Mary Brown Malouf

1 4-pound pumpkin
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 whole cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon ground ginger
6 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
cilantro for garnish

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Slice pumpkin into quarters. Scoop out seeds and place cut-side up in roasting pan. Scatter sliced onions, fresh ginger and garlic cloves around pumpkin. Drop 1⁄2 tablespoon of butter into each pumpkin quarter. Sprinkle all with dry mustard and ground ginger. Pour about 1 cup of stock into pan. Cover pan tightly with foil and bake for about 45 minutes, until pumpkin is soft.

Remove pan from oven and allow to cool slightly. Pour stock-moistened vegetables (with stock) into stockpot on top of stove. Scoop pumpkin from shell into pot and add remaining 5 cups of stock and bay leaf. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Use a stick blender to blend all ingredients into smooth soup. (You can also use a blender or food processor.) Cook for 5 minutes. To serve, ladle into bowls and garnish with about 1 teaspoon of crème fraîche and chopped cilantro. Serves 6.

Here are four easy-to-make recipes to get you started:

CHOCOLATE YOGURT

1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 envelope instant hot cocoa mix
1/4 tsp. almond extract

Mix ingredients together thoroughly, spoon into dessert dishes and chill. Serve topped with raspberries, flaked coconut, sliced bananas, crumbled nut brittle, whipped cream or other favorite toppings.

HONEY YOGURT

1 cup Greek yogurt
4 Tbsp. Slide Ridge honey
3 Tbsp. toasted pine nuts
3 Tbsp. pomegranate seeds

Top yogurt with honey, then sprinkle with seeds and nuts.

ONION DIP

Use this as a crouton or vegetable-chip dip or as a spread on roast beef sandwiches.

1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
4 cups chopped onions
3/4 tsp. salt
1 14-ounce can reduced-sodium beef broth or 1 3/4 cups mushroom broth
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 1/3 cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt

Sauté chopped onions in olive oil till soft, then add broth and cook until broth evaporates and onions caramelize. Cool, then stir onions, salt and vinegar into yogurt.

VEGETABLE RAITA

Use this as a dip, or pack it with vegetables and serve it as a slaw-like salad.

2 cups plain Greek yogurt
1 tsp. ground cumin, or to taste
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
Salt and ground black pepper
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 cup chopped fresh mint
1/2 red onion, peeled and diced
1 tomato, cored, seeded, and diced
1 rib celery, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped

Mix together. Season with cilantro or chopped fresh jalapeño if desired.

Mexican salsas are infinite, but they all fall into two main categories: cooked and uncooked. 
And nothing is simpler than an uncooked salsa. 
The most familiar is pico de gallo—onions, tomatoes, jalapeños, all chopped about the same size—
but that’s just the beginning.

Take any of the ingredient combinations below and place all 
items in a food processor. Pulse until blended but not absolutely smooth. Best if you let it stand an hour or so before serving. (chiringa.com)

Pico de Gallo
1 
1/2 cups tomatoes, diced, seeded
1/
4 cup red onion, diced
1 
jalapeño, diced, stemmed, seeded
1 
Tbsp. garlic, minced
Juice of 2 limes
2 
Tbsp. fresh cilantro
Salt and pepper

Diana Kennedy’s Hot Salsa Mexicana
1 
poblano chile, stemmed, seeded, finely  diced
1 
red jalapeño chile, stemmed, seeded, finely  diced
2 
yellow chiles, stemmed, seeded, finely  diced
1 
or 2 serrano chiles, stemmed, seeded, finely diced
3 
Tbsp. white onion, finely chopped
1 
ripe medium tomato, finely diced
3 
Tbsp. fresh lime juice
1/
2 tsp. crumbled dried oregano
Salt

Mango Salsa
1 
ripe large mango, peeled, pitted, diced
1/
2 medium red onion, finely chopped
1 
jalapeño chile, stemmed seeded, finely diced
1 
small cucumber, peeled, diced
3 
Tbsp. fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
3 
Tbsp. fresh lime juice
S
alt and pepper

Fresh Green Salsa
1/
2 pound tomatillos, husked, rinsed, quartered
1/
2 bunch fresh cilantro, rinsed, stemmed
Juice of 2 limes
4 cloves of garlic
1/
2 small white onion, chopped
1 
jalapeño pepper, stemmed, seeded, chopped
1 avocado, sliced
1/2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. salt
1/
2 tsp. black pepper

There’s a reason creatively curated bites on skewers make for must-try appetizers. They’re simple to make, easy to eat and a breeze to serve. Savor the mix of flavors, colors and textures of our tasty combinations or concoct some of your own. Simply thread the bites on slender bamboo skewers, artfully arrange the sticks on a tray or easy-to-pass platter, and let the party begin.

From left to right: Strawberry, chocolate truffle, mint leaf; Red bell pepper, feta cheese, pickled onion, blue cheese; Creminelli salame slice, red bell pepper, green olive; Strawberry, mint leaf, melon, tangerine section; Cucumber slice, grape tomato, basil leaf, black olive; Green olive, portobello mushroom, marinated artichoke heart; Boiled shrimp, grape tomato, basil leaf; Grape, blue cheese.

From left to right: Grape, blue cheese, dried fig; Watermelon chunk, boiled shrimp; Basil leaf, black olive, Creminelli salame; Grape tomato, basil leaf, bocconcini; Apple chunks, ham cube; Prosciutto, cantaloupe; Bocconcini, black olive, basil leaf, bacon; Clementine sections, chocolate truffle.

The prep was done when I arrived: 2 stock pots, 3 utility tubs, a knife, a thermal dispenser to keep the hot water at temperature, perforated baking sheet, food grade paper towels and Playtex  rubber gloves–the water is HOT. In one pot, agallon of water was heated to 100 degrees. In the other, 3 gallons water plus 1 cup sea salt was heated to 180 degrees, creating a brine solution.

I put on the gloves and faced a utlity tub, filled with the curds cut into 1/2″ cubes. The 100-degree water had been poured over the curds. I stirred them around with a wooden spoon. Mariah set up an assembly line: the utlity pan with the curds in the hot water, an empty utility pan, the thermal dispenser with the hot water, and another filled with icy slurry.

Working in batches, I took a big glop of warm curds, put them in the empty tub and covered them with hot brine solution.

Then I started kneading, moving the mass of curds back and forth in the tub until they knittd together in a single mass, stretching it until it becomes  smooth mass. Sometimes we added more of the brine to raise the temperature back up.

You don’t want to over-stretch the curds–that will make the cheese tough.

Finally, I pinched off about 7-12 ounces, and rounded it into ball, squeezing it between my hands so it has a smooth and glossy surface. Then into the icy slurry to cool for at least half an hour. Then repeat until you’ve used all the curds.

Then eat it.

Photo by Adam Finkle

Confession: Back in 1993, Salt Lake magazine ran an article about pizza.

Editors ordered pizza delivered from five places, including—hard to admit it—Pizza Hut. We counted the minutes between order and delivery. Then we counted the number of pepperoni slices on our pizza.

That’s how we judged pizza then. Domino’s won.

No more.

Now, ads and windshield flyers should tell you all you need to know about pizza chains. So we’re not even going there. This article rates pizza as it is now. We are dividing the pizzas by style—lifestyle and cooking style. (Sometimes when you want pizza is as relevant as what pizza you want.)

Basically, there was, is, now and ever shall be only three parts to a pizza: The toppings. The crust. And the fire. And all three have improved drastically sinceSalt Lake magazine rated pizza for that issue 21 years ago. You wouldn’t even know this is the same pizzaville.

Here’s a list of the best pies on the Wasatch Front.

And before you start the email onslaught: This is not an inclusive list of pizza. It’s my list. But of course, we want to know what you think. Go to saltlakemagazine.com and flame away.

Toppings 

Quality and variety of toppings are what most people notice about a pizza (unless it’s a college style pie, then quantity is what counts.) Hand-pulled mozzarella, house made ricotta, artisanal meats, including pepperoni and other cured meats from Creminelli or another artisanal salumi maker, and true San Marzano tomatoes set the standards for the new pizza.

The Dough 

No one argues that to make good pizza dough, you have to start with high-gluten flour (12 percent is supposed to be ideal.) But after that, it’s a free for all. Pizza Napoletana is made with a soft dough and takes about one minute to cook in a wood-burning oven. New Yorkers claim that the city’s water is why their pizza is inimitable. Baker Ryan Patrick Moore from at From Scratch says that the dough needs to be extensible, not elastic, and that means a long fermentation–or rising–time.

The Fiery Inferno

A gas oven and some slate can only go so far—it’s a fact that the best pizza is made in a brick oven burning fruitwood at temperatures unachievable in a home oven. The increased use of wood ovens is one of the factors that has made Utah pizza so much better in the last few years. One sign of a proper woodfired pizza: big, charred bubbles.

So, without further ado, here are the pizzas:

Strict Neapolitan Style

The rules for true Pizza Napoletana are set down, virtually in stone, by the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana. Google it. Basically, this style is foldable–soft by American standards, so it’s usually eaten with knife and fork. It must be cooked in an incredibly hot wood-burning oven.

In Salt Lake, only Settebello adheres to these rules, cooking their pies made with imported 00 flour at 900 to 1,000 degrees in an imported Italian oven. 260 S. 200 West, SLC, 801-322-3556

Artisanal

We can credit–‑of course–‑Californians with breaking all known pizza conventions. Ed LaDou started serving pizzas topped with goat cheese and truffles at Prego. Wolfgang Puck put smoked salmon and caviar on pizza at Spago in the ‘80s era of conspicuous consumption. Alice Waters opened a pizza place next to Chez Panisse; soon, every city had a joint specializing in upscale pizza topped with spinach and duck sausage. (Ladou went on to help open CPK, whence came BBQ chicken pizza. Never a good idea, even in California.)

Pizzeria Limone, a local mini-chain, bases everything on its secret crust recipe, baked in a gas-fired brick oven and finished with some tricky toppings involving lemons and blackberries. But mozzarella is aged, not fresh. Besides the original Cottonwood location, Pizzeria Limone has successfully replicated in Salt Lake City, Sandy and, soon, South Jordan. 1380 Fort Union Blvd., Cottonwood Heights.

From Scratch takes artisanal a step further by milling its own flour onsite. Because of their buy-local philosophy, the wheat from Central Milling is a mix, not 100 percent, so the pizza is baked at a lower temperature–450 to 500 degrees–in their wood oven. 62 E. Gallivan Ave., SLC, 801-538-5090

Vinto’s two locations also serve an American artisanal pie baked in a wood burning oven. Like 712, the dough is bit sturdier than Neapolitan pizza and baked at a slightly lower temperature, around 600 degrees. 418 E. 200 South, SLC, 801-539-9999; 900 Main St., Park City, 435-615-9990  

Pizzeria 712, the first restaurant in the Heirloom Restaurant Group, still serves the best pizza in Utah, because of the true chef’s attention brought to bear on the humble pie: locally-grown and made ingredients baked in an Italian-made wood burning oven at 712 degrees. Get it? The simple margherita is the apex of Utah pizza. 320 S. State St. #185, Orem, 801-623-6712

Restaurant Style 

Lots of restaurants serve pizza; here, I’m only talking about places where the pizza is a definitive part of the menu. Best by a long shot is Sea Salt.

Slackwater Pizza & Pub is more pub than a pizzeria, but the pizza is extraordinarily wild for a pub. Try the California Sunrise—it actually involves Green Goddess dressing. 1895 Washington Blvd, Ogden, 801-399-0637

Lugano has a limited pizza menu, but deserves inclusion here because of its version of pizza bianca, with roasted cauliflower and shiitake mushrooms.3364 S. 2300 East, SLC, 801-412-9994

Sea Salt’s pizza are full-on Neapolitan style in spirit–made in a wood burning oven, using San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (including di bufala), grana padano…meticulously made and topped judiciously with local produce.1709 E. 1300 South, SLC, 801-349-1480

East Coast Style

They say the first pizza establishment in the United States was opened in 1905 in New York’s Little Italy. It was cooked in coal-burning brick ovens, and the cheese was put on the dough before the sauce.

Several places in Utah claim to sell New York-style pizza, but Maxwell’s comes the closest with their 20-inch, thin pies. 357 S. Main St., SLC, 801-328-0304; 1456 Newpark Blvd., Park City, 435-647-0304

Este is a New York hipster pizza; you can tell because their best-selling pie is a veggie with spinach and they also make some pies with vegan cheese. 156 E. 200 South, SLC, 801-363-2366; 2148 S. 900 East, SLC, 801-485-3699

College Style 

In one study, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported 13 percent of the U.S. population consumes pizza on any given day–with young people representing biggest piece of the pie. Don’t even think about wood, or fresh mozzarella or local ingredients: The key to college-style pizza is sheer bulk—mountains of toppings, including lots of meat and cheese—we presume to counteract the beer.

The Pie is Utah’s quintessential college pizza joint. Obviously. And the Pie’s Combo, topped with ham, pepperoni, salami, ground beef and two kinds of sausage, is a best-seller. The original location is a U of U institution, but now there are locations all around Northern Utah. 1320 E. 200 South, SLC, 801-582-0195 

Roasted Sun, a perennial favorite located conveniently not far from the club strip on State, uses an old-school gas deck oven with big pieces of slate. 2010 S. State St., SLC, 801-483-2120

SLABpizza in Provo–BYU’s college pizza of choice–offers the required collegiate mass in a new way. A slab is one quarter of a 20-inch pizza–you order toppings for each slab. 671 E. 800 North, Provo, 801-377-3883

Midnight Pizza

Sometimes you don’t just want pizza, you have to have pizza. Elsewhere, late-night pizza is a whole genre. The pickings are slimmer in Utah, but there is the Pie Hole, where you can get a midnight slice, and when all else fails, Big Daddy’s even has an ordering app for your smartphone. You don’t even have to think to order this pizza.

Pie Hole

344 S. State St, SLC, 801-359-4653

Big Daddy’s

470 S. 700 East, SLC, 801-746-7499

Back>>>Read other stories in our July/August 2014 issue.

I tend to think of pork as an autumnal animal, especially if it’s roasted. I think of pork and apples and fall pig killings, although my main source for these impressions is a close reading of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books as a child.

Remember how Laura and Mary tossed around the old pig bladder?

Basically, my favorite children’s books focused on food. Or at least that’s the part I remember. After I read The Secret Garden, I couldn’t wait for my first taste of clotted Devon cream.

But forget roast pork and cabbage or roast pork and applesauce and consider island pork—not just Hawaiian, but Cuban and Puerto Rican, like,  for example, the Cubanesque sandwich I had for lunch a while back at Caffe Niche. Roast pork, sliced thin and piled on a bun with caramelized onions and cole slaw made a great warm-weather meal.

And my sister-the-chef sent me this recipe today, for a pork roast that will be as good cold as when it’s fresh out of the oven.

Puerto Rican Roast Pork
Serves 10-12

Marinade:

12 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ cup fresh thyme
½ cup olive oil
1 Tbsp. black peppercorns
2 Tbsp. kosher salt
2 cups sour orange juice OR 1 ⅓ cups orange juice and ⅔ cup lime juice
4-5 lbs. pork sirloin tip or boneless pork shoulder

Mix all ingredients except the meat in a food processor. Mix until almost smooth.

Put the marinade and meat into a large Zip Lock bag and marinate for 6-10 hours in the refrigerator.

One hour before cooking, remove the meat from the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature. Pre-heat the oven to 450⁰.

Wipe most of the marinade off the pork (leaving some of the puree on is OK) and place in a heavy roasting pan. Cook in the oven for 15 minutes until lightly brown.

Lower the heat to 250⁰, add a little water to the pan and cover with aluminum foil. Cook for 2-3 hours until the meat is tender throughout.

Remove the meat from the pan, keep it warm on the side and reduce the pan juices slightly. Strain and taste. If the sauce is not too salty, serve with the meat. If it is a little too salty, wash and slice a potato. Add a few slices of the raw potato to the pan and cook for another 5-10 minutes. Discard the potato slices. They should have absorbed quite a bit of the salt, so taste the sauce again before serving and adjust the seasoning.

Slice the meat across the grain and serve with black beans and rice.

And serve it the next day as a sandwich. My current fave sandwich bread is the ciabbata rolls from Harmons–crusty enough to be flavorful, soft enough to bite through.

UTAH MULES
You can order a Moscow Mule at Bar-X and The Green Pig Pub in Salt Lake City or at Park City’s Stein Eriksen Lodge and the Bistro at Canyons.

THE RECIPE
Squeeze the juice from half a lime (about 1/2 ounce) into a copper cup; drop in the lime shell. Add ice cubes, then add 2 ounces of vodka and fill the cup with ginger beer. If you must substitute ginger ale for the ginger beer, mix in a small amount of fresh, grated ginger to give it a little burn.

THE NAME
“Buck” and “mule” are old-fashioned names for mixed drinks using ginger ale or ginger beer, cirus juice and liquor.

THE MUG
The complicated, contradictory and mostly uninteresting stories about the Moscow Mule’s origin have one thing in common: the celebrity favorite Cock ‘n’ Bull restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in L.A., whose proprietor was Jack Morgan, president of Cock ‘n’ Bull, a brewwer of ginger beer. The original Cock ‘n’ Bull was an English pub, which traditionally served beer and ale in copper mugs, so presumably one was handy.

You can find copper mugs online, but they’re quite expensive, which explains why many bars require a deposit on the mug when you order.

GET ‘EM HERE
Sertodo hammered copper mugs, $116/set of four, amazon.com

WHAT’S THE DIF? GINGER BEER vs. GINGER ALE
Ginger beer was originally a fermented alcoholic beverage made from ginger and water. Now it gets its bubbles from carbonization. It is much stronger, darker and spicier in flavor than mild, sweet ginger ale, and sometimes it’s less fizzy.

FeverTree Ginger Beer, $6 per 4-pak, Harmons, SLC

This post was originally published on utahstyleanddesign.com.

SSlide Ridge Honey has been one of Utah’s local food heroes, a genuine mountain honey literally unique to Northern Utah. Honey’s flavor, body and aroma, like wine and cheese, is directly related toterroir–the land it comes from. Honey aficionados prize particular honeys, like New Zealand anuka, Tuscan chestnut, Hawaiian white and Ghanaian honey, because they can only come from one place.

Slide Ridge has been touted as Utah’s elite honey–made by local beekeepers in our high arid mountains. It says so on their website:

“At Slide Ridge, we start with pure, unfiltered raw wildflower honey, produced in our own sustainably managed beehives. Gathered from wildflowers in the pristine, high mountain valleys of Northern Utah, our bees produce a delicately flavored, elite-quality raw honey. From this honey, we produce a rare Honey Wine Vinegar that is a treat to the palette [sic] and the body. Try them both today and you will never settle for second best again.”

But what if it’s not?

Slide Ridge Honey Wine Vinegar sells for $50 a 750-ml bottle. So yes, it’s elite. You can find it at Caputo’s, Whole Foods, Liberty Heights Fresh and in the pantries of many local chefs. But recently, questions have been raised about Slide Ridge.

Matt Caputo was one of the earliest local champions of the honey, the wine and the wine vinegar. I remember going into the downtown store one day and running into Matt. He had that fanatical fire in the eye he gets when he’s excited about a new food, and I had to stop and taste everything. But this week, Caputo’s sister distributing company A Priori sent out a letter to its customers:

“Dear ____________,

At A Priori, we distinguish our product mix by selling the best of the best. Our “Local Gold Standard” collection, of which Slide Ridge was a part, is based on foods that are not only local, but world class. Our focus is on products which are not merely manufactured here, but have ingredients with intrinsic roots to Utah.

From the time we started working with them, Slide Ridge helped us to build a narrative of their product based on their families’ own beehives in Mendon, Utah, and Martin James’ outlier ability to produce one of the highest quality honeys in the world. We developed a story of how their products beautifully conveyed the terroir of Utah’s Cache Valley, etc., etc.”

“Unfortunately, in mid-March, it came to our attention that Slide Ridge has been sourcing Canadian honey to produce at least its Honey Wine Vinegar. While they have tried to put a positive spin on it for us, we have concluded that we cannot do the same. We cannot stand by and knowingly continue to distribute an adulterated product. Once we found out, and after some soul-searching, we determined that it is in the customer’s best interest to know and that it was A Priori’s ethical obligation to keep you informed of such changes, when they occur. “

I called Slide Ridge to hear their side of this story and spoke to business owner Elmer James. He said, yes; Slide Ridge has been buying Canadian honey. “The drought had a tremendous effect on our bees and we’ve had tremendous bee losses. We’ve been buying from other Utah producers and bought all that up; otherwise we would have had to limit production. There’s no way we could produce enough product anyway, we’re in a desert. You got one arm tied behind your back.”

Sounds reasonable. (And sad, if you’re worried about the declining bee population.) But the narrative about the sustainably raised high mountain honey on Slide Ridge’s packaging and website doesn’t say anything about Canadian honey. Or even other Utah honey.

Elmer clarified. “We’ve only used the Canadian honey in the wine vinegar and the Cacysir <honey wine>.” A few hours later he called back to further clarify, “We’ve never used any of the Canadian honey in our products.”

Caputo’s and Slide Ridge are in a contract dispute concerning distribution. They have bones to pick with each other.

But I’m interested in a question that has larger ramifications—for foodies, for health nuts, for environmentalists trying to reduce their carbon footprint, for anyone who finds Slide Ridge’s Utah story compelling enough to pay $50 for a bottle of honey wine vinegar. As all of us become more concerned about where our food comes from and how it was raised and not just how much it costs, we become more susceptible to being duped. Is a product real or fake? Organic or not? I think most of us believe we can safely trust the word of local producers. Our neighbors. So when the question becomes, is it local or not, it gets a little more personal.

This is not a new problem. The French have been accused of substituting Algerian wine for their own. We all know about Ikea’s meatball recall. Kim Angelli, who runs Salt Lake City’s Downtown Farmers Market, has to check up on participating farmers to be sure they’re selling their home-grown produce and not something trucked in from California.

When it comes to honey, there are certain healthful properties attributed to honey that comes from the area you live in. Utahns don’t need to be acclimatized to pollen from Ghana. Or Canada. If you’re trying to be truly conscientious about buying locally for the sake of the environment, it matters whether product is trucked in from another country or harvested up the road.

But it becomes a bigger problem as we place more value on the source of our food. The more we understand about the food we eat, the more complex the ethical questions surrounding it.

When you start out selling a highly specialized and rare artisanal product, you have automatically restricted your business’ growth in advance. Scarcity equals value, just like quality is supposed to. There’s not going to be an ever-expanding supply of high desert Rocky Mountain honey because only so many wildflowers flourish in those growing conditions and that short season. You have no guarantee, or even likelihood, of expanding your product to fill the demand you create.

This is part of what “sustainable” means.