Hi friends,

We welcome May with open arms as she keeps ushering in beautiful produce that we have not seen in a year and remind us of summer months ahead! Oh, summer. We love you for your warm late nights, spur of the moment picnics with juicy tomatoes, perhaps some burrata with sweet stone fruit, and some crispy and cold Albariño. Who's in?! I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, but I'm sure you can relate. We are so close to those warm days we can almost taste it.

This past month our multi-talented culinary visionary, Rocio, invested her creative energy doing research and development for our new pasta menu. That means working with our newest flour and grain purveyor, Anson Mills. A few months back, I mentioned our excitement about using their organic heirloom grains and embarking on our handmade pasta and bread program. Allow me to share some insight into why we feel so passionate about this purveyor.

Its founder, a modern-day renaissance man, Glenn Roberts is from San Diego. He grew up with a southern scratch-cooking mother who believed rice was a staple with every meal. At the ripe age of eight, his dad started teaching him how to fly a single engine light plane. On the weekends he worked as a busser at a restaurant. He was fond of experimenting with chemistry, played the French horn in the San Diego Symphony, and later joined the Air Force.  As if flying wasn’t enough, he later sailed around the world as a navigator on yachts and drove long haul trucks. You could say he'd done it all, but his curiosity persisted. Eventually he landed on studying architectural history and the history of food with a focus on South Carolina.

During his exploration into South Carolina's food history, he stumbled upon Carolina Rice Kitchen. It was not an actual kitchen but more a style, philosophy, and cuisine that dates back to the early 1800's, and it had many similarities to what we now call farm-to-table. Produce was locally-grown and hand harvested, their proteins were all pasture-raised. The cuisine used Carolina Rice as the main ingredient and was prized for its superior flavor, texture, and cooking quality. This grain, which some call the “world’s best rice,” played a historic role in southern cuisine and agricultural wealth.

Once the European, Native American, and African cultures started embracing each other's foods, their cooking techniques and practices, the regional cuisine emerged as one of a kind. The African slaves in the American South had a deep, lasting influence on Southern cuisine. They conceived of dishes such as gumbo, and introduced foods like okra, black-eyed peas, collards, yams, and melons. Creole cooking had clearly taken note. 

Throughout time and the industrialization of farming, growers started leaning more toward high yield crops and became less interested in hand-picked Carolina Rice. Inevitably, it was phased out. Generations later and during his studies, Glenn entered the scene having possessed a fully realized and madly ambitious plan: to make Carolina Gold rice a viable Southern crop. His goal was to grow, harvest, and mill the nearly extinct varieties of heirloom corn and wheat organically. He perfected pre-industrial milling techniques and uses the practice of rotating crops to enhance the soil. After revitalizing these lost heirloom grains, he set out on mission to show chefs the positive impact this would have on their food. Now, the top kitchens in the US regard these as the paradigm for quality in their dishes. 

It is with this history, enthusiasm, and high standard that we have introduced Anson Mills heirloom grains into our kitchen. All the pasta made by hand at MIHO will use the Anson Mills Farina di Maccheroni ‘00’ Crema, also known as the Pasta Maker's flour. This an heirloom Italian wheat that is hand-bolted just like they did in the 17th century to extract certain oils. It makes the pasta dough silky and a delight to work with. MIHO’s Chef Rocio created some beautiful pasta varieties, all made by hand in our kitchen using Anson Mills flour. Our new family-style pasta menu features thick Pappardelle, Triangoli pressed and rolled with fresh squash blossoms, hand folded Tortellini filled with charred eggplant, Balanzoni pouches filled with spinach, and hand rolled potato Gnocchi and Cavatelli.

Chef Rocio’s talents were on full display utilizing the heirloom grains in these creative dishes, providing delectable and unique flavors unlike anything we’ve tasted before. 

NEWS & SEASONAL TRENDS

Lots of great spring beauties landed in the kitchen this month from a handful of new small farms we hadn't had the pleasure of using before. We saw some baby artichokes from Sun Coast Farms, a cool variety of grapefruit called Melogold from Murray Family Farms (this is a hybrid between a pomelo and a white grapefruit). Weiser Farms has some beautiful pink chicory radicchio called Rosalba that is floral, sweet and less bitter than the normal variety and just perfect in our salads with that Melogold of course. Have you heard of Parisian carrots? I hadn't until the ones from Windrose Farms came in. They are cute, petite, and similar in size to a radish. They are an heirloom variety that dates back to the 19th century! If you see some at the farmers market, I recommend grabbing yourself a bunch or two. Windrose Farms is a regenerative farm in the foothills of Paso Robles and dedicated to reviving heirloom seeds. It's exciting to see people focusing efforts into bringing back old varieties that have been lost through time.

FARM WORTH READING ABOUT

One of the many great qualities of Anson Mills is their seed giving program. They do the research and invest their time and energy to recover heirloom seeds and share them with small independent farmers. Through this program, the founder of Anson Mills made a connection with Alex Weiser from Weiser Family Farms (one of our favorites). He donated hundreds of seeds to Alex and other nearby farms to start their own grain hub and focus on creating their own non-gmo grain belt. From this, the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project was born in 2013. They are committed to preserving and growing heritage grains which are naturally drought-tolerant. Some of their popular grains are Abruzzi rye, which many breweries and distilleries love, and the Sonora wheat which is originally from Sonora, Mexico. We're fans of their flour tortillas which you can get at Specialty Produce to cook up some squash flower quesadillas or some sincronizadas (a quesadilla with beans and ham)! For the Angelenos, try the blue corn tortillas from Gjusta Grocers.

It's exciting to see people passionate about bringing back old varieties of grains that have been lost through time and sharing that with us. Let's continue to support small farms and revitalize food through history!