Holy Kakow!

5/19/09

I bought a really nice product today, a bag of cocoa powder from Holy Kakow, a local company making cocoa powder and chocolate syrups. Their products are organic and sourced from single origin, direct trade suppliers.
I needed some cocoa to bake a couple of tart shells so I stopped by Sheridan on my way home. I admit it was the packaging that caught, and held my eye. It was too cool looking not to buy. Something about it looked very now, and I wanted to try it. I didn’t realize until later that they are a local company, and I felt a tiny bit of envy. One of my sub-fantasies is to run a small scale local chocolate production kitchen starting from raw cacao, but that’s another story…
When I got home, I unpacked the groceries and reached for the bag of cocoa. I unzipped it and said, wow! It was such a nice, rich, earthy, and heady aroma, I just stood and inhaled it for a while, then passed it to the rest of the family to smell. It was good!
I baked my tart shells using their cocoa, and my house is filled with the delicious scent. Nice job guys! It smells so good, I’m excited!
I want to interview the two guys that run Holy Kakow, and see their production plant, and take pics. In the meantime, check out their website, they list where they sell it, and buy their cocoa and taste for yourself.



The Geek Chef

Evoe & Sumac

Recently I went to Evoe on Hawthorne for a lunchtime snack. I like to stop in and chit chat with Kevin Gibson while I eat, and I have always enjoyed his food whether it was at Genoa, Castagna, or his current place of cookerie, Evoe.
He suggested I have the lamb crepinette. A crepinette is a small flattened sausage, usually made with ground or minced pork, lamb, veal, or chicken. It is typically wrapped in caul fat and sauteed in a skillet. Caul fat is the fatty web like membrane which surrounds the internal organs of a cow, sheep, or pig. It’s usually pork caul fat that I find available.
As a cooking ingredient, the primary purpose of caul fat is to lend it’s fat to keeping the wrapped meat moist, plus adding another flavor element.
He served the 2 crepinette with an aioli, watercress, and suggested a good Belgian Beer. The crepinette were succulent containing slices of local black truffles and mint, but there was a flavor I couldn’t place. There was a certain sharp acidity which combined with the mint reminded me of tarragon. I asked Kevin if there was tarragon in them, and he said no, they had the spice Sumac in them. Sumac? I couldn’t recall ever having heard of this spice.

Sumac:
The spice comes from the berries of a wild bush that grows wild in all Mediterranean areas, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, and parts of the Middle East, notably Iran. It is an essential ingredient in Arabic cooking, being preferred to lemon for sourness and astringency.
The whole fruit appears in dense clusters. Individual berries are small, round, 10 mm (1/4”) in diameter, russet coloured and covered with hairs. The bouquet is slightly aromatic, and the flavor is sour, fruity and astringent.The berries can be dried and ground into a purple-red powder, then sprinkled into the cooking, or macerated in hot water and mashed to release their juice, the resulting liquid being used as one might use lemon juice.

Sumac is used widely in cookery in Arabia, Turkey and the Levant, and especially in Lebanese cuisine. In these areas it is a major souring agent, used where other regions would employ lemon, tamarind or vinegar. It is rubbed onto kebabs before grilling and may be used in this way with fish or chicken. The juice extracted from sumac is popular in salad dressings and marinades and the powdered form is used in stews and vegetable and chicken casseroles. “The seed of Sumach eaten in sauces with meat, stoppeth all manner of fluxes of the belly...” (Gerard, 1597) A mixture of yogurt and sumac is often served with kebabs. Zather is a blend of sumac and thyme use to flavour labni, a cream cheese made from yogurt.


After this bit of research I realized I had likely tasted it before in Lebanese food and not known what it was, mostly because I rarely cook Middle Eastern food. I assumed that the acidity I tasted there was from lemon.

If you’re interested in purchasing some Sumac to play around with, you can find it here in town at Penzey’s Spices or Barbur World Foods.



The Geek Chef

Broccolini, Rapini, or Broccoli Rabe?

I have always loved eating, cooking, discussing food and drink, collecting recipes, and learning food facts and history, but mostly eating and cooking. I love being asked food and cooking questions because I truly enjoy sharing what little I do know, and searching for information I don’t know. Now and then I get a question that leaves me stumped, and I’m left answerless. This is a good reality check, and reminds me that there are always new things to learn, or rediscover, and it’s somewhat humbling.

As a case in point, I was recently serving an entrée accompanied by Broccolini and a diner asked the difference between Broccoli Rabe, Broccolini, and Rapini. For all the Broccolini, Broccoli Rabe or Rapini I have either prepped, cooked, or eaten, I couldn’t recall which one was related to broccoli, and the differences between them geneally.

I promissed my diner that I would have the answer for them the next day, and went home and did my homework.

Here is what I found:

Broccolini is a green vegetable not unlike broccoli with small florets and long, thin stalks. Although often misidentified as young broccoli, it is a cross between broccoli and kai-lan, Chinese broccoli. A natural hybrid of the cabbage family Brassica oleracea. Broccolini's flavor is sweet, with notes of both broccoli and asparagus.

Broccolini is also known by the name Asparation, Asparations, Bimi, and Tender Stem. It was introduced in Mexico in 1994 and first brought into the U.S. market in 1996. They grow the vegetable year round in California and Arizona. Today, you can find broccolini throughout the United States and Canada.
The entire vegetable is consumable, including the occasional yellow flower. Rather delicate, common cooking methods include sauteing, steaming, boiling, and stir frying.
Nutritionally, broccolini is high in vitamin C but also contains vitamin A, calcium, folate and iron.

Rapini (also known as Broccoli Rabe (or Raab), Broccoletti, Broccoli di Rape, Cime di Rapa, Rappi, Friarielli (in Naples), and Grelos) is a common vegetable in Galician, Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese cuisine. The plant is a member of the Brassiceae tribe of the Brassicaceae, whose taxonomy is very difficult. Rapini is classified scientifically as Brassica rapa subspecies rapa, in the same subspecies as the turnip, but has had various other designations, including Brassica rapa ruvo, Brassica rapa rapifera, Brassica ruvo, Brassica campestris ruvo.

Rapini has many spiked leaves that surround a green bud which looks very similar to a small head of broccoli. There may be small yellow flowers blooming from the buds, which are edible.

The flavor of Rapini has been described as nutty, bitter, and pungent. The Italian cultivar is similar to, but much more bitter than, the Chinese. The Chinese cultivar is of a lighter green color, not at all bitter or pungent, and more tender.
Rapini is a source of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as potassium, calcium, and iron.
The vegetable probably descends from a wild herb, a relative of the turnip, that grew either in China or the Mediterranean region. It is similar in shape to the Chinese Brassica oleracea cultivar called kai-lan.
Rapini is now grown throughout the world. Rapini is available all year long, but its peak season is fall to spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
Rapini is commonly used in traditional Barese and southern Italian cuisine.

The Geek Chef