Table of contents for 2018 Vol. 3 in SAVEUR

MAKES 20 Active: 1 hr. 10 min. Total: 2 hr. 45 min. When made with properly fatty bacon, the filling in these rustic buns melts into an irresistible fondant of smoked pork and onions, each one indistinguishable from the other. To replicate the rolling, radiant heat from the traditional Latvian cepeškrāsns (wood-fired ovens) that give these buns their burnished tops, bake in a very hot oven for the first several minutes of baking. 1 cup heavy cream, at room temperature1 Tbsp. plus 2½ tsp. sugar1¼ tsp. instant (not active dry) yeast3 large eggs, divided3¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting1¼ tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste6 oz. fatty bacon, cut into ¼-inch pieces1 medium yellow onion (8 oz.), diced (¾ cup)Freshly ground black pepperLard or butter, for greasing…

IT’S APPARENT BY NOW THAT WHAT HAPPENS in the food world can have big, sweeping reverberations outside of it. The choices we make individually and collectively about food—like what we eat, and how and where we grow, make, and consume it—affect everything from agriculture and the environment to political policy, world hunger, climate change, and so much more. Food also plays a societal role, influencing how we act toward and around one another, and the way we experience people, cultures, and traditions that are different from us and our own. Ultimately this all factors in to how well we understand and relate to one another in our communities and across borders. We are happy that 2018 is a year, long overdue, in which women are being prioritized, listened to, and…

A SOFT AMBIENT GROOVE drifts through the tasting room of Nani Moon Meadery on Kauai, as three travelers take their first sips of Laka’s Nectar, the most honey-forward blend in mead-maker Stephanie Krieger’s collection. Light, complex, and occasionally effervescent, her meads are nothing like the dense, sweet honey wines created by ancient brewers. By the time the group has finished their glasses, mead has shaken its 7,000-year-old reputation to exhibit complexities as diverse as its modern makers. Krieger was a marine scientist before she shifted to mead-making. She is using her training to help forge a new path for the industry, one committed to local sourcing and countering the global decline in bee populations. She concentrates on local fruits that don’t export well—all grown within 15 miles of the meadery—and…

WHILE TRAVELING THROUGH THE wetlands of northeast India’s Majuli island, chef Amninder Sandhu and the team from Arth, her Mumbai restaurant, sat down for a meal with members of the local Mishing tribe. They were presented with a thali, a traditional round platter, loaded with local delicacies: banana flowers, fish curry, fiddlehead ferns. “There were also these really tiny potatoes,” Sandhu recalls. “We thought they were chickpeas at first, because they were that small. But I put one in my mouth and realized, these are the potatoes I grew up eating as a child!” The guti aloo, or “pearl potatoes,” as Sandhu calls them, are native to India’s Assam state, and are just one of dozens of regional ingredients she has brought back to her kitchen in Mumbai. Sandhu spent…

Chef Esther Choi of mŏkbar in Brooklyn grew up cooking and eating traditional Korean food, many of the recipes taught to her by her grandmother. “My mom jokes with me that before I even had teeth, I was sucking on kimchi.” THREE DECADES AGO, when Esther Choi’s parents and grandmother emigrated from Korea to New Jersey, they set to work building a garden to make their own kimchi, the basis of most of their weeknight meals. “At the time, there was no kimchi at restaurants nearby,” she says, “and it was hard even to find any Asian ingredients in stores.” Choi’s grandmother began gathering neighbors and friends to make communal batches of kimchi in their local church basement. The fall batch was the most important because it meant their garden…

You can use a nonstick pan to make a 12-inch version, or mimic the whopping crêpes made on commercial griddles in India by using a large, well-oiled cast-iron or freestanding electric griddle. Either way, learning to perfect the balance between crunchy edges and a pillowy underside takes a few tries. (A properly mixed and fermented batter goes a long way; recipe at right.) Once you’ve got the batter and shaping down, Raj says, “the trick to a crispy dosa is a little oil or ghee.” Here are Raj’s instructions. STEP 1: Ladle and Spread Be sure the dosa batter is free of lumps. In the center of a hot pan, working quickly but evenly, add a ladleful of batter (start with? cup for a 12-inch pan). Starting in the center,…

Marinated Anchovies with Candied Citrus, Pickled Raisins, and Chile SERVES 4–6 Active: 15 min. Total: 30 min. Chef Giorgia Goggi, a self-proclaimed anchovy lover, marinates her own fillets and sundries raisins from local grapes to make this delicate sweet-sour dish. Store-bought marinated anchovies work perfectly well, and when they’re soaked in the dish’s pickling liquid, even grocery-store raisins will take on a juicy plumpness. 3 Tbsp. dry white wine3 Tbsp. white wine vinegar½ very small red onion, such as cipollini, thinly sliced (½ oz.)¼ cup raisins, golden, brown, or a mix10 sage leaves1 garlic clove, smashed1 Calabrian or red Thai chile, very thinly sliced1 Tbsp. plus 1½ tsp. fresh lemon juice (from about ½ a medium lemon)Kosher salt4 oz. marinated white anchovy fillets2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil2 tsp. finely sliced…

SERVES 4 Active: 20 min. Total: 4 hr. 30 min. This simple garden salad sits on a milky bed of crumbled biezpiens, a soft, fresh cow’s-milk cheese omnipresent throughout Latvia. This recipe details how to make your own, but in its place you can substitute a well-drained ricotta or crumbled queso fresco. 4 cups whole milk2¼ tsp. kosher salt, divided3 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice1 kirby cucumber (8 oz.)7 large round radishes (7 oz.)1 Tbsp. plus 1½ tsp. distilled white vinegar1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzlingFreshly ground black pepper¼ cup thinly sliced scallion (2 small scallions)2 Tbsp. finely chopped dill1 Tbsp. heavy cream, for drizzling 1 At least 4 hours or up to 12 hours before you plan to serve the salad, make the biezpiens: In a heavy,…

SERVES 8–10 Active: 1 hr. 30 min. Total: 4 hr. 15 min. The rich, beet-infused pork broth of this soup is briny, with tangy vegetables floating throughout. For the fullest flavor, marinate the beets in the vinaigrette well ahead of time. 1 lb. skinned pork belly2 Tbsp. kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste1 lb. meaty pork bones (such as neck or hock)3 bay leaves1½ lb. red beets (2 large)1 tsp. sugar6 Tbsp. white or cider vinegar, divided¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper1 lb. Yukon Gold potatoes (2 large)2 Tbsp. unsalted butter3 garlic cloves, minced2 cups coarsely grated carrot (from about 4 large, peeled carrots)½ cup sliced chives¼ cup chopped fresh dill4 peeled, chopped hard-boiled eggs, for topping (optional) 1 Rub the pork belly with 1 tablespoon of salt and…

Salteñas are the essential Bolivian breakfast pastry, consisting of a subtly sweet dough filled with saucy meat, vegetables, and sometimes egg, sealed with a braid, and baked. Pasteles de queso are fluffy pockets of sweet fried dough filled with squeaky white cheese and dusted with powdered sugar. They’re often paired with api morado, a hot, spiced drink made from purple corn. The chola, La Paz and El Alto’s traditional sandwich (named for the country’s indigenous women, who often serve them), is a pile of soft and crackly roasted pork shoulder, pickled onions and carrots, and ají chile sauce on a bun. Ocas, Andean tubers that look like wrinkled fingers and taste like a sour potato (at right), are red, yellow, or sometimes a tie-dyed peachy pink. They’re one of hundreds…

IT’S NOT THE KIND OF PLACE where you’d expect great wines were being made. Bras and T-shirts are strewn on a clothing rack, turning dry and stiff in the relentless sun. Children’s toys and wooden bikes, temporarily forgotten, are scattered around the stone terrace. And two women, shouting to each other from somewhere in the house, are either really mad or simply Italian. This is Campi di Fonterenza, a biodynamic winery in the Tuscan hilltop town of Montalcino. It’s also home to Francesca and Margherita Padovani, identical-twin sisters who have been making a formidable Brunello di Montalcino since 2004. “This was our parents’ summer home,” says Francesca, who moved here from Milan with her sister almost 20 years ago. The sisters Padovani are like beautiful agrarian hipsters—thick dark hair, chiseled…

1. Ricotta Salata This pressed, salted, aged sheep’smilk cheese has a sharp, salty flavor. Shave it onto non-tomato pies with a fontina or Toma base. 2. Pecorino Fiore Sardo Grated cheese goes onto almost all of Minnick’s pies. This smoky, hard cheese from Sardinia has a slightly stronger flavor than Parm. 3. Fontina In place of mozzarella, Minnick melts handfuls of this stinkier cow’s-milk cheese onto white pies as a dough-blanketing base. 4. Wrangeback This historic Swedish cheese is a richer option for complementing a base cheese. “It has an aged-cheddar-with-crystals quality.” 5. Provolone On tomato pies, where the sauce adds sweetness and moisture, provolones are good, non-weepy choices for a base cheese. 6. Feta Once the mozzarella has been layered on, a sharper, crumbly cheese like feta adds complexity.…

The Tsotsil Maya call themselves the people of the corn. It grows readily in their home, in the foggy cloud forests of Chiapas in southern Mexico, the lush highlands in which their ancestors grew the grain for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived. According to Mayan creation beliefs, humans were made from corn itself—white corn for men, yellow for women. Earlier this year, I visited a group of Tsotsil, far from their rural homeland, in the central city of Puebla, 65 miles southeast of Mexico City. They are an indigenous people who still speak their own language and maintain much of their rural way of life, but have come north temporarily with their families to work, perhaps to help pay medical bills or build a small cement-block house…

MY SISTER-IN-LAW SARAH AND I ARE WALKING THROUGH the art nouveau district of Latvia’s capital, Riga—though, more correctly, you might say we are wobbling, having just toasted our arrival with many glasses of Riga Balzams, the country’s famous tar-black botanical digestif. Its bitterness feels like a properly dour Eastern European tempering to the bald beauty of this city. Riga is ancient with big modern ambitions, full of manicured flower beds, a perfectly restored Old Town, vendors who sell amber and Latvian runes and thick woolen mittens year-round, and particularly vicious cobblestones. As the stones strain the straps of my sandals, a woman in swank culottes and high-heeled booties, carrying a huge bouquet of freesia, passes us like we’re standing still. In fact, every third person on the sidewalk carries a…

MAKES 2 CUPS; Active: 15 min. Total: 30 min. Slathered in oil, baked until crisp, then tossed with a potent quantity of raw garlic, these rye croutons ride sidecar to every soup in Latvia. If you can’t get a loaf of rupjmaize, the sweet-sour Latvian bread, use the darkest loaf of rye bread you can find. 8 oz. 100 percent rye sourdough bread (such as Latvian rupjmaize), cut into 2-inch chunks½ cup vegetable oilKosher saltFreshly ground black pepper2 Tbsp. bacon fat3 large garlic cloves, minced (1 Tbsp.)1 Tbsp. thinly sliced chives 1 Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, toss the bread with the vegetable oil until evenly saturated and season lightly with salt and pepper. Transfer to a large, rimmed baking sheet (no need to clean out…

A name for indigenous Bolivian women (altered from the Spanish chola, which carries a derogatory connotation), cholitas are today highly visible on the streets of El Alto and La Paz. Many wear bowler hats (whose style, brand, and adornment with jewelry or brooches often indicate economic status), tiered skirts, long braids, and many-colored shawls, which they use to carry children or packages. Some women opt to have their teeth enrobed in or replaced with gold, a trend that denotes wealth. Cholitas, who were once considered lower-class citizens and not even allowed to occupy some squares and gathering places, now hold public office, own businesses, perform in their own wrestling league, and host radio and television shows. Though his clench on power has drawn criticism and concern, President Evo Morales—the first…