Our newest invention in the Anarchy kitchens is UMAMI SHISO FINE MUSTARD, and it’s just what it sounds like: umami + shiso. How do we make it? We take mustard seeds [...]]]> Say it out loud and it’s pretty funny: “umami shiso fine”. Say it with a little swagger, maybe a slight Puerto Rican or Dominican accent.

Our newest invention in the Anarchy kitchens is UMAMI SHISO FINE MUSTARD, and it’s just what it sounds like: umami + shiso. How do we make it? We take mustard seeds and “pickle” them in a brine of rice vinegar, green tea, fresh shiso leaf, fresh garlic and ginger, fish sauce and Korean red chile flake.

This flavor reminds me of the time Kheedim from Mamo O’s Kimchee and I made our “Anarchy Mama” jam-chee years ago — the casualty of a radio show in which we were competing against which of our products was sexier (I won, no surprise). It was basically a kimchee flavored marmalade, an aphrodisiac and surprisingly delicious.

Mustard is a marvel. You take a basic item, dried mustard seeds which are harvested once the mustard plant (mustard leaves are delicious as well) has flowered, and add liquid + your imagination = limitless mustard condiments. Whiskey + apple mustard? Yes. Jasmine tea + ginger + lemongrass mustard? Yep. Port + plum mustard? You bet. The sky is the limit. We’ll try and control ourselves.

Wait, but what’s umami? Let me quote one of my favorite people, Robert Krulwich of Radiolab (please read this in his voice, if you can):

“UMAMI. Glutamate is found in most living things, but when they die, when organic matter breaks down, the glutamate molecule breaks apart. This can happen on a stove when you cook meat, over time when you age a parmesan cheese, by fermentation as in soy sauce or under the sun as a tomato ripens. When glutamate becomes L-glutamate, that’s when things get “delicious.” L-glutamate, said Ikeda, is a fifth taste. When Escoffier created veal stock, he was concentrating umami. When Japanese made their dashi, they were doing the same thing. When you bite into an anchovy, they are “like glutamate speedballs. They are pure umami,” Jonah [Lehrer] writes. “Aristotle was wrong. Plato was wrong. We have five tastes, not four. But when Ikeda’s findings were published,” Jonah says, “nobody believes him.  So Who Was Right?

It turns out, almost 100 years after Escoffier wrote his cookbook and Ikeda wrote his article, a new generation of scientists took a closer look at the human tongue and discovered, just as those two had insisted, that yes, there is a fifth taste. Humans do have receptors for L-glutamate and when something is really, really yummy in a non-sweet, sour, bitter or salty way, that’s what you’re tasting. In 2002, this became the new view. It’s in the textbooks now and scientists decided to call this “new” taste, in Ikeda’s honor, “umami.” If you want to get an umami headache, add some monosodium glutamate to your next bowl of noodles.”

Read the full story at NPR.org. 

Note: I’d like to take credit for the name of this mustard, but it actually came from my much wittier friend, the wonderfully inventive curiosity-driven designer Caroline Brown.

A Meet-the-Maker Artisan Marketplace Sunday, MAY 5, Noon to 4:00 p.m. New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, N.Y.C. Free!   RSVP to taste@nyhistory.org Visit www.nyhistory.org/taste for more information

The market will feature multiple vendors, offering visitors a place to meet and mingle with the incredibly talented artisan food makers whose products are for sale in the Museum [...]]]> A Taste of New-York History Launch Event

A Meet-the-Maker Artisan Marketplace
Sunday, MAY 5, Noon to 4:00 p.m.
New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, N.Y.C.
Free!   RSVP to taste@nyhistory.org
Visit www.nyhistory.org/taste for more information

The market will feature multiple vendors, offering visitors a place to meet and mingle with the incredibly talented artisan food makers whose products are for sale in the Museum Store.  The vendors will offer samples, explain their process, and give you a history of food-making as it is happening now in New York in their kitchens and on their farms.  In telling their stories, the Museum Store continues New-York Historical Society’s discovery and preservation of agriculture’s impact on the people and communities of New York.

Winter is so boring, especially for fruit nerds like us. But we fought the blues by creating a new flavor, Fig + Onion Jam, and we think you’re going to like it. Laena is a big fan of savory + sweet condiments, ones that can flirt with cheese but stand on their own too. We [...]]]>

Winter is so boring, especially for fruit nerds like us. But we fought the blues by creating a new flavor, Fig + Onion Jam, and we think you’re going to like it. Laena is a big fan of savory + sweet condiments, ones that can flirt with cheese but stand on their own too. We made it Anarchy-style: simple, balanced with kick-ass ingredients like Organic black mission figs and local onions from our farmer friends at Greenmarket, finished with a hint of maple syrup + orange zest.

Available by April at a store near you! Check out the jams at Whole Foods and all our favorite cheese shops, like Murray’s, Bedford Cheese Shop, Stinky Brooklyn and Lucy’s Whey.

Wanna try it? We’ll be at Smorgasburg starting in April.

For those who have frequented Smorgasburg [...]]]> Maybe “performance art” is a stretch, but I’ll be demonstrating the art of jam at the wonderful Greenlight Bookstore this coming Monday, March 4th at 7:30pm. Brooklyn Based wrote a bangin’ write-up about it, and I’m quoting it here in it’s entirety since it’s just so nice and so awesome:

For those who have frequented Smorgasburg or many of the fine brick-and-mortar cheese shops, green grocers, or local food specialty stores, Anarchy in a Jar is kind of legendary. Simultaneously part icon and part iconoclast, Anarchy embraces the normally grandma-ish activity of small-batch, handmade jam production, only to smash it to the ground and watch delightedly after setting it on fire with all the reverence of Jimi Hendrix and his strat at the Monterey Festival in 1967. After years of daydreaming about what it would be like to be as cool as Anarchy founder and original Jam Queen Laena McCarthy, we’re so stoked that she’s finally written a cookbook so we can capture some of her punk-rock preserves magic at home. To celebrate McCarthy’s Jam On: The Craft of Canning Fruit, Greenlight is cohosting a book signing and canning demonstration with The Greene Grape, so not only will you get jam recipes and other tips of the trade, you’ll be able to sit in on a “jam session” live and in person. With jams, jellies, and preserves like their Arnold Palmer Jelly or Easy Like Sunday Morning Blueberry Preserves, there’s something for renegades and traditionalists alike.

Comparing my jam making to Jimi Hendrix at Monteray? Might be the best compliment I’ve ever gotten. Thanks, guys, we really love you.

I love hearing the ways people reuse our jam jars — salad dressing shaker, shot glass, and spice storage are some of my favs. But the most fun, creative and splashy? Making snow globes. How awesome are snow globes? As a little girl, I used to [...]]]>

Or you can buy these rad ones on Etsy!

I love hearing the ways people reuse our jam jars — salad dressing shaker, shot glass, and spice storage are some of my favs. But the most fun, creative and splashy? Making snow globes. How awesome are snow globes? As a little girl, I used to endlessly flip my mom’s elaborate snow globes, watching the snow move around tiny alpine villages and castles, like glimpsing a shrunken and encapsulated world. I can’t profess to be an expert, but with modest craft skills and mostly recycled items, you can make very cool snow globes.

HOW-TO MAKE YOUR OWN SNOW GLOBES

Supplies:

1. Cool tiny things to stick to your jar lid. Make sure they’re ceramic or plastic (they’ll be in water). Try art stores or flea markets or your local weird dollar store.

2. If you want to paint things inside or your lid, you’ll need oil-based enamel paint. For the rest, sandpaper, epoxy or waterproof glue such as Gorilla Glue, distilled water, glitter, and glycerin (available at drugstores, usually in the form of constipation cures or at craft supply stores).

Steps:

1. Start with a jam jar and lid, and your figurines.

2. If you want to get pretty with it, you can paint the otherwise boring jar lid with an oil-based enamel paint. Then sand the inside of the lid so it’s rough and can handle the epoxy. With epoxy or waterproof glue like Gorilla Glue, adhere your figurines, rocks, shells or other doodads to the inside of the lid, and let the epoxy/glue dry.

3. Fill the jar almost to the top with distilled water; add a little glitter or crushed Styrofoam  for snow and a dash of glycerin to keep the glitter suspended (*note you can use baby oil or mineral oil instead of water + glycerin, but sometimes this makes the glitter clumpy, plus it’s expensive if you’re making more than one). Don’t go too crazy with the glitter, it can stick to the lid. Gently screw on the lid, taking care to not muss your figurines. Now flip the jar back and forth — let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

There was lots of blushing and and whoops of joy in the Anarchy kitchen when we saw our  Tipsy Quince & Cranberry Chutney featured in the November issue of Saveur.

If you would like to try the chutney, you can find it at our market booths at Smorgasburg (Williamsburg on Saturdays and Dumbo on Sundays) and [...]]]>

There was lots of blushing and and whoops of joy in the Anarchy kitchen when we saw our  Tipsy Quince & Cranberry Chutney featured in the November issue of Saveur.

If you would like to try the chutney, you can find it at our market booths at Smorgasburg (Williamsburg on Saturdays and Dumbo on Sundays) and New Amsterdam Market. You can also purchase it online at New York Mouth. A few stores also have it in stock, such as Eastern District in Greenpoint.

For many of us, the holidays in late fall and early winter are a great excuse to cook decadently. I love pouring over food magazines and websites, dreaming of my next big dinner party. Not only does the November issue of Saveur feature the chutney, it’s chock full of fascinating recipes to get your mouth watering. And as a final cherry-on-top, it includes an article on my French jam idol Christene Ferber, the “fairy godmother” of all things jam.

I apologize to all the folks who’ve been asking for classes this summer, but they’re back for fall! And this time, I’m teaching in our professional kitchen at the secret Anarchy in a Jar headquarters. This class will be super fun! And it ends with a jam, cheese, wine/beer pairing (i.e., snacks).

ABOUT THE CLASS:

Do you [...]]]>

I apologize to all the folks who’ve been asking for classes this summer, but they’re back for fall! And this time, I’m teaching in our professional kitchen at the secret Anarchy in a Jar headquarters. This class will be super fun! And it ends with a jam, cheese, wine/beer pairing (i.e., snacks).

ABOUT THE CLASS:

Do you want to learn how to make jam? Do you want to get your jam on at the secret Anarchy in a Jar headquarters? Learn how to take advantage of local produce and make delicious homemade jam in this hands-on class taught in a cozy, professional jam kitchen.

You’ll learn the time-honored tools and tricks to preserve summer in a jar with Laena’s easy and unique methods. Each participant gets a jar of handmade jam to take home with them, along with recipes and tips to try at home. The class ends with a jam, cheese & wine/beer pairing and tasting.

Classes are for beginner’s, but folks with jam skills are welcome to join and learn some new tricks.

You will learn:

• tips on sourcing fruit
• cooking and preserving, while maximizing flavor
• canning and processing jars for shelf-stable jam
• tips for serving jam
• enjoying your final product with cheese & wine/beer!

Sign up here.

Time: MONDAY, OCTOBER 15th  | 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EDT

Location: 157 Freeman Street (follow the signs for Anarchy in a Jar) in Greenpoint, Brooklyn