Eliane has always been a bit of a black sheep. Early on, she broke the mold by being one of the few women in her family to read up on topics like psychology and science. At a time when most women were relegated to the kitchen, she was busy advocating for freedom of mind, body and spirit. But no matter how heated things got at home because of her rebelliousness, one dish was always a unifier: her mother’s minestra di verdure. 

Eliane, who lives in Paris and is 86 years old, was born in Tunisia to Italian parents who emigrated in hope of finding work and making a better life for themselves. At age five, she and her family moved to France, where she still lives today.  

A kick-scooter-riding, rap-loving feminist—who’s also on Instagram—Eliane has a youthful spirit that belies a rich, long life. A highlight was fighting for women’s rights during France’s legendary May ‘68 protests. “That was a revelation for me. It was a time of sexual liberation … I knew I didn’t want a husband like my father. I saw other people [romantically], so my husband did too.”

Those revolutionary times shook something loose in her. “Before that, I thought: I’m married, I have a child, so that’s it, my life is this. But I was wrong,” she said. At age 40, Eliane decided to go back to university, and a few years later, she began hosting her own culture show on France Culture Radio, providing a platform for the country’s most intelligent women. 

Yet amid all those life changes, nostalgic dishes like minestra kept her grounded and in touch with her roots. There was a comfort in the recipe’s simplicity: Always beans, carrots, zucchini, turnips, leeks, green cabbage, celery root, and fennel. Always simmered, not boiled. Always made for loved ones, not for one, as a means to nourish and connect.

These days, Eliane cooks the soup for her granddaughter, Lola, the French filmmaker and actress who made the Grandmas Project mini-documentary about the dish. Like her grandmother, Lola celebrates minestra as a direct link to her Italian heritage. “I don’t speak Italian, and my Italian family doesn’t speak French, so nonna’s soup is really the only link we have left,” she says.

But beyond distant family roots, the soup is a testament to the pair’s deep connection here and now. “She’s my best friend, my idol, my role model,” says Lola. 

Each time Lola visits her grandmother, Eliane slips on her sun-yellow jacket, hops on her scooter, and heads to her favorite greengrocer at Aligre market to pick up ingredients for minestra. “She knows I can’t go too long without it,” chuckles Lola. 

Upon her return, the two sit together at the kitchen table, sipping on a glass of red wine as they peel and chop vegetables, talk about their love lives, and belt out Italian songs from Eliane’s childhood. 

That’s Nonna for you. A woman who believes in the plurality of lovers, in the power of psychology and science, and the importance of stepping outside one’s comfort zone. “My aim in life is to be as cultivated as possible by the time I die,” she says.

Recipe

Minestra di Verdure

Get the recipe>

The post This Italian Nonna’s Vegetable Soup Is a Portal to Her Past appeared first on Saveur.

When Hugo Martinez first moved from Mexico to the U.S. in 2018 to attend Stanford Business School, every party he attended with his American classmates was stocked with beer, wine, and sometimes spirits. By the time he graduated in 2020, there had been a shift—the beverage selection at student shindigs were now dominated by Ready-to-Drink (RTD) sips. Yet, none of the flavors in the cooler, from the White Claws to the Truly hard seltzers, appealed to his palate. In a sea of strawberry, cherry, and kiwi options—none of which really tasted prominently like the advertised fruits—Martinez missed the vibrant, refreshing, boldly fruit-forward drink flavors he grew up with in Mexico City, like tart limonada, tangy tamarindo, and sweet, floral mango.

Though many of his American peers seemed to enjoy the RTD beverages, “I didn’t see the Latinos, and Hispanics, and me and my Mexican friends get into them as much,” he recalls. Martinez suspected this was because they were accustomed to totally different flavors, many of which are arguably bolder and more distinct than what they were encountering in the ice box.

In his native Mexico, there’s a broad category of delicious drink flavors that go well beyond the handful of bog-standard fruit flavorings that make up the RTD aisle in U.S. grocers. A lightbulb went off in Martinez’s entrepreneurial brain—perhaps there was an opportunity to introduce American imbibers to beloved Mexican ingredients through RTD beverages. So, he developed one, a spiked agua fresca called Picadas. Fermented in small batches, the canned drinks are reminiscent of the non-alcoholic varieties one might find on a traditional Mexican taqueria counter. The flavors represent nostalgic ingredients from Martinez’s youth—the distinctly tropical-tasting guayaba (guava); a sweet and sour limonada helada (made with Key limes rather than lemons); and mango, featuring a much sweeter variety of the fruit than the mangoes typically available in the U.S.   

Picadas is just one of a spate of all-natural Mexican beverages now sweeping the drinks industry in the U.S.—with an emphasis on traditional Latin American flavors. Rafael Martin Del Campo, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based tepache brand De La Calle, was born and raised in Mexico City. He’s the third generation in his family to brew tepache, a naturally fermented probiotic drink made from pineapples that’s popular among homebrewers throughout his native country. De La Calle is already available in grocery stores nationwide, and Martin Del Campo says there’s been interest from both customers and stores in exporting the product to not only Mexico, but South American and European countries, too. 

In Picadas’ case, Martinez and his team distributed their product solely in Mexico for an entire year before launching in Texas, the brand’s first U.S. market. But these beverages have broad appeal and Del Campo says both Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations have embraced his company’s products. As Martinez puts it, Picadas is “made by Mexicans for Mexicans for the world to enjoy. Not just the Mexican consumers.”

Mexican Americans make up 20% of the current U.S. population. That demographic is only growing—and businesses are increasingly trying to cater to the community, says Martinez. He points to the success of brands like Topo Chico, Jarritos, Corona, Modelo, and Takis, all of which have introduced Mexican products to the U.S. market, and explains that, “brands are starting to realize that there’s a huge market that they’re not paying attention to, that needs a different solution or a different product than what’s available.”

Brands like De La Calle may also be riding the zero-proof wave, but these culturally relevant libations aren’t just capitalizing on a trend—Mexican households have been making and drinking flavorful non-alcoholic concoctions for generations. Now, the U.S. market is catching up.

Even established food brands are moving into sips, in an effort to share the familiar flavors of their heritage to a new audience in drink form. Longtime Bronx-based tortilla purveyor Buena Vista recently launched Soda Mexicana, a less-sweet alternative to Jarritos, in pineapple, mandarin, apple, tamarind, and hibiscus flavors, all made with natural cane sugar. With just 15 employees, the small brand hopes to build a local following that prefers a lower-sugar alternative to the treacly big dog that’s carried in virtually every supermarket and bodega in Mexico and the U.S. alike.

Del Campo attributes much of Americans’ affinity for Mexican products to the two countries’ proximity. “We’re neighbors to Mexico,” he says. But the entrepreneur also believes there’s interest in more globally inspired drinks across the country in general, and that interest is only growing. “People are looking into more ancestral, and authentic, foods and beverages.”

The post These Mexican-Made Canned Drinks Are Giving Local Flavors Their Due appeared first on Saveur.

Portland, Oregon-based photographer Jordan Hughes stirred up vehement debate on TikTok earlier this year when he made an espresso martini—a latter-day mixology flex—and finished it with a shower of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. 

“I tried it and I can report back that it’s just crazy enough to work!” wrote one viewer. “Straight to jail,” condemned another. Some were appalled, others tickled, and still others traced the combination to a concrete place in their sensory recollections. “This unlocked my memory of coffee cheese! It’s a Swedish bread cheese (no bread, just sturdy) served in coffee,” one user shared. 

Hughes’ Parmesan-scented concoction may have sparked mixed reactions, but the drink is part of an ever-growing range of salty, spicy, and briny creations showing up on drinks lists all over the world. According to Dave O’Brien, a veteran wine and spirits developer who helped launch Aperol in the U.S., the trend towards savory sips is rooted in the mixology craze of the late aughts—and the evolution of American drinkers’ palates have traced a clear arc. “I’ve seen our collective tastes change from more sweet, to embracing bittersweet, to finally a more bitter and adventurous palate,” he explained. On the other side of the equation (and bar), business owners face stiff competition. “I think bartenders feel the need to innovate to help their drinks programs stand out,” he added. 

As savory drinks take up growing real estate on bar menus, mixologists are incorporating brine into their beverages in surprising, and highly sippable, ways. 

A global movement

Marian Beke, owner of erstwhile London bar The Gibson (which will be reopening in Berlin later this year), is arguably a pioneer of the savory cocktail movement. The Slovakia-born mixologist has been experimenting with unexpected flavor profiles for years. In 2018, he collaborated with Belgium’s Copperhead Distillery to roll out a savory gin featuring five botanicals and 13 pickling spices, including mace, pepper, cassia, bay leaf, ginger, allspice, fennel, and dill seeds. In 2019, Beke launched a liqueur line with Italian spirits producer Casoni featuring flavors like Balsamic Vinegar of Modena.   

According to Beke, savory cocktails correlated with UK customers’ relatively salty palates. Consider the classic English breakfast—back bacon, eggs, sausage, baked beans, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, black pudding, with fried and toasted bread—a sodium-rich way to start the day (at odds with many American breakfast staples like pancakes and waffles). Beke said that UK imbibers were already stalwart fans of unsweetened classics like martinis and old-fashioneds. When he began serving savory drinks, like a martini aged in balsamic barrels and served with truffle onions, it was immediately apparent that customers were into them. So he continued to experiment. “We tried to introduce an element of savory or umami into each cocktail,” he explained. Think sea salt, smoked fruits, a hint of balsamic for syrups, pickled eggs for martinis, or pickles as a garnish. 

In other regions where palates skew sweeter, Beke noted, one might expect a savory cocktail to be met with more skepticism. Take Spain, for example, where people don’t bat an eye at mixing coke and red table wine (hola, kalimotxo). And yet, the country has seen its own savory mixology boom, including recent openings like Especiarium, a cocktail bar in Barcelona’s El Born neighborhood dedicated to exploring the world of spices. There, the menu features cheeky, thoughtfully made sips like the popular Saltbae: Gin Mare, a spicy tomato juice, sriracha, a mix of salsas, and salt and pepper “al gusto” (to your liking). Partner and head bartender Antonio Naranjo described it as their spicy take on a Bloody Mary. “You expect something that everyone does the same—the Bloody Mary—and instead you taste a bomb of flavors. And as the ice melts, you get sensations in different parts of the mouth and the nose.” He called it a “complete sensory experience.” 

Bartenders are flexing their creative muscles, and—despite the authoritative ring to the term “mixology”—not taking themselves too seriously 

Finding inspiration in food

As Beke’s English brekkie-inspired drink suggests, a staple ingredient or time-tested recipe can be a solid jumping-off point for cocktail innovations. In New York City, the menu at Noho haunt Jac’s on Bond features a caprese martini, with notes of olive oil, tomato, basil, and balsamic vinegar. According to beverage director Trevor Easton Langer, the creation phase often starts with seeking inspiration from dishes or ingredients that one already loves—no matter how far off they might seem from the world of cocktails. On the rise of savory mixed drinks, Langer noted, “There have been fine variants of classics like the Dirty Martini, Gibson, and Bloody Mary, but there’s been a massive influx of thought-inducing tipples that you’ll want to try purely out of curiosity—like, ‘How’d they turn this into a drink?’” 

Over in New York City’s Meatpacking District, Genesis House puts yet another spin on a classic with their Kimchitini. Head bartender Leslie Hong, who had been daydreaming about a kimchi-infused martini for some time, used her vegan kimchi recipe as a base. Through trial and error, she figured out the ideal ingredient ratios for the cocktail. “I created a cold-brewed gochugaru-and-salt solution to pull the color and flavor,” Hong explained. “The final cocktail also gets a little muddled fresh Asian pear to bring back a little fresh sweetness.” The resulting drink “marries the best parts of the traditional dirty martini with a beloved element of Korean cuisine,” added Kevin Prouve, Genesis House’s general manager. 

When Dave Kupchinsky, bar manager at Bar Moruno in Los Angeles, was looking to shake up the classic martini, he beelined to the restaurant’s kitchen for ideas. There, chef Chris Feldmeier told him about a salmon martini he onced sipped at Dr Stravinksy, a trailblazing cocktail bar in the seaside city of Barcelona (where the team also produces a curiosity-piquing gorgonzola cheese rum). This birthed Bar Moruno’s popular salmon martini, a fish-forward, briny, and unexpectedly balanced cocktail. “I take smoked salmon and infuse it into Tanqueray gin. That sits for about three weeks, then I strain it off, including a lot of fat—but you have to leave some of the fat because that’s where all the flavor is,” Kupchinksy explained.

It makes sense. Consider the dirty martini: a briny cocktail with an oily touch from the olives. Kupchinsky pointed out that fat has been finding its way into the cocktail shaker for some time now. He recalled the bacon old-fashioned at mythical New York speakeasy PDT, adding, “That was probably 10 years ago.” More recently, mixologists have taken the fat-washing method—infusing a spirit with something fatty, freezing it and skimming off the fat—and run with it, incorporating plant-based ingredients like coconut oil, peanuts, avocados, and more. In New York City, the restaurant Hutong serves its Ancient Old Fashioned with sesame-washed bourbon. Curio Bar in Denver offers a sip called Heathen made with green chili vodka, rhum agricole, coconut, and lime oil. The effect of fat-washing is a richer, rounder flavor and, as Naranjo of Especiarium suggested, a fuller sensorial experience. 

Fermenting is another savory technique infiltrating the beverage menu. At Workshop, a new Portland restaurant with a vegan tasting menu that makes heavy use of chef Aaron Adams’ fermentation lab, the cocktails are inspired by people and places culled from Adams’ memories. One, the K&A, is a tribute to Kevin Farley and Alex Hozven of the Cultured Pickle Shop and features Rittenhouse rye, Cynar, and celery kombucha vinegar. It sounds almost nutritious enough to negate any detrimental effects of alcohol (except, perhaps, that late-night text sent an ex).

Be it fatty, fermented, or generously spiced, you can have your cocktail and (sort of) eat it, too.

A twist on nostalgia

Savory cocktails may be as old as the dirty martini itself, which dates back to 1901, but it’s clear that mixology experts are going bolder than ever with briny ingredients. Sometimes, in getting patrons to embrace seemingly strange combinations, it helps to tap into a spirit of nostalgia, drawing on profiles that might hit a sentimental note of familiarity for cocktail creators and customers alike.

Recently, I popped into Abricot Bar, a buzzy new cocktail spot in Paris’ Belleville neighborhood. Co-owner Allison Kave, a Brooklynite cum Parisienne, served me their instant-hit minitini—a teensy-weensy dirty martini at the right price of five euros. It was perfectly chilled and packed with savory flavor. Kave explained that the team makes their own brine, blending lactic acid, salt, and water, and also uses Baldoria Dry Umami vermouth for its strong notes of mushroom and seaweed. (Obvious by now: the OG briny cocktail is catnip for savory spinoffs.) 

For the next round, Kave poured one of the cocktails on tap—the Cel-Ray, a fresh take on a G&T inspired by the cult-favorite vegetable soda and Jewish deli mainstay of the same name. It’s made with the juice of lemon peels, Citadelle gin, aquavit, and a celery syrup produced in-house using fresh celery and fennel seeds. I sipped the bubbly elixir from its tall glass and got an instant hit of celery. But there was something deeper—an earthy, nutty, maybe even malty character, which I asked Kave about. “That’s probably the rye bread notes that come through from the aquavit,” she told me. The aquavit, Kave explained, is flavored with the same caraway seeds that stud rye bread in those Jewish delis of our native New York. We shared an IYKYK smile. For an instant, two New Yorkers in a bar on a quiet street in Paris’ 10th arrondissement were transported to warm memories of the place they used to call home. 

“This is amazing,” I told Kave. It was easily drinkable—nothing cheesy or gimmicky about it. The woman next to me leaned over the bar and ordered the same.

The post Everyone Is About to Be Drinking More Savory Cocktails appeared first on Saveur.

Rise & Dine is a SAVEUR column by Senior Editor Megan Zhang, an aspiring early riser who seeks to explore the culture of mornings and rituals of breakfast around the world.

I was admiring the bright-red packaging of the coffee beans at SuperJoy Coffee Lab & Roasters when the barista behind the counter called my name. He set down the handcrafted mocha I’d ordered, the foamy surface etched with a perfectly symmetrical rosetta design. Though the whimsical flourish is typical of specialty coffee shops here in Portland, Oregon, this wasn’t an ordinary brew—it included a surprising ingredient which wound up jolting me from my early-morning daze almost as much as the caffeine did: Sichuan peppercorn.

This unexpected pairing is part of SuperJoy’s mission to bring a Chinese viewpoint to Portland’s vibrant coffee scene. Beans from China are still very underrepresented in the U.S. market, explains the café and roastery’s owner, Christopher Ou, who was born and raised in Guangdong Province. Though Chinese people have been cultivating tea for millennia, coffee production only expanded into a full-fledged industry in the 1980s and 1990s, driven largely by the globalization of coffee culture. Today, both the quality of the country’s coffee beans, as well as Chinese people’s demand for them, are on the rise.

To shine a light on the country’s up-and-coming but still undervalued coffee industry, SuperJoy sources beans from Yunnan Province, where the majority of China’s coffee is cultivated. “They have a unique earthy flavor,” says Ou of natural-process beans from Yunnan, adding that drinkers often detect elegant notes of berry, wine, and chocolate. When customers bring home a bag of SuperJoy’s roasted beans, there’s little doubt of their origins—the red packaging is adorned with an image of chopsticks gripping a single bean.

Incorporating Sichuan peppercorn into mochas made from Chinese coffee beans is another way SuperJoy is nodding to the country’s burgeoning coffee culture. The tongue-tingling spice is famous for bringing a numbing, anesthetic quality to countless dishes in Sichuan Province’s fiery cuisine, but the SuperJoy team realized when developing drinks for the cafe’s menu that the ingredient could do more than counteract heat. The peppercorn’s citrusy, floral aroma also gave unexpected balance and contrast to the rich, chocolatey flavor of a mocha—introducing Portlandians to a traditional Chinese ingredient in a non-traditional way.

Portland’s coffee scene is a long-established pillar of the city’s identity. The disruptive 1990s growth of Pacific Northwest chains like Stumptown Coffee Roasters, the now-closed Coffee People, and the Seattle-founded Starbucks firmly cemented the region as one fueled by joe. The port city became a breeding ground for independent roasters who helped drive the third-wave coffee movement, emphasizing fair-trade practices and high-quality, direct-trade beans. Lora Woodruff, owner of Third Wave Coffee Tours, often wonders if the city’s embrace of the warm, energizing beverage has something to do with its climate: “It seems most people seek out caffeine to get through our gray, dark winters,” she surmises. Today, Portland’s love of specialty coffee is as strong as ever, and it’s fueling continued evolution in the boutique roasting scene: a growing community of BIPOC founders are diversifying the city’s java—by spotlighting the undervalued coffee-growing regions of their native countries.

Augusto Carneiro fell in love with coffee not in cafés, but at their very source. Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, he would spend summer breaks visiting his mom’s family’s coffee farm in the highlands of São Sebastião da Grama, where the family had been cultivating the crop since 1890. After graduating from college in Portland, Carneiro wanted to find work that would allow him to regularly visit his hometown. Coffee was the clear answer. “It was a passion for Brazil and for the work my family did. Coffee just happened to be the medium,” he says. In 2004, Carneiro launched his own roastery, Nossa Familia Coffee, importing beans straight from his family’s plantations.

In the specialty coffee industry at the time, “Brazil was not known for high-quality coffee,” Carneiro notes, despite the country’s status as the world’s top coffee producer. Because the Brazilian government controlled exports and mixed beans from different sources until the 1990s, many roasters “considered Brazilian beans to be just a blender,” he explains. Though that reputation lingers somewhat today, Carneiro hopes his family’s farm can help rewrite the narrative by shipping specialty-grade, single-origin beans to Nossa Familia and other roasteries—and marketing them proudly as Brazilian. Moreover, he wants to set an example for a direct-trade business model in which “everybody in the chain can make a healthy living through coffee,” he says. Over time, he’s established relationships with farms in Guatemala and Nicaragua to set up supply chains that mirror his family’s in Brazil.

A key factor of the business’s success, Carneiro believes, is Portlandians’ keenness to support businesses with a community-minded mission, or what he describes as “the West Coast attitude of pioneering.” Today, Nossa Familia operates three airy, plant-filled café locations in Portland where customers can spend a slow, quiet morning—as I did—nursing a cafezinho, a traditional Brazilian coffee drink that strikes the perfect balance between bitter and sweet.

As important as coffee is in the daily lives of many Americans, most people don’t realize “the impressive value chain that exists before the coffee reaches the end consumer,” says Alberto Gomez, who was born and raised in Mexico City. While visiting a coffee plantation in his native country, he was disheartened to learn that the lucrative industry’s profits are rarely distributed fairly across the supply chain, and thousands of Mexican coffee farmers live in poverty. Moreover, he felt Mexican coffee was underappreciated in the global market, despite its prime geographic position on the coffee belt—the equatorial regions where the temperature, humidity levels, and soil are ideal for cultivation. “There’s a lot here, and it’s not reaching consumers,” Gomez recalls realizing. 

Gomez and his wife Adriana Lopez had just moved to Portland, where they experienced the city’s vibrant fair-trade coffee culture for the first time. “We kind of connected the dots,” he says. In 2019, the couple opened their own small-batch coffee company, Tostado Coffee Roasters, sourcing beans only from small producers in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Nayarit—and donating a portion of profits and tips to the farmers. Each package of beans comes with a whimsical piece of art: a colorful pom-pom handcrafted by indigenous women in the Chiapas village of Tenejapa, as a nod to the beans’ culture of origin.

Tostado Coffee Roasters isn’t the only Portland roastery cutting out middlemen to maximize farmers’ profits and improve their livelihoods. When Héctor Mejía Zamora was growing up in Guatemala, his father, a coffee farmer, told him that middlemen often exploit growers and take massive cuts of their would-be profits, which leaves the farmers struggling financially and creates a downward spiral. “These farmers that are paid less money, they will just be left behind because they cannot compete in terms of quality,” Zamora learned. After his father passed away, he eventually moved to Portland, where he discovered a thriving café scene. He realized this city could be the place to “make my father’s dream come true: eliminating the middleman between farmers and roasters.”

Café Zamora opened its doors in 2019, importing beans directly from Zamora’s father’s coffee farm in Guatemala, as well as from small independent farmers within the cooperative Conebosque, before roasting them in Portland. Zamora explains that consistent and fair wages will allow farmers to achieve financial stability and invest in the long-term future of their farms. “I want to be for my community the person that my father wanted to find,” he says. On the packaging of the roastery’s beans, what pops out the most is the phrase “Path to a Better Future.”

During my week in Portland, I hopped around the globe without ever leaving the city, tasting brews from a different region almost every day. Each cup felt like a postcard, hand-delivered by someone who identifies with that part of the world, and wants to lift up the growers and producers who share their heritage. “I was the only foreigner I knew who had a coffee-roasting company that was representing my country,” Carneiro recalls of Nossa Familia’s early days. But thanks to Portlandians’ propensity for uplifting small businesses and uncommon business models, “now, there’s many more, and that’s super exciting.”

The day before my departure flight, I stopped by the coffee shop and roastery Portland Cà Phê, where owner Kim Dam is broadening people’s appreciation for Vietnamese coffee beyond merely “giving that extra caffeine kick,” as she puts it. Many friends had recommended the spot, which specializes in beans from the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and sure enough, the Americano I ordered was delightfully aromatic, with pleasant notes of vanilla and licorice. As I looked down wistfully at my half-empty cup of joe, the last of this trip, I decided to save the rest to make a jar of overnight oats. After traveling the world cup by cup, it seemed right to keep the journey going—by taking some of Portland with me for the long trip home.

Recipe

Leftover Coffee Overnight Oats

Get the recipe >

The post The Latest Thing Brewing in Portland: Unsung Coffee Beans appeared first on Saveur.

My fridge, like most, is filled with bits and bobs. There’s day-old white rice, half of a blue cheese wedge, and beef stew I cooked last weekend. A few overripe guavas, a handful of grapes, and some droopy scallions are rolling around in the crisper drawer. On the shelves inside the doors sit half-consumed cartons of milk, condiment jars down to their last dregs, and pickle brine that I keep telling my boyfriend I’m saving for deviled eggs.

As much as I make it a goal to use up existing ingredients in my fridge before buying more (for the sake of both frugality and also minimizing food waste), it often feels like the disparate odds and ends can’t possibly produce a complete meal without another grocery haul. That’s where chef Tamar Adler would disagree—because where the average home cook might see stray puzzle pieces that don’t fit together, Adler sees delicious possibilities.

In her newly released The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z, the chef shares a veritable encyclopedia of ideas for how to utilize just about any ingredient or dish in your fridge—from boiled eggs or pozole to ramen flavoring packets or the last bits of a maple syrup bottle. Though she recognizes the impossibility of representing all the leftovers across America, she says she wanted to ensure the book didn’t “uphold the idea that everybody has the same things left over in their refrigerator.” Drawn from her restaurant experience, kitchen experimentation, and global cookbook collection, Adler’s diverse recommendations range from practical (“mangoes make the best smoothies”) to reassuring (“bottarga lasts for a geologic period of time”) to unexpected (“cold frittata plumps gratifyingly in warm broth”). 

Beyond imparting thrifty tips and hacks, though, Adler’s broader goal is to give home cooks a new lease on leftovers. Far from mere scraps to be rescued from the trash, she firmly believes leftovers are building blocks to new and unexpected meal ideas. These are some of her cost-cutting principles that have transformed the way I approach my leftovers.

Cooked greens can go in countless delicious directions. I’ve learned that as long as one has leafy greens—be it spinach, kale, or turnip tops—it is impossible not to eat well. More than an affordable side dish or nutritious source of fiber, greens can be the bedrock for infinite mains. Oftentimes, all it takes to elevate greens to entrée status is a bit of fat. Combined with creamy béchamel, greens become the star of a comforting gratin. Mixed with yogurt and herbs like cumin or dill, it makes a cooling, creamy dip. Blended with toasted nuts, grated Parmesan cheese, garlic, and olive oil, it transforms into a rich pesto perfect for spreading on bread or tossing with noodles.

When in doubt, introduce crunch. Often, all it takes to give leftovers new vitality is to change the texture. “In particular, add something crispy or crunchy,” Adler advises. An old portion of beans and rice, for example, can be fried so that it gets crisp and golden-brown (a tip she adapted from Brooks Headley’s Superiority Burger Cookbook). Even a days-old sandwich can be delicious again if the outside of the bread is slathered in mayonnaise, coated in grated Parmesan, and re-griddled. “It will caramelize in a beautiful way,” she notes. One of Adler’s favorite ways to introduce crispiness is to upcycle the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of chips. She likes adding a flavorful crunch factor to pork chops by crusting them in a concoction of gremolata, mayonnaise, mustard, oil, and chip crumbs. Or, she’ll add the crumbs into cookie dough to introduce a compelling savory element that counterbalances the baked goods’ sweetness. Combined with some lime zest, the seasonings at the bottom of the bag (think Cool Ranch Doritos) even make a terrific seasoning salt for salads, rice, porridge, and myriad other dishes. 

Cores, stems, and peels are secret weapons. The leftover bits of fruits and vegetables don’t have to go straight into the compost bin. Before composting or tossing them, consider how their flavor or consistency might enhance other dishes. Things like cauliflower cores and iceberg lettuce cores can add texture to blended sauces like pesto, or make a new meal out of leftover takeout stir-fry. Odds and ends such as tomato cores, leek tops, and marjoram stems can impart lots of flavor when tossed into a braise, stew, or pot of beans. Don’t discount peels either—root vegetable peels make a fantastic frugal snack. Whenever Adler peels tubers, she instinctively sets the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and tosses the peels in olive oil. “I don’t even compost my potato peels anymore,” she says. Topped with grated cheese and thinly sliced scallions, “it’s the perfect bar food.”

Near-empty condiment and sauce containers are full of potential. Never again will I think of an old jar of peanut butter as nearing the end of its life. Rather, with a handful of affordable ingredients like garlic, fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar, those last bits can begin a new chapter as a sauce for salads and noodles. Perhaps you’re reaching the bottom of a maple syrup bottle; Adler recommends adding water to it, shaking it well, then serving the liquid over ice as a refreshing summer sip. The next time you’re close to finishing a bottle of ketchup, pour in some fish sauce, give it a shake, then add the concoction to fried rice or cold noodles for a boost of umami. Almost out of miso paste? Smash a few tablespoons of room-temperature butter into the jar to make a fancy-tasting miso butter.

Frittata, fried rice, sabzi, and minestra are reliable go-tos. These versatile dishes make a formidable quartet that Adler prepares again and again because they “can really accommodate anything” you might need to use up, she says. In the book, her “Any Vegetable Minestra” recipe includes two cups of chopped vegetables, cooked or raw, and notes that peels, stems, and cores are all fair game. In her recipe for fried rice, the chef calls for chopped crisp vegetables and chopped herbs, but leaves the choices up to the reader. 

Starchy cooking water is extremely useful as a thickener. The next time you boil potatoes, save the cooking liquid (you can also freeze it to use later)—it turns out the starchy water makes an ideal thickening agent. If you’re making a pot of soup and want a less watery consistency, pour in a little potato water. If you’ve seared a steak and have drippings left over, combine the fat with potato water to make a luscious gravy. If you’re making mashed potatoes and run out of cream, swap out a portion of the dairy for potato water—Adler promises airy results. Just make sure to taste the cooking water first, as it may contain more salt than you want to add to a dish.

Don’t pour out day-old tea. Anyone who brews a lot of tea has wound up with a half-finished kettle at some point, but that leftover liquid doesn’t have to be fated for the kitchen sink. Instead, add some lemonade to make an Arnold Palmer, or pour in a splash of seltzer and limoncello for a grown-up refreshment. Adler also recommends saving tea to make a flavorful brine for chicken or ribs, or using the liquid to make savory marbled tea eggs.

The post How to Let Your Fridge Scraps Lead appeared first on Saveur.

There’s no denying that a big, beautiful meal served at a table with friends is one of life’s most enjoyable experiences. But there’s something particularly satisfying about the in-between times, the things we eat because we crave them, the things that we’re just eating for fun. We’re talking about snacks, the crispy, crunchy, salty, sweet, sour bites that we can share (or not share) with friends. 

So, welcome to Snacky Hour, my dream come true (and SAVEUR’s newest column). I’ll be sharing recipes that scratch all the itches, and create new obsessions along the way. We’ll also serve up snacky stories from around the world, dive deep into the best snacks on the market, and more.

We’re kicking things off with a recipe that’s long been a staple at Southern gatherings, our version of Spicy Fire Crackers, two ways. One takes on the original Ranch powder-laden recipe using our own mix of spices, and the other brings in some Indian flavors and heat for an updated, craveable snack. 

It’s always Snacky Hour at Saveur, so stay tuned for way more fun.

–Ellen Fort, Senior Editor

The post Welcome to Snacky Hour appeared first on Saveur.

The best Neapolitan pizza Katsuya Fukushima ever ate was in Japan, at the omakase-style, seasonally driven restaurant MONK in Kyoto. Blistered in the eatery’s wood-fired oven, the perfect dough was satisfyingly chewy yet airily light, speckled with pieces of briny mackerel and subtly sweet radish. “It blew my mind,” says the Japanese American chef, who had traveled to Japan to study and research the art of wafu-Italian, a genre of cooking that evolved from local interpretations of the European nation’s cuisine (wafu translates as “Japanese-style”). Of everything he ate, the artisan pizza especially stuck with Fukushima, later inspiring him to develop a corn and mentaiko (salted pollock roe) pie made with Hokkaido-imported flour that went on to become one of the best-selling items at Tonari, his wafu-Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C.

The culinary traditions of Japan and Italy, despite the vast geographic distance separating them, have a great deal in common (in addition to being two of the most popular cuisines in the world). “Philosophically, there’s a lot of affinity between the two,” says Daisuke Utagawa, a partner in the Daikaya Group, the team behind Tonari. Both cuisines are celebrated for spinning maximum flavor from minimal ingredients; both underscore seasonality and enjoyment of foods at their peak freshness; and both similarly emphasize the value of craftsmanship, “not only in cooking, but in agriculture and harvesting of natural resources,” notes Utagawa. The coastal nations even share a similarly long and narrow geographic shape that begets diverse bounty from land and sea, he adds. And now, spurred by obsession with umami-packed foods and fascination with how Japanese dishes mesh with other cuisines, a growing number of chefs in the U.S. are championing Italy and Japan’s culinary compatibility.

American chefs experimenting with Asian flavors is nothing new. (Wolfgang Puck’s divisive Chinese-inspired restaurant Chinois on Main, which opened in Santa Monica in 1983, is often credited with pioneering and popularizing “Asian fusion,” thorny nomenclature that continues to evoke connotations of white chefs combining cuisines in gimmicky fashion, or glorifying ingredients sans cultural context.) But recent years have seen a wave of chefs, many of whom previously concentrated on Japanese or Italian food, now devoting their entire kitchens to channeling wafu-Italian cuisine. Though the spirit of this confluence has flecked restaurant menus in the U.S. for decades (New York’s Basta Pasta, for example, originated in Tokyo in 1985 and has long brought subtle Japanese accents to its Italian menu), chefs today are overtly spotlighting this descendent of two culinary juggernauts, all while approaching both parent cuisines with intentionality and care.

Chef Robbie Felice began serving wafu-Italian dishes in late 2020, in a pop-up omakase concept called Pasta Ramen devoted to celebrating the crossover cuisine. Felice, who specializes in Italian cooking at his New Jersey restaurants Osteria Crescendo and Viaggio Ristorante, first encountered Italian food with Japanese notes in Positano, where he ate an umami-rich crudo dish garnished with yuzu. The balanced taste surprised and delighted him, and the experience led Felice to devote years to researching and practicing wafu-Italian cooking. He wanted more diners to experience how elegantly the two cuisines blend, a chemistry he attributes in part to their symbiotic base flavors. Take shiso leaf, for example, a citrusy herb prominent in Japanese cooking. “What’s the flavor profile of shiso leaf? It’s basil and mint—the two most commonly used herbs in Italian cuisine,” he explains. From Miami to Seattle to Los Angeles, demand and interest followed the pop-up around the country. In January, Felice and restaurateur Luck Sarabhayavanija, who owns Ani Ramen, opened Pasta Ramen’s permanent home in Montclair, New Jersey. On the cross-cultural menu that highlights the two cultures’ shared penchant for noodles, standouts include chicken katsu ramen served in a deeply savory parmigiano shoyu broth, and a creamy, slurpable carbonara-inspired tsukemen featuring spicy togarashi and zesty lemon. 

Across the Hudson River, another restaurant drew buzz when it introduced a wafu-Italian menu in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood in 2020. At Kimika, diners can start with small bites like briny house-marinated olives or crisp tsukemono (Japanese pickles) before moving on to a hearty pasta course of creamy mentaiko spaghetti made with salty roe, or a saucy pork ragu cavatelli served with nutty edamame and milky ricotta. Showstoppers such as crispy panko-crusted eggplant katsu and shiso-scented grilled branzino—dishes a traditional Italian menu might refer to as secondi—round out the meal. Over in Minneapolis, Sanjusan, which opened in 2021, serves gyoza that marries buttery foie gras with earthy wood ear mushrooms, and fires up savory artichoke pizzas topped with bonito cream. And in D.C., Fukushima draws from his Japanese heritage and studies of Italian tradition to produce his own take on wafu-Italian cuisine at Tonari. “I’m not trying to reinvent Italian food,” says the chef. Rather than riffing for pure novelty’s sake, he aims to honor both origin cuisines in equal measure: a dish he’s especially proud of is mentaiko tagliolini, made with pasta crafted at a ramen factory in Japan, that packs an umami punch with deeply savory ingredients like cod roe and tsuyu. Another favorite is his version of inarizushi, or rice-stuffed fried tofu pockets, which he tops with meaty, buttery anchovies. 

Originally, the convergence of Japanese and Italian flavors stemmed less from chefs admiring the cuisines’ synergy, and more from necessity and practicality. After the Meiji Restoration opened Japan up to Western trade in 1868, foreign food influences flowed into the country; another influx came during the post-World War II era as Allied soldiers occupied the country. In part to meet growing demand, local chefs increasingly served globally influenced offerings like curry rice, doria, and Napolitan spaghetti. Such dishes, borne from cultural exchange and limited ingredient availability, integrated Western flavors with Japanese techniques and became a category of cooking known as yoshoku, or “Western food.” Over time, in the spirit of Japan’s reverence for specialized craftsmanship, many chefs devoted themselves to mastering true Italian fare, Utagawa explains. On that foundation of understanding and esteem for Italy’s traditions, some imbued their food with Japanese sensibilities, creating a new culinary style. “They [aren’t] trying to push the ingredients together as much as they really respect all the different ideas,” notes Ivan Orkin, cookbook author and owner of Ivan Ramen in New York City.

In many ways, wafu-Italian cooking is a fluid concept, the ever-shifting intersection of a Venn diagram that cooks today are continuing to explore. “I don’t think it’s possible to coin or define [wafu-Italian],” Utagawa adds. “It can manifest in many, many ways.” What the myriad interpretations have in common is that they “highlight the similarities as opposed to the differences” between two cultures, says Ricky Dolinsky, chef-owner of the Manhattan restaurant Yo+Shoku. 

This offspring cuisine, suspended between two culinary powerhouses, bears the DNA of both parents without identically resembling either one. Given its delicious lineage, it was only a matter of time before the whole world caught on.

Recipe

Udon all’Amatriciana

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The post These Two Noodle-Loving Cultures Tangle Seamlessly on the Plate appeared first on Saveur.

Search #CookForIran on Instagram and a sea of bright, lovingly plated dishes populate the results: a Seattle restaurant serving up lubia polo, a comforting and aromatic dish of rice, green beans, and spiced meats; a home cook in New Zealand sharing a goblet of ab-havij bastani, a luxurious ice cream float made with refreshing carrot juice; a warm platter of Iranian American cookbook author Naz Deravian’s tahcheen-e morgh, tangy saffron-spiced yogurt rice with juicy chicken, baked to bronze perfection for a table of lucky diners in Germany. The strangers cooking these Iranian delicacies haven’t met in real life, but online, they’ve come together to support a common cause.

Humanitarian and entrepreneur Layla Yarjani conceived the idea of #CookForIran while coordinating charity partnerships and operations for #CookForSyria and #CookForUkraine, food-driven campaigns raising awareness for the humanitarian crises in both countries. In Iran, mass protests have shaken the nation since September 2022, when a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by local morality police for not wearing a hijab in accordance with the strict laws. Witnesses say Amini was severely beaten and fell into a coma; she died three days later in police custody. The tragedy sparked widespread outcry on social media and mass demonstrations in the streets of Iran. “People are just asking for basic human rights,” says Yarjani. According to Human Rights Watch, authorities in the country have brutally clamped down on dissent and opposition, and thousands of protesters have been detained, imprisoned, or sentenced to death. Both the uprising and the government’s lethal crackdowns have drawn unprecedented levels of global attention to the oppression millions of women continue to face in the country.

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As the demonstrations dominated worldwide news coverage, Yarjani wanted to help amplify global awareness about human rights advocacy in Iran, while resisting characterizations of the country and culture as a monolith defined by its politics. In October 2022, she and fellow activist Omid Scheybani kicked off #CookForIran on Instagram, with a basic rice recipe from cookbook author Najmieh Batmanglij. “When people eat the food from a particular country, they really start to appreciate the culture and connect that food with the people in a more visceral way,” says Yarjani. Since the initiative’s launch, hundreds of cooks around the world have joined the cause by sharing images of vibrant, tantalizing dishes like borani esfenaj, a cool and creamy yogurt dip, and shushtari polo, featuring crispy, golden rice and savory meatballs.

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“Iran has been a country and a culture that has been misunderstood a lot by the West, especially in the U.S.,” explains Iranian American cookbook author Andy Baraghani. By bringing the voices of individual people—be they demonstrators, activists, supporters, or well-wishers—to the surface, #CookForIran reminds the world that there are real faces and families being impacted by the events there. “Humanizing any society is the first step in having the world care about them,” says Tara Kangarlou, an Iranian American journalist and author of The Heartbeat of Iran. 

Yarjani understands that many people may feel unsure how to best express their support for the Iranian community. “Some of the content coming out of [Iran] is so difficult for people to grasp,” she says. Many members of the Iranian diaspora who still have family in the country are also understandably careful about their speech, says Kangarlou, explaining that the regime has punished many people for outspoken criticism or solidarity. The journalist is among those unable to return to Iran, as her past reporting has shed light on the regime’s human rights record. Food, though, can be a “subtle way to raise awareness—a way that will inspire more people to get involved,” says Yarjani, emphasizing that #CookForIran is simply championing human rights and can allow people to advocate for Iranians from afar without being explicitly political. “I think it’s commendable that [advocates] are cautious while doing all they can to tell the Iranian story,” adds Kangarlou.

The #CookForIran campaign also encourages people to donate what they can to The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, an organization providing trauma therapy training to community leaders, physicians, teachers, and other individuals on the ground in Iran, as well as remote mental health support services. Many well-known tastemakers, including chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Marcus Samuelsson, and cookbook author Najmieh Batmanglij, have joined the initiative, adding Iranian dishes to their restaurant menus or sharing recipes with their social media followers to raise both funds and awareness.

For Iranian-born cooks, these acts take on even more meaning, as preparing Iranian dishes has long been a way for many to keep their heritage and country close. Food is “a really accessible way to connect with a culture,” says Nilou Motamed, an Iranian American food personality and judge on Netflix’s Iron Chef whose childhood memories are peppered with instances of food as fuel, refuge, and community. She fondly recalls going for early-morning treks in the mountains north of Tehran, where humble tea houses offer hikers a warming respite. “You’re freezing cold, and you just want to get some tea and then some hot bread—which is, I think, the canvas of the Persian breakfast ritual,” says Motamed. Sometimes she’d choose sangak, baked on top of a layer of little stones; other days, it was lavash, a thin flatbread traditionally made in a clay oven. But her favorite breakfast was barbari, a crisp yet soft, plush bread topped with sesame seeds and served with sweet or savory accompaniments like feta cheese, sour cherry jam, butter, and honey.

Today, Motamed treasures any opportunity to bake fresh barbari for breakfast in her New York City kitchen and relive those memories. “The traditions that you take for granted when you’re in Iran are things that you have to create elsewhere,” she says. “This one little act of making barbari at home makes me feel more connected and more rooted in a culture that I miss so much.”

The team behind #CookForIran hopes the campaign will ensure the world continues “keeping Iran in their hearts and minds,” says Yarjani. “We want people in Iran to feel like they’re being seen and they’re being heard, and that they have people’s goodwill.” With these stakes, it’s clear that images of torshi seer and ash-e reshteh carry far more weight than the typical food snaps shared online. Resistance can come in many forms. Sometimes, it’s a plate of kuku sabzi, humanizing and advocating for the culture behind it.

Recipe

Barbari Flatbread

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The post Feasting with Purpose appeared first on Saveur.

If you’ve been keeping up with food trends on social media, chances are you’ve noticed some weird-ass cakes creeping into your feed lately. You know the look—lopsided, whimsical, and baroque, with bushy foliage and flowers poking through the frosting and thick chunks of fruit smushed straight into the sides. 

This striking new aesthetic—pioneered by a cohort of young bakers like Amy Yip, Jamie Rothenberg, and Aimee France—is everything conventional pastry isn’t: freeform, imprecise, and refreshingly unserious. 

But the genre is so new that scant resources are available for home cooks eager to dabble in the “anti-cake” chaos. After all, most baking books don’t teach you how to make slumped, wobbly cakes—they aim to do just the opposite.

So when Aimee France—the 23-year-old baker who goes by YungKombucha420 on Instagram—invited us into her tiny Bushwick kitchen for a lesson in unconventional cake decorating, we jumped at the opportunity to watch the artist at work. Here are her top tips for bakers looking to branch out.

Create distinctive patterns and designs.

Run-of-the-mill garlands, buttercream roses, and fondant accents won’t do—let your imagination run wild and get inspired by nature, fashion, and geometry. Aimee uses lots of lines and dots. “I never go into decorating a cake with a specific plan or idea of what it’s going to look like in the end. I just kind of freestyle,” she says.

Use architecture as inspo.

Crown molding, capitals, domes, motifs—architectural elements like these find their way into Aimee’s cake designs. 

Toss the tip.

To create the Van Gogh-like ruffles and swirls that make Aimee’s cakes so trippy and hypnotic, she frequently forgoes metal tips and pipes on the icing straight through the hole in the pastry bag.  

Go crazy with color.

No color is out of bounds when it comes to frosting, as evidenced by Aimee’s jaw-dropping charcoal-gray and black cakes. Visit your local kitchen store (or shop online) to stock up on unconventional food colorings, then play painter and blend them to create even more distinctive hues. Aimee skips artificial dyes and instead uses spices and natural colorings (such as activated charcoal and butterfly pea tea) to create her signature earth-tone palette. 

Fresh produce is your friend.

“I love using seasonal ingredients because there’s always something new to look forward to,” Aimee says. This time of year, she’s reaching for cranberries and citrus, which “add a little zing” to chocolate cakes in the form of fillings, frostings, and garnishes. When the ideas aren’t free-flowing, she reaches for The Flavor Bible, which helps her figure out what ingredients might play well with one another. 

Lean into the lean.

Aimee’s cakes are so gorgeous in their topsy-turviness that you might assume she relies on protractors and complicated support systems. But that couldn’t be further from the truth: “You can make a cake, but gravity is the force of life,” she said, adding that she lets the layers settle organically, which sometimes results in a tilt. To prevent the cake from collapsing, she often inserts a single dowel through the center of the cake.

Forage!

The concrete jungle of Bushwick is no forager’s paradise, but when Aimee goes on vacation or visits her hometown in New Hampshire, she returns with wildflowers and bushels of wild herbs, which she presses and dries for year-round garnishing. Chamomile and hemlock are two of her mainstays. But just because an ingredient is pretty doesn’t mean it is edible—be sure to do your research!  

Spice up your frosting.

Literally. Beyond adding color and texture, spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and dried herbs lend complexity and depth to an otherwise one-note frosting.

Aimee’s cakes are available for purchase in the New York City area and must be ordered at least two weeks in advance via email: yungkombucha@gmail.com.

The post How to Make Those Fabulously Unhinged Cakes You Saw on Instagram appeared first on Saveur.

The wiring in your brain compels you to enjoy chocolate. Compounds in the food trigger the release of endorphins and dopamine, heightening the pleasure you feel as a decadent truffle melts luxuriously on your tongue. And chocolate may benefit more than just your mood; it’s also a rich source of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants associated with decreased risk of heart disease and lower odds of depression. It’s no wonder the key ingredient in chocolate—the fruit of the Theobroma cacao tree—is often referred to as a superfood. However, the processed bars, balls, chips, and chunks that line the shelves of your local grocery store only utilize a portion of each fruit: the seeds, or beans. Now, a growing number of entrepreneurial ventures are taking steps to change that.

When it comes to cacao fruit, most chocolate manufacturers are only interested in the few dozen seeds nestled inside. These seeds, which make up around 30 percent of the fruit’s total mass, undergo a process that includes fermenting, drying, and roasting, before they are conched smooth and combined with sugar and emulsifiers to become the chocolate we know and love. Other components of the fruit, like the thick outer husk or the sticky white pulp that coats the beans, have uses in different stages of the chocolate-making process. Husks can be “spread back into the farm as compost, serving as organic nutrients for the soil,” explains Belizean chocolate maker Luis Armando Choco, while the sugary pulp helps kickstart the seeds’ fermentation. And yet, chocolate manufacturers largely consider any portion of the cacao fruit other than the beans to be leftover byproducts, which means much of those parts may go to waste.

This doesn’t have to be the case: in countries like Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia, locals might use cacao pulp to make treats ranging from juice and jam to ice cream and fruit leather. In Belize, where Mayan people have been consuming cacao beverages since as early as 600 BCE, excess pulp that seeps away during the fermentation process gets collected and upcycled into cacao vinegar and even wine, says Choco, a member of the Kekchi Maya community in Belize. He points out that the roasted beans’ outer shells can also be upcycled to brew a chocolatey, antioxidant-rich tea—a product some chocolate makers have begun selling not only in Belize but also Thailand and Ecuador. 

Potential uses for whole cacao extend beyond its edibility, as legendary Japanese confectionery brand Meiji—which sources from countries including Ghana, Venezuela, Peru, Vietnam, and Madagascar—hopes to prove. According to company spokesperson Akie Harada, researchers are developing coasters, vases, and other tableware made from cacao husks, which are kneaded into bioplastic and shaped with the help of 3D printing. In Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest producer of cacao, a new biomass plant may soon even generate electricity by burning the waste created during cacao production, BBC reports. 

Longtime chocolatier Oded Brenner saw firsthand the untapped edible potential in the crop when he traveled to a handful of cacao-growing communities in Central and South America. Brenner is one half of the founding duo behind Max Brenner, a retail brand and restaurant chain known for its chocolate-based confections. After a years-long legal battle and bitter split with the company, he traveled to some of the communities that cultivate the key ingredient for the world’s favorite decadent sweet. “I was not aware of the endless culinary treasures that are hidden in the fruit,” admits Brenner, who previously bought ready-made chocolate directly from manufacturers like Barry Callebaut. Though most chocolate manufacturers only prize the beans, “the rest are incredible culinary ingredients,” he realized.

However, depending on the community, “there may not be that knowledge or local interest in using all of it,” notes Kerry Daroci, the cocoa sector lead for the Rainforest Alliance, a non-profit promoting sustainability in agricultural supply chains. Moreover, because the nutrient-dense fruit’s versatility is largely unknown to consumers outside of countries that cultivate it, there currently isn’t enough global demand to generate significant additional income for growers.

Applying his newfound inspiration from the cacao-growing regions he visited, Brenner decided to wade back into the packaged foods industry once more. The chocolatier’s new company Blue Stripes focuses on making edible use of the entire cacao fruit. The pulp is upcycled in multiple ways: It’s dried to make a chewy snack similar to fruit leather, a treat Brenner encountered in Ecuador and likens to gummy bears. The juice left behind after the beans ferment is cold-pressed to produce an electrolyte-rich water, which is then flavored with fruits like mango, passionfruit, and lime. The juice is even turned into a syrup that’s used to sweeten other products, like chocolate bars.

The fruit’s hard outer husk comes in handy, too. It’s ground into a fine flour, then incorporated into everything from Blue Stripes’ trail mix to granola. “There’s no reason in the world why chocolate companies shouldn’t add even 2 or 3 percent cacao shell flour to their bars,” says Brenner. He explains that the small addition may not have a strong impact on flavor but that it can fortify foods with a natural dose of dietary fiber, nutrients, and stimulants—all compounds that have helped establish chocolate’s reputation as a superfood.

Products like WholeFruit Chocolate, an offering from Barry Callebaut made purely from various components of the cacao fruit and no additional ingredients; Capao, snack bites that combine the pulp with nuts and seeds; and Pacha de Cacao, a company turning pulp sourced from farms in Ecuador into bottled juice, are also aiming to position cacao as a highly nutritious ingredient that warrants consumers’ attention. Swiss brand Nestlé has developed a patented process for turning cacao pulp into powder, and released a KitKit bar in Japan that contains no added sugar. 

Beyond minimizing waste, there are additional ecological motivations to make use of the whole cacao fruit. Excess biomass, particularly from the pulp, that gets left behind on the plantations “can become an environmental hazard as it ferments, contaminating land and waterways. If not used, the juice needs to be collected and stored safely until it can be removed and disposed of properly,” explains Jacob Lopata, co-founder and CEO of Xoca, the company behind a sweet, tangy prebiotic soda made from juice generated during cacao fermentation. Two of Xoca’s founders are chocolate makers in Ecuador who began experimenting with the juice after realizing how much of the byproduct was going to waste. 

Efforts by commercial brands to make use of the entire cacao fruit—whether motivated by genuine commitment to sustainability, potential profits, or corporate reputation—won’t solve all the ongoing problems in an industry marred by climate change concerns, deforestation, and child labor and slavery issues. (The U.S. Department of Labor estimates 1.56 million children are victims of child labor in the cacao industries of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Nestlé and Cargill could not be sued for child slavery that occurred on the African farms from which they source ingredients. EarthRights International, a non-profit focused on legal advocacy for social and environmental justice, called the decision “a giant step backward” for human rights protection.) But promoting all parts of the cacao fruit as edible and nutritious might bring about small changes toward improving equity and sustainability in the industry. Whole-fruit business models can potentially provide much-needed additional wages for growers; in many cacao-producing regions, cacao farmers’ income falls below what the World Bank considers the extreme poverty line, and growers cannot afford the very chocolate products their efforts make possible. Diversifying the products they can sell to include byproducts like the husks, pulp, and seed shells may be a step toward lifting them out of poverty while also helping them adhere to more equitable, environmentally conscious practices.

Many tropical countries known for their cacao, like Ghana and Belize, are not as well-known for their chocolate—let alone other products made from cacao—as are former colonial nations that historically exploited slave plantations. (Countries like France, Italy, and the Netherlands continue to be among the world’s leading chocolate producers.) Now, a wave of bean-to-bar brands are working to rewrite that narrative. In Ghana, companies like ‘57 Chocolate and Mansa Gold produce premium chocolate that celebrates Ghanaian culture and adds value to locally grown cacao. Belizean artisanal brands, such as Che’il Mayan and Cotton Tree Chocolate, are reclaiming the region’s ancient chocolate-making tradition—and some makers are beginning to explore untapped opportunities that could lie in the non-bean parts of the fruit, too. Though locally consumed products like cacao vinegar and wine have not yet been commercialized on a large scale, explains Choco, they “can potentially open up a new market for the Mayan communities” and uplift conservation-minded farmers who have nurtured this labor-intensive crop for centuries. “We cultivate our cacao under agroforestry practices,” says Choco of most cacao growers in Belize. “Our farmers always joke that their first harvesters will always be the woodpeckers—then the farmers receive the second harvest.”

But, in order for non-chocolate cacao products to bring about additional revenue, there must first be awareness and interest. Well-known brands and new entrepreneurs “can have a big impact in terms of creating that demand and providing that extra income to the farmers,” explains Daroci. Whole-cacao business models are “most definitely generating a great deal of interest and attention,” adds Lopata. If they take off, the chocolate industry won’t be the first to successfully market a previously oft-overlooked food. Coconut water was a largely neglected byproduct of coconut processing before it became the globally prominent drink it is today. However, that industry’s arc also presents a reminder: despite the financial success of many coconut water enterprises, little profit has trickled back to coconut farmers.

Initiatives such as Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana’s decision to set a fixed $400 premium per ton over cacao’s benchmark future prices may help to better distribute cacao profits throughout the supply chain. Efforts from non-governmental organizations could also make a difference: the Rainforest Alliance’s certification program requires buyers to pay a minimum of $70 per ton of cacao to certified farmers, on top of the market price paid. Farmers seeking certification must also meet a series of other criteria, including adopting “climate-smart” agriculture practices—like planting shade trees and following eco-conscious pest management techniques—and establishing internal committees to identify and prevent cases of child labor. To pioneer more transparent global trade, wholesale suppliers like Uncommon Cacao, which launched in Belize in 2010, are building partnerships between smallholder farms and chocolate makers. In a similar vein, small chocolate companies like Tanzania-based Kokoa Kamili and Ghana-based ‘57 Chocolate work directly with growers; direct trade standards can eliminate the “local middlemen, who pass through the farms at unpredictable intervals, use unregulated scales to weigh the beans, and pay as little as possible for the crop,” reports Shane Mitchell for SAVEUR. The hope is that consumers will vote with their dollars for brands that not only pay fair wages, but also support growers committed to human rights and environmental conservation.

Blue Stripes began selling online direct-to-consumer last year; now, the company sells its products in Whole Foods stores nationwide and counts Hershey among its investors. Given how universal the love for chocolate is, the potential for whole-cacao business models to make a meaningful impact is hard to ignore. Still, only time will tell whether these companies’ efforts will move the needle on improving social and environmental sustainability in the world’s cacao-producing communities—or simply add more offerings to grocery store shelves.

The post Chocolate Beyond the Bean appeared first on Saveur.