The art of cheese, bread and dumplings: Meet the makers of Dallas’ most memorable foods - The Dallas Morning News

adaapablogsi.blogspot.com

These behind-the-scenes food artisans at our favorite restaurants make magic with dough and cheese. That fresh bread at Lucia? It’s made by Matt Ramirez. The steamed dumplings at Royal China? Meet Huajuan Shen and Sophia Chen. And the cheese at Mozzarella Company? That takes a team effort from Elena Mercado, Carmen Lopez and Leticia Villanueva, who still do things “the old-fashioned way.”

Dumpling makers Sophia Chen, left, Eliza Monica and Huajuan Shen work with ingredients and dough to make Chinese dumplings at Royal China restaurant in Dallas.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The Dynamic Dumpling Duo: Huajuan Shen and Sophia Chen

The dumpling bar at Royal China is the best seat in the house. Steam churns from a jacuzzi of water, jostling baskets that wait for nests of hand-pulled noodles. Huajuan Shen and Sophia Chen are joking around, each carrying a singular unfinished soup dumpling in their palm. Blink and you’ll miss it: They roll out a small circle of dough, add a scoop of filling, then spin-round the dough with their thumb as a center, pleating folds quickly until it’s cinched up and ready to steam. It’s a hypnotic process: You may not even notice that your server has been asking you “Sir, what would you like to drink?” for a solid minute.

Royal China hasn’t always had dumplings like this. B-Lan “April” Kao, who owns Royal China at Preston and Royal with her family, spent a full year learning how to make dumplings like she wanted them. Before 2008, the restaurant had basic steamed dumplings, not the handmade dough that gets rolled out before your eyes. Kao’s dumplings now have certain signatures — “I can claim credit,” she says with excitement — like crunchy jicama with pork or shiitake mushrooms. The dumpling sampler at Royal China, an instant classic in Dallas, is presented in a wheel of colors: Shrimp dumplings have a little bit of beet juice to turn the dough vibrant red.

A Chinese dumpling sampler from Royal China restaurant in Dallas(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Chen flattens dough circles using a small copper roller (some people use wood, but Chen likes the weight and feel of the copper), then Shen purses the dough. In an instant, a dozen dumplings are in the tray, then two dozen, three, and four. The dumpling team will make around 1,000 — both the classic crimped crescents and the purse-like soup dumplings — in one day. The ingredients are simple — chicken stock, pork skin (to help gel things up in the cooler) — but challenging to prep. Shen works fast to keep the stuffing mixture cold, pursing the dough with speed, knowing exactly how long it’ll take to turn the broth inside into dark, hot silk.

Shen and Chen make it look easy. They have for years. Shen moved to Texas from China 13 years ago, and Chen, who immigrated from Venezuela, began in 2018. The dynamic duo talk and laugh together as they dot steamers with dumplings, one after the other, stacking completed trays. The pandemic has been brutal for restaurants, but Kao dedicated herself to keep the same hand-made dumplings going, whether it’s delivery or dine-in.

Bread baker Matt Ramirez of Lucia restaurant in Dallas(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The Bread Blacksmith: Matt Ramirez

It was the chicken liver mousse that lit up Matt Ramirez’s brain like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Ramirez had nabbed a precious reservation at Lucia for his wife’s birthday, and the smooth, salty mousse left him awestruck enough to approach chef and owner David Uygur.

Ramirez has always been that way, a forger. He’ll leap into tough situations, and see what’s made on the other side. He moved to Dallas from El Paso in 2015, and, after a stretch at culinary school and cooking for charity events, found a gig in the kitchen at Crossroads Diner. He’d met Crossroads chef Tom Fleming at one of those events, asking for a job on the spot.

“He didn’t think I was going to show up,” Ramirez remembers with a laugh. “But I was there the next day.”

After the birthday dinner at Lucia that energized him like a Griswold family Christmas tree, Ramirez had his eyes on the horizon. He waited and watched Lucia for an opening. A prep cook job was the first thing to pop up at the Oak Cliff Italian joint in August 2016, so he jumped. Lucia was doing something, something exciting, he remembers thinking, and he wanted to be right there next to the fire.

“Matt’s pretty brave about trying stuff,” says Uygur about his current bread master. “One of the things that’s really kind of interesting is he never really seems to be flustered or in a flurry.”

A basket of Chocolate Babka bread, bottom-center, and Sourdough Blue Tinge Emmer, from Lucia restaurant in Dallas(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Ramirez had zero experience as a dedicated baker. Sourdough was a complete stranger to him. But lack of experience doesn’t matter once you’re inside Lucia: You ask how to do it, and jump head-first into the frying pan. Never made fresh pasta with squid ink? Don’t panic. You’ll be behind a pan swirling linguine into primordially black sauce in no time. When asked, Ramirez jumped headlong into the dough. He started with the classics — big, cloud-light loaves of sourdough.

“I just kept pushing myself,” Ramirez remembers from his first year as Lucia’s bread man. Suddenly, Lucia was flush with naturally-leaved pita, cushiony focaccia tufted with raisins, fennel, and crunchy turbinado sugar. A country mile of Ramirez’ rosemary focaccia, laden with good olive oil and topped with a storm of finishing salt, should be on our Texas flag. It’s one of the great bread-stuffs to eat in the city.

Working in the food industry doesn’t run in Ramirez’s genes. His mom was just too slammed with work, he says. Occasionally his uncle would get behind a grill, and Ramirez would hang with him, bathing in the smoke and rapture of barbecue. Ramirez is the trailblazer chef of the family.

During the pandemic, when Lucia was shut down along with every other restaurant in the city, co-owner Jennifer Uygur helped him find a job at the Central Market in Plano. Ramirez was one of the store’s bakers for about a month. Then, the Uygurs put the bread signal in the sky as they planned to reopen.

Lucia has now reopened at their new location down the street, formerly held by Macellaio, their sister restaurant that closed during the pandemic.

Cheese makers Elena Mercado, left, Carmen Lopez and Leticia Villanueva, outside of The Mozzarella Company in Dallas.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The Mozz Bunch: Elena Mercado, Carmen Lopez and Leticia Villanueva

There’s a good chance that right now, in the unassuming factory on Elm Street, a team of women are making mozzarella like they do in the old country. At the top of the week, around the same hour a rooster would be an alarm clock, 2,000 gallons of raw milk from Texas cows are driven to The Mozzarella Company, chef Paula Lambert’s longstanding cheese joint, in Dallas’ nightlife district.

Elena Mercado, who’s helped lead the mozzarella process for 21 years, will get to work on pasteurizing the milk. Mercado and her team, which includes Leticia Villanueva and Carmen Lopez, process about 500 gallons a day behind the vinyl slats of the storefront. Almost 400 gallons of goat milk will also show up for their superb goat cheese.

“We make it the old-fashioned way,” Mercado says. “It’s not skim milk.” Her fellow cheesemongers smile. Lopez, who’s been at Mozzarella Company for 32 years, takes pride in making everything by hand. They know more than written recipes can tell them at this point. They can sense the right stretch of milky cheese or the cave-funk of the aging room.

A local gem is the Deep Ellum Blue, a creamy block that’s tiled with electric marine-blue funk. It represents the district in every way — loud and neon and tall in flavor. All you need is a cracker and a knife. You might not even need the cracker. Another not-so-hidden gem is the capriella (half cow’s milk and half goat’s milk mozzarella). Grab one from the fridge, smooth and shiny as a billiard ball, and pair with fresh basil during tomato’s golden hour, and you’ll feel like you’ve been dropped in Tuscany through a tear in space-time.

On a recent visit, verdant green chiles are spread out on a table in the factory like a deck of cards. The chiles will be folded into queso blanco, a soft but crumbly cheese that’s ready to shower over pork tacos. Each of Mozzarella Company’s cheeses become essential for whatever dish you’re cooking this week — you just need to find the right one. How about burrata con crema? It’s stuffed with creme fraiche, a silky interior that tastes somehow of a breezy, clear Texas sky over an Italian countryside, and is sublime on a saucy homemade pizza.

But what makes Mozzarella Company’s cheese really stand out amongst the crowd? Carmen Lopez weighs in:

“We make the cheese like it’s for us. Like it’s for a family.”

Carmen Lopez mixes jalapeño and epazote herb into queso blanco as she prepares a variety of cheese with a group of women at The Mozzarella Company in Dallas.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Cheese maker Carmen Lopez forms mozzarella into a ball of cheese.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Adblock test (Why?)

"bread" - Google News
June 03, 2021 at 09:03PM
https://ift.tt/3wV8r3G

The art of cheese, bread and dumplings: Meet the makers of Dallas’ most memorable foods - The Dallas Morning News
"bread" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2pGzbrj
https://ift.tt/2Wle22m

Bagikan Berita Ini