no spices in her cooking other
than pre-ground black pepper and “red pepper flakes,” I have
no spice upbringing or family tradition to fall back on. So I
asked a couple of culinarily skilled Zingerman’s folks who did.
Gauri Thergaonkar came to Ann Arbor as an adult but grew up
in India. She has a strong family tradition of spice management
to fall back on. “For me,” she said, “here’s what the to-toastor-not-to-toast debate comes down to—asking the right question. Which is not the ‘toast-or-not-toast’ question, but rather:
‘How am I going to best enhance the flavor of the spices for the
dish I’m doing?’ There are different ways to bring out the best
in spices. I can do it by simmering whole spices in liquid in a
braise, or frying whole spices in oil in an Indian-style Tarka. If
I’m blending and powdering to throw into a curry, I’ll almost
always toast because that’s what’s going to bring out the flavor
in that particular case, you know? Not the grinding. Or simmering the spices raw, but still ground, in a curry.” Ji Hye Kim, our
newest partner at Zingerman’s, came to the US as a teenager
but she too grew up with a lot more spices than I did in Chicago.
“I agree with Gauri,” she said. “I toast if I want to enhance the
flavor of spices.” Philippe reminded me what Rick Bayless reminded me many years ago: “Chilies are probably the spice that
are most transformed by dry roasting.”
Toasting spices in a bit of hot
oil can help to bring out
their flavors very nicely. It
does round off the edges
of the flavors, soften them .
. . maybe soft jazz compared
to Ornette Coleman? Harold
McGee explain the science
in On Food and Cooking, “Once the aroma molecules in herbs
and spices are released into a preparation and exposed to
other ingredients, the air, and heat, they begin to undergo a
host of chemical reactions.  Some fraction of the original aroma chemicals becomes altered into a variety of other chemicals, so the initially strong, characteristic notes become more
subdued, and the general complexity of the mixture increases
. . . . When cumin or coriander are toasted on their own, for
example, their sugars and amino acids undergo browning reactions and generate savory aroma molecules typical of roasted
and toasted foods (pyrazines), thus developing a new layer of
flavor that complements the original raw aroma.” And also
that, “The toasting on a hot pan of whole dry spices, typically
mustard, cumin or fenugreek, for a minute or two until the
seeds begin to pop, the point at which their inner moisture
has vaporized and they are just beginning to brown.   Spices
cooked in this way are mellowed, but individually; they retain
their own identities.”
Some spices that benefit from toasting: fennel, cumin, ­
cinnamon, cardamom, coriander seed, and mustard seed.

WELCOME THE
DE VIENNE FAMILY
TO ANN ARBOR
and spice up your Spring
with these great events in
the Zingerman’s ­
Community of Businesses
ALL SPICE ROUTES
LEAD TO THE ROADHOUSE
Tuesday April 14th • 7pm • $55
at Zingerman’s Roadhouse • 2501 Jackson Rd.
This is the beginning of what I’m guessing will become an
annual Roadhouse tradition. Carried round the globe with
great fanfare and usually at great cost, spices became the
color that livened culinary palettes, the nuance that took
recipes from common to compelling. Today, of course, finding spices is far easier. But this dinner is about the best of
the best, the hand-selected, carefully curated spices that
our friends from Épices de Cru have been searching for and
selecting for over thirty years now. These are spices the likes
of which supermarket aisles will never see. Combining the
culinary talents of our own, James Beard award-winning Alex
Young and Montreal-based spice-trekker Philippe de Vienne
this dinner offers a bit of spice history, a bit learning about
how to use spices in your own kitchen, a good dose of spicy
storytelling, a bit of laughing, a lot of love and a really good
meal! If you’re thinking life could stand a little spicing up,
don’t miss out! Call 734.663.3400 to reserve or book online at
events.zingermanscommunity.com.

THE INS & OUTS OF SPICES
How To Find, Store, And Serve
the World’s Best Spices!

Wednesday, April 15th • 6:30-8:30pm • $30
at Zingerman’s Events on 4th, 415 N. Fifth St.
Visiting spice trekkers Marika, Philippe and Ethné de Vienne
voyage from Montreal to share over thirty years of incredible
spice travels, travails, and terrific tastes with us. The results
of their work are an almost overwhelming list of special
stuff that we’re privileged to offer for sale at the Deli and
for tasting on this exceptional, educational and enlightening
evening. You’ll discover rare, specially selected cloves from
Southern India, wild cumin from Uzbekistan, wild cubebs
from Madagascar, special 00000 grade true cinnamon from
Sri Lanka, and carefully chosen black pepper from a single
Indian village. And there are the blends—amazing and exotic
Ethiopian Berbere, Silk Road Spice Blend, White Curry,
Kashmir Curry, and so much more! If you’re ever wondered
how to add flavor to your kitchen; how to use some of those
spices you’ve seen, but had no clue how to cook with; or
wondered what you could add to your culinary repertoire to
really jazz up your cooking without having to go to school,
this class is for you! Seats are limited so sign up soon!
Call 734.663.3663 to reserve or book online at
events.zingermanscommunity.com.

BAKING WITH SPICES
Thursday, April 16th • 6-8:30pm • $45
at BAKE! • 3723 Plaza Drive
A first at BAKE!
The de Vienne family, spice experts and engaging speakers
from Épices de Cru, have traveled the world to bring the best
spices to North America and they’ve learned a lot along the
way. In this special baking class, they team their talents with
our baking experts. Together we’ll demonstrate how good
quality fresh spices and grinding your own at home can dramatically improve the flavor of your baked goods. You’ll see
a few recipes in action and we’ll enjoy them together so you
can taste the difference. Call 734.761.7255 to reserve or book
online at bakewithzing.com.

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

­9

Ethiopian Berbere
Berbere could be called the “curry of Africa.” The
fragrant and versatile Ethiopian blend is Épices de
Cru’s best seller in Montreal. This Berbere is a blend
of three chili peppers modified with a host of spices
including ginger, black and green cardamom, fenugreek, allspice, adjwain, cassia buds, and black pepper. Philippe told me that it’s “traditionally used for
meat in Ethiopia, we have yet to find a dish where it
did not work: seafood, vegetarian, grains ... even in
brownies. It’s the ultimate answer to the question: ‘If
you had to take only one spice blend to a desert island?’ This would be it.”

Wild Uzbek Black Cumin
This wild black cumin seed has given me a whole new
appreciation for just how amazing a spice can be.
Spices, like wines, olive oils, or coffees, vary from origin to origin. This Uzbek cumin has a has a very delicate but still super-delicious cumin taste with hints of
wild herbs. It’s a bit earthy, seriously sensual, richly
aromatic. People who shy away from cumin’s pronounced presence are usually won over by this wild
offering. Honestly, I can’t get enough of it. I’m on my
second tin in under six weeks.
Épices de Cru says to use it straight out of the container, without roasting or grinding, as a finishing touch
on your special dishes. I’ve put it onto some of the
really good lentils we’ve got at the Deli cooked simply
with carrots, parsnip, and onion, drained and dressed
with lots of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and plenty
of wild cumin seed. Try it on beans, on fish cooked for
fish tacos. Great on just cooked potatoes. Excellent
with chickpeas, whole or in hummus. And it’s fantastic on a Tunisian lablabi (recipe available on request).
The story of this particular cumin is one more testament as to why I’m so excited to be offering Épices
de Cru here in our stores. Here’s the story as Ethné
de Vienne tells it: “One of the most wonderful spice
discoveries we’ve made in years did not involve us
crossing any time zones but came to us while we were
at our shop in the Jean-Talon market in Montreal.
Philippe and I enjoy nothing better than spending
our Saturdays in the market as we find the intimate
contact with our customers and staff incredibly invigorating. We listen, we learn, we share, and we grow.
“On one such Saturday a man walked into the store,
introduced himself as Jack and told us that he had a
sample of something to show us. He was quite tall and
no light weight but Jack seemed harmless enough so
when he reached into his pocket to take something
out we were not alarmed but rather intrigued by the
little plastic bag that he held in his outstretched hand.
Jack explained that he had previously come to our
store looking for black cumin, certain that he would
find it. We did not disappoint him as we did in fact
have black cumin, but from all appearances he was
underwhelmed by what we offered. We are not used
to disappointing customers, so Philippe and I were
doubly interested by what he went on to say.”
“It turned out,” she explained, “that Jack was from
Uzbekistan and not surprisingly was fond of cooking
Uzbek food. The ‘crowning glory’ of Uzbek national
cuisine he explained is the plov, which closely resembles the rice pilaf of the Middle East. Wild cumin,
it turns out, is one of the ‘pillars of a good plov.’ We
tasted his sample,” Ethné said, “and were completely
bowled over by its taste, intense flavor and surprising
lack of bitterness.” With Jack’s help the de Vienne’s
get enough of this great wild cumin to carry in the
shop. And to send to us to sell here in Ann Arbor!

Rare Indian Cloves
Épices de Crus’ cloves have been one of the biggest eye-openers for me over the last few months.
Philippe has told their story so beautifully that I figured I’d just leave it as he told it to me.

­10

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

Spice of
the Month

special!

25%
off

at

March

April

Ethiopian
Berbere

Wild Uzbek
Black Cumin

$11.25/tin
(reg. $15)

$11.25/tin
(reg. $15)

“Great cloves usually come from equatorial islands
like Indonesia or Zanzibar.  As a rule, Indian cloves
are of poor quality. Traders pay rock bottom prices
to farmers who put a minimum effort into production, sorting etc. so they have little incentive to grow
anything great. Typically all cloves at various stages
of maturity are stripped off the tree in one picking,
then are dried and packed together. Plus the climate
in India is generally far from ideal. 
“Cloves are the flower bud of the tree. They are at
their peek of aroma when the tip of the buds is a
beautiful pink; the day before they burst open. The
round ‘heads’ of those cloves are a light beige when
dried. After that, if left on the tree, they open and
quickly lose their aroma; those are the cloves without a “head”. Before that the buds are green, not as
fragrant and they can be recognized as the dry cloves
with a dark head. To maximize the output of premium
cloves you must ideally hand-pick the good cloves
and leave the others to ripen. That means repeatedly
climbing the trees over the course of a few weeks.
“Our friend Sudheer introduced us to Najeeb and
Shihab eight years ago, at our request, after we’d
seen—to our surprise—some pretty good cloves it
their place. When we visited Najeeb and Shihab’s village we understood why. The village is located  in a
semi-desert area of Kerala, built around huge basaltic
hills, in the crags of the hills there are verdant oases,
where life flourishes. Over the years we have encouraged Najeeb and Shihab to improve the quality, to put
more care in the whole process. They have responded in kind. When we first visited, they lived in modest
homes they rented and sold bulk cloves.
“When we visited last February they proudly showed
us their new homes. We looked in and found the
cloves that are now sold as “special selection.” They
were all perfect. Najeeb and Shihab’s faces beamed
with pride as they explained that these cloves were
much more expensive. We explained that we understood why and agreed to pay the price they were
asking for the 5 kg they had produced that year. They
only had produced a small amount because they have
been so conditioned that they could not believe that
someone would actually pay the value of such hard
work.
“Their trees can produce a few hundred kilos a year
and we encouraged them to maximize the output of
the superior grades and that we would take all they
could produce. When we left, they walked us back to
our car and we could see the many clove trees scattered in the village. We asked “ How much cloves
does this village produce in a year?” ‘5 tons’ was the
answer. One of us said, ‘Insh Allah, one day all the
cloves produced in this village will be of this amazing quality.’ Najeeb replied, beaming ‘Insh Allah!.’
We know we have a great job but seeing people like
Najeeb and Shihab prosper and be proud of their accomplishments is one the best parts. All they need is
a fair shake.”
I’ve been adding cloves to soups and stocks liberally
over the last few months. Excellent ground and used
for baking. Really all it will take is a quick smell from
the Épices de Cru tins at the Deli and you’ll probably
be ready to do the same.

March

april

Designed by our dexterous
Sandwich Line cook, Kyle’s
patchwork of flavors won the
hearts and tummies of over
half of his kitchen co-workers.
He pairs smoked turkey with
the pleasantly herbaceous
oven-dried tomatoes, added
leaf lettuce for crunch, ranch
dressing for creaminess, and
brings it all home with bacon.
It’s all nestled between two
slices of grilled rustic bred.
Label it delicious!

This month we throw our hands
up in the air for really awesome
roasted meat! Beef brisket
that’s been marinated and
roasted for 8 hours is shredded and united with the Deli’s
house-made spicy and bright
barbecue sauce. Served on an
onion roll, it’s topped it with
sliced garlic pickles to balance
sweetness. A small container
of our yellow mustard-based
potato salad tags along on the
side as a simple, classic conclusion to a delicious meal! ­

Kyle’s Narpie

$14.99

Barbecue Bill

$10.99

March

Ortiz Mackerel
$9.99 (reg. $14.99)
You may have seen
these gorgeous, slender
little fillets of heaven on
the tinned fish shelf at
the Deli. Packed upright
in a beautiful red and
gold-labeled jar, soaking in
luscious extra virgin olive
oil, they are hard to miss. One taste, and you’ll see that their
texture, flavor and versatility is equally unforgettable.

April

Connétable Sardines
$6.69 (reg. $9.99)
Founded in 1853, the Connétable factory has been producing
some of the world’s best sardines for over a century-anda-half. These simple, no-nonsense classics from Brittany,
France are cleaned by hand, fried and then packed in
velvety extra virgin olive oil. Good enough for the fanciest
of hors d’oeuvres or enjoyed right out of the tin.

GRADUATION 2015
Zingerman’s Catering
is ready to create a
memorable University of
Michigan Commencement
Party this May. From
delicious deli trays to
superior sandwiches,
beautiful breakfast baskets
to our Grillin’ for the Grad
package, you’ll be able
to fashion a full-flavored
feast fit for your parents,
grandparents and friends!

Call 734-663-3400 to chat
with one of our expert caterers.
They can take care of all the details so
you can focus on finishing up for the
big day. One of our sales staff will ask
all the right questions and walk you
through your order in a flash. For $25,
our delivery drivers will bring the food
to your door and help you get set up
(but we also make pick-up real easy –
you won’t even need to get out of your
car!). Leave Ann Arbor in good taste
with Zingerman’s Catering.

PaSsover EASTER
Specials TREATS
Erev Passover is Friday, April 3

Easter is Sunday, April 5

Call 734.761.2095 to reserve yours!

ChocOlate
Orange TorTE

A Zingerman's classic
We take a layer of chocolate cake
made with matzo and ground almonds,
flavor it with real orange oil, cover it
in dark chocolate ganache
and sprinkle it with toasted
almonds. This 6" cake serves
6 to 10.

Lemon
SpOnge Cake

A light and lovely ­
end to any feast
We've baked up a modern twist on the
traditional Passover sponge cake! We've
dressed up this tasty holiday standard
with fresh lemon zest and our own
lemon curd inside and caramelized
meringue outside. This 6" cake serves 6
to 10. Wheat free!

Bakehouse Passover specials are available April 1-11 at ­
Zingerman's Bakehouse, Delicatessen or Roadhouse

Hot CrOSs Buns
4/2-4/5 only

A traditional treat on Good Friday, this
soft, yeasted bun is made with a bit of
potato (to keep the dough moist), raisins,
currants, candied orange peel, and decorated with an icing cross.

SomOdi Kálacs
(sho-mo-dee-ko-loch)

every weekend in April
A traditional Hungarian Easter bread we
learned to bake in a village in Transylvania on our trip there last year. This soft,
golden loaf is made with fresh eggs and a
sweet butter and cinnamon sugar swirl.
The smell is amazing. The taste is even
better. Enjoy it while you can!

Ss
baking cla
hands-on

Hot Cross Buns Class

Saturday, March 28th, 1:30-5:30pm
OR Saturday, April 4th, 1:30-5:30pm
Learn to make these traditional
Good Friday treats at home. They are
so yummy fresh from the oven and
your family and friends will be so
impressed you made them yourself!
Register at www.bakewithzing.com

Milk Chocolate
Peanut Butter & Jelly Fudge Eggs
Made with browned Kerrygold butter
and whole Guernsey milk!

Full menu online at www.zingermansdeli.com

First pick up is April 3, 11 am
We've been preparing and serving full-flavored Passover dishes since we opened in
1982. We make everything from scratch in our kitchen and use the best ingredients
we can find. Over the years, our annual Passover menu has built up a loyal local
following thanks to traditional dishes like our homemade gefilte fish (try it if you
think you don't like gefilte fish!), mahogany eggs, and beef brisket. Call 734.663.3400
to order!*

Chocolate Almond
Fudge Eggs
A NEW treat from candyman Charlie
Frank with marzipan and chunks of
toasted almonds

Special Easter
Chocolate Covered Peanut Brittle
For the ultimate Easter basket! Our
fresh, crackly brittle dipped in luscious
dark chocolate.

A few favorites on this year's menu:

Easter themed
Zzang!® Bar 4-Pack

Seder Plate

The perfect way to sample all four of
our handmade candy bar flavors

Charoset, Mahogany Eggs, Fresh Horseradish, Roasted Lamb Shank, Passover
Greens, Parsley, and Matzo Crackers

Other Menu Highlights

Charoset, Fresh Horseradish, Chopped
Liver, Jewish Chicken Broth, Matzo,
Chocolate Orange Passover Tortes, Bakehouse Macaroons and more!

Gluten FrEe
gefilte Fish

Our handmade Gefilte Fish is made with
freshwater fish, matzo meal, fresh eggs,
sea salt and white pepper, then poached
in fish broth. And, now they’re available
gluten free!

Complete
Seder Meal for 4

Choose from Roast Beef Brisket OR
Whole-roasted Free Range Chicken
with Housemade Golden Mashed
Potatoes and Gravy, four handmade
Gefilte Fish, Potato Kugel, and Passover Greens, Jewish Chicken Broth
with Matzo Balls, and a 6" Chocolate
Orange Passover Torte made at
Zingerman's Bakehouse.

100% of the profits
from our Complete Seder
Meal for 4 goes to
FoOdGatherers!

*None of our Passover foods are kosher.

To see the full menu, stop by the Deli or go online at
www.zingermansdeli.com Order ahead at 734.663.3400

MarshmalLow
BunNy TailS!

Handmade marshmallows in two
delicious flavors: raspberry and
coconut. Pure flavor from raspberry
preserves or Italian coconut paste
and toasted coconut. You could say
they're from Italian bunnies! Each
half-pound package contains both
flavors.

Easter Super Zzang!® Original

Masha’s Paska

A foot-long version of the candy bar
that Oprah said "puts the vending
machine stuff to shame."

Traditional

Michigan

Tvorog, demerara
Tvorog, demerara
The traditional Pascal (Easter) cake of the
sugar,
butter,
sugar, butter,
Eastern Orthodox Church. The resurrection
vanilla,
almonds
cinnamon, dried
of this Easter cake came about with the
and
red
flame
peaches, dried
help of former Roadhouse server Masha
raisins
apricots, dried
who is from Belarus. With her help we
apples, dried
translated traditional recipes from Russian Cherry
pears, and raisins
and used her sense memory to try them
Tvorog, demerara
out. We are making a traditional Russian
sugar,butter, sour
white cheese called tvorog as the base for
cherries, thyme
these cheese cakes, and blending it with
our Cream cheese. The cakes are rich and
available March 23-April 6
creamy, and spiked throughout with dried
fruits and nuts.

$19.99/cake

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

­11

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape —
the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, ­
the whole story doesn’t show.”- Andrew Wyeth
To all appearances, the farm is asleep. Snow blankets the fallow fields and gently rolling pastures. It lays upon broken
corn stalks, withered tomato plants, and meadows browned
in the chill of autumn. The earth is frozen hard, locked tight
until the warming sun of spring returns.
Yet, in the midst of this monochromatic landscape, life thrives
unseen. The farm’s warm hoophouse nurtures and strengthens seedlings and sprouts in advance of early spring planting,
giving them a fighting chance against the fickle and changing
Michigan weather of March and April.
The farm’s animals, barn-bound since the first snows, are nurturing and growing their own young lives. This is the breeding
time on the farm, and Herd Manager Kelly Young is expecting a
whole new generation of goat kids, lambs, piglets, and calves
come spring.

GETTING OUR GOAT(S)
There are three different goat breeds on the farm; Toggenburg,
Nubian, and American Alpine. All three are known for producing high-quality milk, and the farm sells their goat milk to
Zingerman’s Creamery for use in cheesemaking. The mating
process begins for the goats in October, when the bucks come
in to rut. During rutting (mating) season, the buck’s scent
glands begin to work overtime, secreting a powerful hormonal aroma. “They smell awful,” says Kelly, laughing. “When
people talk about how goats smell, what they’re talking about
is the smell of the bucks in rut.” Turns out, this is the key to
a lady goat’s heart. October is also is the time when the does
come into heat, and they’re on the lookout for a smelly buck
to help them conceive.
Goats are seasonal breeders, showing little interest by January.
So, Kelly has her local veterinarian stop by in December to
verify which of the does is pregnant. The vet uses a portable
ultrasound device “that she wears like a purse,” according to
Kelly, and the pregnant goats are marked with a paint stick to
quickly identify them when birthing season approaches. The
infant goats require about five months of gestation, so the
does that were impregnated in October will be due in March.
Kelly tells me that goats usually give birth to twins; sometimes triplets, and in rare cases, quadruplets. The goat herd is
one hundred twenty-strong, with forty-seven does currently
expecting.
To help her monitor the birthing process Kelly has had a camera set up in the barn, which she can check using her smartphone. Prior to the barn camera, Kelly had to actually sleep
in barn so she could keep an eye on the mothers. As she puts
it, “first-timers can sometimes be a challenge,” and she needs
to be present to ensure the birth goes smoothly, so mom and
baby are healthy and comfortable.

ANCIENT SHEEP
For the seventeen Tunis sheep on the farm, the breeding and
birthing process is very similar to goats, right down to the
length of the gestation period (5 months). The Tunis is a rare
breed, and one of the oldest in recorded history. The distinct
breed originated in Tunisia on the Northern Coast of Africa,
and they were first imported into the U.S. in 1799. Thomas
Jefferson supposedly owned a large herd.

While the goat herd contains several breeding bucks, the
Tunis ewes have to rely on just one stud ram to help bring
the new spring lambs onto the farm each year. Kelly says
they call him “The General,” and he does his best to live up
to his name by head-butting those who would infringe on his
territory. Unlike the goats, the sheep at Cornman Farms will
normally produce just one lamb per season. They’re are also
much more skittish around people than the sociable goats,
which can be a challenge during the monitoring and birthing
process. But, the sheep are also a much hardier animal, a big
plus for an overworked herd manager during birthing season.
The Tunis is known for its tender and flavorful meat, milder
than most and lacking the distinct mutton taste that’s present
in other breeds. This was a big part of reason why they were
chosen for Cornman Farms. Tunis sheep are also renowned
for their long and lustrous wool, a detail that has not escaped
Kelly’s eye. “We’re going to investigate having the wool processed into yarn this year,” she says. “We’ve never done it
before, so this will be a learning experience.”
Sheep shearing happens in February or March, and it’s done by
a roving crew who do all of their work on a specially equipped
truck. The team pull the sheep up a ramp and into the back
of the truck, then use power clippers at three different stations to separate the wool from the sheep. Kelly says it’s really
something to see how quickly and efficiently the shearers give
the Tunis a haircut. She’s hoping that the wool will produce
a significant enough amount of yarn to be able to share, and
possibly sell.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY
Last year, Zingerman’s Roadhouse Chef and Cornman Farms
founder, Alex Young, traveled out to Iowa to look at some pigs.
It might seem like a long way to travel, but these were very
special animals. Raised by Paul Willis, founder and manager
of the Niman Ranch Pork Company. Niman Ranch is known far
and wide for the humane care of their animals, as well as the
very high quality of the resulting meat. The pigs are a Chester
White/Berkshire cross-breed. The Berkshire originated in
1800’s Britain, in the county of Berkshire, and is considered
a rare heritage breed, while the Chester White was originally
developed in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Both breeds are
prized for their delicious flavor and tender meat, as well as
a higher fat content which helps it stand up to both longer
cooking times and higher temperatures.
Cornman Farms currently has five breeding sows, and this past
fall they borrowed a stud boar from their friends at Green
Things Farm, north of Ann Arbor. The boar apparently takes
his siring duties very seriously. “He got right off the truck and
just started doing his job!” laughs Kelly. But the enthusiastic
fellow did his job well, and Cornman Farms will likely see
five litters of ten piglets each in the spring. When it comes
to breeding, it seems that pigs give it their full attention right
down to the smallest detail: The gestation period for these
pigs is precisely three months, three weeks, and three days.
When I do the math (50 new pigs!), Kelly reminds me that
Zingerman’s Roadhouse throws an entire hog on the smoker
each day to keep up with the steadily rising demand for their
excellent barbecue. Additionally, the Roadhouse butchers will
use a lot of the meat for their own
house-made sausages, ham,
bacon, and pork rinds, among
other things. This is a perfect
example of the farm-to-table
concept, where everyone,
from chefs to diners, knows
exactly where their food came
from.

‘TIL THE COWS COME HOME
The cows at Cornman Farms have it pretty good. Kelly maintains a herd of about seven breeding cows of mixed Angus,
Hereford, and Charolais breed. The Angus originated in
Scotland, and is probably the most common breed of beef cattle in the U.S. Angus are also noted for the superior quality and
flavor of the meat, as is the Hereford. The Charolais originated
in Charolles, France, and is another prominent breed among
beef cattle. Additionally, the Charolais cross-breeds well with
both Hereford and Angus cattle, bringing its own high-quality
traits to the resulting beef.
Cornman Farms does not have a bull. Instead, the farm rents
a stud bull who, like the boar, sets to his task with the air of a
professional. Which, of course, he is. Each cow will deliver one
calf each spring, so the herd will periodically grow in number until the older animals have reached harvest age of two
years. Cornman Farms actually keeps their cows around longer than the industry average of 14-16 months. This is a reflection of Chef Alex’s more flavorful meat for the Roadhouse.
Simply put, beef that’s been allowed to more fully mature just
tastes better. Alex and Kelly feed the cattle an enriched diet
of organically grown alfalfa and legumes, as well as a certain
percentage of grain, which contributes to the ultimate flavor
of the beef. Kelly says that beef that are exclusively fed grass
produce a leaner beef, but the meat also lacks some of the
richness of flavor. And the reason for this is the fat. Like many
chefs, Alex Young strongly feels the presence of a bit of fat
contributes to keeping the meat moist and flavorful during the
cooking process, and thus, better tasting. Leaner beef tends to
dry out more easily during the cooking process, and the result
does not make for a good steak. So the cows get to enjoy some
cereal with their breakfast, and they’re happier for it.

THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Kelly Young has a deep connection to Cornman Farms. She is
the sixth generation of her family to live on the Island Lake
Road property, and her family name (Arnold) is well-represented in the history of the Village of Dexter. The field currently used for the farm’s agriculture was part of the original
deed issue way back in the early 1800’s. The plot passed out of
family hands for a time, and Kelly is obviously happy to have
it back. There’s a sense of coming full circle. It feels like home.
This past year has been a whirlwind of experiences and
learning moments. Kelly feels a sense of connection to these
humble creatures that comes from raising nearly all of them
from birth. Kelly grew up on a horse farm, riding, training, and
showing her animals, and this experience likely gave her a leg
up in understand the care of livestock. But, more importantly,
Kelly thinks is an innate trait that some people simply possess.
“I think there are people who know animals and can work
with animals, and those who can’t. When people [or prospective farm hands] come and visit the farm, I watch how they act
around the animals. You can tell who’s an animal person and
who’s not.“ And Kelly, obviously, is an animal person.
When I ask Kelly what’s next for the farm, she says she’d love
to bring in chickens and ducks, and possibly expand the existing herds. But, that’s down the road. Right now, her plate is
pretty full with managing the herd and raising a family. “Once
we have more staff, then it will be easier to manage the animals.” But that’s the future. How about right now?
“I am happier now that I’ve ever been in my entire life. I am
thrilled to death that this is my job, and I can’t believe I get
to do it.”

EJ Olsen covers Zingerman’s for our newsletter and
on zingermanscommunity.com and on Twitter

­12

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

Building Customer Loyalty, One Slice at a Time

The Story of PiZzEriA LOla
• An exquisite, out-ofthe-ordinary setting and
a nice change of pace
from a conference room
or hotel setting. Perfect
for a corporate retreat,
board meeting, staff
party, client appreciation
gathering, and more.
• Modern amenities of
WiFi, sound system,
ample parking, beautiful and clean restrooms,
adjustable heating/
cooling, including the
possibility of a crackling
fireplace during the cold
months!
• Plenty of options for
set-up and room layout
either in our gorgeous,
sunny farmhouse or our
2-level barn with an outside patio overlooking
our stunning gardens.

• Fantastic food provided
by either Zingerman's
Roadhouse or
Zingerman's Catering.
• Great service in guiding
you through the process
from determining the
best location/set-up to
the food, beverage and
other logistics to knowing you will be cared for
from arrival to departure
as if you are a guest at
our home.
• Rustic yet elegant environment with plenty of
natural light and a comfortable setting that just
might even elicit fond
memories (food, herbs,
fresh air, you name it)!

Call 734.619.8100
to get started!

Do you have a group interested in historic buildings?
Responsible raising of animals? Really delicious, sustainable farm-to-table food? Zingerman’s Cornman
Farms loves group tours! Whether you’re looking for
an hour-long introduction to what makes our Farm so
special, or a full day of scrumptious meals and hands-on
learning, we’ve got a tour for you.
Our pre-Civil War era Barn is perfect for a group of up
to 100 guests, and an informative, interactive tour and
lunch are incredibly popular with our group tours. Our
goats and gardens love visitors, and we have experts onhand to share their knowledge with your group. Guests
with mobility concerns? It’s our pleasure to bring the
gardens and animals straight to them while they enjoy a
farm-fresh lunch in the barn.
Below are just a few of the Group Tour options we offer,
and we’ll customize one to meet your specific needs!

Introduction to
Zingerman’s
Cornman Farms
Enjoy a fascinating introduction to Cornman Farms’
rich history, agricultural
projects and humane
raising of animals - and
a taste of something
seasonal from the gardens!
90 minutes, $20/person
(minimum of 10 guests)

Harvest Tour
Available only from Labor
Day through Thanksgiving!
Autumn is magical at
Cornman Farms. Let us
teach you a bit about the
harvest season here we’ll even provide some
cider and tasty donuts!
90 minutes, $30/person
(minimum of 10 guests)

Call 734.619.8100
to get started!

Afternoon at the Farm
Spend the afternoon with
us for an in-depth understanding of what makes
Cornman Farms so special.
This experience includes
a behind-the-scenes tour
of the Farmhouse, Barn,
Goat Barn, and Gardens,
and a delicious luncheon
overlooking the grounds. 3
hours, $65/person
(minimum of 10 guests)

The Big Tomato
For serious farm fans only!
Enjoy a hearty breakfast
in our lovely historic
farmhouse, then spend the
morning learning about
our vegetable production
and animal husbandry,
observe the goats in their
home, and pick a basket
of seasonal vegetables to
take home with you after a
simple, lovely farm lunch.
5 hours, $100/person
(minimum of 5 guests)

In many ways, Ann Kim and Conrad Leifur are our ideal clients.
They first experienced ZingTrain and Zingerman’s by coming
to a seminar. We love it when people start their relationship
with us by coming to visit because it gives us the opportunity
to play host and share the Zingerman’s Experience with them,
and it also gives them the opportunity to visit all our businesses and see if and how we walk the talk. The other reason
we love Ann and Conrad is because they internalize, interpret
and implement what we share with them! Nothing warms a
training businesses heart more that clients who assimilate
what they’ve heard, adapt it to their own business and implement it!
Here’s Ann telling the Pizzeria Lola story ….

Gauri: Tell us a little bit about Pizzeria Lola and Hello Pizza
Ann: Pizzeria Lola was the result of a dream. I've always had
a passion for cooking, something that was inspired by my
mother and grandmother. When I wasn't working I was cooking and feeding people.
Neither Conrad or I had any previous restaurant experience,
but we knew we wanted to do something that brought us joy.
One thing that I felt was missing from the food landscape in
Minnesota was pizza, something that Conrad and I had plenty
of experience eating from our college days in New Haven, CT
and New York City. So, since the kind of pizza that we wanted
to eat didn't exist, we decided to bring great pizza to the good
people of Minneapolis.
Once we decided to focus on pizza I did extensive research,
experimenting and trained with my mentor, Tony Gemignani,
an award winning pizzaiolo in San Francisco. It was here that I
fell in love with the art of wood fired pizza so decided to focus
on a unique crust with creative ingredients that reflected not
only traditional American and Italian styles, but also reflect
my Korean heritage.
When we opened Pizzeria Lola in Minneapolis in 2010, we
envisioned an environment that fostered a symbiotic relationship between the business, the employees, customers
and the community at large. We wanted to create a unique,
fun environment where everyone felt at home. A place where
people came for the food but stayed for the community and
connection to the place and the people. An atmosphere that
celebrated the pizza as well as the people behind it.
And before we knew it, what started as 6 night-a-week operation has turned into 7 days-a-week serving both lunch and
dinner. What we initially envisioned as a small mom and pop
pizzeria has become a nationally acclaimed pizzeria doing
over $3 million and 50 employees.
Hello Pizza opened in March 2013. Hello Pizza is a very different model. I harkened back to my original love, which was
East Coast-style pizza cooked in a deck oven. Since I was a fan
of New York-style pizza and Minneapolis seemed to be lacking a proper neighborhood slice joint, Hello Pizza was born.
Hello Pizza offers delivery and quick-order items in a counterservice setting. But just like Pizzeria Lola, everything is made
in house with the same attention to detail and quality.

Gauri: How did you first come to ZingTrain? And, more importantly, why did you come? What is it you were seeking?

Ann:

I first found out about the Zingerman's organization
just before I opened Pizzeria Lola the summer of 2010. Heidi
Andermack, who is co-owner of a local catering company
called Chow Girls, grew up in Michigan and was a big fan of
the Zingerman's Community of Businesses. She wanted to
bring the training to her staff, but since she couldn't afford it
she reached out to other local restaurateurs and small business owners to see if there would be interest in participating
in a day long leadership and service workshop. I was already
doing a lot of research and reading books about servant leadership and various service models so I quickly signed up along
with many others. Conrad and I wanted to run a business that
was successful and healthy and to us that meant running a
business with integrity and something that not only we were
proud of, but a place that our staff shared in the same vision. It
was here that I met many other business leaders and restaurateurs with similar values and philosophies. The workshop was
extremely helpful and it validated what we already believed
in terms of how we wanted to run our restaurant. It was also

here that I was hungry to learn more about ZingTrain.

Gauri:

What is it about what you learn/hear from us that
keeps bringing you back for more?

Ann: Prior to opening the restaurants the only person I ever
managed was myself. I was a freelance actor and worked
multiple jobs to support the "career." I had zero experience
with leadership and management in the conventional sense.
I was excellent at motivating, pushing and leading myself, but
had no idea where to begin with leading, managing, organizational development and fostering growth in others. I instinctively believe that good organizations are run by good people
and that it really does take a village to create positive flow/
energy. These are things that I kept hearing from ZingTrain
and loved that the Zingerman's community of businesses was
built on similar shared values I knew I had to learn more.
What I had in belief, I lacked in experience and the tools to
lead, manage and inspire others.

Zingerman’s [has] been extremely
beneficial to our employee engagement.
Customers comment all the time about
how energized our staff is and how much
fun they’re having doing their jobs.
Gauri: What aspects of what you learned at ZingTrain have
you chosen to implement at Pizzeria Lola and Hello Pizza?

Ann: Visioning, the training compact and the importance of
setting clear expectations, servant leadership philosophy, we
also borrow heavily from Zingerman's Eight Guiding Principles
Gauri: You moved on from coming to seminars to bringing us
out to you for private training at least once a year. Why did
you decide to do that? Could you give us some sense of the
similarities and differences between getting trained here in
Ann Arbor and us coming out to you.

Ann: There is definitely a little more hands on/in depth and
focused approach when training in Ann Arbor. It's also nice
to have the training spread out over two days and to share
stories and experiences with others from around the country. We had sent most of our leadership/management team
from Lola to Ann Arbor in the first couple years of business,
and we really wanted to share that experience with the rest
of our staff. Since it wasn’t realistic to send every single staff
member to Ann Arbor we thought that bringing Zingtrain to
us would be a great way to engage the staff and give us all an
opportunity to connect and share ideas. Another great part
of having Zingtrain come to us is that the day was focused on
our organization and our needs specifically. Having the private training for all the staff at both restaurants has helped
establish key ZingTrain concepts throughout the organization in a way that sending a few managers to Ann Arbor really
couldn't. We also feel that the personal development aspects
of ZingTrain (e.g., developing a vision) have been inspirational
to our employees. It's really helped improve staff engagement.
Gauri:

How has coming to Zingerman's/ZingTrain changed
Pizzeria Lola as a business?

Ann: This is a hard question to answer since we've been
influenced by Zingerman's since even before we opened, but
there's no question it's been extremely beneficial to employee
engagement. Customers comment all the time about how
energized our staff is and how much fun they're having doing
their jobs. Through the years our success has come through
word of mouth of our loyal followers who do the advertising
and marketing for us by bringing new guests who turn into
loyal followers and so on. We don't have an advertising budget. We spend that money on enrichment and engagement
opportunities for our staff because if they're happy our guests
are happy. This is much the way Zingerman’s operates and it’s
what we heard in the seminars and it really resonated with us.
I'm proud of what we do. It's authentic. You can't fake joy. In
the end it's about joy and our mission is very clear: To spread
JOY through GREAT pizza and INSPIRED hospitality.

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

­13

DIY GELATO!
Since we started making gelato nearly 10 years ago, we’ve received hundreds of
suggestions from our guests on flavor ideas; some great ideas and some very
creative ideas and several have even made it into our case. Now we’re offering
you the opportunity to have your friends/ relatives embrace their inner gelatician, to create the next “Moose Tracks.”
You’ll be able to choose from traditional ingredients, like our handmade chocolate chips,
peanuts roasted with Michigan butter and
salt, or peppermint candy from Hammond
candy company. We’re also offering some
ingredients that you’re
not so familiar with, such
Congrats
as candied bacon, strawberries in balsamic
John!
vinegar syrup or even caramelized Irish
soda bread. We will be updating the list of
GO BLUE!
flavors regularly, so the creative opportunities are nearly endless.
od
cInC e

MayA

March

Zingerman’s Real CrEAm CheESe
$10.99/lb. (reg. $12.99/lb.)
pre packed 6oz container regularly $6.50 on sale for $5.50
When we began Zingerman’s Creamery, the
first challenge we faced was; what cheeses
do we want to make? And the second question was why? I have always been interested
in looking back at the origins of a cheese
then examining if there is a disconnect from
descriptions of the past and the descriptions
of the present. Some cheeses remain pretty
consistent with their ancestors while others
have evolved to a point where they are
unrecognizable.

“This cheese stands alone.”
­—The New York Times

Get yours at ­
www.zingermanscreamery.com!

Limited-time
Gelato Flavors!

Variations of cream cheese have been
around since the 11th century, but it wasn’t
until the late 19th century that additional
cream was added to what the French called
Neufchatel that it became more recognizable
to what we think of today as cream cheese.
In a 1918 Canadian Agriculture bulletin, farmers were encouraged to make cream cheese
due to its relative ease of manufacture and
high profitability. It also suggested that the
cheese be sold within one week. About this
time, supermarkets were just beginning to
gain popularity and by 1930, the explosion
was in full swing. The suburban migration of
the 50s and 60s solidified self-serve convenience shopping for most people.
Of course, the idea of getting your cream
cheese to market in two days so that it could
be sold within a week or two became a
quaint and archaic impracticality.
Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the
Philadelphia Cheese Company was founded
Philadelphia developed a process of extending the shelf life that dovetailed neatly with
the needs of the burgeoning supermarket
industry.

So, Cream Cheese changed to accommodate
the market, not because it was better. So we
set out to recreate the Cream Cheese experience of the past.
It was about ten years ago that Zingerman’s
Creamery Cream Cheese was awarded first
place at the prestigious American Cheese
Society conference and the New York Times
proclaimed, “This cheese stands alone”.
The cheese is based on a recipe from 1936
written by then cheese guru John Langley
Sammis.

Available at Zingerman’s Creamery
and Zingerman’s Deli

April

The SharOn HOlLow
$6.99 ea. (reg. $7.99 ea.)

Made with freshly delivered cow’s milk from
our friends at Calder Dairy in Carleton, MI (about
a half-hour east of Ann Arbor), our Sharon Hollow
bursts with the delicate flavor of fresh milk. Whereas most flavored
cows milk cheeses made in this Country are pressed and extruded, with
a dense, uniform (and, honestly, kind of boring) texture, our Sharon Hollow actually boasts
seven distinct layers of curd, giving it an unmatched flakiness that begs for subsequent bites.
The production technique we use for this cheese is as basic as it is traditional: A little rennet
is added to the newly-arrived milk to set the curd. After allowing the milk to set for hours,
drawing out as much of that amazing, fresh flavor as possible, the new curd is cut and then
hand-ladled into small round forms. And here’s
where it gets interesting—we alternate layers
“This is like a magic carpet back
of this delicious curd with layers of either fresh
to my first trip to Paris.
garlic and freshly chopped local chives, or garlic
and cracked black tellicherry peppercorns.
My favorite cheap lunch was big
The chive version of our Sharon Hollow is
slices of rough bread slathered
absolutely dynamite when paired with anything
with a fresh cheese that was
savory, and really shines as both a burger topping
garlicky and chive studded.”
and as an addition to pretty much any kind of
—Lynne Rossetto Kasper,
potato dish you’d like to throw at it. Our pepper
version is one we really like to pair with fruit
Host of NPR’s “Splendid Table”
and sweeter foods, giving a distinct zing to any
number of fruit plates. Really, the best way to enjoy this cheese is exactly the way Ms. Kasper recommends—spread it on your favorite crusty
bread and call it a day.

Available at Zingerman’s Creamery and Zingerman’s Deli

­14

ISSUE # 249

For $175, you get a personalized gift certificate entitling the
recipient to ten 12-ounce containers of gelato and personalized
labels that will arrive on their doorstep. Shipping included.

MAR-APR 2015

Guinness Gelato

Candied Brown Bread Gelato

One of our most anticipated flavors of the
year. Made for the week surrounding St
Patrick’s Day, we create
a syrup of real Guinness
Stout to flavor our
gelato with a slightly
burnt and mightily
malty flavor.

An annual March favorite, our recipe is
adapted from Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe
Cookbook. We take the traditional Irish
brown soda bread made right next door
at Zingerman’s Bakehouse, crumble it
and caramelize it with demerara sugar.
Crunchy, sweet and slightly salty, it has
become a huge staff favorite. You’ve never
tasted a treat like this!

THURSDAY NIGHT
PAIRING PARTIES
3-6pm every Thursday in our cheese shop on Plaza Drive
We’ve been enjoying our cheeses with great
American beers and wines (many from
Michigan!) for the last year. We would like
to share our favorites with you on a weekly
basis at our Thursday Night Pairing Party!
We’ll be serving samples and talking cheese,
beer and wine, and helping you find just the
right marriage of our favorite food and drink.

ROASTER’S
March
COngo - MuUngaNo
CoOperative

PICK

Since its founding in 2009, the Muungano Coop
has grown from 350 to over 4100 farmer-members. This month’s pick has rich sweetness, a
syrupy body, and flavors of dried fruit.

April
Rwanda - AbakundAkawa
CoOperative

At their best, Rwandan beans offer flavors many
people have never experienced in a cup of coffee.
We liked this lot from the Abakundakawa Coop
for its crisp character, complexity, and delicate
tropical fruit notes.

Available at Zingerman’s Coffee Co.,
Delicatessen and Roadhouse

I was a non cook/baker
but now, I am seriously
considering a career
change. This class was
definitely inspiring.

You learn so much about the
science of baking and get to take
home what you make! Plus the
student-teacher ratio is low, so you
get tons of help.

- Shari

- Stephanie

After taking the
baguettes class,
I made baguettes
for a British
friend - she said
they were the
closest thing
to Parisian
baguettes she’s
had since coming
to North America!

I will no longer
fear homemade
bread making.
- Chandra

- Meghan

After baking for 40
years, I still learned
new techniques.
- Nancy

We learned a lot. My daughter
saysnow I can’t say pies are
too hard. No excuses! Also, it
was really fun to bake with my
daughter. - Carol and Lily

20% OFF

We have made some great specialty breads over the years that
developed their own small followings, so we bring them back for
a weekend here and there just for fun.­
If you’re looking for a little adventure check out this calendar.

March

april

Irish Brown Soda Bread
March 1-17

Somodi Kálacs
(sho-mo-dee-ko-loch)

Pumpernickel ­
Raisin Bread
March 13-14

Every weekend

Hungarian cinnamon
swirl bread

Barches (bar-kess)

Hot Cross Buns
April 2-5

Hungarian challah bread
with paprika

Loomis Bread ­

March 20 & 21
Almond Poundcake
March 26-29
Chernushka Rye Bread
March 27-28

Cheshire cheese &
red pepper

April 17 & 18
Olive Oil Cake
April 23-26
Green Olive Paesano
April 24 & 25

Call ahead to order
Bakeshop—3711 Plaza Dr. • 761.2095
Deli—422 Detroit St. • 663.3354 (DELI)
Roadshow—2501 Jackson Rd. • 663.3663 (FOOD)

whole cakes and slices at Zingerman’s Bakehouse and Deli

march

Farm Loaf ­
$4.50/ea. (reg. $6.29)
Imagine sitting around a French farmhouse table waiting for dinner to be served--this would
be the bread they’d bring out. It has a thick
crust and a soft white chewy interior with a
flavor that tastes of toasted wheat. Baked to a
nice dark crust, this is Frank’s favorite loaf.

APRIL

Paesano Bread ­
$4.50/ea. (reg. $6.29)
The traditional bread
of the Puglia region
of Italy. Pass it around
the table for ripping
and dipping in great olive
oil, soup or pasta.

Available at Zingerman’s Bakehouse,
Delicatessen and Roadhouse

march

Boston Cream Pie
In spite of its name, Boston Cream pie
is in fact a cake and happens to be the
official dessert of Massachusetts. It
was created in the 1800’s at the Parker
House hotel in Boston, also famous for their Parker House
rolls. Our Boston Cream pie is two layers of moist vanilla
chiffon cake, filled with fresh vanilla bean pastry cream,
covered in thin layer of vanilla butter cream and rich dark
chocolate ganache. Take one bite and you’ll know why it
has a whole state so devoted to it.

APRIL

Hummingbird Cake
When Zingerman’s Roadhouse
opened in 2003, we were inspired to
introduce many old time American
favorites. Hummingbird cake is one
of them. A traditional southern cake with toasted coconut,
fresh bananas, toasted pecans and pineapple covered in
cream cheese frosting. Treat yourself with one of our most
popular cakes.

ISSUE # 249

MAR-APR 2015

­15

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