Escarole

Escarole is a unique lettuce that Liberty Heights Fresh customers love! It is mildly bitter and adds texture to both cooked and raw dishes. Chopped it can be combined with other greens and used in salad preparations. Its leaves are sturdy enough to stand up to creamy or warm dressings or to act as a salad bed for grilled meats. Its flavor and texture marry well with salt rich meats such as bacon, sausage and prosciutto, white beans, apples, dates, citrus, shallots, fried garlic, avocado, cream based dressings, olive oil, toasted pecans, dried cranberries, and cheeses such as blue, feta and pecorino. Escarole is a signature ingredient in the Italian American holiday soup known as “Straciatella”. Commonly consumed on Christmas, New Years and occasionally on Easter “straccia” translates to mean “rags” in Italian. Its name is a nod to the raggedy appearance of the strings of egg and Escarole floating in the broth. It is also a common ingredient in Italian wedding soup or “minestra maritata” which translated to mean married soup, a reference to the way meat and greens pair together well in the soup.

Challerhocker

Challerhocker, pronounced “holler hocker”, meaning “sitting in the cellar” is a Swiss cheese washed in brine and spices and then aged for a minimum of 12 months. Made from thermalized milk, the cheese is dense and smooth without any holes or cracks. The repeated brine washing and extended ageing reveal a great depth of flavour and texture, unlike any Swiss cheese. Its initial aroma and flavour is a lovely concoction of roasted peanuts, melted leeks, brown butter, sweet cream and caramel. Made by cheesemaker Walter Rass, the lingering silky, salty finish of Challerhocker makes it an ideal cheese for the winter months. The cheese pairs ideally with a glass of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cider.

Fourme au Moelleaux

Crafted by master cheesemaker and affineur Rodolphe Le Meunier, Fourme au Moelleux is a fabulous French bleu cheese injected with Vouvray, a sweet white wine from the Loire Valley. Fourme au Moelleux starts with a very famous cow’s milk blue cheese, Fourme D’Ambert. It’s creamy and dense, with a bold blue cheese taste that’s perfectly balanced and offset by the sweet wine, which turns a great cheese into a something very special. Complex and delicious, serve this buttery cheese as a dessert cheese, or crumbled over a fresh spring green salad.

Piquillo Peppers D.O.

Not like any other red pepper you have ever tasted, guaranteed! Pure piquillo peppers imported to the U.S. carry an exclusive seal of authenticity, granted only to those peppers that are hand-picked in the Ribera del Ebro region of Northern Spain. The Piquillo pepper, meaning “little beak” for its distinctive pointed shape, have for generations been picked and produced almost entirely by hand, using no chemicals in the washing, roasting and peeling process. Slow roasting over open wood fires gives these unique peppers a complex, rich and teasingly spicy-sweet flavor.