What Andrew Zimmern Can’t Live Without

I had one at work for a while and I loved it. I then went, like, Moses in the desert, out for 15 years doing a lot of other different bespoke coffee preparations, finally winding up on a really complex pour-over system. About five months ago, I was sitting there measuring coffee, weighing it, and heating up water in my special kettle, and I was just like, “Fuck this. I mean, what am I doing?” The zen of coffee-making had worn off. And then I went, “I should just get the MoccaMaster,” because it was the best one that I tried. So I ordered one, and everyone in my house just went bonkers, like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe how good this is.” And it’s true. Using extremely simple technology, mostly having to do with the spray nozzle where the hot water comes out to go over the grounds, it basically sprays it on the sides and lets it drip down so all the coffee stays in the bottom. So not only do you get a cleaner, better-tasting cup of coffee, but you can use less grounds per pot. It’s just beautiful.

I’m a pretzelholic. I love pretzels. I get them from all over. And a friend of mine about eight or nine years ago said, “Have you tried Uncle Jerry’s?” I’ve been ordering them by the bucketload ever since. As far as I know, Uncle Jerry’s was the first Pennsylvania brand to make a true Pennsylvania-style pretzel. Theirs is Pennsylvania Dutch style in that they’re not soft. They’re baked all the way through till crisp, but they have options for whether you want regular or well-done, salt or light salt. I like the extra dark because they have a much richer, toastier flavor. And I find their light salt is the perfect amount of salt for them.

Gustiamo has no fluff, all substance. They probably carry, I don’t know, a hundred SKUs? Everything they sell, I buy. I buy their grilled artisanal artichokes packed in olive oil. I buy all their tomato products. I buy their roasted peppers when they have them. They have two different types of pasta they sell, but those are the two best pasta companies, in my opinion, that are in Italy. Why do I need to go anywhere else? They buy a certain amount of hand-dried-over-open-fire chickpeas that you only get from them in season, and I jump all over it because those chickpeas are better than other chickpeas.

I get all of my Nettuno fish products from them. Now, I have been on the Amalfi Coast and in the Nettuno company factory. By the way, when I say factory, it is one giant room about the size of my living room with five women all older than 70, all in widow’s black, in this tiny little town on the ocean, peeling anchovies by hand. Nettuno is just second to none when it comes to product, especially their colatura, which I can’t live without. Colatura is less fishy than fish sauce, but it’s the Italian version, and it has more in common with garum historically. I just adore colatura. It is a little drizzle in sauces and soups and everything, and nobody knows it’s there. It’s a chef’s cliché, but it is an instant boost of umami and a salty counterpoint to any other flavors.

Same thing, but in the Sichuan China world. They have the best peppers, the best peppercorns, the best Chinese soy sauces, the best Chinese vinegars. And by the way, I have probably three or four Japanese vinegars and three or four Chinese vinegars from Japanese Pantry and Mala Market, respectively, in my drawer in my house right now. And they are all different. They have a maker there in Sichuan Province called Zhongba that has, I think, a one-year-old and a three-year-old soy sauce that for Chinese cooking is just stunning. And obviously the chiles and all that stuff, but their Sichuan pepper oil is an ingredient that I can’t cook without. A little drizzle of that makes anything spicy and numbing. They sell all the chiles, everything I need. They have a douban paste, a chile-bean paste that’s spicy that they sell. That’s the bedrock of Sichuan cuisine that I couldn’t even begin to cook without it. But that Baoning ten-year-old vinegar, which is $25 for 24 ounces on their site — I use that in recipes that other people are using $100 bottles of sherry wine vinegar. It’s that sophisticated. I think people really overlook Japanese and Chinese vinegars in particular, to their detriment. They’re not as expensive as the European ones, and they have as much depth of flavor and nuance.

Mala Market is just like Gustiamo and just like Japanese Pantry, that the owners are always going there, always finding new things, always populating their newsletters with a lot of wisdom. People ask me sometimes, “Oh, how do you know so much about this or that subject?” It’s like, I’m teachable. This stuff nowadays, if you sign up for newsletters with the right people and open your ears and read shit, you’ll learn a lot.

La Tienda is the opposite of those other three food websites in that they’re very large. They sell Spanish stuff, but they also sell a lot of South American products and things like that. It’s a wonderful, wonderful website. I get a lot of really great product from them, like hams, butifarra sausage, anchovy-stuffed olives, and all the rest of that. But I’m an anchovy nut. And the best anchovies of the world come from the Cantabrian Sea. The best anchovies that are commercially available to people like you and me — without going to a dock somewhere in Morocco or Italy or somewhere else where someone is processing anchovies — are from the Cantabrian Sea, packed by hand, one by one, and sealed in olive oil and available online at La Tienda. They’re just the best.

And I serve anchovies. Actually, the recipe is coming out in my cookbook. I roast peppers in my fire in the wintertime, and I peel them and shape them a certain way in these little rolls, and I put an anchovy across the top of each one. A little bit of minced parsley and drizzle them with olive oil and a little black pepper. That’s it. It’s the thing that my friends sort of count on the most being at my house whenever they come for dinner. And they always ask me, “Oh my God, what did you do? What is so good about this?” I’m like, “It’s the anchovies.” They’re just the best. They’re not fishy or salty. They’re just heavenly. I don’t use them when I’m making Caesar salad. I mean, you’re sort of wasting the really good stuff. But whenever I’m eating anchovies as is, I use the Nassari brand from the Cantabrian Sea that I get at La Tienda.

I’m part of the Jewish diaspora that’s here in Minnesota, and there is no delicatessen; it doesn’t exist. We know for sure that five generations of my family ate at Russ & Daughters, but we also know that my family had a personal relationship with Joel Russ’s family, and the family that runs the stores today are close friends of mine. I’ve talked about this with Niki Russ Federman, the co-owner, before: The sixth generation, which would’ve been my grandmother’s grandfather, lived a block and a half away from Joel Russ’s first store. They were old and would have not been regular shoppers, but we know they would’ve stopped in there once a year with their nickel to spend on some little candy or some nuts or a fancy loaf of bread for Hanukkah or Seder. So we figure that it’s six generations. I have a standing order of whitefish salad, chopped liver, bagels, bialys, cream cheeses, pickle blocks, and some herring. But their Gaspe salmon is my favorite. It’s delicately salted, delicately smoked. I think it has the best salmon flavor. It’s got the best fat-to-lean ratio, and it’s my favorite of their salmon products.