Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2019 i SAVEUR

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

Food Moves Us Closer

WE CAN NEVER LEARN ENOUGH about one another’s cultures. Although there is beauty in our individuality as nations, regions, and families, making an effort to know more about each other is the ultimate path toward kinship and unity. What we’ve already shared, learned, and adopted from one another’s food cultures worldwide is a marvel. This issue celebrates those migrations—the movement of cooks, culinary ideas, and dishes—across the map and throughout history, and how they have made our shared culinary experience richer. In “Around the Fire” (p. 58), writer Yasmin Kahn beautifully unpacks the relationship between London’s diverse population and its beloved Turkish-run restaurants, dozens of which span the city’s Hackney borough. Kahn’s focus is kebabs, those tender, spiced grilled meats, and her piece shows how widely Turkish ocakbaşl—fireside restaurants—have been…

2 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

A LONG AND WINDING ROAD

In my kitchen in Oakland, California, I preheated my cast-iron comal and slipped a pat of butter onto the surface. I’d just gotten home from New Orleans, where at an artisanal bakery I’d purchased a mallorca, a sweet spiral bun made by a baker from Puerto Rico, who was in turn following a centuries-old formula that can be traced back to a tiny island off the coast of Spain. Removing the pastry from my backpack, where I’d kept it safe and unsquashed on the 2,000-mile journey, I sliced it in half and set both sides face down on the griddle. I made a sandwich like the ones you’ll often find in Puerto Rico, where my family is from, with some crispy bacon and melted American cheese, a decadent treat made…

3 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

Cannoli, Grandpa’s Way

CANNOLI HAVE ALWAYS BEEN a fixture in Angie Rito’s family, thanks to her Sicilian grandfather Santo. At age 8, he worked at a tiny pastry shop in Riposto, on the island’s eastern coast. His first task was mixing cannoli dough. “Back then, the shop was using a 300-pound marble mortar to keep the dough cold,” says Angie, who coowns Don Angie restaurant with her husband, Scott Tacinelli. According to her grandfather, adding cold dough to hot frying oil helps create the bubbling that makes cannoli shells light and delicate. “I’m not entirely sure the science adds up, but who am I to change the way he’s always made it?” He also spent hours kneading and rolling out the dough by hand. Cannoli are still Santo’s specialty: He bakes them professionally…

5 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

Stacked in Your Favor

PARATHAS ARE THE STUFF of my carb-filled dreams. The soft, layered Indian breads were a staple of my childhood in Dallas—most commonly stuffed with spiced, mashed potatoes and made by my Aunt Rachna. I remember sitting at her kitchen table, mesmerized as she carefully rolled the whole wheat dough into rounds, expertly sealing an impossible amount of potato filling within each thin disk. Ours were basted in oil or ghee and griddled in a hot cast-iron pan until shimmery and crisp, and we’d either pile them high in the center of the table or, more often, eat them as soon as they came out of the skillet. Depending on where you are in India or its surrounding countries, “paratha” might mean something entirely different. In some places, they are folded…

7 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

NOTES FROM THE TEST KITCHEN

1 A Few Picks from Portugalia IF IT’S UNLIKELY THAT YOU WILL FIND yourself in Fall River, Massachusetts, to visit Portugalia Marketplace (see “Conservas, Olives, and Salt Cod,” p. 22), you need not miss out on the best selection of Portuguese specialties this side of the Atlantic. The market has a robust online selection of olive oils, snacks, dried sausages, sodas, desserts, and conservas, the country’s beloved tinned seafood (portugaliamarketplace.com).Here are some highlights worth putting on your list.—Luke Pyenson 1 SANTA CATARINA TUNA FILLETS ($8) This outstanding conserva starts with top-quality day boat tuna from the Azores, caught with sustainable pole-and-line methods. The solid, flaky chunks are packed in molho cru sauce, made from onions, garlic, parsley, and peppers—a sort of Portuguese chimichurri. Try it on salads, toast, or just…

6 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

CANADA’S BRISKET WHISPERER

ON THE CORNER OF an otherwise indistinguishable big-box strip mall in Markham, a suburb of Toronto, you’ll see signs for a Jewish delicatessen. It’s a predominantly Chinese neighborhood, but Sumith Fernando, a Roman Catholic Sri Lankan immigrant, saw an opportunity: The rent was low, and he knew through a previous deli job that the Chinese shared a penchant for fatty cuts of smoked meat. Called Sumilicious, his deli, which is also halal to appeal to the area’s Muslim population, primarily serves Montreal-style smoked meat sandwiches, for which he laboriously cures and wood-smokes the brisket himself. Why? To this improbable deli man, the answer is obvious: “I love this food.” When Fernando and his wife, Shalika De Fonseka, immigrated to Canada from Sri Lanka 20 years ago, neither had ever encountered…

3 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

The Booza Boom

THE POUNDING OF BOOZA is a spectacle worth lining up for. Though the word means “ice cream” in Levantine Arabic, today it mostly refers to the Syrian version, a combination of milk with sahlab or salep (a starchy orchid-root flour) and mastic gum (a tacky, piney-tasting tree resin), which give it its characteristic stretchiness. The landmark Bakdash shop in Damascus, Syria, opened in 1986 and mesmerized customers with a rhythmic pounding of the sweet base: Servers hammered 3-foot-long wooden paddles against the cold metal counter until the booza looked like soft serve but stretched like taffy. It became a ritual to crowd in and watch the show. After more than 100 years of production in Syria, booza has been on the move over the last six years, but for bittersweet…

2 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

The Real Pad Thai

“It might be the most Thai dish there is.” PAD THAI MIGHT JUST BE Thailand’s most famous export. The lightly sweet, peanut-topped noodle dish can be found in nearly every Thai restaurant around the world. And while it has been endlessly adapted (some might say bastardized) to appeal to the global masses, the real Thai street food version—a wok-fried tangle of rice noodles, salty-sweet sauce, and crunchy toppings—has undeniable appeal. Andy Ricker, the chef of Pok Pok, the beloved Thai restaurant in Portland, Oregon, argues that the original recipe “might be the most Thai dish there is.” It was invented in the 1940s, under the administration of nationalist prime minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who organized a competition to create a dish that could represent the nation. As Ricker points out, the…

9 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

Nothing Gold

IT APPEARED AT first that I had arrived in Macau by time machine. The hotel’s name, Morpheus, seemed picked to evoke either Greek mythology or The Matrix, but the exterior of the $1.1 billion building makes it clear the proprietors had chosen science fiction. Designed by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, it looks as though a black block of liquid metal had three holes melted through it before it was wrapped in a fishnet exoskeleton. It’s even more difficult to describe the avant-garde dream space once you’ve stepped inside the lobby. Imagine a glass church built from fractals expanding skyward in chaotic harmony. It’s a bit like the city itself: ostentatious and awe-inspiring, a place that can bankroll wild ambition. Macau is a stew of influences, a place that…

17 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

THE LAST LEBANESE STEAKHOUSE IN TULSA

LIKE A LOT OF KIDS GROWING UP IN OKLAHOMA IN THE 1970S AND ’80S, THE FIRST TIME JOE DAVIDSON ATE HUMMUS WAS AT A STEAKHOUSE. IN THE LATTER HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY, A SERIES OF LEBANESE-OWNED AND -INFLUENCED STEAKHOUSES—EDDY’S, FREDDIE’ S, JOSEPH’S, JAMIL’S, THE SILVER FLAME—RAN THE SCENE IN TULSA. “They didn’t tout it as Lebanese,” remembers Davidson, who is now the owner of Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. “We didn’t even know where Lebanon was. But if you wanted to have a great rib-eye, that’s where you went.” Just one of these restaurants remains within city limits, serving gut-stuffing steak dinners where the Middle East meets Middle America. At Jamil’s, third-generation owner Jennifer Alcott’s feathery blonde hair floats around her face as she checks on diners with a gravelly, worn…

11 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

There and Back

Every meal at Milli begins with a complimentary chalupa. One of the cooks griddles a small, handmade corn tortilla atop a hot comal until it’s bronzed on both sides, then layers it with smoky red salsa and homemade queso fresco. It’s a humble gift—and a warming first taste of the restaurant’s pueblo cooking. One of Milli’s owners, Leo Telléz, says that other local chefs who come to his restaurant often end their meal with hopes of emulating the dishes they tasted. A common line of questioning is about the restaurant’s fresh masa. Leo answers amicably, knowing that the skill takes time to hone. “If you just want the final dish, that’s not how it works,” he says. “You have to feel the maiz, touch it, even plant it.” His year-old…

16 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

The French Bitter That Took Nevada

I’D BEEN IN ELKO, NEVADA, for less than an hour, and I’d already broken a rule. I had come to the Star Hotel, a century-old restaurant and former boarding house for cattle ranchers, in search of the Picon punch. There it was, advertised on a chalkboard menu. you only need one, promise was written underneath. I was on my second. I forged ahead, given that I’d driven to northeastern Nevada to chase this elusive cocktail, a boozy punch traditionally made with an obscure French bitter called Amer Picon. It’s the local drink of choice for ranchers in Elko and Reno, brought there, it’s surmised, by waves of Basque immigrants in the Gold Rush era, when many migrant shepherds by trade found work in Nevada as cattle ranchers. In the classic…

2 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

Conservas, Olives, and Salt Cod

“THIS IS NOT ENTRY-LEVEL FISH,” says a smiling Michael Benevides, standing in what has to be the United States’ largest purpose-built bacalhau chamber. It occupies one end of Portugalia Marketplace, the emporium Benevides opened with his father, Fernando, six years ago in Fall River, Massachusetts. The glass-enclosed, temperature controlled monument to salt cod is just one corner of the ambitious family market, but it perfectly represents the store’s mission to serve the local Portuguese community and to celebrate and share the culinary heritage of Portugal. Benevides was born in 1977 on São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores, a chain of Portuguese islands more than 800 miles from the mainland. But when he immigrated to Fall River with his family at age 2, he settled into an already well-established…

2 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

Mexico’s Party Food

EVERY TIME STEVE SANDO, THE founder of California-based heirloom bean company Rancho Gordo, heads down to Mexico, he encounters a new kind of pozole. “I remember one I tasted in Oaxaca where the cooks used some puréed hominy to thicken the broth and cooked it with goat meat,” Sando says in a rapturous daze. “I still think about it to this day.” After more than 40 trips across the country over 35 years, the bowls have added up: In Michoacán, a broth was stained green with fresh chiles, tomatillos, and ground pumpkin seeds. In Guerrero, a pale white variation was garnished with pork cracklings. In Acapulco, an unusual rojo sassed with tomatoes was fortified with shellfish instead of the typical pork. “Whichever one I ate last is my favorite,” he…

8 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

AROUND THE FIRE

London’s Little Istanbul stands out as one of the most culturally harmonious places in the country—Britain at its best. TURKISH LONDON STRETCHES through the boroughs of Hackney and Harringay, in the northeast of the city. There are Turkish barber shops and bakeries, lahmacun cafes and baklava stores, and an Ottoman-style mosque with a butcher’s shop beneath it. Greengrocers stock grape molasses and halloumi; fishmongers specialize in Aegean sea bream and Black Sea anchovies. Dozens of Turkish, Kurdish, and Cypriot social clubs are open to members only, their smoke-filled rooms a mystery to outsiders. What unites this community is the collective love of food and, above all, the mangal—the Turkish word for a grill. Long before chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi helped bring pomegranate molasses, tahini, and sumac further into the culinary…

11 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

The Middlemen

Sarah Maglass lives in a new red-brick house in Tanzania’s fertile Kilombero Valley, just south of Udzungwa National Park, nearly 40 miles from the nearest electricity or paved road. In her village, Mbingu, there is one dirt road and a tangled network of sandy footpaths that snake between rice paddies, mud walled houses, and stands of leathery banana trees. Maglass is a farmer, like nearly everyone here. She cultivates patches of blushing pink pineapples and rows of corn, but it’s her 5-acre cocoa plantation that makes the real money. Once every two weeks during the six-month harvest period between June and December, Maglass wends her way through her 1,500 trees, ducking the low-slung branches to hack firm, ovular pods from their trunks. Unlike the carefully controlled monocultures of other cocoa…

13 min

SAVEUR|Fall 2019

at the BAYOU’S EDGE

AT THE END OF THE LAND IN SOUTHERN LOUISIANA, water sloshes at the sides of the road, creeping into parking lots and backyards and beneath houses on stilts. Wetlands and fishing docks splay out into the Gulf of Mexico, narrowing the divide between solid ground and the open sea. “Rural” here increasingly means surrounded not by open land, but by water. On one dock, Sandy Nguyen, an activist and a fisherman’s wife, stands among a small crowd, part of the community of Vietnamese shrimpers who reside in Plaquemines Parish, a county of about 23,000. It makes up the southernmost part of New Orleans, and appears on a map as a sprinkling of tiny islands reaching out into the Gulf. Sandy paces the dock, alternating between jovial greetings and pointing out…

10 min