Pickles and Cures
Are you looking for the perfect addition to your charcuterie board? Does your sandwich or burger need the flavor and crunch of a crisp, tangy pickle? The cure you’re looking for may be Pickles and Cures, a local pantry goods business selling preserved meats, vegetables and fruits, which chef Adrian Nicotra launched in November.
Nicotra, who is originally from Buffalo, New York, has lived in Alexandria since 1995 and has over a decade of culinary experience. His first job was working at Bookbinders (now Columbia Firehouse) on South St. Asaph Street when he was a senior in high school. Since then, Nicotra has worked as a chef at some of the DMV area’s top restaurants, including some named top 100 by Washingtonian.
Adrian Nicotra
Nicotra took a break from the restaurant business for a while and started his own personal training business, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to shut that down and he started working at a local deli. It was there that he discovered an interest in cured foods.
“It started off with something as simple as ‘Let’s start making our pickles from scratch,’ ‘Oh hey, let’s make the sauerkraut from scratch.’ I was just doing research and found it fascinating,” explained Nicotra. He came up with a bunch of ideas and decided to launch his own business selling preserved foods, inspired by the traditional New York deli.
Nicotra currently sells pickled beets, za’atar spiced cucumbers, tomato confit and garlic confit. He also sells two kinds of pickles, a vinegar-preserved dill pickle and a New York deli style “lacto” fermented pickle that is cured using salt instead of vinegar. This process inhibits the growth of bad bacteria and allows healthy bacteria like lactobacillus to flourish (hence the name lacto.) He will also be adding a pastrami-cured salmon and chicken, beef and vegetable stocks, perfect for winter soups.
Nicotra recognizes that not everybody is familiar with how to use cured foods in their cooking. “It can be a little daunting for people,” he said. “The website (picklesandcures.com) has suggestions and customers can reach out to me if they need some suggestions or help for what to do with the product after they purchased it.”
In addition to charcuterie and sandwiches, Nicotra’s creations can be used for a variety of dishes. The za’atar cucumbers are great in salads or cold fish dishes. The tomato or garlic confit would add flavor to any pasta, pizza or meat dish and the garlic can be puréed into mashed potatoes.
As Pickles and Cures continues to grow, Nicotra will expand his offerings to include more preserved vegetables like lacto-fermented carrots cured with tarragon and citrus.
“Further down the line, I will be expanding the charcuterie program,” he said. “I will be making a lot of charcuterie from scratch, although it will be more of the unusual kind, the kind you really have to google and do research in charcuterie to even know. So it won’t be salami and pepperoni, it will be unusual stuff that you usually have to find in a foreign country.”
He is also looking forward to collaborating with local businesses to create and share his products, like using local honey in a special fermentation process. Last November, his pickles were featured on one of Holy Cow’s Burgers of The Moment which was called “The P&C.”
When Nicotra isn’t experimenting with a new way to cure meat and produce at the Frontier Kitchen, a commercial kitchen in Lorton, you can find him serving coffee at Swing’s Coffee Roasters or spending time around the Del Ray neighborhood which he calls home. He is hoping to start selling his products at local farmers markets in the spring, and sometime down the road, get into stores and possibly open a store of his own.
Nicotra’s products are available for local delivery in the City of Alexandria and parts of Fairfax County and Arlington and for shipping around the DMV. Find out more about Pickles and Cures at picklesandcures.com and on Instagram @pickles_and_cures.
