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

As our car wound along the coastline, I glanced at the time. It wasn’t nine in the morning yet, but the sandstone bluffs surrounding the beach at La Jolla Cove were already packed with beachgoers and birdwatchers. Sea lions sunbathed in the sand, while snorkelers bobbed in the ocean.

Growing up in Northern California, I’d been to San Diego many times. La Jolla, a community known for its golden beaches and protected marine life, always seemed to exhibit picturesque suburban life. I wondered aloud to our Uber driver, David, if mine was merely an outsider’s oversimplified perception. He told us he’d grown up in the area and raised his daughters here: “Everybody knew everybody. We didn’t knock on the door—we just walked in the house.” As we drove on, he pointed out his childhood friends’ homes. “Everything closes early at night though,” he added. “Everyone’s an early bird.”

What La Jolla may lack in nightlife, though, it makes up for in vast breakfast options. As if on cue, David dropped us off at the end of a line stretching down the sidewalk outside a local bakery. Early-to-rise La Jollans, it appeared, are zealous about their first meal.

A wait is the norm at Wayfarer Bread, a bake shop founded by Crystal White, an alumna of San Francisco’s famed Tartine. The small bakery churns out baguettes, English muffins, cinnamon buns, sweet and savory scones, and seasonally inspired croissants——black sesame and passionfruit in late summer, plum and hazelnut for autumn, and housemade marmalade and pistachio during winter. “Everyone likes to get up, seize the day here. Surf, swim, bike, run,” White told me. After relocating to San Diego to open her business, the habits of her fellow townspeople, coupled with the demands of running a daytime cafe, quickly turned her into a morning person, too.

Gripping our Americanos and a box of pastries, my boyfriend and I headed in the general direction of the ocean, until we spotted a secluded bench at the end of a cul-de-sac overlooking the water. A group of guys in flip-flops and board shorts strolled past. “That pistachio croissant is so good,” one of them said, nodding approvingly as I took a bite and brushed crumbs from my chin.

A couple blocks away, Dodo Bird Donuts opened recently as the daytime complement to the splashy new restaurant Paradisaea, in part to meet the local breakfast demand. Like Dodo Bird’s dinner-focused sister spot, the locally-owned café nods to the area’s coastal ingredients and Mexican influence. Energizing sips like sea-salt-infused mochas and lattes featuring cajeta (Mexican caramel) made with goat’s milk promise a well-fueled morning hike or dip in the ocean. A rotating donut line-up from Paradisaea’s chef Mark Welker, who previously helmed pastry at Eleven Madison Park in New York, features flavors like horchata, starring a cinnamon-scented cream filling; maple, topped with a coffee cake crumble; and matcha, with a tea-scented glaze. In the mood for something savory, I zeroed in on the breakfast sandwich roster and chose a Cubano-inspired number: rosemary-infused prosciutto, gruyere, dijonaise, bread-and-butter pickles, and eggs from a local purveyor. Washing it down with a matcha latte, I remembered that everything tastes better—and becomes breakfast-appropriate—with an egg on it.

After two morning meals, we needed a stroll, and traced the coastline back toward La Jolla Cove. I knew we were getting close when I could make out the distant sound of a lifeguard and his megaphone warning beachgoers to avoid approaching the sea lions. By the time the marine mammals were in view, we’d worked up an appetite for one more breakfast.

Brockton Villa Restaurant opened its doors in the ‘90s, after the family behind the local company Pannikin Coffee and Tea renovated the beachfront bungalow into an eatery. Megan Heine, daughter of the Pannikin family, fell in love with the storied architecture and ocean-facing hillside, and took over the restaurant in 1994—exactly a century after the property was built. Today, a menu item served since day one remains the restaurant’s most popular: Heine’s famously soft and custard-like French toast, the inimitable (and trademarked) Coast Toast. “We grill the bread first, brown it, and then we put it in the oven to order, so it poofs up like a soufflé,” said Heine, explaining how the kitchen achieves the remarkably pillowy texture.

As we ate our toast on the balcony and watched the beachgoers below, I caught snippets of conversation between patrons and waitstaff. “How was your daughter’s school year?” “The new sitter is great, thanks for asking.” Later, I told Heine how our Uber driver had enthusiastically given us an impromptu tour of the area to showcase its small-town-within-a-big-city character. “Was he wearing a bow tie?” she asked, and I nodded. “Yeah, I know him,” Heine said with a laugh. Serendipitous? Maybe—or just what one would expect in La Jolla.

Though many of the community’s longtime families have stuck around, she told us, the everyone-knows-everyone vibe is evolving. “I have seen decades of change,” said Heine, who also owns Beaumont’s, a dinner spot in La Jolla, with her husband. “The downtown La Jolla that I knew growing up was all locally owned single stores—everything from children’s clothing stores, to the drugstore.” Over time, as San Diego’s economy, population, and real estate costs grew, some of the locally owned businesses that once dotted the main thoroughfares of Prospect Street and Girard Avenue closed up shop, and chains like Banana Republic moved in. However, many of these big-name stores wound up closing, too. “The cost of the rent, and maybe the seasonality of the town—they weren’t able to survive like they do in a mall setting,” Heine speculated.

Yet, amid the ebb and flow of growth and change, many longtime family-owned eateries never left. The third-generation breakfast haunt Harry’s Coffee Shop, dating back to 1960, bills itself as “La Jolla’s oldest diner,” dishing up morning classics like oatmeal pancakes and carne asada breakfast burritos. The Cottage, established in 1992, continues to draw weekend crowds with coastal California brunch fare: crispy crab cakes sandwiched between sourdough, shrimp omelets with poblano peppers, and Mexican-inspired eggs Benedict topped with chorizo and cotija cheese.

Today, though the downtown area is still home to some chain stores, Heine said she feels as though the neighborhood is gradually returning to its former character. “It seems like it’s going back to a bit more unique stores and smaller businesses,” she noted, listing off some of her favorites. “Wayfarer is fantastic. Crystal, the woman who owns it, does a really great job.” When I admitted that I’d visited earlier for my first of three breakfasts that day, Heine’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you were already there? Yeah, I love that pistachio croissant! I walk there from my house to get it.”

After a lifetime in La Jolla, Heine said she can’t imagine living anywhere else. I don’t blame her—Brockton Villa’s balcony boasts one of the neighborhood’s nicest views, overlooking La Jolla Cove with an exceptional front-row seat to nightly sunsets. “We joke that it’s sort of like the Nature Channel. You can just watch everything right here,” she said.

It’s hard not to dream idyllic suburban dreams in a place like this. During another weekend getaway to San Diego back in 2020, we drove to La Jolla to watch the sunset. Half of the city, it seemed, had done the same. After finally hunting down a parking spot, we navigated on foot through socially distanced picnic blankets and sat down in an unoccupied patch of grass. As the red sun inched toward the ocean, the crowd’s chatter fell to a hush. Finally, the star creeped its way below the horizon, leaving a flare of iridescent clouds, fuchsia and lavender, streaked across the sky.

San Diego surely has awe-inspiring sunsets, but they’re matched by an equally arresting phenomenon on the flip side. Back before Wayfarer had a brick-and-mortar location, White would frequently spend the whole night baking, then bring the pastries to pop-up locations as the sun was coming up. One spot was by the beach, so she’d take a break there and watch the sunrise on Ocean Beach Pier. “I remember one sunrise was so gorgeous that everyone in the water started cheering and clapping,” said White, recalling how amazed she felt that this was her home. “It was breathtaking.”

Recipe

Custardy French Toast

Get the recipe >

The post The Coastal Village That Runs on Breakfast appeared first on Saveur.

I first encountered “savory cake” as most French people do: at an apéro dînatoire, a boozy buffet-style dinner of room-temperature offerings. On the table were a number of unfamiliar dishes—I recall a cold rice salad studded with bright pink surimi and dainty plastic verrines of layered vegetable purées—but one was a revelation: a loaf cake filled with black olives, shredded deli ham, and hunks of barnyardy goat cheese. They told me it was cake salé (“savory cake”), and with one bite, I was hooked on its tender, olive oil-scented crumb. 

When you hear the French 101 word “gâteau,” you probably envision architectural pâtisserie marvels, but le cake is far humbler. The sweet versions are domed loaves that are often glazed with lemon or marbled with chocolate, while the savory iterations are filled with meats and cheeses, perfect for lunches and picnics. 

In the 16 years I’ve lived in France, I’ve encountered many such casual cakes, but while quiches have become a Starbucks mainstay and savory tarts like pissaladière have starred on Food Network, le cake salé is nowhere to be found Stateside. 

I’m not the only one who’s noticed a dearth of this delight. “I don’t get it,” says author and French pastry eminence Dorie Greenspan, who has included a savory cake recipe in nearly every cookbook she’s published in the last decade. “It’s easy to make. It keeps well. And once you have the basic recipe, you can add whatever you find in your refrigerator or pantry.”

Indeed, le cake salé is a testament to what Aleksandra Crapanzano, author of Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes, considers a characteristic frugality in French home cooking. It isn’t so much about the cake itself as it is about the add-ins: sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese in Provence, perhaps, or Reblochon cheese and lardons in Savoie. (Or, more pragmatically, chopped-up leftover roast chicken, or cubes of those past-their-prime cheeses kicking around the fridge.)

But cake salé wasn’t always an anything-goes blank culinary canvas, according to French baker and cookbook author Sophie Dudemaine. When she discovered the dish in a magazine in 1998, there was only one type French people were making, filled with olives and ham. 

Dudemaine saw huge potential in cake salé, but she didn’t dig that recipe, which turned out a dry, one-note brick. So she got to work, first reducing the flour, which made the cake less dense. Then she swapped the butter out for sunflower oil, which resulted in a moister crumb. Finally, she turned to the fillings, where she really let her imagination run wild, developing versions filled with melty raclette cheese and bacon or seasonal creations with chanterelle mushrooms and asparagus. Bonus: She could fit far more loaf tins in her oven than pie pans, which led her to abandon the idea of selling savory tarts at the local market in favor of the rectangular cakes.

A decade later, Dudemaine had enough loaf cake recipes to fill a cookbook. Les Cakes de Sophie, published in 2000, sold over a million copies. The media dubbed her the French Martha Stewart, and suddenly savory cakes were omnipresent on French tables. Twenty years later, they still are: The 2022 edition features 100 recipes, most of which are new (think cake salé with rabbit in mustard sauce, a nostalgic French favorite revisited in a new format).

Most French cooks don’t know the debt they owe to Dudemaine. And yet, despite the unabating cake salé craze back in the Mother Country, the dish has hardly leapt its borders. This cake-shaped hole Stateside may have less to do with the dish itself and more to do with when it’s traditionally served. In France, wedges of savory cake are a mainstay of the aperitif, the course of pre-dinner drinks and nibbles so sacrosanct it’s protected by UNESCO. Americans love their cocktail hour, but there’s simply no U.S. equivalent to the French apéro. 

Beyond divergent mealtime traditions, cake salé has a visibility problem. Unlike their sweet counterparts, savory cakes are glaringly absent from French bakeries and restaurants both in France and abroad. “I’ve never seen a savory cake outside the home,” says Crapanzano. That means even the most adamant visiting Francophile would struggle to catch a glimpse of the dish, let alone taste it.

“Unless you’re close enough with a French person to be a frequent houseguest,” she says, “these are things that you would never know about.” French dinner invitations tend to be hard-won, following weeks or months of meeting in bars, cafés, and restaurants—and even then, it would likely take several such meals before you could be served what’s essentially upgraded leftovers.

But there’s hope for the savory cake seekers among us, whether a trip to France is in the cards or not. Recipes by Greenspan and Crapanzano abound; some are filled with Roquefort and walnuts, while others toss in chorizo and crumbled goat cheese. 

Back in France, there are signs that cake salé is finally beginning to fly the nest. Recently I glimpsed shrink-wrapped tomato-feta cakes in the apéro aisle of my local Monoprix, and two savory cakes have popped up on the menu at the Marcounet, a floating bar on the Seine. 

Paris even has a new bakery, CakePart, that’s dedicated to “les cakes” both savory and sweet. The owners, Sarah Zerbib and Margaux Sodoyer, say the business is an homage to their childhood love of cake: the vanilla-scented ones Zerbib’s mother made for four o’clock goûter, or the chocolate ones Sodoyer’s mom brought to weekend meals with extended family. 

Each day, in addition to these sweeter offerings, CakePart bakes off a handful of cakes salés, whose ingredients vary seasonally: In winter, butternut squash may dot the batter; in summer, tomato and eggplant peek through the crust. “We see it as a ‘fast good’ meal—one with healthful ingredients, but where you don’t necessarily have to go sit in a restaurant for hours to eat,” says Sodoyer.

Americans may never fully embrace the French apéro, but savory cake is a gateway to its palpable joie de vivre, whether you serve the dish for lunch or brunch (which Greenspan recommends) or take it on the go. Crapanzano rightly points out that savory cakes keep longer and hold up better than most sandwiches, making them perfect for hikes and picnics.

Regardless of the occasion, you’ll want to keep a few tips and tricks in mind when making cake salé. Crapanzano says full-fat buttermilk is your best bet for achieving a moist crumb. A tablespoon or two of extra olive oil ensures the cake remains moist even when  the add-ins are on the drier and less fatty side. Filling-wise, three cups is a good amount to add to the batter to ensure each bite marries rich, eggy dough with pleasing pockets of texture. 

“I say, open your fridge. Now that you have the base, add whatever you like,” says Dudemaine. Greenspan agrees: “It’s the kind of thing where if you make it and love it, it can become yours.”

Recipe

Cake d’Alsace (Bacon, Guyère, and Caramelized Onion Loaf)

Get the recipe >

The post Is This Humble Dish France’s Best-Kept Culinary Secret? 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.

After catching a pre-dawn flight from Medellín and doing some early-morning trekking around the high-elevation Colombian capital of Bogotá, all my tired friends and I could think about was breakfast. As we waited in line outside La Puerta Falsa—a historic establishment that’s been serving traditional homestyle Colombian fare since the early 1800s—the smells of its famous tamales (masa, chicken, and other ingredients wrapped in banana leaves), ajiaco (a hearty chicken-and-potato stew), and chocolate completo wafted out into the street.

When we finally piled into seats on the second floor of the tiny wood-paneled restaurant, it didn’t take long for us to make our selections from the short menu. The scents that had simultaneously tortured and tantalized us were the restaurant’s can’t-miss classics, according to advice that a few Bogotana friends had shared with me before the trip.

But, just as a server was climbing the narrow stairs to take our order, I spotted something else on the menu. Last year, after I read Mariana Velasquez’s cookbook Colombiana ahead of a previous trip to Colombia, one recipe in particular stayed with me. Changua, a milky soup featuring eggs, cheese, scallion, cilantro, and hunks of bread, seemed like exactly the kind of morning meal I’d devour: a soupy, belly-warming breakfast in a bowl that requires minimal cooking effort beyond some quiet stirring. In the recipe headnote, Velasquez likens the dish to a breakfast I know well: “Changua is to Colombians what congee is to the Chinese: a comforting, soothing, and savory broth.” Though the dishes have decidedly different ingredients, I could see the common thread, and was sold.

When our spread finally arrived, the steaming-hot tamales and slurpable ajiaco were just the stick-to-your-ribs revitalization we needed. But the milky, allium-rich changua, with slices of cheese and bread fanned out across the surface and a generous portion of chopped herbs sprinkled on top, was the dish we talked about for the rest of the day.

Before tasting changua for the first time, we had little frame of reference for what a dairy-rich soup with cheese and dough soaking in it would taste like—would it be creamy? Vegetal? Like a savory cereal? As we ate spoon after spoonful, diverse textures and bold flavors made up each interesting bite, with the crisp, pungent scallions, the jammy eggs, and the chewy, milky cheese sparring for flavor dominance. We tried to draw similarities to dishes familiar to us, but none felt nearly like an adequate comparison—changua is more layered than porridge, more watery than chowder, and more textured than cereal with milk. We cleaned our bowls, all the while dunking in more bread between bites to sop up the soup. Later in the day, when hunger pangs kicked in again as we hiked down Monserrate, my friend JJ brought the conversation back to that memorable soup. “I think that changua was my favorite,” he said wistfully, and we all echoed agreement.

Bogotana chef Alejandra Cubillos González, whom I met when she was helming the kitchen at Sofitel Barú Calablanca‘s Bahía Restaurant in Isla Barú, attributes her home city’s association with soups like changua and ajiaco to the relatively chilly climate and high elevation (about 8,660 feet above sea level). Across the country’s mountainous Andean departments like Santander, Boyacá, and Cundinamarca, she says, changua is usually considered breakfast. Whenever Velasquez, who was also born and raised there, cooks and eats the dish, “it reminds me of dewy, cold mornings in Bogotá.”

It seems what often kindles affection for changua is the breakfast coming to one’s rescue on frigid days. Chef and cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt had his first taste at a restaurant near Lake Tota in Boyacá. “It was a very cold morning in the mountains, by a fireplace,” he recalls. As he slurped down the warming bowl of changua, “I thought it was the perfect thing.” On the other hand, López-Alt’s wife, who is Colombian, grimaced and teasingly made faces while he finished his soup. “She grew up with it and never liked it,” he says.

As a group that unanimously enjoys changua, my friends and I might be something of an anomaly. “Some people love it, and others hate it,” says Velasquez of the divisive dish. So, many home cooks freely adapt the ingredients to their liking: some families add potatoes, while others choose to skip the cheese. Some place the bread into the serving bowls first before pouring the soup on top, while others leave the bread on the side and dunk it in as they eat. “Every house has their own version,” says Maria Delgado, the chef behind Cartagena’s Caffé Lunático, who recalls that her grandfather, like many, served changua with calados, a variety of stale bread. Other families might choose almojábanas or pandebono—two other Colombian bread varieties made with cheese—or a simple crusty white loaf instead.

Since returning home from Bogotá, I’ve experimented with cooking different versions of changua, especially on blustery mornings in Boston. Yet, I always go back to craving the more-is-more version La Puerta Falsa served us: lots of cheese, bread in the bowl with extra on the side for dunking, and a heap of punchy, aromatic herbs. That’s what I, a member of the pro-changua club, would call breakfast luxury.

Recipe

Changua (Milky Colombian Soup)

Get the recipe >

The post This Milky, Eggy, Cheesy Soup Comes to the Rescue on Chilly Mornings appeared first on Saveur.

Growing up, I always considered backyard grilling a special-occasion activity—reserved for warm-weather long weekends like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. My parents would invite friends around and dust off our Weber; then we’d marinate drumsticks, ribs, and vegetable skewers and prepare appetizers and drinks before spending the day shepherding platters from the indoor kitchen to the grill to the backyard table. I always loved our cookout days, even though there was a lot of going back and forth between the indoors and outdoors, and not a lot of sitting down to enjoy the summer air.

Recently, I took a road trip from my parents’ house in Northern California down to the Santa Ynez Valley, home to the 10,000-acre Alisal Ranch. In addition to raising horses and maintaining its lakes and golf courses, the ranch hosts “BBQ Bootcamp” events a few times a year, when pitmasters from around the country convene to demonstrate tips and best practices for amateur grillers. As chefs walked us through easy techniques for cooking all kinds of foods, from pizza to puddings, I began to realize that a grill is a far more versatile and forgiving tool than most of us might think. Perhaps using one doesn’t have to be a labor-intensive, all-day affair either, and, with the optimal tools and ingredients, maybe it doesn’t have to be relegated to holiday weekends, or even to dinnertime. “Look at your grill as an outdoor range,” Valerie Gordon, the chef behind Valerie Confections in Los Angeles, told us. “It’s not just steak, ribs, and potatoes. Just about everything can be cooked on the grill.”

“When I’m inside cooking, I’ve got my back to my family,” said Paula Disbrowe, author of the grilling cookbook Thank You for Smoking. Outside, on the other hand, the grill is the center of the entertainment, the hearth around which everyone gathers. For making the most of our backyard grates and cooking outside with ease, here are some of my top takeaways from grilling camp.

Break out the cast-iron skillet. A well-seasoned cast-iron vessel is a practically indestructible cooking tool that’s nonstick to boot. With one of these versatile skillets on the grates, you can make practically anything you’d make on an indoor stovetop—whether it’s scrambled eggs and French toast for breakfast, grilled-cheese sandwiches and shrimp skewers for lunch, or chicken thighs for meal prepping. “The bonus is the proteins absorb the wafting charcoal and wood smoke aromas, [yet] you retain all of the flavorful juices,” said Disbrowe. This means you can even grill dishes that require or produce a good deal of liquid, like a hearty paella or marinated vegetables.

Add woody, herbaceous aromas. Different kinds of wood impart different flavors, so Riker recommends experimenting with a few varieties to find your preferred wood or combination of various types. “Mesquite wood provides a strong smoky flavor, while fruitwoods like cherry or apple offer a milder, sweeter taste,” he explains, adding that his favorite is olive, which imparts a distinctly nutty essence. If you’re using a gas grill, you can still introduce the element of wood via a wood chip box. “Even a small amount of woodsmoke adds tremendous flavor,” advised Disbrowe, whose preferred woods are hickory and oak, both of which provide rich, intense aromas that pair especially well with red meat. Further heighten the flavor by adding fresh herbs directly to the grates: “I love to add sprigs of rosemary or even small stems of fresh bay leaves to the periphery of the fire, so they smolder more slowly,” Disbrowe noted.

Keep an all-purpose spice blend on hand. A simple spice mix is key to grilling efficiently for a crowd—it’s much easier to keep a single shaker on stand-by, rather than a whole line-up of spice jars. Take Santa Maria rub, for example, which is especially popular among tri-tip fans and typically includes salt, black pepper, and garlic powder (though some cooks like to incorporate additional flavors such as paprika, thyme, or cumin). The mild-flavored concoction can be sprinkled over eggs in the morning, rib-eye in the evening, and snacks in between.

Foil it up. Riker’s favorite foolproof technique for cooking delicate foods, like certain seafood and vegetables, is to seal them in packets of foil to keep the ingredients tender and moist. Add a splash of citrus juice and a sprinkling of spices and herbs first, and always crimp the edges of the packet tightly to keep everything contained. (Open it up carefully—nothing ruins a day of backyard fun like a nasty steam burn.) On that note, you should keep foil around anyway, as it’s handy for tenting cooked foods to keep them warm while they rest.

Cook big steaks to feed a crowd. Instead of grilling individual steaks one by one, get big cuts of meat and grill those, then slice them up for guests. “The secret to cooking this meat to perfection is to season it generously,” said Craig Riker, Alisal Ranch’s executive chef. Sprinkle the entire surface with kosher salt, then refrigerate, uncovered, for at least 30 minutes, or ideally overnight. When you’re ready to grill, let the meat come to room temperature; then, cook the steak over indirect heat, seeking out the cooler parts of the grates, which will promote more even cooking. When the meat is 8–10 degrees away from the desired temperature, move the steak to the hotter parts of the grates and sear for a couple of minutes on each side. Reverse-searing achieves that crisp, brown exterior while keeping the inside juicy and tender. While a tomahawk steak might sound intimidating, Riker promises it’s a great at-home option: “The marbled fat yields melt-in-your-mouth tenderness and a robust flavor,” he said—especially when paired with a rich, herbaceous chimichurri.

Intensify salads by grilling the ingredients first. Try introducing a smoky char to your vegetables before tossing them into a salad, and you might never go back. Sturdy ingredients like asparagus, bell peppers, mushrooms, okra, squash, and shallots all taste great after a kiss from the flame. Before adding the grilled veg to your raw greens, simply toss them with some fresh herbs, butter, and apple cider vinegar to create what Riker calls “a flavor explosion.” Or, keep it extra simple with a mere three ingredients: “A split romaine, grilled and finished with olive oil and salt, is hard to beat,” suggested Burt Bakman, the pitmaster behind the Los Angeles restaurant Slab Barbecue. And don’t rule out fruit—grilled watermelon salad with feta is another one of his go-to’s.

Grill fruit to make spiked drinks. A brief rendezvous with heat can bring out the jamminess of sturdy fruits like pineapple and stone fruits. “Grilling peaches intensifies their sweetness,” said Riker, who recommends cooking the slices until they have char marks before adding them to a favorite sangria to the whole batch with subtle smoky flavor. (Drinks writer Leslie Pariseau aptly likens the aroma to “the comforting scent of an early evening campfire.”) Alternatively, muddle the grilled fruit with syrup and citrus juice, then shake it in with ice and your liquor of choice to make an icy, slurpable cocktail.

Make boats out of sturdy fruits and vegetables. Nothing’s more fun than an edible bowl, especially for kids, so turn ingredients into boats and fill them with tasty toppings. Riker recommends grilling a few halved, pitted avocados flesh-side down, then topping them with spicy salsa and cotija cheese for a creamy appetizer or side dish. Or, spoon the seeds out of a halved zucchini or eggplant before filling them with cheese and herbs and giving them a blast of heat for a craveable cheese pull. For dessert, try caramelizing halved, pitted peaches, then filling them with whipped cream or mascarpone and sprinkling with cinnamon sugar and granola—an entertaining spin on a peach crisp. The cooking and assembly all happen outside, and guests can top their boats to their liking.

Go ahead, make a pizza. It’s totally feasible—or, dare we say, easy—to make a pizza using your grill. First, stretch out the dough and give it a light sprinkle of flour. “Just a dusting will help prevent the pizza from sticking onto the peel and becoming a calzone,” noted Brendan Smith, co-owner of the Santa Barbara pizzeria Bettina. Place it directly on the grates and par-cook it on both sides; then, when you’re ready to eat, top it with sauce and other add-ons and give it a final grill. According to Smith’s co-owner Rachel Greenspan, if you opt for meats like sausage, they can be placed onto the crust raw: “The fat seeps out as it cooks,” she pointed out. Eggs are also a fun addition, especially for breakfast: use cheese to build a small well in the center of the pizza, then crack in a raw egg for a delectably oozy yolk. Smith also encourages home pizzaiolos to get creative with seasonal veg combinations: during spring, Tutti Frutti peas and mint pesto make a refreshing pair, while in the summer, the pizzeria always makes a peach-and-poblano-pepper pie. Don’t have pizza dough on hand? Swap in flatbreads or pitas for a time-saving alternative.

Make melty, custardy treats. Desserts made from liquidy, quick-cooking batters are great candidates for the grill—think a skillet chocolate-chip cookie, fudgy blondies, and sticky toffee pudding. (Dense batters with a long cook time, like pound cake, won’t perform as well). Make sure to grease any skillet using a pastry brush, and “you will get a crispy edge like you’ve never had in your life,” Gordon promised. “Throw the batter on the grill while you’re eating dinner, and as soon as you’re done eating, dessert is ready.”

The post Your Backyard Grill Can Cook a Lot More Than You Think appeared first on Saveur.

At the tip of Cape Cod, on a narrow strip of land 60 miles out to sea, lies Provincetown, Massachusetts—the end of the world (or, at least, New England), and the place I’ve called home for close to two years. Locals might call me a “washashore,” but I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

That’s because Ptown is (per capita) the queerest town in the country and one of the most sought-out vacation spots for anyone on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. It’s a place of extraordinary natural beauty (the dunes! the beaches! the gardens! the architecture!) as well as a playground for freedom and pride. The main drag, Commercial Street, runs the length of the town along the bay side and is home to the majority of the restaurants, clubs, shops, and galleries. During the summer, it overflows with people of all flavors of gender expression, kink, and sexuality.  

I landed in Ptown after 20 years in professional kitchens ended in epic burnout. In 2021, mid-pandemic, I sold Willa Jean, my restaurant in New Orleans, and headed north. Love was waiting, as was eventual heartbreak and, ultimately, recovery and healing in Ptown. 

I’m not sure if it was the sunset G&Ts with friends on the beach, the impromptu clambakes, or the slices of pizza I devoured in the street after raucous nights out, but eating my way through the city has taught me that to be a queer person in Ptown is to be part of a community. Every restaurant and bar contributes to this spirit, and these are some of my favorite places.

Nor’East Beer Garden

206 Commercial Street

The Nor’East Beer Garden is an unassuming outdoor space on Commercial Street that serves some of the best food and cocktails in Ptown. That’s because you never get bored: The culinary “theme” changes each season; this summer, it’s “light Italian,” which means you can savor dishes like mushroom pâté, burrata with fried dough, and minty brown-butter mussels. 

Sal’s Place

99 Commercial Street

Sal’s is by the water in the West End, which makes for spectacular views. Cash-only and often difficult to reach by phone, Sal’s is worth the trouble of getting a reservation, whether you’re booking dinner with friends or a date. Don’t skip the cauliflower Caesar with baby romaine, which I love to order alongside the charred octopus with garbanzo beans and smoked chile oil.  

Relish

93 Commercial Street

This inviting little bakery in the West End makes a variety of breakfast and lunch sandwiches—great for a handheld meal while strolling about, or as beach picnic fare—but I always go for the pastries. Spring for a wedge of key lime tart, or grab a cookie or a slice of coffee cake.  

Tea Dance at the Boatslip Resort

161 Commercial Street

Shirtless muscle gays, margarita-sipping drag queens, straight vacationers who love to party—Ptowners of all stripes congregate every afternoon at the ultimate pregame called Tea Dance (or just “Tea”), held at the Boatslip Resort from 4 to 7 p.m. The legendary bartender Maria reigns over the right side of the bar, the end closest to the water, and will happily start you off with the Planter’s Punch, their official cocktail. 

Strangers & Saints

404 Commercial Street

After Tea, many revelers flock to Strangers & Saints, housed in an incredible 1850’s Greek Revival homestead. The Ken Fulk-designed interior, and well-made cocktails make for a dependably enjoyable second stop. The food goes well beyond basic bar snacks with dishes like meatballs with salsa verde and cucumber kimchi (my go-to dish), which pair nicely with the charred shishito peppers or spicy Moroccan carrots. Eating at Strangers & Saints feels like being welcomed into the home of someone with impeccable taste who loves throwing dinner parties.

The Mayflower

300 Commercial Street

Long before Provincetown was an LGBT+ mecca, it was a Portuguese fishing village. Remnants of that past can be found at the Mayflower, where traditional Portuguese flavors endure in dishes like the Portuguese kale soup, made with spicy linguica sausage and red beans. Its obligatory sidekick is an order of garlic bread, and if you’re still feeling peckish, a dozen steamers, a Cape classic of brothy soft-shell clams that you dunk one by one in melted butter. Family-run with a no-reservations policy, the Mayflower has an old-school diner feel with a down-home friendliness to match. They also happen to make the best Manhattans in town.  

Irie Eats

70 Shank Painter Road

Provincetown has a large, vibrant Jamaican population—many first arrived as seasonal workers and wound up making Ptown a year-round home. A little off the beaten path is Irie Eats, which offers spicy Jamaican food that fuels my summer season. My favorite dishes in the regular rotation are the curry goat, jerk chicken or pork, salt fish, and oxtails—all of which come with rice and red beans, and slaw. It’s a grab-and-go vibe, but they do have a small outdoor seating area to soak in the sun (and the flavor). 

Pop + Dutch

147 Commercial Street

My personal “best sandwich shop” award goes to Pop + Dutch. Their slogan is “Sandwiches. Salads. Lube,” and their tiny market selling vintage, often slightly titillating textiles and art only adds to the appeal. The shop carries everything you need for a day at the beach or pool, including sunscreen and, yes, lube. The fridges are stocked with fresh potato salad, pimento cheese, chicken salad, dolmas, and a variety of drinks including a great Arnold Palmer. But the sandwiches are the main event (lately, I’ve been loving specials like turkey topped with Cool Ranch Doritos and ranch-flavored mayo). In the morning, they make a mean scrambled egg sandwich on brioche, but slugabeds be warned: It’s only available from 9 to 10:30 a.m.

Crown & Anchor

247 Commercial Street 

The grande dame of Ptown is Crown & Anchor, an entertainment venue that sits in the center of town. Housing six bars and entertainment venues, a restaurant, a pool club, and a hotel, it caters to visitors and locals of all types. In 2021, it got new owners who were determined to turn the complex into a safe (and profitable!) space for queer artists, musicians, and chefs, among others. The restaurant concept changes daily, while the oyster bar is open seven days a week. Brunch (Thursday through Sunday) is hosted by yours truly and features a New Orleans-meets-New England menu. Expect my famous biscuits and gravy, plus live drag performances fueled by talent and fantasy. 

Lobster Pot

321 Commercial Street

The bright neon lobster sign, one of the Cape’s most recognizable images since 1979, welcomes stampedes of seafood lovers to the Lobster Pot. Tanks of fresh lobsters? Check. Ocean views? check. Consistently friendly service? Check.

The plan of action here is to venture upstairs to the “top of the pot,” snag a seat at the bar, and kick things off with a perfect bloody mary. Then, it’s lobster rolls all around—or, for the lobster-averse, a wide-reaching menu of all sorts of fish and shellfish that you can order pan-roasted, grilled, stuffed, baked, blackened, fried, and more. There are also to-go dishes around the corner at Lobster Pot Express (5 Ryder Street). 

The Red Inn

15 Commercial Street 

Happy hour at the Red Inn is peak Ptown. From 2 to 4 p.m. daily, you can enjoy a raw bar menu, cocktails, and wine specials—all on a deck overlooking the beach that’s blessed with the best natural light in town. If oysters won’t cut it, chase them with heartier dishes like panko-crusted shrimp with sweet chili sauce, bacon-wrapped oysters, or shrimp remoulade salad. 

Helltown Kitchen

338 Commercial Street, Unit 3

Legend has it that Provincetown, because of its remote location, used to be a hideaway for smugglers and pirates. That’s why Puritans began calling it Helltown, a nickname that inspired the name of this restaurant that blends international flavors with New England ingredients. There’s truffle-scented, South American-spiced lobster risotto studded with peas and mushrooms. And if lobster isn’t it for you, Helltown does an incredible pork vindaloo that comes with mango chutney, basmati rice, and naan to sop it all up. 

Provincetown Brewing Company

141 Bradford Street 

Provincetown Brewing Company is fueled by community activism, and its business model reflects that. Not only does the brewery donate 15 percent of proceeds to LGBTQIA+ and Outer Cape causes; it also buys from queer-owned businesses and farmers. I’m big on their artichoke-cheese dip and jerk chicken sandwich, which I wash down with a flight of whatever PBC beers happen to be on tap. Keep an eye out for themed parties, trivia nights, “fag-out Fridays,” women’s night, and even a “yappy hour” for dogs. 

Atlantic House

6 Masonic Place

If Tea is where the party starts in Ptown, the Atlantic House (aka “A House”) is where it ends (or at least where last call happens). Most patrons have no idea that the establishment is a contender for the oldest gay bar in America, having been in continuous operation for over two centuries. It draws the biggest crowd of any bar in Ptown and has three spaces: little bar, macho bar, and the dance floor, where the lights are low, the music is loud, and little by little the clothes seem to disappear. 

Spiritus Pizza

190 Commercial Street

Spiritus pizza is an old faithful and has become the staple stop between the party and the after party—so much so that the hour from 1 to 2 a.m. is called “pizza dance.” Spiritus is the only late food option in town, and after last call at the bars, the pizzeria fills up with hungry crowds, who overflow onto Commercial Street to revel in what’s essentially a nightly pizza party. There are three New York-style slices: cheese, pepperoni, or Greek (cash only!).  

Chalice at the Land’s End Inn

22 Commercial Street

Chalice is a new favorite wine and beer bar on the manicured lawn of the Land’s End Inn, which sits atop the tallest point at the end of the Cape. Complete with a fire pit and stunning views of Provincetown and beyond, it makes an ideal pitstop on your way to Tea or pre-dinner cocktails.  Look out for the pink martini flag: If you see it flying, then Chalice is open and well worth the uphill walk.

The post Where to Eat and Drink in Provincetown, Massachusetts appeared first on Saveur.

When I first saw Zara’s garden, it was waist-high in stinging nettles, thistles and other scary weeds. Mallow, bindweed, green alkanet, dock … In the five years the vegetable plot had been uncultivated, an impenetrable thicket had taken over. Zara, a woman from Sarajevo who moved to London in the 1980s, was now in her eighties. She’d been renting this piece of ground in West London for over 30 years but was no longer able to care for it. I asked if she’d let me try to revive it. When she said yes, I was thrilled.

Little did I imagine that, in just a few months, I’d be growing over 30 kinds of vegetables there—with hardly any weeds in sight, a testament to a method called No Dig that would completely change my perspective on gardening.

The plot was an allotment, a British institution that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times. Allotments took their present form in the 1920s, when the government encouraged city dwellers and servicemen returning from the war to grow food on land owned by local councils and boroughs. To this day, allotments are often found along railway lines, rivers, and in other unused spaces. They’re protected by law and exist in varying forms all over Europe. Ours is in Chiswick, sandwiched between the River Thames and a large sports club. 

Once I had the go-ahead from Zara in October 2021, I was eager to get going—but the task was overwhelming. The plot, as big as a doubles tennis court, was thick with weeds (and the millions of weed seeds deposited over the years). I had watched my mother lose her battles with bindweed years before so I knew I wanted to avoid back-breaking weeding. My garden was going to be organic and I would not be using chemical weed killers or fertilizers that do so much damage to the environment. And digging was against my other rule: Don’t disturb the soil.

Writing about soil microbiologists Claude and Lydia Bourguignon in 2003 taught me that soil is home to millions of organisms that maintain its health. Two-thirds of the world’s creatures live underground, from worms and woodlice at the top to invisibly tiny critters deep down. Turning the soil (or, worse, spraying it with a weed killer) disrupts and often kills them. The mycelium—the fungal super-network that exists below ground and helps plants, including trees, grow and communicate with one another—is also damaged by digging the soil. 

I knew what I wanted but wasn’t sure how to achieve it. Then I found Charles Dowding. Dowding, an Englishman based in Somerset, has spent over 40 years growing and selling organic vegetables. Over time he developed No Dig gardening, a method that—I soon discovered—commanded an army of online enthusiasts eager to spread the gospel. No Dig enriches the soil without disturbing it and reduces labor and weeds by using compost spread on top of the soil. You plant into the compost and let the roots find their way down into the soil beneath. From my research, I understood the theory. You simply place a sheet of unglazed cardboard onto the weeds or grass, cover it with four inches of compost, and plant the seeds or seedlings into that. Any weed seeds on the soil’s surface are buried under the cardboard and, deprived of light, can’t germinate. A few resistant weeds do work their way up through the disintegrating cardboard after a few weeks, but they’re easy to spot and remove. Eventually, even bindweed gives up the fight. 

It sounded too good to be true, but I couldn’t wait to try it. My No Dig journey began in winter—that’s when I covered most of the allotment with thick black tarpaulins to get a head start on smothering the waist-high weeds. By March I was ready to peel back a small amount of the cloth the size of my first new bed. Most of the weeds had died. Those with bigger roots at risk of restarting, like stinging nettles or alkanet, I eased out with a trowel. I laid a large piece of recycled cardboard over the exposed soil and covered it with four inches of store-bought compost. Then I started planting. As easy as that. 

With every sprouting plant, I became more ambitious. The bulk of the weeds were gone, and the bones of the former garden began to appear: paths, borders, walkways. Using more cardboard and compost, I created beds for asparagus, flowers to encourage pollinating insects, and a section for the fruit bushes loved by the British: blackcurrants, redcurrants, and gooseberries, underplanted with strawberries. Everything grew and was full of flavor. 

In no time, I was harvesting. First came the broad beans and peas, followed by onions, leeks, and spinach—including the abundant everlasting spinach-beet whose taste is milder than classic spinach. Then came the potatoes, which are easier to pull up with No Dig. Again, working against conventional wisdom, Dowding doesn’t dig trenches for his potatoes but rather places them on the surface of the soil and mounds them with compost. 

By midsummer, I was obsessed with No Dig. Not only was I producing far more vegetables than I could eat myself; I was doing it much more easily than my neighbors who were using more conventional methods. My plants were healthier, less prone to attacks by insects, and abundant. From watching Dowding’s YouTube videos and studying his books (No Dig is my favorite), I learned many tricks. For instance, in damp England, where slugs and snails devour so many crops, Dowding suggests removing the lowest leaves of plants such as cabbage or lettuce once they begin to yellow, as these are the kind the slugs are most interested in. Equally, eliminating any decomposing wooden borders from the beds is another easy way to discourage the slugs. Dowding also advocates leaving the roots of vegetables in the ground after they have finished their growing cycle to create more organic matter in the soil.

Dowding was not the first gardener to experiment with No Dig. Farmers all over the globe have practiced no-till methods for millennia, and there are similar systems such as Masanobu Fukuoka’s One-Straw method and Ruth Stout’s No-Work variant of permaculture, but Dowding’s is the only approach to feature compost as surface mulch. That’s what makes it so approachable and easy for people like me, no matter how challenging the soil conditions are. You feed the soil from above (as happens naturally with falling leaves, etc), and leave the work to the worms and other creatures to carry the nutrients down into the lower ground. I’m making my own compost now and will use that to spread about one inch onto the beds this winter.

By the time September rolled around, No Dig had changed my life. Not only had I produced enough vegetables to last me through the winter—and give lots to friends—but going to the allotment, which is about a mile from my house, had become the most pleasurable part of my daily routine. Instead of dreading the grind of weeding and seeing my plants devoured by pests, it has been a thrill to watch my vegetables grow, and then to cook them. 

This growing season, with a year of No Dig gardening under my belt, I’m branching out and planting vegetables I’d never dared to experiment with before. Red-veined spinach, six types of onions, rose-streaked celery, purple string beans, pink fir apple potatoes… The time that was freed up from not having to dig or weed I devoted to tracking down and ordering a wide variety of seeds—which will no doubt make this year’s meals more varied, unusual, and delicious. As we speak, I’m bringing home armfuls of sweet fresh peas, which go into risi e bisi, which is easier than risotto as it requires less stirring; I always add a teaspoon of fennel seeds to mine.   

Come summer, salads will take center stage in my house again. But this year, I’ll be reaching for bitter radicchio and escarole, peppery nasturtium leaves, wild arugula, and sweet purple lettuces. 

Then, as many bemoan the arrival of cold weather, I’ll be content roasting squashes with estate-bottled extra-virgin olive oil and Sicilian capers preserved in salt. And I’ll get through the winter cooking kale, cabbage, and cima di rape (from seeds bought in Italy). 

Because of No Dig, I am now surrounded year round by all the chutneys, jams, soups, and other preserves my garden gave me. I’m blessed with so much produce that I recently bought an enormous freezer to store it all (and a greenhouse for my seedlings)—a small price to pay for all of No Dig’s riches.

The post I (Basically) Stopped Weeding Thanks to This Game-Changing Gardening Method appeared first on Saveur.

“I spent so much time in my grandmother’s kitchen growing up,” said Charleston, South Carolina-based chef Amethyst Ganaway. “A lot of it was out of necessity, but I was also a greedy kid. She taught me how to make the ‘for real’ shrimp-and-grits, and my great-granny Adele’s coveted banana pudding from scratch, sitting and stirring the damn custard on the stove.”

On a recent spring day during the Charleston Wine + Food Festival, Ganaway stood next to another stove, in a former rice mill overlooking the Ashley River, stirring the roux for brown oyster stew in a commercial-grade stockpot. Around her, an all-female crew of volunteers hustled to chop greens, grill shrimp, whip up cornbread batter, and season quail before a celebration dinner honoring their elders. Local suppliers deposited heritage ingredients on steel prep tables—Sea Island red peas, Peculiar Pig Farm pork chops, Carolina Gold rice, sorghum syrup, loquat jam.

As the afternoon progressed, the beats and laughter amplified, while everyone navigated between hot stations with the grace and ease afforded by old friendships. “Food is a big part of our culture,” said Ganaway. “And it hit me hard when Miss Martha Lou [Gadsden] died, and her restaurant closed down. Even before moving back home I noticed the lack of female representation in the Charleston food scene, and this dinner is about giving Black women the respect they deserve at the end of the day.”

In the Carolina Lowcountry, the conveyance of culinary traditions is particularly strong in Gullah Geechee communities, where knowledge keepers—some in their late 80s or early 90s—have preserved such canonical dishes as deviled crab, okra soup, chicken bog, and red rice. They are the living links to the foodways of enslaved ancestors, and their cooking skills are intrinsic to one of America’s oldest regional cuisines. These women are fondly considered matriarchs. They feed everyone who walks into their kitchens, bring prized pies and layer cakes to church picnics, treat thirsty neighborhood children to ice-cold chilly bears, and teach daughters and granddaughters how to season a dish without measuring spoons.

Perhaps the best known is Emily Meggett, bestselling author of Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island, and a beloved “other mother” to so many. “As you grow up and realize that people are getting older, you look at them differently,” said Ganaway. “These ladies are leaving a legacy for their families. And I’ve been thinking about the legacy my grandmother is leaving for ours.” For a cooking culture that has largely passed down techniques orally for most of its history, guardians of Gullah recipes bear great responsibility for passing the torch. (And the kitchen matches.) Ganaway and her young crew represent the generation who will carry it onward. 

As guests arrived, the chefs pulled yeast rolls from the oven, gave a final stir to the okra-and-shrimp purloo, and topped Emily Meggett’s recipe for sweet potato cake with a swirl of frosting. Ganaway offered last-minute tweaks on the pass. Her intention was to serve each course family-style, in hopes of sparking conversation among strangers at the long tables.

Meanwhile, artist Natalie Daise unveiled her portraits of the mothers being celebrated, including Albertha Grant, founder of Bertha’s Kitchen, chef Sara Green of Gullah Grub on St. Helena Island, and cookbook author Sallie Ann Robinson from Daufuskie Island. Embraced by dark green collard leaves, each woman is depicted wearing a brightly patterned kitchen apron and a halo of woven sweetgrass. Then, Meggett, dressed in a matching black suit and bedazzled hat, was seated at the head of one table. (No one knew that night, but it would be the Edisto matriarch’s last public appearance. Meggett passed away on April 21.) Ganaway’s own grandmother sat beside her. And just before hot platters hit the tablecloth, A$iahMae, Charleston’s poet laureate, recited her new poem “Benefaction.”

The first time I ever prayed it was at a kitchen table/God bless the
hands that prepared the food/thank you for the love in them/the love
that labors/cradles cheek and ladle/seasons & pinches with senses….

and before we partake/we give/praise be to the
chefs/and praise to the spirit of nourishment that moves through
them that my grandmother named God/and we respect it/by cleaning
our plates.

Plates were certainly cleaned that night.

Recipe

Lowcountry Brown Oyster Stew

Get the recipe >

The post A Tribute to the Matriarchs of the Lowcountry appeared first on Saveur.

There’s a preconception about grandmothers that they’re mostly meek and mild, conformist and conventional. Justina Terés Sondevila, the 88-year-old Grandmas Project star, turns that notion on its head. 

Her granddaughter, film director Carmen Aubédes (26), realized at an early age that Justina (“Tina”) was “special.”    Here was a spirited woman who enjoyed the good things in life and was, in certain important ways, a person ahead of her time.    

“Modern? Yes, I suppose I was. Girls in those days weren’t as independent as they are now. But I did pretty much what I wanted at home. That was the kind of liberal education my parents gave me,” reflects Tina.

Tina was born in the town of Monzón, a 90-minute drive from the Aragonese capital Zaragoza. In 1960, she married a Catalan gentleman with whom she had four children before being widowed 30 years ago. (To her delight, her children have given her eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.) Tina ascribes her “rather strong” personality in part to her Aragonese ancestry, her compatriots having a reputation for pride and obduracy, but also for generosity and good humor.    

Characteristic of a Spanishwoman of her vintage, she is a proficient cook with a range of homestyle specialties. “I enjoyed cooking for the family. I still have piles and piles of recipes tucked away. But cooking for myself rather bores me now. I used to do a yogurt bizcocho (sponge cake) that came out very nicely. My macarrones were a favorite with the grandchildren: The sauce had a good sofrito of onion and tomato, plenty of cheese at the end, and sometimes a dash of cream. I did a good plate of lentils, too. And we had barbecues in the garden.”    

She also had a signature dish: conejo borracho (“drunken rabbit”). In Spanish cuisine, “borracho” indicates that the dish contains some kind of alcohol, often sherry or sweet wine. In this case, the rabbit pieces are cooked with a sofrito of onion, green pepper, mushrooms, and garlic, then bathed in a good glug of sherry before gently simmering until the meat is tender.   Finally the sauce is thickened with a Catalan-style picada of pounded almonds.  

“When I was little, she used to tell me the rabbit was chicken,” remembers her granddaughter Carmen. “The idea of eating such a cute animal was upsetting to me.”

Since Tina’s husband died, she has lived alone in a modern “chalet” with a large yard outside the Catalan city of Lleida. In the Grandmas Project video, she is seen striding around her garden while extolling a genre of classic movies in which an indomitable woman lives on her own in some remote location, perhaps in the Wild West or on the steppes of Central Asia. “I love those old films. The woman is usually on her own in the house, sometimes with a child…  and always armed with a rifle.   I used to imagine it might be me.”

Carmen’s film reveals Tina as a woman of character with an unsuspected string to her bow: She has a fine singing voice.    Before her marriage, she belonged to a choir in Zaragoza and traveled on various international tours, her specialty being the Aragonese folk dance called the jota. One of her star turns at family gatherings was the jota “Las Cerezas,” with its piquant lyrics comparing kisses to cherries (“When you take one, and then another, you’ll soon have the whole basket!”). In the film, she belts the “cherry song” while sitting at the kitchen table.   

Throughout her long life, Tina has been a dedicated follower of fashion. “I’ve always liked dressing up and looking nice. It was very much the thing in Zaragoza when I was young—we’d all wear the latest fashions, and plenty of makeup. In my youth, I was very fond of designer clothes, the world of fashion, and beautiful things in general. I’d like to have been a decorator, or perhaps a beautician. Even now, I try to make myself look nice, even if I’m only going out to the shops. I suppose I still have a slightly youthful look about me—but that’s just in my nature,” she says coquettishly.    

After cooking and eating her drunken rabbit, she relaxes with a tall glass of cava in her hand. “My friend Marisa, when she drinks cava, she feels sleepy. I’m the opposite. It gets me going! My husband used to cook from time to time, and some nights, he’d say, “I’m going to make torrijas [French toast].”   And we’d get out the cava. And of course then he’d want some sort of compensation. It sounds harsh to say this, but we didn’t have a great deal in common,” she confides. “Except the sex, which was one thing that did work very well.”    

Her granddaughter recalls the filming process as easy and fun.   As a child, Carmen loved to shoot little videos of family life with a compact camera, so for her grandmother, the experience was hardly a novelty. Tina “knew not to look at the camera—all I had to do was follow her around the house,” says the director. “I think she enjoyed being the object of attention. In fact, the more we filmed, the more she seemed to grow into the role.”

When Tina talks about Carmen—second child of her first-born son—a tenderness comes into her voice. “She’s a very good girl, sweet natured and very intelligent. She used to come by here a lot, and still she’s one of the grandchildren I see the most of.” Of Tina’s four children, only one lives anywhere near (in a small town in the Pyrenees). The other three are based in London, Barcelona, and “all over the world.” However, three decades of solo living, together with her naturally feisty and independent character, have inured her to loneliness.  

“Occasionally I find myself missing the family; then I have to remind myself that they’re all happy, which of course is the main thing,” she says. “I’m quite content here on my own.    This is the way I want to live. Because I’m worth it, as they say at L’Oréal.”   

So saying, she flicks back a lock of fine gray hair and lets out a peal of laughter.

Recipe

Catalan-Style Rabbit Stew with Sherry, Mushrooms, and Almonds

Get the recipe >

The post A Spanish Abuela’s Secret to Rabbit Stew—And to Life Itself 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.

Mesmerized, I watched my grandmother’s hands working the dough as she told me how she survived the Great Depression. How she brewed tea twice. Diluted soap. Saved every bag, tie, and scrap of foil.

These idiosyncrasies of the Silent Generation annoyed my mother, but fascinated me. My grandmother’s lessons in frugality would serve me a few years later when I became homeless.

Frugality does not mean what it did a century ago, a decade ago, or even a year ago if you consider the price of eggs. A word that originally meant the care and enjoyment of the fruits of one’s labor, “frugal” doesn’t have the same definition for everyone. That’s because not everyone has equal access to those fruits.

To understand the role of frugality in American culture, studying the Great Depression is a good starting point. “There’s a great dish called Milkorno,” says baker and author B. Dylan Hollis, who revived an old recipe for the powdered milk and cornmeal gruel for TikTok. Hollis studies history through cookbooks. “In the Great Depression, you had institutes and universities coming up with frugal ways to teach the populace how to stretch their dollar,” Hollis says. Milkorno was one of Cornell’s concoctions. Hollis’ scalding review described the bite as “Depressed polenta! Oatmeal that needs therapy! Unemployed grits.”

But wealthy people weren’t eating depressed polenta during the Great Depression. They were busy serving aspic, those towering, jiggling plates of savory gelatin—in part to show they could afford a refrigerator, as historian Jonathan Rees explains in Refrigeration Nation. A modern analog might be the Vitamix or Instant Pot, appliances that streamline cooking while also being status symbols. As in every era, the more money you have, the more frugal you can afford to be with your time. 

“The trade-off is time for money,” says dietician and author Jessica Wilson, who specializes in anti-hunger work. These days, Wilson is terrified about her patients losing access to food stamps, now that Covid-19 pandemic emergency aid is ending. Across the country, many will soon face the precarious predicament of having to be frugal with both time and money, which, for the working poor, were already in short supply. “A lot of people I work with are in areas of food apartheid that don’t have grocery stores,” she says, emphasizing that she doesn’t use the term “food desert” because a desert is naturally occurring, whereas apartheids and redlining are man-made. “Until [people] can get food, I don’t want to talk to them about healthy food,” she says. That’s because dictating to people what they should put in their bodies often “only creates guilt.”

Having to be frugal with one’s money and time leads many shoppers to buy groceries in bulk to cut down on spending and trips to the grocery. But that presents another issue: space. Anyone who’s lived in a small apartment knows how to get the most out of every square inch—but that’s not easy when it comes to storing, say, a 24-pack of canned green beans. 

For Becky Schwarz, a business manager who works from home, lupus has made food shopping stressful. “An anti-inflammatory diet is brutal because it’s so much more expensive,” she says, explaining that fresh fruits and vegetables are far pricier than the cheaper, packaged foods that are harmful to her health. When her lupus flares up, sapping any energy to cook, Schwarz relies on Costco’s ready-made meals that won’t risk making her more sick (she says the membership fee is worth it).

Perceptions of frugality shift according to age and income. It’s not all gloom and doom—lots of people enjoy gamifying frugality by couponing. Take Josh Gabel, who left his job at Amazon during the pandemic to return to grad school, where he studies Indian law. Using coupons, he manages to save at least 40% on each trip to the grocery store, helping stretch his tight student budget. “I’ve gotten it down to where it’s worth the time investment, because time is money,” he says. (Gabel acknowledges that the digitization of coupons has excluded many elderly folks who aren’t as tech-savvy.) 

Gabel grew up making frybread and smoking salmon according to his Snoqualmie family’s traditions. “We always maintained salmon smoking as a preservation method,” he says, noting that uplifting native food systems is frugality on a macroeconomic scale that benefits everyone.

Coupons remind us that food prices are not only fluid—they’re sometimes made-up. Crop scientist Sarah Taber notes that markets incentivize environmental depletion, so that once-bountiful (and affordable) foods become delicacies. “Caviar used to be cheap. It was a trash byproduct of the sturgeon fishery. Then we made the sturgeon population mostly extinct, and now caviar is expensive. Lobsters, oysters, same thing,” Taber says, referencing a time when lobster was so undervalued it was served to prisoners. 

Yet supply and demand aren’t always to blame for price hikes, especially when it comes to agriculture. “There’s not a geographical restriction on where you can grow eggs,” Taber says, reminding us that egg prices soared simply because suppliers hiked prices in anticipation of an avian flu epidemic that never really came. While many Americans were forced to be frugal with their eggs, Big Egg was essentially lining its pockets. (Prices have decreased in recent weeks but haven’t returned to their pre-December baseline.)  

Rising food costs are hitting small food businesses particularly hard, and behind the scenes, many chefs are being forced to be more frugal. According to Beet cofounders Eric Rivera (a chef) and Emahlea Wilxer (an epidemiologist and dietician), that frugality might look like less-expensive cuts of meat such as hanger steak or skirt steak on menus. It might look like smaller portions, or worse, slashes in pay or hours for employees. 

Rivera notes that sometimes a historically thrifty menu item becomes so popular that it turns into a luxury. Oxtail is currently experiencing this shift, riding similar waves of food gentrification as quinoa, collards, and kale, which have all increased in price in recent years. This exacerbates food inequality, as many people wind up unable to afford the ingredients their ancestors cultivated and developed over generations because wealthier folks are snapping them up. 

Then there’s the question of “cheap” versus “frugal.” Dried beans are universally touted as frugal, but if you’re working two minimum-wage jobs, do you really have the time or energy to watch a pot for hours? For busy parents, priorities and budgets are constantly shifting. Chef Susie Snyder, who used to own a vegan meal delivery service, says her perception of frugality evolved during the pandemic. “I started making sourdough like everybody else,” she says, recalling how she and her neighbors pitched in to buy a large bulk order of flour to share. But she gives “so many fewer Fs now” and is more frugal with her meal planning efforts. She says convenience foods that create time are now the most important items on her grocery list.

Time and community were two of the only resources I had in abundance as a homeless teenager. I had time to forage and dumpster dive, sharing expired expensive tea, pastries, and other valuable finds. Searching for food I was not allergic to was a constant stress, and continues to be, despite my financial situation being more stable. 

Now, I buy groceries for people around me struggling to make ends meet. I draw on my grandmother’s economical yet flavorful Depression-era recipes and cook them for friends. I continue to annoy my family by diluting soap and—yes—saving every bag, tie, and scrap of foil. 

Across all socioeconomic strata, the main ingredient for frugality, in its healthiest form, is communal cooperation. That might mean donating garden space, giving away seeds and produce, offering childcare, advocating for better laws, sharing a ride to the grocery store, volunteering to cook, providing mutual aid, or sharing resources like foraging extraordinaire Alexis Nikole Nelson’s videos. 

Donating to food banks is helpful, but experts I spoke with emphasize that the food often doesn’t make it to people in need, with their long work hours and lack of transportation being two main reasons. As dietician Jessica Wilson puts it, giving one dollar goes much further than one can of beans.

Frugality won’t save us from poverty. Milkorno is no substitute for a balanced diet. As meager emergency Covid-19 aid ends, already-stressed communities will bear the added weight of their most vulnerable members struggling to survive poverty—and the health implications and death that come with it.

As Congress prepares to vote on this year’s reauthorization of the Farm Bill, contentious debates about expanding food benefits rage in the marble corridors. And what is Congress but community, writ large? If frugality boils down to the management of scarce resources, our leaders should take inspiration from their frugal constituents—and find ways to improve lives with as little waste as possible.

The post The New Frugal appeared first on Saveur.