SpiceLines

Every letter starts this way: “Greetings from Carrboro….”

That would be Carrboro, North Carolina, a.k.a Paris of the Piedmont….

The former textile mill town is now home to what a deeply cynical friend refers to as “the crunchy granola set” (sorry Carrboro, it’s true), a splendiferous farmer’s market, and the kind of cool density and walkable streets that Richard Florida praised in The Rise of the Creative Class.

More importantly, Carrboro is home to Acme Food and Beverage Company.

Crunchy green beans go Japanese
when wasabi, soy sauce and ginger
are added to the pickling brine.
Photo: Rick's Picks

First, full disclosure: Rick Field is good friend who turned a passion for pickling into Rick’s Picks, a thriving –you guessed it—gourmet pickle business.

OK, that’s done. Now let me mention a few favorites: Phat Beets (pickled beets in rosemary-scented brine), Smokra (pickled okra with smoked paprika) and the new Heat Seekers (spicy pickled jalapenos with orange blossom honey). Not to mention his Dad’s amazing pickled green cherry tomatoes—they aren’t in the product line, but you can get the recipe right here on SpiceLines.

If you’re in a pickling mood, you can watch Rick make Windy City Wasabeans, a hugely popular variety which has twice won Best of Show at the International Pickle Festival in Rosendale, NY. Adding wasabi, soy sauce and ginger to the brine, Rick makes the whole pickling thing look easy on this video from Whole Foods Secret Ingredient, a weekly cooking “show” posted on the store’s blog. Go here to see the printed recipe.

Where: Flour Bakery
12 Farnsworth Street
Boston, MA 02110
Telephone: 617/338-4333

When: 2:42 PM, Sunday, March 8

What: Tender roast lamb on grilled country bread, oozing with goat cheese,
spiced with addictive homemade tomato chutney. Ideally balanced flavors:
meaty, tangy, hot and sweet.

Follow up with: One perfect coconut macaroon--chewy, dense, golden brown on the
outside, soft buttery crumb inside--and a glass of cold milk.

Atmosphere: Strangely quiet mid-afternoon lull; weekends normally seethe with
painfully hip 30-somethings wielding double-wide strollers, social x-rays,
sleepy students in sweatshirts.

Motto: “Make life a little sweeter…eat dessert first.”

Normally Gerard Vives collects rare poivres sauvages, or wild peppercorns, in
the Madagascar rain forest. This year, a cyclone got in the way. Then came
the riots.

Sometimes I tell myself if I had it to do all over again, I’d be a spice hunter. The romance, the intrigue, the snakes…

Gerard Vives wrote a long email the other day about his recent escapades in Madagascar. “My métier is sometimes dangerous,” he said. “I’ve had to face wild animals, unpleasant savages, serpents, spiders, big monkeys, etc. in the areas of production, but the one I fear the most is …man. “

Gerard is an intrepid spice hunter and pepper specialist who lives in Marseilles. He is never happier, it seems, than when he’s tracking down one or more of the superb peppercorns for which he’s known—19 different varieties at last count—or when he’s on the trail of some other exotic spice. It's not much of a stretch to call him the Indiana Jones of the spice trade, a throwback to the wilder, more dangerous days of a profession that’s become a bit sedate in the last century or two.

Smoky sweet vanilla oil lends richness and depth to an earthy lentil salad, while
the bittersweet zing of orange zest and flowery long pepper add brightness.

This is a flavor match made in heaven.

A few days ago I gave you Gerard Vives’ recipe for vanilla oil.

Gerard is a peripatetic spice hunter and self taught chef. On his last trip to Madagascar, he dodged a cyclone that flooded the west coast of the island, and then was caught up in the deadly riots that swept the capital, Antananarivo.

After that, he went into a creative frenzy, developing 50 new recipes using vanilla, the island’s most famous product, including one for huile de vanille: grape seed oil infused with fragrant vanilla pods.

Drag the tip of this citrus zester across an orange and you'll get a pile of thin,
curly strips of peel without any of the bitter white pith. The five holes in the tip
have sharp edges that cut into the peel, releasing fragrant volatile oils.

I can’t begin to tell you how fragrant the kitchen has been this week.

Vanilla beans sweetly perfuming the air, oranges spurting zesty terpenes …

Um, terpenes?

That’s what makes citrus peel smell so good. In On Food and Cooking, curious cook Harold Magee explains that terpenes are “defensive” carbon compounds found in the peel of citrus fruits, pine bark and needles, and flowers.

When you zest an orange, you puncture the volatile oil glands in the skin, releasing terpenes into the air. They are usually the first molecules to reach the nose, says McGee, flooding your smell receptors with heady notes of limonene, pinene, neral/geranial and linalool—that would be citrus, pine, lemon and flowers.

Before I get too blissed out on these aromas, let me praise my trusty citrus zester. This traditional tool, different from the excellent Microplane grater, has a stainless steel tip affixed to a handle. The tip ends with five, sharp-edged holes. When you pull the zester across an orange, it produces thin curls of aromatic zest without any of the bitter white pith.

You can zest a bowl of oranges in six minutes flat.

My tool was made in Japan and I’ve had it forever, but you can find similar zesters at Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table and cooking.com. Use it to zest any citrus fruit or, when you host your next Friday night sushi party, to make curly mounds of carrot and daikon strips to garnish your spicy tuna rolls.

There are three very different kinds of sweetness in this dish: the briny taste of
the shrimp, the sweet-tart flavor of the pineapple and the bittersweet citrus
zest. Vanilla oil and a simple orange butter sauce bring them all together.

Maybe it’s the suddenly balmy breezes, but I’m in a tropical, seafaring mood.

Ripe pineapples from Costa Rica were in the market this morning, wafting their luscious aroma across my path, luring me deeper into towers of golden Mexican mangoes and Maradol papayas, split open to reveal orange-red flesh and peppery seeds. A few steps further and I came upon a case of plump, briny shrimp, never frozen, for 8.99 a pound.

Shrimp with pineapple was clearly in the offing—and then I remembered the vanilla oil.

If you’ve been longing to serve Toast’s delectable Moroccan Lamb Sausage, Chickpea and Roasted Tomato Bruschetta at your next party, but have been hung up on the hard to find Merguez sausage, help is at hand.

In today’s New York Times (“A Good Appetite: An Easy Route to Savory Sausages,” p. D2) Melissa Clark offers an alluring recipe for Homemade Merguez—ground lamb spiced with coriander, fennel and cumin seeds, plus fresh cilantro, paprika and cayenne. It can be shaped by hand into patties or “cigars”—no sausage casings required—and best of all, can be kept in the refrigerator for up to five days, or frozen for up to 3 months, before cooking.

In “A Mexican Feast with Artisanal Technique” and “Old World with New Twists” (The New York Times, March 25, 2009, p. D1), staff writers Kim Severson and Julia Moskin square off (in the friendliest possible way) against each other. The challenge: to create a dinner party for six for less than $50.

Inexplicably, this frozen quince blossom sent me into a frenzy of rosewater ice
cream making. The secret ingredient? Cortas rosewater from Lebanon.

This morning I woke up to a white winter wonderland. Two inches of powdery snow had fallen during the night. As my eyes fluttered open, the sun bounced off a glittering fretwork of branches rimed with frost.

The whole world was frozen. The only thing missing was the ice queen.

Oh yeah...

Happy April Fool’s Day…