Saveur Winter 2019

SO WHERE WAS I 25 YEARS AGO? Right here. Not in the same physical location (Saveur’s got much swankier digs now), and certainly not in the same position atop the masthead. No, back when this magazine launched, I manned the reception desk outside editor-in-chief Dorothy Kalins’ office. And let me tell you, my eyes and ears were open wide. I may have been hired to answer phones and fetch coffee, but what I did was eavesdrop, and watch, as this brilliant woman conjured up this groundbreaking food bible with a little help from her friends, Christopher Hirsheimer and Colman Andrews. Basically, I had a ringside seat at Saveur’s birth. It was messy, in a most fascinating and educational way. Middle-aged grown-ups passed out in office chairs after pulling all-nighters. Knock-down drag-out fights…

Available in glossy black or candy-apple red, this beauty boasts the style and swagger of a vintage sports car, with a manual flywheel cutting mechanism that deftly shaves paper-thin ribbons of cured meat. Berkel also manufactures electric versions, but ham aficionados favor the slow and smooth hand crank, which minimizes friction and subsequent overheating—instant death for quick-melting pork fat. The B2 is pricey at $4,759 ($6,284 with a handsome matching pedestal). Then again, would you really want to subject a $400 leg of prosciutto di Parma to anything else? (theberkelworld.com)…

ALMOST A DECADE AGO, I made two good decisions. The first was to move from New York to New Orleans. The second was to get there by train. I boarded the Crescent at Penn Station, carrying a small, soft-sided cooler that contained a loaf of bread, a stick of dried Italian sausage, blocks of cheese and pâté, a bag of my mother’s chocolate chip cookies, and a bottle of Bulleit rye. I was not going to go hungry. I had purchased what Amtrak calls a roomette, an ingeniously designed closet that was, in the best possible way, like traveling in an airplane bathroom. I spent most of the 30-hour journey there, in blissful isolation. But I was equally thrilled each mealtime, when a knock came at my cabin door, alerting me…

Even at 30, I’m a little too old to truly “get” TikTok, that video-sharing app all the young people are into these days. (It’s where Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” first caught on.) But when I started seeing strange videos of people making Chinese food outdoors, I had to know more. Turns out, the real stars of TikTok are rural cooks in China (where the app is called Douyin). And I can’t stop watching. The internet can feel predictable, right? Cats riding Roombas, your uncle’s unfortunate political opinions, engagement photos from middle-school classmates—it all starts to blend together. But as these videos ping from ingredients to techniques to finished dish in just a few seconds, I never know where they’re heading. They’re surprising, and a nice reminder of just…

In 2015, when Hawa Hassan launched Basbaas Somali Foods, her personal history was widely covered. Hassan lived in a Kenyan refugee camp as a child before relocating on her own to Seattle, where she was discovered by a modeling scout. What often got lost amid the dramatic story telling and glamorous portraits? Just how delicious the products are. My favorite, the Tamarind Date sauce, based on a recipe from Hassan’s mom, incorporates fiery cherry bomb peppers and creamy medjool dates. Its sweet-tart-hot flavor makes for a truly excellent barbecue sauce, and a compelling ketchup alternative. I also stir it into yogurt and slather the stuff atop grilled chicken. Initially, Basbass Somali Foods sauces were available only through Hassan’s local Brooklyn CSA. Now, 27 retailers, including Whole Foods, sell the goods nationwide. —K.C. Jan.…

THE TOWN OF CASTRO MARIM IS TUCKED so far east into Portugal that you might hear echoes of Spanish from across the Guadiana River. Though not a famed salt mecca on the order of Guerande, France, or Maldon, England, people here have been transforming seawater into seasoning for millennia. Jorge Raiado married into this tradition 12 years ago, effectively becoming part of the second generation to operate a company called Salmarim. But any ambition Raiado had to improve the product encountered a powerful foe. The salt-making process in Castro Marim is a natural one, he explains. “Nature is always wild and does whatever she wants.” It seems simple enough: The tide runs in from the Atlantic Ocean through man-made canals, filling Salmarim’s grid of shallow mud ponds with water, which the…