Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food [A Cookbook] - Hardcover

Mogannam, Sam; Gough, Dabney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158008303X ISBN 13: 9781580083034

Verlag: Ten Speed Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

A cookbook and market guide from the nation’s premier neighborhood grocery store, featuring expert advice on how to identify the top ingredients in any supermarket and 90 vibrant recipes that make optimal use of the goods.
 
San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market has a following akin to a hot restaurant—its grocery goods and prepared foods have made it a destination for lovers of great food. In Eat Good Food, former chef turned market owner Sam Mogannam explains how to source and use the finest farm-fresh ingredients and artisanal food products, decipher labels and terms, and build a great pantry.
 
Eat Good Food gives you a new way to look at food, not only the ingredients you buy but also how to prepare them. Featuring ninety recipes for the dishes that have made Bi-Rite Market’s in-house kitchen a destination for food lovers, combined with Sam’s favorite recipes, you’ll discover exactly how to get the best flavor from each ingredient. Dishes such as Summer Corn and Tomato Salad, Spicy String Beans with Sesame Seeds, Roasted Beet Salad with Pickled Onions and Feta, Ginger-Lemongrass Chicken Skewers with Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce, Apricot-Ginger Scones, and Chocolate Pots de Crème will delight throughout the year.
 
No matter where you live or shop, Sam provides new insight on ingredients familiar as well unique, including:
 
• Why spinach from open bins is better than prepackaged greens
• What the material used to wrap cheese can tell you about the quality of the cheese itself
• How to tell where an olive oil is really from—and why it matters
• What “never ever” programs are, and why you should look for them when buying meat
 
More engaging than a field guide and more informative than a standard cookbook, and with primers on cooking techniques and anecdotes that will entertain, enlighten, and inspire, Eat Good Food will revolutionize the way home cooks shop and eat.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sam Mogannam is the second-generation owner of Bi-Rite Market and founder of the Bi-Rite family of businesses, which includes Bi-Rite Creamery, 18 Reasons, and Bi-Rite Farms. He also serves on the board of the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. Sam has been featured in Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Sunset, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and programs such as Foodcrafters. Sam stepped into the family grocery business in 1997, after working as a chef at his own restaurant, and transformed the market into a culinary landmark.
 
Dabney Gough is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, a former columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, and a contributor to Fine Cooking and the Honolulu Weekly. She is the co-author of the forthcoming Bi-Rite Creamery’s Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones and lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.
 
France Ruffenach’s photography has appeared in countless books, magazines, and commercial campaigns. She has been twice nominated for the James Beard Award for best photography, and won in 2008 for her work on The Country Cooking of France. She lives in San Francisco.

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Creating Community through Food

I never wanted to be a grocery guy, but here I am. My dad and uncle had owned San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market since the 1960s, which for me meant a childhood spent stocking shelves, helping out, and generally serving as free labor. Starting at the young age of six, I would go home after school every day, pick up the dinner that my mom had prepared for me and my dad, and head over to the market, where I would work until the store closed at 9 p.m. The grocery business was hardly my idea of fun, and as soon as I left home I didn’t look back.

I found my calling in the restaurant world. I went to culinary school, cooked in Switzerland for a year, and continued to cook once I returned to San Francisco. I loved cooking, and I didn’t miss the grocery business at all. So in 1997, when my dad gave me the opportunity to take over the family grocery business, I initially said, “No way.” At the very least, I was hell-bent on doing something—anything—other than running a market.

Still, Dad’s offer piqued my interest. Just like him, I had entrepreneurial blood running through my veins, and at the age of twenty-nine was coming off of six years of owning and operating my own restaurant. With his offer, I immediately started visualizing the store’s potential as a restaurant space. I fantasized about gutting the store to put in a large kitchen and a spacious dining room. Dad nipped that in the bud, though. He knew how hard I had been working at my restaurant—the long hours, the less-than-healthy lifestyle—and he denied me flat out. “You’ll never have a family if you stay in that business,” he warned. (Like many fathers of childbearing-age adults, he was pushing hard for grandchildren. Which he eventually got.)

So no restaurant. I still refused to do a grocery store, so we began to think about other ways to use the space. We entertained all kinds of ideas; someone even suggested to Dad that we open a pet food store, so we kicked that around for about a week. After much debate and no ideas that really excited me, I caved. I agreed to take over the market and continue to run it as such, but under one condition: I had to do it my way.

The odds were against us. At that time, the neighborhood was hardly the trendy, vivacious, bursting-with-energy place it is today. The Mission has always been lively, but for a long time it was the wrong kind of liveliness. Dolores Park, just half a block from the Market, was home to junkies. Stabbings and shootings happened regularly. By the time I was twelve, I had been mugged twice on my way to and from the store.

Still, when we started our renovations in November 1997, one of the first things we did was take down the metal bars that covered the windows. What a drama that was! All these old-timers—people we hadn’t seen in years—came around and asked, “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” To me, those bars made the store feel like a fortress. I wanted the store to look inviting and welcoming, so I told myself (and those questioning bystanders), “I’m taking the bars off, and I’m just going to deal with it.”

The renovated store reopened on June 8, 1998. And it was crazy. My brother Raphael and I were partners in the business (he is no longer a partner but still works at the store), supported by six staff from my old restaurant and all the family members we could corral. I wore many hats in those days: I would go to the produce market in the morning, come back and cook for the deli, stock the shelves, and ring on the register.

In the beginning, we had no idea what we were doing. We made it up as we went along, running it like a restaurant, which turned out to be a huge advantage. And, it turns out, we reinvented the grocery store in the process.

I did know one thing from the very beginning. Coming from the restaurant world, I understood the importance of making things entertaining and treating the market as a theater of sorts. The flattering lighting, the upbeat music, the open kitchen and exuberant signage are all designed to create an energetic, fun vibe. I also knew that having friendly, informed staff would be key. So we hired former waiters for our “front of house” staff, and we expected them to know our food inside and out, just as they would at a restaurant. Even if they’re stocking shelves, their main role is always to inspire customers, put them at ease, and get them excited about good food. All with the overarching goal of making grocery shopping an interactive, fun, and enjoyable experience.

The product selection got a makeover, too. We revamped the offerings and got rid of products that my dad and uncle had carried for years—things like cigarettes and forties of malt liquor. It came as a big shock to some folks in the neighborhood. After we reopened, people would come in, take a look around, and eventually ask, “Ain’t you got smokes?”

We didn’t. We filled the shelves with things that I as a chef would want: pantry items like good wine vinegar and panko bread crumbs, farm-direct produce, and sustainably raised meat. Basically, it was a lot of the same ingredients I had used at my restaurant. I preferred these ingredients because they tasted better, not just because they were organic or local. That evolution came over time and happened largely because of the people around me. These were people—mostly our own staff at first, but more and more guests as well—who wanted to make a difference in the world, and they began to push me in ways that nobody had before. Our produce buyer, Simon Richard, had a huge impact on me. A farmer himself, he helped me see farming in a new way, and I gradually understood why organic and sustainably raised produce was so important. I owe him a lot for that.

Once I made the connection—that where produce is grown, how it’s grown, andwho is behind it are all just as important as flavor—it was easy to apply that thinking to all our products. It eventually evolved into a rigorous but informal set of criteria for everything we sold: Would we eat this ourselves? Would we feed it to our children? How was this raised, grown, or made? What was the impact on the environment? How are the workers treated? Can we feel good about that?

Often, the only way to answer these questions was to talk to the producers themselves. Not many grocers can say they are on a first-name basis with the people behind the products on their shelves, but we can. In addition, since we support so many local products, it’s possible to visit the producer and see firsthand how the products are grown or raised. We also taste nearly every product before deciding whether to sell it. Even meat, cheese, or bread with the most pristine provenance will not get very far with us if it doesn’t taste good. This process of evaluating and vetting products means everything that’s here is here for a reason. The products support each other and enable cooks to achieve their vision. This alone has done a lot to establish a sense of trust between us and our guests, because they know that if we carry it, it’s going to be good. 

When we started making these changes, some guests grumbled about the higher prices that came with these more sustainable foods. We tried to help them understand the factors behind those price tags, including the lower yields (but higher quality) associated with organic farming. We worked hard to instill the idea that every grocery purchase affects the environment, the economy, and the well-being of the people who feed us. We talked about the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ten Speed Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 158008303X
• ISBN 13: 9781580083034
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Ten Speed Press; https://crownpublishing.com/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: eucomply OÜ; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; Pärnu mnt 139b-14; Tallinn; 11317; Estland