From left: Eco-Deli’s Beer Bark flatbread,
Jeff Dubin and his merlot tea.
Photo by Deborah Luhrman.
You might call it food from the future. A Salinas man is embracing the ecologist’s mantra “reuse, repurpose, recycle” and inventing new foods made from the byproducts of local artisan beer and wine making. Hidden away in a corner of an old airplane hangar at the Marina airfield, former sculptor Jeff Dubin has built a top-secret test kitchen where his studio used to be. He turned his kiln into an oven and started mixing batches of flatbreads, teas and vinegars.
“At this time in my life I just wanted to do something that is fun, useful and creative,” he says. So he founded Dubiansky’s Eco- Deli and is working to market his first product—a flatbread called Beer Bark.
Beer Bark is a deliciously crunchy cracker—but surprise! It’s made with malted barley and brewer’s yeast left over from the alemaking process at Carmel Valley Brewing. Usually these byproducts would be composted, but Dubin is trying to give them a new life as what he calls “sustainable haute cuisine.”
“Our local brewers and winemakers use only the best ingredients, so there’s an enormous amount of high-quality flavor and nutrition left in these byproducts,” says Dubin, who studied biochemistry in college and currently bakes at Claudio’s Specialty Breads in Castroville.
Beer Bark is a high-fiber, high-protein flatbread, with the slightly sweet flavors of malt and yeast. Encrusted with roasted sesame and sunflower seeds, it has wowed the tastebuds of people who have sampled it at Montrio Bistro in Monterey and at its debut at the Monterey Beer Festival in October.
Eco-Deli joins a small but dedicated group of businesses in the Monterey Bay area that are committed to making the most out of bountiful local harvests. Carolyn Swanson’s Pacific Grove company, Gnarly Nature Organic Produce, for example, supplies local restaurants with fruits and vegetables that are just too ugly to sell to consumers, but work fine in soups or sauces. Others rescue fruit from neglected orchards, like Colleen Logan’s Carmel-based Savor, for which she cooks up low-sugar, fruit-forward jams, and the Santa Cruz Fruit Tree Project, started by Steve Schnaar, which produces cider, chutney and other canned treats.
Dubin, who grew up in New York City, had been thinking about all the wasted produce left behind as the fields around Salinas are picked. At the same time he was reading a book called Save the Deli by David Sax about the demise of the family-owned Jewish deli in America.
“I come from an Eastern European Jewish heritage, where my grandma and great aunts used to cook up a storm. They had that European ethos that comes from poverty and used every tidbit of food to make something,” he says.
The concept for the Eco-Deli line of products all came together for him during a tour of Carmel Valley Brewing, led by Monterey Peninsula College culinary teacher Paul Lee. There he saw used vats of valuable malted barley, which had been heated up and macerated in water for only an hour at the start of the 13th century-style alemaking process used by the brewery. It was a light bulb moment.
In addition to Beer Bark, Dubin has developed a Chardonnay reduction molasses and a tea made from the roasted grape skins and seeds left over from the winemaking process.
The merlot tea, for example, is a pretty rosé color and has a pleasant fruity taste.
He’s also experimenting with making vinegar from wine pomace, and baking up a bialy—a bagel-like staple of New York delis— using more malted barley from the brewery and perhaps the addition of mashed olives left over after the oil is extracted.
With a test kitchen full of unusual gleaned ingredients and a head full of ideas, the Eco-Deli is set to take off…just like the small planes that share that old airplane hangar.
To shop at the Eco-Deli, go to eco-deli.com or email Dubin at jeff@eco-deli.com.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
