yogurt, miso porridge

Think about the foods you love and think about how they’re made.  If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s  you will already understand the difference between how modern versions of old foods like yogurt are different from what our (great-)grandparents ate.  Modern products labeled as yogurt are often made “yogurt-like” with additives that add texture or mouth-feel and flavored with artificial flavors and too much sugar.  Fat-free yogurt is a poor attempt at latching onto the public’s fear of fat, and doesn’t behave the same as the real thing.  Real yogurt, made from raw milk and natural bacterial cultures is good stuff.  There are even different types of cultures that can be used to make everything from watery to stiff yogurt to a slimy, mucus-y substance like the Nordic specialty, viili.  There’s a video showing what the texture is like… watch it if you dare.

chorizo (front L), salami (front R), sauerkraut (rear R)

The whole premise of this tasting event was to take a trip back a thousand years or so to taste foods made in traditional ways.  There was homemade miso, with some mixed into a porridge.  I really liked how the funky umami flavor of the miso dispersed into the creamy porridge.

There were two sauerkrauts on the table, provided by Dan H. Schreiber.  One was a plain cabbage sauerkraut (which I, regrettably, didn’t try) and another one made with mostly white cabbage but colored deeply with beets.  Sauerkraut is often made with unnecessary additives, rendering it much less healthful than the original fermented formulation of cabbage and salt.  Dan’s is all-natural and tasted fresh and still crunchy.  Sure it was sour from lactic fermentation, but it was a wonderful flavor unlike any sauerkraut I’ve had before.

The meats were, of course, provided by the masterful meat manipulator, Laurence, of This Little Piggy fame.  The chorizo was a solid interpretation of the Spanish cured meat, but the salami was my favorite.  I was told it was a fennel salami, but the peppercorns in it gave little bursts of peppery kick when you met one.  It’s the kind of salami I could munch on all night.

raw milk, scary!

Then there were the dairy products.  This is where the crazy regulators get all antsy in their seats just wishing they could barge in the door and tell us how un-pasteurized milk is dangerous stuff and pour bleach all over everything in sight.  Fortunately this is purchased directly from a farmer who cares about preserving the 1000 year old food that comes out of his cows’ udders.  I was able to advocate for raw milk that night, convincing another attendee that she could drink raw milk just fine, despite her lactose intolerance.  You see, raw milk still has all the stuff that is needed to digest it, including some bacteria and enzymes like lactase (which is what LI folks can’t produce enough of).  I was really happy with the milk, and will definitely be obtaining some in the future.

raw milk cheddar

The other delightfully raw dairy came in the form of a raw milk cheese made by the same aforementioned farmer.  It was a cheddar style, and was by no means a refined, commercial product.  I imagine this is cheese that he makes with extra milk he has for his family to enjoy.  With some age, maybe heavier salting, this could be great cheese.  As it was, it was amazingly light from lack of age, but the flavor of the milk was concentrated.

There are no pictures of it here, but there was a selection of Dan’s chocolate as well as a mint fudge prepared by his business partner, Bill.  If you haven’t heard, Dan is already in the process of finding the right equipment and the right space to start up his own micro- (nano-?) chocolate factory right here in Urbana.  He’s already started making certified (i.e. by the health department, so he can sell it in retail stores) chocolate, drawn up business plans, and by the time I’m writing this who knows what else he’s accomplished?  Keep an eye on his blog to find out all the latest.  Congrats Dan on all that you’ve accomplished so far, and all the success that is sure to come!

This event was “sponsored”, supported, and publicized by the newly resurrected Prairie Table organization.  Prairie Table plans on holding more events like these, tasting excellent locally available products, as well as many other community-building opportunities.  I am already involved with them and hope to be a part of bringing more local food opportunities to the community.  If you’re in the Central Illinois area and are interested in hearing more, go to the website and look around.

EDIT: Of course there are so many things that I’ve nearly forgotten, like home-brewed beer (the stout was tasty).  If anyone in attendance remembers something I didn’t, please let me know!

One of my adventures was to the Windy City with my wife and her friend since high school, Stephanie.  Stephanie lives in warm, sunny California, and wants everyone to move there.  Walking around Chicago with snow blowing everywhere, I wished for a moment that I was blessed with the warmth of the Golden State.

We drove downtown and found our way to the corner of Clark and Illinois, where Xoco is located.  If you’ve ever been to Bayless’s other restaurants, Frontera Grill or Topolobampo, Xoco (pronounced sho-ko, meaning “little sister”) is right on the corner of the same block.  Looking through the window you can see the preparation of chocolate and churros (see my earlier post on churros) for eager guests.

When you enter, the space looks very small, just enough for a small kitchen and a winding line to wait in before you order.  While waiting in line you can look at surreal images, like the one at right of children in a churro-cactus forest, or one of a woman riding a torta flying through the air (see that one in the gallery at the bottom of the post).  As you enter, there are only a few tables visible, but it turns out that there is another section of tables further back, but the total seating capacity is probably only 40.

We went in the mid-afternoon, around 3:30, since we wanted to be able to try the caldos (soups) that they start serving at 3PM.  There was already a line all the way to the door, which meant about 12 people in front of us, along with a handful of people standing near the door waiting for their carry-out order.  While in line, we saw the board displaying the numerous local farms that they source from.  This is a quick-service sandwich and soup place, but it’s still firmly rooted in Bayless’s strong commitment to supporting local farmers.  Our local Prairie Fruits Farm is listed as a source, along with Rick’s own family garden.

The ordering process got a little awkward as they handle carry-out orders separate from dine-in orders (but through the same register).  We had to wait for a table to open up before we could order.  Luckily, a table opened up just a moment after we were told to step aside.

We ordered heartily, including chips, sandwich, soup, dessert, and a delicious Goose Island beer.  You can serve yourself still or sparkling water from a pair of faucets as you leave the cash register.  We carried our water and beer and were escorted to our seats, a set of high stools at an interior counter.  It wasn’t the nicest view, but the other tables were filled.  Soon after we sat down, we got our appetizer of chips and guacamole.  We splurged for the pair of salsas for an extra buck.

The chips were fine, but nothing memorable.  The guacamole was good, nice and creamy with balanced flavors.  The salsas were great, but they are the same ones you can get in Frontera jars.  The biggest problem I had was the portion was way too small.  For $4 (5 with the salsas), I wanted more chips.

The tortas (sandwiches) and caldos (soups) are prepared to order in their small kitchen from fresh ingredients.  While in line, I saw the cooks tasting the food as they were prepping each order, which gave me high expectations for the results.  In our case, they really did deliver.

First is my wife’s torta cubana.  From the menu: “smoked Maple Creek pork loin and bacon, black beans, avocado, artisan Jack, chipotle mustard”.  I tried a bite and it was very tasty, and held together well as a sort of torta-meets-panini creation.  For $11, I don’t know if it would have filled me up, but my wife loved it.

Stephanie got what I would have had if I didn’t get the soup–the torta ahogada.  This “drowned” sandwich has “golden pork carnitas, black beans, tomato broth, spicy arbol chile sauce, pickled onions”.  I wanted to steal this sandwich, but opted only for a bite.  The carnitas were cooked and seasoned perfectly (maybe could have been crisped a bit more).  The brothy sauce at the bottom of the bowl can be ordered as mild or spicy as you like, and it is the perfect foil for the torta’s extra crunchy bread.  I did my own take on this sandwich after we returned home from the holidays, but that post will have to wait for now.

I had the pork belly vermicelli soup.  The menu says “crispy-tender pork belly, toasty-tender noodles, woodland mushrooms, zucchini, avocado, salsa negra”.  If that’s not a close enough look, here’s a spoonful of pork belly with the noodles, fideos, it’s hiding.

This was simply amazing.  The soup stock  had a depth of flavor I haven’t had in any other quick-service restaurant soups.  It had the mouthfeel of a long-simmered stock, almost thick and chewy, but it still tasted fresh and vibrant.  I didn’t see any salsa negra, so I assume it was the source of the sesame seeds floating in the broth as well as the spicy kick it contained.

The pork belly itself was thick and meaty, cooked until tender, and browned enough on the outside that it still held up to a little chewing instead of dissolving into so many porky threads in the soup.  The noodles were alright, sort of like a rustic spaghetti.  They added to the bulk of the soup, but I would have been just as happy if they weren’t there.  The vegetables offered nice variation in each bite, and each offered a flavor and texture that the soup needed.  The avocado was cool and creamy, the zucchini still tender-crisp and bright, and the mushrooms were dark and deliciously chewy.  The arugula on top wilted into the soup and performed as a slippery sidekick as it draped itself on many of my bites.  For $12, this soup is a meal that should not be passed up.  I would have loved a bit of one of their toasted bolillos to dip and crunch on as I ate.  Maybe Rick will read this and add it as an option al lado.

We all gorged ourselves on our main dishes, accompanied by Goose Island Matilda, a Belgian-style beer brewed in Chicago.  It was an expensive 22 oz. bottle ($13), but shared among three people, it paired perfectly with the rich food.

Of course, with the fresh chocolate being made here, we couldn’t pass up dessert.  We were given the option to order chocolate and churros with our meal and they would serve them to us later after we finished our food.

The pacing at the end of the meal was the low point.  As we were finishing, a couple staff members checked if we had ordered chocolate or churros.  After being left with nothing in front of us for what felt like forever, a plate of three churros arrived.

They are, dare I say, perfect churros.  Crispy, soft, light, warm, coated liberally with sugar, cinnamon, and ground cacao.  I could have eaten a dozen of these, even after the huge portion of soup.  What I wanted, though, was my chocolate in which to dip it.  I ate slowly, bite by bite, savoring each bit of the churro, but no chocolate arrived.  Finally we saw the chocolate man come with his tray of dark cacao goodness.

No table-side preparation, really, just pouring already-prepared chocolate into mugs.  There is a wide array of choices on how you want your chocolate prepared.  We tried three different choices, the authentic, made with water, the classic with 2% milk, and the almendrado, made with almond milk.

The chocolate was good, and had all the fresh vibrant flavor you’d expect from Bayless’s bean-to-cup operation.  If you click through the gallery of photos at the bottom of the post, you’ll see pictures of their chocolate grinding away in the same machine that local chocolate maker, Dan Schreiber, uses.  The almendrado, made with almond milk, was perfect for my wife, who loves chocolate and almonds.  The main difference between the authentic (water) and the classic (2% milk) is the milk tempers the bright flavors of the ultra-fresh chocolate.  Neither is “better”, just different.  My only disappointment was the portion, which seemed undersized for the mugs they serve it in.  The photo above is before drinking any, and it shows that my mug was only about 2/3 full.

Overall I HIGHLY recommend Xoco.  Try everything you can and bring your friends.

If you haven’t entered the Taza chocolate contest, do so now.  The entry deadline is now this Saturday, January 9, at noon Central time.  The winner will be announced shortly after.

[View with PicLens]

The humble site you are reading, Clever Food Blog, has only been around about a year.  I appreciate all the emails and comments I’ve received from my readers.  If you’ve shared a link to the site with others, thank you for spreading the word.

Furthermore, I want to make sure that the next year goes even better.  Help me improve the site, help shape it into something you love.  Share a story and your opinions on a bunch of things.  Please fill out my survey, created through Google Forms.

In about a month, after the New Year, I’ll choose a respondent at random to receive 2 (new, unopened) packages of Taza Mexican Chocolate (see the picture… you get 2 disks in each package).  You can read all about these delicious disks in my last post.  I’ll try to figure out something else special to give the lucky winner, and maybe a runner-up as well.  If you’re local, I’d be happy to hand-deliver the prize.  Otherwise, I’m happy to box it up and send it to you wherever you are.

To have a chance at the give-away, you need to fill out my survey.  I love filling out surveys, but what I hate is having to answer questions.  In that light, I made most of the survey questions optional, however the more questions you answer, the better your chances of winning will be (respondents will be weighted based on how many questions they answer).

So go take the survey!

I had a great seasonal recipe published on a local site, featuring more delicious sweet potatoes.  I’ll leave it as a tease now, but I’ll be posting a copy (with links to the original post) very soon.  This is one to bookmark and share with your friends for the holidays and any time you find great sweet potatoes.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, chocolate has been taking over my life.  First it was getting involved with Dan Schreiber.  At some point I started noticing a small, artisan, bean-to-bar chocolate maker out of Somerville, MA–Taza Chocolate.  They’re on Twitter (@tazachocolate), and apparently if you’re in the area, they offer tours of their facility and have a Chococycle that they pedal to local markets and events.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of great chocolate makers out there.  One way that Taza distinguishes themselves is by putting their values in the forefront of what they do.  Their chocolate is not merely fair trade, but Direct Trade.  They work directly with the people who grow their vital raw material–theobroma cacao.  Not only do they pay them more generously than fair trade standards require, but they work with them to ensure they are using organic, sustainable growing practices.  So far, all their chocolate (other than a recent limited release) has used chocolate from a single coop in the Dominican Republic.  In addition to holding their suppliers to high standards, they work for sustainability and eco-friendliness in their own operations, reusing, recycling, and composting wherever possible.  They even work with a local organization to help keep their community green.

Their process is very manual, using vintage machinery that they put a lot of love into.  At the end of the line, the chocolate is wrapped by hand.  Their bars are sealed with a label that has a number corresponding to the batch of chocolate your bar is from.  On Taza’s website, you can put in this number and see all the details of where everything in the bar came from, when it was made, even the signature of the cacao grower the beans came from.  Click the image on the right of one of the bars I had to see all the details for batch #218.

When you unwrap one of these bars, you’re greeted by a shiny bar of dark chocolate.  Each section snaps loudly as you make your way through the bar.  The chocolate has texture, character, owing to the hand-hewn stone grinders they use at Taza.  Pressing it to the roof of your mouth, it slowly melts and the flavors of this 80% dark chocolate unfold with delicious notes of fermented flavors, a surprising brightness (acidity?) and unexpected tropical fruit flavors, like banana.  Before having real artisan-made chocolate, I never experienced chocolate like this.

Their other primary product is Mexican Chocolate, sold in adorable disks pressed with the company name and hand-wrapped in pairs.  They are all 55% cacao, since they are intended for making drinking chocolate, though they are tasty on their own.  For these decadent disks, they offer several flavors on top of their cacao puro, including classic flavors like vanilla, cinnamon, and guajillo chile.  They also offer, for the slightly more adventurous, a yerba maté infused chocolate.  If you’ve enjoyed the bitter South American beverage before, it’s a really neat combination.

Now, I mentioned drinking chocolate, not hot chocolate.  The recommended recipe is one disk to 6-8 ounces of milk, or water if you want to be traditional.  This elixir is intense.  If you love chocolate, this will change your life.  If you snack on the dark stuff every once in a while, and you think it might be too much, share it with a friend.

One of the typical ways that people all over the world enjoy this decadent beverage–from cafes and street carts in Spain and Mexico, to chocolate mexicano advocates like Rick Bayless in his Chicago restaurant, Xoco–is with churros.  I remember having churros in my high school cafeteria, but if you’ve never had them they are essentially fluted tubes of fried dough.  They are often dusted with sugar, maybe cinnamon, and if you’re going over the top, like Bayless does, rolled with finely ground cacao nibs.  Warm churros, with their crunchy exterior and (usually) softer, interior, are delicious on their own, but this classic combination is a winner.  The way the fluted edges hold just enough chocolate to soften them ever-so-slightly is a testament to why this is a lasting match.

As long as you’re not afraid of piping dough into hot frying oil, churros are easy to make.  Most recipes I’ve found make a dough that is too hard to pipe out of anything I have–most churros are extruded from large metal churreros, not plastic piping bags that most of us have access to.  The traditional dough is similar to pâte à choux (you know, the stuff eclairs & cream puffs are made from) without eggs  or butter.  Boil oil, sugar, and water, then turn off the heat, dump in flour and stir, stir, stir.  Bayless’ recipe is available from StarChefs.com (and probably elsewhere).  Since it was way too thick to pipe with my jury-rigged zip-top-bag-with-the-corner-cut (I do screw on a star tip), I added a couple eggs, which softened up the dough enough to allow for precise piping.  Pipe it into hot oil (watch out for splashing), and cook until lightly browned.  Watch the oil temperature though.  If it’s too high, the insides won’t cook enough, and I’ve heard that if it’s too low, they will explode as the outsides will set before the moisture inside has a chance to escape.

If you’re having visions of drinking delicious hot stone-ground chocolate, explore Taza’s online store or ask around at local stores.  In the C-U area, I found some of the Mexican chocolate disks at Art Mart in Urbana.  I’ll be hosting a give-away of some Mexican chocolate disks (and maybe an additional surprise), but it won’t end until after the New Year (expect details in the next week), so if you want some before the holidays, go ahead and order some.

Disclosure: Taza sent me some free samples of their products (see below), with no request or expectation of a review, positive or negative.  I have since bought my own chocolate from them, beyond what they sent, which is why I have some to give away. I like the chocolate and believe in their mission and their quality, which is why I’m spreading the love.

My response:

Dan is a scientist.  He’s a really smart guy.  As much as he deals with high technology in his work & studies, he has a very deep appreciation for the traditional, some may say “old-fashioned” way of doing things.  He makes fermented foods, like sauerkraut, that most people just don’t make any more.  He is making chocolate using modernized traditional means–motorized stone grinding.  Much of the chocolate we buy in stores is mass-produced from a set of industrial candy-making materials including chocolate, flavorings (often artificial), emulsifiers, and sometimes other chemicals as well.  It’s made on a scale that requires consistency–every Hershey’s milk chocolate bar will taste the same.  They blend cacao from different places and roast it and treat it in such a way that it will give the same taste and texture experience every time.  There’s some value to that, but you also lose a lot of the characteristic flavors that chocolate can have.  Once you pay attention to it, you can taste things in a hand-made single-origin chocolate that you’ll never taste in the Hershey’s from the checkout lane.

I’ve come to realize that it’s somewhat like wine.  If you want to buy the cheap stuff, sure it will be “wine” and it can get you drunk, but the experience of even a $12 or $20 bottle can be so much more.  Yes, artisan chocolate is more expensive, but like fine wine you (can) get what you pay for.  Dan has an excellent reference “flavor wheel” on his site describing all the different flavors that may be found in your chocolate.

Aside from all that, Dan has already shown success in making great chocolate.  If/when he can manage to grow this into a larger business, our community will benefit from it.  Look at the Urbana farmers’ market, Common Ground Co-op, the various CSAs available–our community values high-quality, local, handmade food.  Dan’s chocolate fits the bill.