THE NIBBLE Gourmet News & Views
Trends, Products & Items Of Note In The World Of Specialty Foods
Read all of our content on TheNibble.com, the online magazine about specialty food.
Archive for Snacks
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June 22, 2008 at 8:00 am
· Filed under Snacks
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Like sweet fruit salsa? Like adorable pygmy goats? Here’s the salsa for you. The line has four mascots: pygmy goat triplets and their canine “brother.” Together, they dish out nice, sweet-and-spicy salsas and an outstanding rum raisin sauce for ham, dessert or whatever you can find an excuse to put it on.
The Szareks have a greenhouse in Clinton, New York, where they grow tomatoes and herbs. Some of their produce goes into their own line, under the Old Goat label. Today, three pygmy goat triplets—Spike, Vinca and Violet—are the honorees. Each goat has a salsa named after it, based on, according to the Szareks, their personalities (Vinca being very sweet, Violet a moderate and Spike, well, hot and ornery).
There’s also a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Baylee, the official “goat herder.” He gets the best deal of all: Our favorite product is named after him! More about that in a moment.
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| The Szareks grow their tomatoes and herbs in a greenhouse, without the use of pesticides. Their products, with their sweet labels, will be popular with food lovers and animal lovers alike. Read the full review on TheNibble.com. |
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June 21, 2008 at 8:15 am
· Filed under Snacks
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Love chips, but want less fat and more fiber…and maybe something a little more “gourmet” than the familiar old fried potato slice? All-natural Arico Cassava Chips, in Original plus Barbecue Bliss, Ginger On Fire and Sea Salt Mist, belong on your plate. We love the elegant flavor profiles of these chips, which are sophisticated enough to be served with dinner. The healthier profile is a bonus.
Although it is rarely seen in North America outside of Latin American markets and restaurants, cassava—also spelled casava, and also known as manioc and yuca—is a staple of nearly 500 million people worldwide. The root of a woody shrub native to the Amazon basin, cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrate food in the world.* It is a popular replacement for potatoes in the countries where it is grown, a resilient root and grows well in arid or drought-ridden soils.
*Claude Fauquet and Denis Fargette, (1990) “African Cassava Mosaic Virus: Etiology, Epidemiology, and Control,” Plant Disease, Vol. 74(6): 404-11.
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Thousands of years ago, the subtropical plant was carried from the Amazon basin throughout Latin America and, through long boat journeys, to Africa and Asia. (Arico purchases its cassava roots from farmers on the island of Java, in the South Pacific.) Today, travelers can enjoy cassava in purées (liked mashed potatoes), fried, made into dumplings, added to soups and stews, in bread, pies and puddings, Tapioca is made from cassava root flour.
Now, you can take a bite of this ancient food—a crunchy bite. Arico Natural Foods has brought gluten-free Cassava Chips to America. In four flavors, with 30% to 40% less fat (depending on the flavor) and twice as much dietary fiber as potato chips, these all-natural chips are a healthier alternative,** as well as an exotic new addition to the snack and garnish repertoire. They add a fresh, new taste to crunchy foods. The thin, yellowy disks with their brown edges add a graceful design to the plate as well. Read the full review at TheNibble.com.
**They have 150 calories per ounce.
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May 29, 2008 at 9:31 am
· Filed under Fruits & Nuts, Snacks, Tip Of The Day
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| Peach salsa is always a top-seller, but we think mango salsa is even more exciting. It’s so sophisticated on top of fish, chicken, with pork or tortilla chips—and it’s easy to make a delicious version at home. Combine diced tomatoes, mango, red onion, chopped mint and lime juice. Add a splash of cider, red wine vinegar or flavored vinegar. Click here for a mango chile vinegar from Gennari’s that’s also splendid for fruit salads, green salads, bread dippers and anyplace else you need vinegar and extra flavor. For more salsa recipes, check out THE NIBBLE’s Salsas, Dips & Spreads section. And to learn about the different types of salsa, read our Salsa Glossary. |
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This carmelized salmon with cherry-mango salsa is a perfect summer dish. You can find the recipe here.
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March 2, 2008 at 9:01 am
· Filed under Cocktails & Spirits, Snacks, Tip Of The Day
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Not every type of peanut goes well with beer. |
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March is National Peanut Month. People (and bars) commonly serve goobers with beer; the idea behind giving them away at bars is that salty peanuts make you thirstier for more beer. But there’s an art to pairing peanuts with libations. German Hefe-Weizen beers, with their scent of roasted hops and wheat, echo the same notes in peanuts. A perfect match! Sherry is known for its nutty qualities, so serve roasted peanuts with a sherry aperitif. Honey-roasted peanuts match better with a fruity wine, and hot chili peanuts also beg for a wine with residual sugar to offset the heat of the chilies. Visit the Snacks Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine to find our favorite gourmet peanuts. |
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February 24, 2008 at 8:03 am
· Filed under Ethnic Foods, Snacks, Daily Food Holidays
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Tortilla chips are made in yellow, white and blue corn (shown above); and riding the whole grain nutrition wave, are also made in multigrain blends. |
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On the heels (perhaps too close on the heels) of National Corn Chip Day (January 29th), February 24th honors one of America’s favorite snack foods, the tortilla chip. Surprisingly, tortilla chips are not a traditional Mexican food. They were first popularized and mass produced in southwestern Los Angeles in the late 1940s by Rebecca Webb Carranza, who, with her husband, owned a Mexican deli and tortilla factory. Misshapen tortillas were rejected from the tortilla manufacturing machine, and she turned them into chips—cutting them into triangles, frying them and selling them in snack-size bags. Needless to say, they sold well, and became a popular appetizer in Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in California. They expanded beyond California in a big way in the late 1970s, with the growth of Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants, replacing corn chips like Fritos as America’s favorite corn chip snack. As we mentioned in our post on corn chips, the main difference between the two types of chip is that a tortilla chip is cut from a whole tortilla, and a corn chip is corn meal processed into a particular shape. |
- See our favorite gourmet tortilla chips.
- Make this tortilla soup recipe—a favorite Mexican dish, blending chicken, corn and tortilla chips.
- Enjoy one of our favorite guacamoles with your chips, Yucatan Guacamole—not only delicious, but organic and kosher.
- Find our favorite salsas in the Salsas and Dips section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.
- Before they were tortilla chips, they were tortillas. Read about our favorite tortillas, from Tumaro’s. |
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February 15, 2008 at 8:07 am
· Filed under Diet Nibbles, Snacks, Desserts & Ice Cream, Recipes, Sugar-Free, Tip Of The Day
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| If you’re ready to switch gears after chocolate-filled Valentine’s Day festivities, fruit kabobs with yogurt dip are a sweet transition—low-calorie and healthy, too. For a snack or light dessert, simply skewer pineapple chunks, melon balls, berries, grapes, orange segments—whatever catches your eye in the produce section—in interesting patterns (or, serve them as fruit salad). You can make an easy yogurt dip from one cup of vanilla yogurt, 2 tablespoons of honey and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. The diet dip version substitutes plain, fat-free yogurt and 2 packets of sweetener—hold the honey. Our favorite plain, fat-free yogurt, FAGE Total, is so delicious, we’re happy with the fat-free version. Read our review of FAGE Total Yogurt. Find more low-calorie foods in the Diet Nibbles Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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Make fruit kabobs with berries, grapes, pineapple, etc.; or just enjoy this delicious and healthy snack as a fruit salad with yogurt topping. |
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February 14, 2008 at 4:19 pm
· Filed under Snacks, Tidbits (Food Facts)
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| What exactly are “kettle chips,” such as those made by Boulder Canyon, our Top Pick Of The Week (see the previous post)? Let’s start at the beginning. Potato chips, invented in 1853 in Saratoga, New York, were originally called Saratoga chips. Chips got soggy quickly in the days before vacuum packaging (or even airtight bags), and needed to be purchased fresh. By the 1920s, every town in the U.S. had its own chip maker, or “potato chipper.” The chip maker sliced up potatoes and fried them one batch at a time in a small kettle. The continuous fryer was invented in 1929, creating tremendous economies of scale and driving most of the small, kettle cookers out of business. By the 1940s, automation had evolved to change much of America’s artisan food production into mass production, including potato chips. Potato farmers bred the natural sugars out of potatoes to accommodate mass production, because the natural, variable sugar content required individualized attention to know when the batch was done. The result: Chips like Lay’s and Wise, which sell many millions of bags a year, but are only a shadow of the former gustatory glory of the potato chip. |
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The right chip is not just a good snacker: It creates sexy hors d’oeuvres. Photo courtesy of Kettle Brand chips. |
Today’s “kettle chips” are a return to the thicker, small-batch chips made with top ingredients (you can use some of the best brands to construct fancy hors d’oeuvres, as shown in the photo). While today’s “kettles” are fryers much larger than the original stovetop kettle, they are still small in comparison to mass-produced chips.
- Read more about potato chips in the Snacks Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.
- Read the history of the potato chip (you’ll learn how the potato chip bag was invented—a technology breakthrough of the time)
- Fry your own kettle chips with this recipe. |
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February 14, 2008 at 2:22 pm
· Filed under Top Pick Of The Week, Snacks, Super Bowl
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Two of our favorite flavors of Boulder Canyon potato chips: Hickory Barbecue (front) and Parmesan & Garlic. |
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The second potato chip to be named a Top Pick Of The Week by THE NIBBLE specialty food magazine is the polar opposite of our first. North Fork Naturals, the first top chip, offers classic potato and sweet potato chips. Boulder Canyon pulls out all the stops to present seven flavors plus “original” all natural potato chips.* These thickly-sliced, small-batch kettle chips are flavor-forward in a delightful way: You know what you’re tasting, and it tastes good. Whether as a casual snack with a beer, a more tony encounter with a martini, a side with a sandwich or a more creative pairing (garlic chips are killer with cucumber-yogurt dip), you’ll understand the difference between a chip off the same old block and a chip that belongs at the Ritz.The kettle chips are made in Balsamic Vinegar & Rosemary, Hickory Barbecue, Jalapeño Cheddar, Malt Vinegar & Sea Salt, Parmesan & Garlic, Sea Salt & Black Pepper, Spinach & Artichoke and Totally Natural/Original. We do have some favorites. Read the full review to find out what they are. Find more of our favorite salty treats in the Snacks Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
| *There are also three crinkle-cut flavors. |
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January 29, 2008 at 12:27 pm
· Filed under Snacks, Daily Food Holidays
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| When we first began to evaluate corn chips, we went to the supermarket and specialty food stores and bought every brand available. The results were staggering. The supermarket brands were—to our sensitive palates, which don’t eat preservatives or mass-marketed brands packed with salt—INEDIBLE. They tasted like salted cardboard. Now, we know that these products (we won’t name names, but some begin with D and F, and they are not the only ones) rack up many millions of dollars in sales. But there’s a lot of bad food out there, and a lot of people who don’t know the difference pay for it. If you like your big-name chips, we do not mean to impugn your value as a lover of fine food. We believe you have not tasted the good stuff, and when you do, you, too will convert to what we think are the best brands or corn and tortilla chips. |
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 Blue and yellow tortilla chips grom the Garden of Eatin’ garnish a bowl of black bean soup. |
| What’s the difference between a corn chip and a tortilla chip? They are both made from corn or masa,* vegetable oil, salt and water; but tortilla chips are cut-up wedges from tortillas. Corn chips are processed into a particular shape—curls or scoops, like Fritos. Corn chips were, for the most part, the only known corn-based chip outside of California until the 1970s, when they were popularized by growth of Mexican restaurants.
*You’ll often see masa listed in the ingredients, instead of corn. Masa is corn that has been dried, treated with a lime water solution, then ground. |
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January 26, 2008 at 5:15 am
· Filed under Fruits & Nuts, Snacks, Daily Food Holidays
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| We’re the last to make light of Fundamentalist Islam, but we do have better pistachios for it. Prior to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, there was no pistachio industry in the U.S. A series of political events ensued, beginning with the fundamentalist Islamic revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini that ousted Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It was followed by the Iran Hostage Crisis, in which the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was stormed and 66 hostages were taken. This led to a U.S. trade embargo against Iran. Since a majority of the pistachios eaten by Americans were imported from Iran, California farmers saw the opportunity to plant the crop. A better pistachio resulted, since the U.S. has the benefit of more modern farming methods. When there are delays in processing the harvested nuts, the white shells begin to stain and blemish, which is why pistachios from the Middle East were often dyed a cover-up red. (Later, pistachios were dyed red to stand out in vending machines; today, some pistachios are still dyed red for marketing purposes.) |
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 Perfect pistachios from Santa Barbara Pistachio Company. |
| Now that you have some historical perspective, go nuts and celebrate. Our favorite pistachios come from Santa Barbara Pistachio Company. They have regular pistachios plus wonderful flavors (Crushed Garlic, Hickory Smoked, Red Hot Habañero Lemon Zing and more) plus gift assortments in case your valentine doesn’t like chocolate. Ready about more of our favorite gourmet salty snacks in the Snacks Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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