A Brief History of Virginian Pork

In 1607 a few fearless settlers crossed the dizzying ocean and arrived in their promised land: Surry County, VA.

When the settlers landed they were incredibly hungry.  There were more deer and fish than one could shake a stick at…  but the palates of those first few were craving something specific: pork, bacon, ham! The pioneers knew what they had to do. A message was sent back to England, telling the Brits to send some piggies posthaste.

When the pigs arrived they were taken to their own private island (seriously) a few miles from Jamestown. In a stroke of creative genius, they named it Hog Island.

What they did with the pork was real genius, however.  They rubbed it with salt to preserve it, smoked it over an oak fire to give it flavor, and then let it mature with age, like fine Burgundy. They had that technique pretty spot on, as it has changed little in over 300 years.

The quickly multiplying pigs were a great boost for the fledging economy, and the number of farms grew and grew. As a result, ham is engrained in Virginia's history and tradition.

THE ARRIVAL OF S. WALLACE EDWARDS

As the generations passed, recipes were handed down from father to son. In 1926, S. Wallace Edwards, the captain of the Jamestown-Surry ferry, began selling his ham sandwiches during the crossing, sending his customers overboard with gastronomical delight. His cured pork proved so wonderful he was able to quit the ferry business and start hamming it up full time!

MODERN DAY

The Edwards family menu has grown significantly over the decades. Their Heritage-breed Berkshire bacon is one of many specialties. Pure bred for over 200 years, the Berkshire pigs produce darker, more flavorful meat which they use for their "Surryano" ham.  It is a perennial favorite of top restaurateurs in the U.S.  Notice the play on name with its European counterpart the famed Serrano ham of Spain.  It’s a nod to Spain and their great style.  While the Spanish feed their pigs acorns, the Berkshire pigs are fed peanuts, then smoked with hickory and aged for 18 months.  The delicate, flavorful result is mesmerizing.

Another nod to Europe, this time Italy, is "Jowciale", the Surry Farm take on Guanciale. Traditionally an unsmoked Italian bacon made from hog jowl, our friends at Edwards’ hand coat their heritage breed Six-Spotted Berkshire  with black peppercorns before being smoked over hickory for a few days. The result?  An historic European delicacy brought to life in Virginia, with somewhat of a richer flavor than bacon, which is thick and marbled beautifully.

Jowciale can be used as a substitute in almost any dish calling for thick pancetta or lardons. Slice it thin and it will irresistibly melt into any dish you prepare. A favorite use of ours is in a spaghetti alla carbonara, you’ll notice the difference over using bacon or pancetta for sure.  Bacon enthusiasts may take a little convincing, but once you try it we think you’ll agree.

Generations may have passed, but the passion and attention to detail of those first settlers remains on the farm today. When true artisanal practices create products this fantastic, one gets the feeling that Edwards of Surry County will be around for centuries to come.

No animals were harmed in the making of this Faux Gras

 You may have noticed a new product in our cooler this spring: Faux Gras, from the New York food company The Regal Vegan.



The Regal Vegan



Faux Gras is a delectable blend of lentils, walnuts, caramelized onions, and spices. Meat-free, gluten-free, and dairy-free, one thing this paté doesn’t lack is flavor.

Use it as a dip, with our Picos de Pan (mini toasted baguettes) and crudité. Spread it on a vegetable sandwich. Try these recipe ideas from The Regal Vegan website, like Faux Gras and tomato persimmon salsa on Italian bread (pictured below). Or just use a spoon, and don’t feel bad about it— Faux Gras is nutrient-rich, with lots of fiber, protein, and the healthy kind of fat from walnuts. What’s more, an entire tub has only 400 calories!

Since it contains no preservatives or chemicals, you should eat it quickly for maximum deliciousness—but then again, you’ll probably want to anyway: it’s that tasty.

The Regal Vegan

The product’s creator, Ella Nemcova, is a certified holistic health coach and natural foods chef. Faux Gras is made fresh every week in New York City, in small batches (a common theme among our favorite products). Oh, and guess what? We’re the only place outside of NYC you can buy this deliciousness.

Our omnivore customers can’t believe it doesn’t contain meat, and vegetarians (including this writer) give it enthusiastic nods of approval. Aptly described on its website as “decadent, savory and creamy,” Faux Gras is a wholesome indulgence. You deserve it!

The scoop on DC's locally made gelato

Brian Tropiano via United With Love

It’s April and it’s already sweltering out – pretty soon, we’ll be in the throes of another hot DC summer. When you’re trying to stay cool, there’s no more delicious way to do it than a spoonful of local artisanal gelato.

Dolci Gelati is based right here in Washington, DC. It opened up five years ago, and has grown to supply gelato to crowds at the National Zoo, the Nationals stadium, the Italian embassy, stores and restaurants up the East Coast, and—of course—P&C Market. I recently ventured out to the company’s gelato “laboratory” to meet the chef and to see for myself how all this delicious gelato is made.

Where the magic happens

The man behind the frozen goodness is Italy native Gianluigi Dellaccio. When we meet, he’s dressed in a sharp suit, with big sleek sunglasses. He gives me a tour, explaining along the way with an Italian accent. The laboratory’s a maze of kitchens, contraptions, and walk-in freezers. A few minutes after I arrive, I’m handed a sample of his handiwork—a cup of strawberry sorbet, which was churning just a few moments earlier. Whew, was it delicious! I bet it was the freshest I’ll ever eat.

Brian Tropiano via United with Love

The gelato is made to order in small batches. “An order comes in, and we make it fresh that day,” says Gianluigi. When a shipment gets to P&C, it was made that day or the day before—no later. The gelato operation gets hormone-free milk and cream delivered daily from a farm in Pennsylvania, and Gianluigi mixes his own sugar for the gelato in-house. Specialty ingredients like Sicilian pistachios and hazelnuts are shipped in from Italy.

Choices, choices

Gianluigi says that he has “lost count” of the total number of flavors the company has made—though a partial list of 250 can be found on their website. He says he takes suggestions, or just dreams up unusual combinations on his own to keep things interesting. Moving to the U.S. a decade ago exposed him to new international cuisines that he didn’t encounter in Italy, and has led to gelato flavors like Green Tea, Wasabi, and Thai Coconut Lemongrass.

When I ask about the difference between gelato and ice cream, Gianluigi is ready—he hands me an info sheet titled “Gelato vs. Ice Cream.” It explains that gelato has one third the fat content and half the calories of American ice cream. And because it has less fat, it does not freeze quite as solidly, making for a sensual melt-in-your-mouth quality.

A new game

Before he became a gelato maestro (no really, that’s his degree), Gianluigi was a rising water polo star. He left the sport after a dispute with his coach, and decided to turn his life toward desserts. He says what he learned from the game infuses the very spirit of Dolci. “If I am a competitor in my work ethic, it’s because of the sport—how to fight, how to reach a goal,” he tells me. “This is my game now.”

Brian Tropiano via United With Love

Dolci Gelato is a decidedly local company, with a family feel. Gianluigi lives five minutes from the gelato laboratory, and says he goes to the lab every day, leading his small staff (about 10 in all). He and his wife have two kids, and he still plays water polo recreationally in Rockville.

He says business is going great, and this June will be Dolci’s five year anniversary. His future goal (when he can find the time and the business partner) is to open a retail store. He dreams of selling pastries alongside the gelato (he’s also a pastry chef) and handmade chocolate from scratch. I got a little taste of his chocolate when I was there and let me tell you, it was amazing.

Are you hankering yet?

At P&C Market, we carry an endless variety of Dolci Gelati flavors, in a few different sizes. One of our favorite ways to enjoy it is to bring it over Lincoln Park on a hot day. Or, if you’re willing to share, it’s usually a crowd-pleaser at dinner parties. Gelato is, of course, an Italian treat. But you don’t have to hop a transatlantic flight to enjoy it.

Covered Bridge: Is it the bag, or what's inside?

There's something about the burlap bag. It can turn heads, for sure. Maybe it's even a little gimmicky, as one blogger put it. But it's hard to deny how good what's inside tastes. And if it weren't for the distinctive potato sack, Covered Bridge chips might not have made it to P&C Market. 

"I was enamored by the burlap bag," our in-house gourmet Brett will tell you.  "Turns out, the contents were outstanding, and I knew we had to have them."

P&C Market directly imports Covered Bridge potato chips and tortilla chips from New Brunswick, Canada. This province that borders Maine has most of its agriculture around the upper Saint John River Valley, and potatoes are the most important crop.

Since the 1920s, the Albright family has been farming in New Brunswick. Over the years, generations of the family have moved and acquired more farmland. Now, the fourth generation of Albrights - cousins Ryan, Matthew and Shaun, all around 30 years old - is running the show, and in 2009 began turning their family's 500 acres of potatoes into chips.

Based in Hartland, the smallest town in New Brunswick, Covered Bridge takes its name from the town's claim-to-fame: it's home to the world's longest covered bridge, built in 1901. 

What makes Covered Bridge potato chips so good? That's easy: the potato. The Albrights farm the Russet Burbank variety, which is the potato most commonly associated with Idaho, and more commonly used for french fries (chips, on the other hand, typically are made with the Maris Piper potato). Russet Burbanks are high in sugar content, and carmelization during cooking accounts for Covered Bridge chips' darker color.

There's not much else to explain. All that goes into a bag are the russets, canola oil, and sea salt. They start with a satisfying crunch and gently melt in your mouth. The salt is balanced by a light char, and like any good chip, it's difficult to put down the bag until it's empty. The flavored varieties are just as hard to put down. Smokin' Sweet BBQ is reminiscent of some really good ribs. Creamy Dill Pickle tastes like biting into the fried gherkins you might find in the South.

And as odd as it sounds for a Canadian chip-maker to be making Mexican-style corn tortilla chips, they pull it off. These small, salted triangles that have enough crunch and heft to handle the chunkiest salsa. You might even find yourself eating the lime-flavored version as a standalone chip. 

For a company that's only a few years old, it could be brazen to declare their product is "The Way Chips Should Taste." Could be, but isn't, because they're right.

And don't forget to save that burlap bag! The crafty among us have found ways to keep using it.

Pastificio dei Campi & the making of a region's pasta tradition

From http://www.pastificiodeicampi.it

Imagine a town so dedicated to making pasta that its design revolves around it—literally. Welcome to Gragnano, near Naples, Italy, a hill town wedged between a mountain range and the Amalfi coast. When Gragnano was built hundreds of years ago, the main street was made extra-wide so that pasta vendors could dry out their product in the fresh breeze that blew down the center of the road.

To this day, artisan pasta makers of Gragnano take seriously their role as keepers of a tradition, using time-honored techniques and local resources to create a pasta of unsurpassed quality. P&C Market has worked with one such vendor, Pastificio dei Campi, to bring these products to Capitol Hill in a variety of inspiring shapes.

"It is so exciting to be one of the first importers of the highest quality pastas anywhere in the world,” says Brett, our food and wine buyer. “It is such a privilege to work with Giuseppe and his family to bring in something made with so much love."

Pasta “di Gragnano” implies both a location and a style of production (not unlike DOC wine appellations; in fact, a group of Gragnano producers are seeking an E.U. designation to protect the pasta’s provenance). The process begins by combining the town’s spring water with durum wheat. Next, the pasta is finished by hand and gently pressed through bronze castes, before being slow-dried at a very low temperature. This technique, passed down from generation to generation, creates a subtly chewier, nuttier pasta, with more surface area and a slightly rougher texture—making it better able to absorb the flavor of a sauce.

With such insistence on creating an unrivaled product, it’s clear that Pastificio dei Campi is far from your typical pasta. Made in small batches, each box can be traced back to what day that batch of wheat was sown, what field it was grown in, and when it was harvested. That attention to detail, combined with the company’s devotion to quality, means that when you take home a box of Pastificio dei Campi, you’re not just buying dinner—you’re investing in the history and future of pasta. Now, that's amore!

On our shelves, you’ll recognize classics such as spaghetti and linguini, along with other options. For an authentic Southern Italian dish, try the pacherri or ziti, cooked al dente and topped with a Neapolitan ragù. We hear time and time again that our customers are finally able to replicate their favorite Italian meals with Pastificio dei Campi pasta. It’s the real deal, and we hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.

Who is Albert Ménes and how did he get to P&C Market?

It started with a can of sardines. P&C Market's food and wine buyer Brett Freeman described his transformational introduction to the Albert Ménes product line beginning with that fateful can while living in Paris: “They were, to say the least, exceptional.” Recognizing the quality of Albert Ménes products as a gift to the D.C. area, Brett and P&C Market began the long journey of bringing Albert Ménes to the United States.

Monsieur Albert Ménes himself was an explorer. As a French Marine in the early 1900s, Albert Ménes traveled the world gathering and archiving tastes and flavors. In 1921, he founded La Maison Albert Ménes with the philosophy that he was creating a high quality conservatory for the unique tastes of places and cultures around the world. Where better to showcase the tastes of the world than in the heart of the nation’s capital?

The Albert Ménes journey to P&C Market lead to treasure in an unsuspecting place. While the sardines were not yet available for import, it was revealed that the true gem of the Albert Ménes product line was the spices. Albert Ménes spices are among the highest quality in the world being carefully selected by methods of growth, curing, drying, location, processing, cooking, and packaging. Just as wine is distinguished by the region and process from which it originates, Albert Ménes spices represent people and cultures of the world. From the Ras de Hanout of North Africa to the rose colored peppercorns of France, these spices are truly a conservatory of quality. Similarly, the honeys--varying from deep earthy suede in color to an almost translucent creamy white--represent the unique conditions from which the bees have drawn their honey such as fields of lavender to forests of pine.

On October 11^th, P&C Market debuted the Albert Ménes product line as the sole U.S. importer. P&C Market now carries Albert Ménes spices, honeys, biscuits and more. You can take advantage of these beautifully crafted products with recipes such as Lapin a la Moutarde or Onion and Honey Tart.