Edition #4
A niche subscription business idea, tahini, and why not soufflé?
This edition has a dream business idea and two recipes. And the marvelous Kelly Green, a San Francisco-based Art Director, has contributed a fragrance recommendation (that I personally can’t wait to order). I had wanted to write more, but this past month threw our pack a curveball, and so for 10 days of school-mandated isolation we all danced to the Encanto soundtrack, the second most infectious cultural item in Brooklyn. With Wordle a close third. Consider those supplemental recommendations above the fold.
As with the last newsletters, the below is divided into sensory subcategories so feel free to skip to what interests you. These are some things occupying my mind and that I would gush about if we met for coffee this week.
If you missed the last newsletter you can read it here.
Scent
A Business Idea: Seasonal Sensations
One of the most unassailably wonderful things about living in Los Angeles for all the years I did was the farmer’s market. Not just the quality of the produce. Not just the variety of fruits and vegetables available throughout the winter. What I miss (in addition to this) was the constant conversation about what was ‘hitting the market.’ The first weekend of strawberries. The appearance of honeynut squashes. The bunches of fragrant sweetpeas, delicate as they were with their limited lifespan but an-oh-so-ambrosial scent projection. Excitement about what was just-now ripe, ready, or in bloom was evident all over the city. So much so that a market report segment airs every Saturday on KCRW’s Good Food, (my favorite food program/ podcast from LA’s NPR programming). It can be claimed that produce heralds season changes in SoCal in ways that actual weather does not.
I didn’t grow up clued into understanding what’s in season, or rather, what the changes of season should taste like and smell like. I never paid enough attention to such things that felt as irrelevant to my urban activities as the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and I dearly hope I can make up for it now — to tune into seasonality; to have knowledge about our natural world’s wonders.
This business idea I’d like to propose is something like a sensory CSA drawing on curation of fragrance and other natural materials (including, but not limited to, teas and fruits and dried spices and candles and incense and raw fragrance materials). Seasonality as an organizing principle is something I think of as a real experiential luxury - the original limited-edition drop! More broadly I think now more than ever, people need context for what they consume. Why this? Why now?
Scent is a particularly adept vehicle for context: telling a story or conjuring a material. Perfumers can (re)create very compelling sensory stand-ins for the natural world, growing and alive. While I may be physically far away from the magnificent bloom of magnolias that happens in early Spring, I can find a soliflore fragrance, say Dusita’s Melodie de L’Amour, that can bring me up close to such an occurrence on a corporeal level. One spritz of Melodie de L’Amour calls forth one perfectly true, waxy magnolia, cupped by leathery leaves. It’s just invisible.
Think of high summer when melons pile high in the market - Oh, how I’d love to receive a care package of a perfectly ripe honeydew alongside a fragrance showcasing the fruit.
The vast library of perfume, under the right curation, can sequence a year of what’s fresh or in bloom. The arrival of a lilac perfume (maybe En Passant by Frederic Malle)— timed to the window of late spring in which these blossoms bloom — is a perfect prompt that might have me making haste towards the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. A desire to compare the scent. A reason to seek out and take in the real thing.
I think what makes this different from a simple content strategy using seasonal prompts, is that I want real-time alignment! When the first lilies of the valleys bloom, I want a delivery! I want to know when the roses are harvested in Morocco. I want to be overtaken by the waves of marigolds (tagetes) in October. It needn’t all be sweet-smelling - there’s room for mischief. The next time the famed corpse flower blooms at The Huntington, I want a sniff, however malodorous it may be. I want to be transported by my senses, from my apartment as a starting point, to wherever nature is showing off.
And when there are no flowers blooming or fruits ripening, we can think about heartier materials that withstand the cold and frost. Herbs and dried pods (aka spices) and yes, gourds, and the myriad fragrant woods that burn. Realistic campfire fragrances for deepest winter are a most welcome inhalation especially for those stuck indoors. Or even the pure sensation of winter itself - the smells of the dormant earth blanketed in snow.
I fantasize about such a subscription. It is a business idea for anyone who wants to take this on, I just want to be the first customer :)
Taste
Tahini
Several years ago I tried to bring back jars of Al Arz tahini from Tel Aviv but customs confiscated them from me. At the time and probably still, you were not allowed to travel with “pastes” of any sort. My case to convey the true nature of tahini (ground sesame seeds) fell on deaf ears.
Now you can get Al Arz tahini on Amazon, which I do, often. My last few trips to Israel, however, have led me to discover a new favorite brand, also available on Amazon here, called Har Bracha— I’ve heard that this is the stuff beloved by Miznon chef Eyal Shani.
Tahini is omnipresent in Israel; a staple of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and anytime snacking. Good tahini offers a surprisingly complex flavor and yet is very simple to make. Given its cultural significance, it is endlessly customizable, and most Israelis will tell you they know the ‘best way’ to prepare it. Here’s how I’ve been taught:
Ingredients:
tahini base
ice water
lemon
Salt & Pepper
Options: garlic, fresh parsley
Quantities are always eyeballed and easily adjusted based on your desired consistency at the end. If you want to start with a rough guide - aim for 1 cup of raw tahini : 1 lemon : 1/2 cup water with more as needed
Recipe
Start by mincing a few cloves of garlic and finely chopped parsley- or neither if you don’t like those flavors.
Pour the Tahini base into a mixing bowl.
Then squeeze in half a lemon (to start). As you mix, with a fork or a spatula, you’ll feel the mixture seize up a bit with the addition of the juice. This is normal.
Then slowly add ice water to the paste. It will be hard to incorporate at first, drip in a light stream of water and okay to adjust as you go.
Your goal texture with the tahini is satiny smooth. When it gets there it’s like magic! Taste - salt, pepper, and adjust with more lemon if necessary. Then dollop on everything.
Jacques Pepin’s Maman’s Cheese Soufflé
Easiest (and I mean weeknight easy) most decadent soufflé recipe, is a rather famous one. I was keen to try it, blissed out that I did, and now want to encourage all of you to give it a go!
You can also found it written out with more detail here on food52.
Perfume Recommendation
LVNEA’s Saffron Rouge (Link to order a 10ml rollerball oil perfume)
Kelly Green, a fantastically talented art director, and fellow scent explorer, offers these late-night thoughts on LVNEA’s Saffron Rouge which has notes of saffron, cinnamon and rose in an oil rollerball application. She said to me that this fragrance is both cozy and intriguing at the same time, “Familiar like an ambling line across time.”
”It’s golden in the winter. Warmth from within, radiating outwards in hazy glowing rays. Body as hearth, a murmur of familiar intimacy and cyclical being.
Close your eyes and find that golden glow. The smell of heat waves and sweet extinguish/release. The way it feels to lay on a sun-bleached towel in deep summer, skin still damp from creek water. Each remaining cool drop and pool warms again, evaporating perceptibly into the air, sweat slowly emerging again the heat returns to soften your state of being. Near nakedness, that perfect hum, one with all.”
Thank you for reading. More to come.
Stay safe, healthy, and attuned to the gifts in the world.
Signing off with another favorite picture of quarantined readers.
