Saveur Spring 2019

IT STOPPED ME FOR A SECOND. On page 70 in this issue, Zurab Chkadua from the country of Georgia refers to cheese as a “God-given treasure.” You may very well agree, no explanation needed. But even if you don’t (yet), it’s hard not to admire that kind of passion for, well, anything—but definitely for food. The writers and cooks in this issue each have a culinary curiousity that borders on obsession—be it a cuisine, an ingredient, or a cultural tradition—and our stories and recipes celebrate their admirable dedication. For them and many of us, food is not just a thing eaten around a table. Sometimes, like in the case of the Georgian cheese, it’s a culture’s history rolled up into a food, each component revealing something about the people behind it:…

Bells of the Ball In western Switzerland, traditionally crafted bells help dairy farmers distinguish prized cows IN THE PASTURES OUTSIDE OF Fribourg, Switzerland, gently undulating fields of green rise up to meet pure blue sky at the horizon. Rugged mountains reach upward, craggy peaks white with snow. As far as the eye can see, huge dairy cows with their black-and-chestnut-colored markings dot the fields. Standing nearly 5 feet tall and weighing up to 2,000 pounds, these gentle giants lazily graze on lush grass and wildflowers. Their resulting milk—harvested twice a day—is transformed into some of the world’s greatest dairy: Dense and nutty Gruyère AOP cheese comes from the canton of Fribourg, as does thick double cream and exquisite milky-sweet butter. Hanging from each cow’s massive neck is one of the most recognizable symbols…

WHEN ZIMBABWE-BASED COOK NICOLA Kagoro announced that she wanted to ignite a vegan movement among black Africans, her friends mostly laughed. Vegan food, many said, was an expensive trend, filling niche sections of the supermarket with gimmicky artificial meats. But Kagoro wasn’t following a fad; she was looking backward. “Our ancestors were vegan,” she says, referring to the centuries before Western colonization on the continent, when the majority of people subsisted largely on plants. “We have always been vegan, and that tradition and culture should not be forgotten.” Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Kagoro spent most of her youth in New York City. She attended culinary school in Cape Town, South Africa, where she happened to intern at a vegan restaurant called Plant. “At the time, I didn’t even know what ‘vegan’…

EVERY REFRIGERATOR IN HAWAI‘I HAS AT least one batch of chile pepper water in it. When I was a kid, in the town of Hilo, on Hawai‘i’s Big Island, my dad and I would save old glass jars or cool-looking whiskey bottles for making and storing our own. Around the dinner table, my father and uncles would take little gulps of it from a shot glass, or else sip it from a ramen spoon in between bites of the meal. Somewhere between a condiment and a chaser, chile pepper water can be drizzled over food like hot sauce, but most people prefer to sip it alongside rich dishes, like local-style beef stew or lau lau—a steamed roll of pork or fish wrapped in taro leaves. Chile pepper water originates from the native…

BORN AND RAISED IN NORTHWESTERN ALGERIA, NEAR THE border of Morocco, Warda Bouguettaya moved to the U.S. when she was 21 years old. “I followed my love to Detroit,” she says. After a few years, it happened again: He received an offer to work in China for three years, so they moved there before ultimately settling back in Michigan. “The idea of opening a pâtisserie was to have a space that celebrates all the places I have once called home: Algeria, France, and Asia,” Bouguettaya says. Using locally sourced ingredients such as flour from Michigan’s Ferris Organic Farm, and even some savory herbs and vegetables from nearby urban farms, she tries to achieve the most traditional versions of pastries from each place. “The ingredients might be a little different here in…

ON A TUESDAY MORNING, A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN bustles into a kitchen in the town of Zarqa, Jordan, just outside Amman, holding multiple bags of meat. Around the kitchen, orders are scrawled on sticky notes and empty boxes. Today, she has to make 70 kibbeh, a type of fried Levantine meat croquette, and she appears completely at ease. “It’ll take four hours,” she estimates, and rolls up her sleeves. She puts away her things. The bottom of her headscarf is neatly tucked inside her tunic. She combines bulgur wheat with spoonfuls of crushed red pepper, flour, black pepper, and lamb, and kneads the mix into a dough, animatedly narrating the process as she reaches for ingredients. She works for a women-led cooking collective in Jordan, operated by a nonprofit organization, where a…