A Sweet Rock Experiment

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

After walking down an aisle filled with environmentally friendly baby diapers and beige and pink clothing of organic cottons, a regular shopper at the newest Whole Foods Market, on Warren Street, finds herself facing a wall that holds a new row of lever-operated dispensers filled with nothing but rock sugars, from small chunks of white sugar to sizable jewels of blue and brown sugars.

Not only do the plastic dispensers, outfitted with a spout at the bottom for filling paper bags, offer more common rock sugars such as demerara (a raw cane sugar), turbinado (a brown sugar made from early pressings of sugar cane), and regular white rock sugar, they’re also home to a cinnamon sugar that’s dotted with yellow, orange, and white chunks of glistening sweetness, releasing a pungent aroma that reminds one more of chai than of straight spice. Large blue crystals that resemble dusty sapphires, facets and all, are actually mint-flavored sugar. There’s coffee sugar and almond sugar, with the coffee version looking expectedly brown and roasted, while the almond sugar could be used to pull a prank on a professional baker, looking just as fresh as normal, white sugar, only with a subtle almond scent.

It’s an impressive display, and it’s the first of its kind at any Whole Foods Market in the country, according to a regional grocery coordinator for the store, Kara Rubin. Offering the rock sugars in the first place is in keeping with one of the market’s “core values … to satisfy and delight our customers,” Ms. Rubin wrote in an e-mail this past weekend. “Having [the sugar] display is very much in keeping with that value. … The sugar display [gives] customers the opportunity to try something they haven’t before, in quantities of their choosing.”

All of this could set off the sweet tooth of any food-market junkie, but really: What can the home cook do with rock sugar? It’s tempting, almost in an automatic kind of way, for the curious to pull any of the levers of these dispensers and suddenly find themselves with, say, a pound of mint sugar. (It’s also expensive, as the unflavored sugars run at $5.99 a pound, and the flavored sugars at $13.99 a pound.)

But the rock sugar is still in crystal form, and some rocks are so large that they’re difficult to bite through, unless you masticate like a bulldog.

The idea of cooking with rock sugar takes quite a bit of pondering. One can stir it into hot drinks — the small-size cinnamon sugar’s ideal for a coffee or tea sweetener — but if you want to break it up into smaller chunks, you either need to put sugar in a plastic bag and pound it, or use a mortar and pestle. Some people have a mortar, but not all, and certainly not in a city where space is at a premium; and pounding sugar in a bag seems to be, well, redundant, when other sugars already come granulated.

When asked how she expects customers to use the sugars, Ms. Rubin wrote in an e-mail that both the flavored and unflavored rock sugars are “quite malleable,” suggesting that the mint sugar can be crushed and used to rim glasses holding mojitos, or stirred into hot chocolate. She also suggests that the cinnamon, almond, or coffee sugars can be crushed and sprinkled over cookies, ice cream, or waffles, or as a topping for crème brûlée. She further states that the unflavored rock varieties can be used as garnishes for baked goods or eaten on their own.

But is that the limit of rock sugar — to be used as a garnish or as a sweetener in drinks? If a cook is paying $13.99 a pound for almond sugar, shouldn’t she be able to, say, bake a cookie with it?

Rachel Thebault, the owner and head confectioner of Tribeca Treats, a bakery known in the neighborhood for its cupcakes and chocolates, doesn’t think it’s worth investing the time and money into rock sugar, at least for baked goods. “It’s not practical for baking,” she said in a phone interview last week. “When baking, you want a sugar that you can pour, to measure it out correctly. You’d have to adjust the sugar quantity accordingly.” Furthermore, “with the size of the rocks, a dough’s not going to combine as well.”

“As far as flavored sugars go,” she added, “there’s something more cost effective: When you have a recipe that calls for vanilla beans, save the pods and put them in an airtight container, and cover them with sugar for vanilla sugar.”

Beyond baking, some local pastry chefs have hit the stove to play with rock sugars, albeit unflavored varieties. Pichet Ong, of the restaurant P*ONG and the bakery Batch, and Michael Laiskonis, pastry chef of Le Bernardin, both suggest making syrups out of rock sugar for cooking purposes. (Both chefs also use Chinese rock sugar, which is not sold at the TriBeCa Whole Foods. It is a yellow rock sugar that Mr. Ong suggests can be bought at such markets in Chinatown as Kam Man Market, 200 Canal St. at Mulberry Street.) Last week, Mr. Laiskonis talked about how he experimented with making syrups from both rock and granulated sugars. “There’s a deeper color to the rock sugar syrup,” Mr. Laiskonis said. “While one wasn’t sweeter than the other, there’s a slight, slight more of a molasses flavor or a caramelized flavor.”

It’s this syrup that Mr. Ong suggests can be utilized broadly: Despite his history as a pastry chef at such restaurants as Tabla and Jean-Georges, he said that he’s used rock sugar “for a long time, mostly for savory applications.” “Almost every Chinese braised meat like pork belly or beef stew uses sugar,” he said. “A rock sugar syrup makes the dish balanced and tenderizes the meat.” His syrup recipe calls for three parts water to two parts sugar, and can last in the fridge for two weeks.

Another suggestion Mr. Ong offered uses actual rocks: Deep-fry a few shallots, then chop and stir-fry them with a small, chopped chili pepper, chopped garlic, and a dash of fish sauce. Crush a little rock sugar in a mortar and pestle (or a plastic bag), and add it to the pan with a dash of vinegar, and serve it as a condiment on top of grilled fish, or just as a side snack to accompany a bowl of rice.

Mr. Laiskonis warns that in using flavored rock sugars, the subtle flavors can get lost when they’re combined with other ingredients. If you’re branching out into rock sugar territory, then stick with the less-fancy, unflavored varieties — and think savory.


The New York Sun

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