Pan-Seared Sea Bass in Clam Stew, Black Rice, and Tomato Salsa

For those of you in the area, you know what I’m talking about. For those of you visiting, this is one of the absolutely must-stops. Rooted in southern cuisine, owner and chef Amy Tournquist uses the freshest, local ingredients to create perfect dishes.

Best Pimento...ever.

Creative, classic, perfectly seasoned. When folks from out of town ask me which is the one restaurant they should try. It’s Watt’s. Now to get them to open earlier for Sunday brunch….

In my time away from the wine industry (sad moments!), I work in research at a marketing institute that’s very keen on learning about growth and brand development. We work for clients who represent some of the biggest international names in consumer goods. And we — I should say they, my colleagues — do it awfully well.

Aylward Farm in Victoria, Australia... home to the the very small, very successful Ocean Eight Winery

As I straddle two worlds, I wonder how marketing growth strategies and formulas might apply in the wine world, where so many companies are extremely small and under-capitalized. At its heart, wine is a very agriculturally oriented industry. Even the world’s biggest wine companies top out at about 3% of the global market share. Everyone is struggling to get their name out to consumers, sell enough wine to afford grapes next year, and keep the business ticking over. With so many competitors (check out your local wine shop… thousands of labels kicking around!), how can small businesses rise above? More to the point, how can they rise above within the finite resources of land and vines?

Growth-driven marketing aims to create companies with ever-greater production. But part of the joy of good wine is that it comes from specific spots on the earth; ground does not expand very fast. Quality wine, among many of life’s luxuries (think coffee, chocolate, seafood, diamonds), is diluted literally and figuratively when more is made. Overextend the resources, and quality drops across the board. Nevermind what it does to our souls to get luxuries on the cheap. Some things are worth a bit more effort and cash.

Yarra Yering's current releases are among the best and most expensive Aussie wines

There’s another way: charge more for the little you produce. The Atlantic recently ran an article about boutique California wineries whose wines cost anywhere from $400-$1400 depending on vintage. We can debate ad nauseam whether wines are ever worth that kind of money (I’d argue no), but who can blame acclaimed producers for squeezing every cent from their grapes? Well, I suppose the average folks who can’t shell out hundreds for bottles might get a little angsty. This is one reason wine gets the image of pretentiousness… which makes less expensive wines hard to sell to the average folks…

Is there a way to produce, sell, and repeat in a continuous cycle? For wine, as well as for our vegetables, our clothes, our coffee, our chocolate, our toys. Can companies grow or even survive by producing good quality on a local, sustainable level? Do co-operatives offer a scalable alternative that allows the little guys to stay little? What will become of the marketers and their careers? We love to make things grow… but what if we try to grow a philosophy as its own fortune.

Could we learn to sell “less?”

An old-school wine press. One of the many reasons good wine takes time.

For another look at places that focus on eco-friendly eating rather than just mass selling, check out this Food of the Farm article about South Africa.

1. How does this Open Source work, and why did you choose to go this route?

We are open source in the way that we disclose recipes, techniques, and business processes. If you have an idea on how to make us better, we welcome all helpers. If you would like to volunteer with us, we’ll take you. I feel that this is in keeping with our sliding-scale pricing — we are focused on inclusivity and equability. Also, we live in a technological age where the internet has democratized nearly anything that can be manufactured, including food. We are not in a race to the top by any means — we just want to bake as best we can.

2. Do you think food companies and the food industry will go the way of pay-what-you-want? What challenges does this model hold?

I’m happily surprised by Panera’s selective adoption of pay-what-you want, but ultimately, there are too many ways for corporations to squeeze a dollar – board members answer to shareholders, and shareholders generally don’t understand a business model like sliding-scale. I think for non-profits and privately-owned businesses, it might be an option. The reason why it works for us is that we have a collegial rapport with the customer. If we were anonymously selling out bread online, I think people would pay much less (I think this happened to Radiohead when they released a pay-what-you-want album). No one wants to feel ripped off, so customers naturally project themselves into our shoes when they decide what to pay (i.e. “Am I paying enough? Does this cover their costs? Am I a good person if I effectively tip a dollar extra?”). I think sliding-scale gets tricky at larger scales not just because of possible anonymity of the transactions, but there is a transaction cost associated with deciding what to pay (i.e. the time and sometimes consternation that goes along with picking a price).

3. Have you found the model profitable for your business? What are the challenges?

We are profitable right now. I make enough to pay myself and the two or three other folks that help out in any given weekend. We do get unpaid or “underpaid” volunteer help frequently which helps. The money is really secondary for me, but if it was unprofitable, I think it would be harder to justify the entire enterprise. One challenge is that sometimes I would like to source a fine ingredient (like Valrhona chocolate), but the person who is buying an item sliding scale might not be able to infer that cost based on our product description alone. For instance, we used more expensive cheese than usual (sourced from Reliable Cheese) last weekend, but that did not mean that we necessarily got a higher per tartlet price. People just see a savory tartlet and price accordingly.

4. How did you get started baking?

I messed around at home for a bit, and then during the economic dead zone of 2009, got a job as baker at 9th Street Bakery. When you go from thinking about food for three meals a day to thinking about food 8-10 hours a days as your job, fortunately or unfortunately it becomes a habit that is hard to turn off.

5. How do you come up with your recipes? How do you decide what to make?

Our recipes are an amalgam of cookbook, family, historical, and internet inspirations. When I say historical, for instance, next winter, I want to attempt a stollen as it was made in the 18th century. Or last year I tried to make matzo as it might have actually tasted in the Egyptian desert. Whatever the recipe, most go through a series of home-testing that might last between a week and years. I am currently on my 9th iteration of bagels, and have been making and refining one chocolate chip cookie homage for almost four years!

6. What are your family’s baking/cooking traditions?

My grandmom on my mother’s side makes great mandelbrot, so that was the inspiration for that product. My grandmom on my father’s side made great knaidlach, which is a beef-filled matzo dumpling. Mostly, my inspirations from my childhood revolve around several Jewish bakeries in and around Newton, MA, where I grew up (Diamond Bakery, Tuler’s Bakery, Lederman’s, Rosenfeld’s Bagels).

7. Is Durham a special place for this model to work or do you think it will work anywhere?

Of course Durham is special!

Especially for those late nights…or rather, early dinner before a night spent at the blackjack tables, great food tapas-style is the best way to fill up with deliciousness rather than overstuff with mediocrity.

There is an old Indian saying that “a good cook uses his spices similar to how a painter uses his colour palette”. A little more of this and a little less of that do make a huge difference. The importance to know the correct blend of spices in a particular curry requires research, guidance and experience. Also, in Indian cooking, there is a special emphasis to the process called bhunno or bhoona. This is the process in which spices are added to the hot oil and cooked with the main ingredients until the raw taste and smell of the spices is gone and essential oils are released from each of the spices. This part of cooking requires careful control over the flame, as the amount of heat from time to time also determines the taste of the final dish.

Now let’s understand what the word dum means. Dum is a slow-cooking method practiced in India since the beginning of time, but gained greater significance during the Mughal period, when dum aloo (potatoes simmered in gravy) and dum pukht (chicken simmered in gravy) dishes came to exist. These dishes required patience and tasted amazingly delicious and succulent – a result of slow-cooking method. Actually, any dum curry tastes its best if cooked in a special vessel called hundi or handi, which is almost a ball-shaped utensil with an opening at the top. Appropriate amount of water is added along with other par-cooked or bhoona ingredients. The lid of the hundi is tightly sealed with wheat flour dough and cooked on charcoal fire. This is the traditional method.

Back in my Mumbai home, I do have a beautiful hundi, but due to storage constraints in small kitchens in Hong Kong, I did not bring it here. So I decided to go on with a modern non-stick skillet with a proper-fitting lid. My dum pukht came out perfectly succulent and the taste of the spices reached the innermost layers of the chicken delicately. Do give this a try and you will fall in love with this scrumptious culinary obsession!

Murgh Dum Pukht (Simmered Indian Chicken Curry)

[Dum means to breathe and pukht means to cook. Please use chicken with bones for this recipe, since the juices from the bone marrow intensify the flavour of this dish.]

Ingredients:
1 kg chicken (with bones, cut into medium-sized pieces)
3 medium-sized purple onions (sliced)
1 cup hung curd (thick, unsweetened yogurt)
2 TB ginger paste
3 TB garlic paste
1.5 tsp red chilli powder
10 almonds
5 cashew nuts
2 dried bay leaves
3 green cardamon pods
5 cloves
1 black cardamom (big) pod
12 whole peppercorns
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
2 blades mace (optional)
1/4 cup coriander leaves (paste)
4 red or green fresh chillies
1.5 tsp salt to taste (plus extra 1 tsp for the gravy)
7 TB oil
1 tsp Ghee (Indian clarified butter)
2 cups water

Directions:
1. Marinate the chicken overnight with yogurt, 1.5 tsp salt, ginger-garlic paste and red chilli powder. Heat 3 tbsp oil till it starts to smoke. Reduce the heat to medium and fry onions (cut lengthwise and thin) till these become golden brown. Remove the fried onions from oil, cool at room temperature and make a fine paste.

2. Soak the nuts in a little water (just enough to immerse them) overnight as well. Next morning, make a fine paste.

3. Heat the rest of the oil to its smoking point and then reduce the flame to medium once again. Add the dried bay leaves, green cardamon pods, cloves, black cardamom and whole peppercorns to this. After the bay leaves turn a little darker (not black, but dark brown), add the marinated chicken along with the marinade. Increase the flame to high and toss the chicken pieces continuously, so that the chicken becomes well-coated with the spices and the marinade becomes almost dry. This takes around 15 min.

4. Reduce the flame to medium now. Add the fried onion paste, mace (optional), turmeric powder, black pepper powder and the nut paste to the skillet and toss well for 15 min.

5. Add the coriander leaf paste and the red or green fresh chillies (whole) to this. Cook till the chicken is almost dry and oil starts leaving from the the spices and the chicken. Now is the time to add the ghee.

6. Add water and stir well. Check the salt and add more, if needed. Simmer the flame and put a well-fitting lid on the skillet. For best results, seal the edges with wheat flour dough to ensure that the steam can’t escape from the skillet. Let this cook on a low flame for 30 more minutes. This slow-cooking called dum is a great way to cook some of the popular Indian dishes such as this one!

Strawberry Granola bar...amazing.

Started in 2009, Boxcarr Farms, this family farm is a true example of biodiversity. On over 30 acres, Boxcarr takes care in ensuring a diversity of seeds and crops, growing many heirloom varieties.

The heirloom varieties also extends to their diverse flock of animals, including heritage chickens and pigs.

Honeybees and goats share the beautiful land, all fed with natural feed without antibiotics or hormones.

Their mobile food truck has some amazing food – from fresh sandwiches to the most amazing strawberry granola bar, this food truck is so worth the stop.

It was the summer of the big Northeast blackout, and I was living the young English major’s dream. I had an internship lined up at a New York publishing company that specializes in limited edition, hand-bound, letterpress books. I had rented a room in a warehouse-cum-photographer’s studio-cum-artist commune in Astoria. Radiohead was headlining a festival that summer. It was supposed to be the best time of my life.

I was miserable. My first lesson in the strange kindness of New Yorkers occurred when I struggled up subway stairs with my luggage. A stranger took the handles from me and unceremoniously dumped my bag on the platform. He walked away without a word. Hungry and homesick, I half-heartedly explored my neighborhood. It was my first time living alone. Money was short and I didn’t know how to take care of myself. Even if I knew where to find a supermarket, I wouldn’t have known what to buy. I bought a loaf of stale bread from a local bodega, retreated to my room, and threw myself an extravagant pity party.

Then, a roommate knocked on the door. Through the door, he asked if I would share dinner with him. “I made Thai peanut noodles,” he said. I didn’t respond immediately. It took me a few moments to collect myself even after he walked away. I got up and opened the door.

I eked by that summer eating yogurt for breakfast and learning to make avocado sandwiches (ingredients: avocado, baguette) for lunch. Needless to say, with the luxury of on-campus housing and dining during my final years in college, I forgot what little I learned about cooking that summer until I graduated and moved to London.

Again, it was the kindness of my flatmates who lessened the misery of that cold and gray first day. Micah made hamburgers for us on that first night. Erin could roast a mean chicken, and watching Micah annihilate the carcass could be more entertaining than television.

It was my friend Colette, however, who unknowingly taught me how to cook. She often invited me over for dinner—on one night it was a roast pork loin skewered with rosemary over a bed of caramelized Granny Smith apples. On another night, couscous topped with roast vegetables, still steaming from the oven. On yet another night, a hearty winter root vegetable and sausage stew. I would beg her for the recipe, and then cook it myself. Repeatedly. From my friend Mary, who was teaching English in Oundle, England, I learned how to bake my first loaf of bread—whole wheat rosemary and parmesan foccacia. I still have the torn notebook papers on which I dutifully copied the recipe.

When I left London and entered law school, I began baking breads and cakes regularly. I made my own stock and granola. I called my mother every other night for this recipe or that recipe. I threw mushu roll parties, congee parties, potsticker parties, or just plain old Katherine’s comfort food parties, trying to recreate exactly what my mother used to make: steamed scallops, braised ribs, and simple soups.

The elegance of cooking is that no dish cooked by two chefs will ever be alike, no matter how detailed the instructions are. It’s even more difficult to recreate a treasured recipe when the source is your mom, and she tells you the right amount of soy sauce or cooking time “just depends on experience.”

How do you repay the most important cook in your life? When my mother visited me in New York recently, I treated her to my favorite fancy restaurant in New York—Eleven Madison Park, where chefs customize every dish to your preference. Gluten-intolerant? No problem. Paleo diet? Bring it on. Every course is artful and balanced.

But not even Eleven Madison Park can capture the magic of that first meal with new friends in a lonely city—or at the kitchen counter with your mother after years away from home.

I request this dish from my mother frequently. The sauce is creamy, but surprisingly contains no dairy. It’s perfect for spooning over rice. The barely cooked cilantro and scallions counterbalance the richness of fermented bean curd. I’ve tried to be specific as possible in the recipe, but the proportions, well, depend on experience.

Momma Tsai’s Fermented Bean Curd Chicken (腐乳雞)
About 2 people with leftovers.

Ingredients
At least 5-6 cloves of garlic for ½ chicken (or more if you love garlic). Remove the skin.
½ chicken chopped into small pieces, skin and bone left on

Note: It’s helpful to ask a Chinese butcher to chop up a chicken for you. Pieces should yield approximately two bites of meat. The last time I asked a Whole Foods butcher, he got huffy and asked how he could possibly cut up a chicken even into 8ths. A good Chinese supermarket will offer truly free range chicken (土雞), which, unlike American “free range” chicken, tastes firm and flavorful.

Chinese cooking wine
Rock sugar (regular sugar is also fine)
Taiwanese sweet and alcoholic bean curd (甜酒豆腐乳)

Note: The density and sodium level of this fermented bean curd resembles miso. It’s delicious on its own in extremely small quantities, paired with congee or rice.

Cilantro (about 1/3 to ½ a bunch) and scallions (at least 2 or 3 stalks), cut into small pieces

Directions:
1. Sautee the garlic in vegetable oil on medium high until you can smell the garlic.
2. Add the chicken and sauté until the outside is cooked. You’ll notice that chicken juice will be released in this initial process. Sautee until some, but not all, of the juice has cooked away.
3. Meanwhile, mash several cubes of the fermented bean curd with rice wine in a separate bowl. Feel free to pour in some of the bean curd liquid as well. Because the bean curd is so salty, be conservative at first. For ½ a chicken, I used 3 cubes of bean curd, plus some of the liquid.
4. Once mashed and mixed in, add the bean curd/rice wine mixture to the chicken. Add more rice wine and/or water until the chicken is half covered.
5. Add a hunk of rock sugar (or regular sugar) to taste. If using rock sugar, babysit the sugar while it is melting in the sauce, and rescue it before the sauce is too sweet. We are reducing the sauce, so err on the side of caution. What tastes perfect now might be too sweet or too salty later.
6. Flip the chicken pieces occasionally so that every portion has a chance to simmer in the sauce.
7. Cook on medium low, uncovered, until the sauce thickens. Because reducing the sauce takes some time, this recipe is forgiving and you can continually adjust the sauce to taste. If the sauce is too sweet, add more mashed bean curd cubes. If the sauce is too salty, add more sugar.
8. When you’re satisfied with the taste and viscosity of the sauce, stir in the cilantro and scallions, turn off the heat, and cover for a few moments.
9. Enjoy with a bowl of multigrain rice and vegetables! (The multigrain rice pictured here is a 10 grain rice mix that can be found in many Asian supermarkets. My particular mix includes oats, millet, buckwheat, pearl barley, mung bean, red bean and yam).

On Sunday, Bull City came alive in only the unique way Durham, NC can – with community and heart. Despite a bit of rain in the morning, Fullsteam opened its doors to us, Sol Food Mobile Farm, and Real Good Food. Fullsteam is a local brewery that has become a community mainstay – a true community gathering place that is not your typical brewery (dogs and children welcome).

The three of us put together goodies for raffle ticket winners for those who donated – including mason jars, packets of seeds, bumper stickers and more! (If you want a Zomppa magnet or bumper sticker or set of postcards, let us know!).

While Sol Food parked the bus outside getting ready for visitors, Real Good Food prepped the tables for the food swap. Meanwhile, ZomppaPatty, ZomppaKat, and ZomppaKatherine, all of whom flew from all over the world to join, got the Zompping for Food and Planet workshop ready – featuring Italy!

Adults and children alike loved Sol Food Mobile Farm (hard not to!), and the incredible team shared about their upcoming national tour. They also shared with the community knowledge about running a bus on waste-oil, container gardening, and of course, their amazing rooftop garden (this is a photo of the roof…no joke!).

Meanwhile, Real Good Food got things going with a community swap. Folks brought their goodies and the different items were laid out. Folks then noted whether the food was organic, local, gluten-free, or vegan/vegetarian. Then folks walked around and bartered their goodies.

The list of food traded was impressive, including:

Lemon balm jelly with backyard honey
Chocolate Chip Quinoa cookies
Tomato Avocado Black Bean Salad
Strawberry Mini-cakes
Chewy Chocolate cookies
Homemade Dill Pickles
Triple Coconut cupcakes with dark chocolate chunks
Sourdough Starter
2 different Kombucha Scobys (starter)
Homegrown Arugula Pesto
Chocolate Peanutbutter-Graham Squares
Hazelnut Granola
Fresh Mozzarella and veggie Fusili pasta salad
Handpicked Strawberry Jam

I bartered my Avocado-Tomato-Corn-Black Bean salad for some real goodies, including Berenbaum’s amazing cookies, some ridiculously awesome chocolate peanut butter bars, and a jar of this incredible honey.

ZomppaKat led a few dynamic workshops on Italy – and the kids (and parents) were enthralled and fully engaged making their pasta jewelry, singing opera, and analyzing the Mona Lisa.

Of course, the kids also were fully engaging learning knife skills and making bruschetta. They could not get enough – who knew these little ones would appreciate a healthy, easy-to-make meal!

But the day was not just about us three. After all, it is a community.

We were fortunate and honored again to have the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle with us. They shared with folks about their various programs that aim to reduce hunger in North Carolina, from food recovery, to culinary training programs, to community gardens.

They had fresh produce, recovered of course, and encouraged folks to try black bean, vegetarian, lettuce wraps. We even saw a bunch of kids eager to try the vegetables!

We were also treated to learning more about how Triangle Raw Foods prepares 100 pounds of zucchini, and how This & That Jam packs so much flavor in those jars. Ari Berenbaum’s amazing homemade goods (his crusts and pastry shells are ridiculously beautiful) were available for everyone to taste and buy – paying what they felt was the right amount.

Folks seem to have a great time, with parents and children excited about our curriculum and wanting to see it at their children’s schools, folks of all ages thrilled at seeing the bus in action, and community members curious about when the next food swap would happen.

Additionally, we had the support of many local NC bloggers and friends spreading the word, including Carpe Durham, Durham Socialite, the indelible Jonathan Bloom of Wasted Food, Dirty Durham, Durham Foodie, and Green Eats Blog.

Having all these groups and organizations who care about local food and community, and connecting it with the global truly makes it clear that indeed, it takes a village.

Thank you.

You can check out more pictures from the event on our Facebook page.

Pretty much everything is amazing, their made-from-scratch crostada and soups and sausage biscuits But you really can’t come leave without a slice or two of yheir chess pie…chocolate chess, lavender chess, lemon chess…Come early – it gets packed and things get sold out fast!

(Visit our Facebook page album for all the pictures from the event)

The Food Shuttle also hosts mobile markets every month in various communities around the Research Triangle region in the state. We joined them in their May mobile market held at a church located in East Durham, where the congregation is predominantly Latino. At each mobile market, one of the Food Shuttle’s incredible volunteers does a cooking demo with the produce available during that week. Then food is distributed to the community members, and the contents of the box vary, depending on that week’s availability. Fresh fruit and vegetables are always available – a distinction from that of many other food recovery organizations that tend to focus on canned and baked goods.

Given the Food Shuttle’s focus on empowering individuals with the awareness and excitement for healthy eating, we joined them this month, bringing the Sol Food Mobile Farm and conducting a unit from the Zompping for Food & Planet curriculum. It was super fun to see the kids get excited as the big red school bus pulled up.

We kept the country a “mystery” until we opened the bus doors…and the country was…Italy!

ZomppaKat had come all the way to NC from Ireland to teach the workshop. Given her Italian roots and Spanish fluency, she was the perfect teacher for this workshop. Chatting with the moms and dads there, Kat got all the kids super excited about figuring out where Italy is located, learning some Italian words, appreciating a bit of opera, and recognizing pasta shapes. The kids put their creative brains on making pasta jewelry and their culinary skills to the test making bruschetta, exploring where tomatoes and basil come from.

Kids and their parents also board the Sol Food Mobile Farm, where Reid showed them all the plants at the back of the bus. The kids came out proudly carrying their tomato plants that they had just planted themselves.

Of course, they also got to peek on the rooftop where succulent greens cover the top of the bus – we can’t forget to water the roof!

It was a wonderful morning, and everyone seemed to have fun. Thank you to the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle for letting us join in your incredible efforts to ensure that everyone has access to healthy food and nutrition.

(Visit our Facebook page album for more pictures from the event)