THE NIBBLE BLOG: Products, Recipes & Trends In Specialty Foods


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PRODUCT: Heart Shaped Goat Cheese For Valentine’s Day & Special Occasions

Getting ready for Valentine’s Day? Throwing a bridal shower? Planning to propose? Don’t hide the ring in a cream puff where your intended can break a tooth. Instead, insert it, standing up, into a Bourbon-chocolate heart-shaped goat cheese (chèvre).

Capriole Goat Cheese enables you to say “I love you” year-round with this loving assortment of three six-ounce goat cheese hearts:

– A 6-ounce fresh chèvre heart with pink
peppercorns
– A 6-ounce ripened chèvre heart
– A 6-ounce Bourbon-chocolate chèvre heart

The three cheeses are boxed in a wooden crate tied with a red ribbon, for $60; the hearts are $8.99-$12.99 individually. BYO Champagne and crackers. The assortment is available for immediate delivery during February. A two-week pre-order is required the rest of the year. At CaprioleGoatCheese.com or telephone 1.812.923.9408.

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PRODUCT REVIEW: Michael Season Reduced Fat Cheese Puffs


Michael Season’s Cheddar Cheese Puffs (front)
and Chili Cheese Puffs (rear) offer real cheese
flavor with reduced fat.
Love chips, but want to cut back on the fat and the calories? Michael Season delivers a line of baked cheese snacks that have fewer calories, less fat, and taste even better than his regular line. They’re also wheat-free, gluten-free, certified kosher and all-natural—no preservatives, no hydrogenated oils, no MSG, and made with organic grains.

Michael Season heard the call to organic foods more than 20 years ago. He tried his hand at organic farming long before it was hot, because he wanted his family to be able to eat foods free of chemicals and additives. He developed one of the largest natural foods distributorships in the U.S., and then began to produce “better for you” snack foods—reduced fat and lowfat potato chips. They promise:

– All-natural ingredients
– No preservatives
– No artificial colorings or flavorings
– No GMOs (genetically modified ingredients)
– No MSG
– No hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils
– Kosher certification

We had the opportunity to taste the Season’s line of cheese puffs and cheese curls—the regular, “Ultimate,” line and the reduced fat, “Baked” line, which have half the fat (or more) of traditional puffs and curls—and are wheat-free and gluten-free to boot.

Whether digging into the Ultimate or Baked Line, these snacks are delicious. Where one bite of a major supermarket brand of cheese puff or curl tastes like artificial food, here, these all-natural snacks taste just like that: all natural. Light and crunchy, they’re made with real cheese, not an imitation cheese-flavored powder. That being said, you still end up with orange-powdered fingers. It must be part of the ritual.

Snack along with us as we review these noteworthy, cheesy, crunchy snacks. Read the full review on TheNibble.com.

The Popcorn Factory

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RECIPE: Rio Star Fiesta Salad

Winter is citrus season. Grapefruit and oranges make delicious and healthy salads, and red grapefruit adds to the drama of the presentation. There’s a reduced-calorie dressing and a healthy garnish of pomegranate seeds, pumpkinseed kernels and cilantro.

The Rio Star grapefruit is a very red, sweet variety that is 10 times redder than the original Ruby Red. It has an overall blush on the exterior peel as well as a deep red interior color. This specialty grapefruit is grown exclusively in the southernmost tip of Texas—the Rio Grande Valley. Texas citrus is tree-ripened and handpicked throughout the season.

Makes about 6 one-cup servings.

Ingredients

Salad

– 4 cups chopped romaine lettuce, rinsed, drained and patted dry
– 4 oranges (sectioned, reserving juice)
– 1 Rio Star Grapefruit (sectioned, reserving juice)
– 3 cups peeled and cubed jicama (about 1 pound)
– 3/4 cup slivered red radishes (1 bunch, about 10 to 12 radishes)

Dressing

– 1-1/2 teaspoons grated lime peel
– 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice (1 large lime)
– 3 tablespoons plain fat-free yogurt
– 2 tablespoons light mayonnaise
– 1-1/2 tablespoons honey
– 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
– Dash of salt

Optional Garnishes

– 1 cup pomegranate seeds
– 3 tablespoons toasted pumpkinseed kernels
– 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Preparation

For Salad

1. Place lettuce in a large serving bowl. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
2. To section oranges and grapefruit, put each piece of fruit on a cutting surface. Using a sharp thin-bladed knife, cut off both ends of the fruit. Place on flat end and cut away peel from top to bottom along curvature of the fruit.
3. Remove all white pulp. Hold peeled fruit over a second large bowl. Section oranges and grapefruit by cutting down along fruit sections to the center. Turn knife to loosen section and lift out.
4. Remove other sections the same way. As the juice is released from the sectioning process, allow it to drip into the bowl.
5. Add jicama and radishes to citrus sections and juice; toss gently. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes.

For Dressing & Assembly

1. In a small bowl, combine lime peel, lime juice, yogurt, mayonnaise, honey, pepper and salt. Stir until smooth. Set aside.
2. Remove salad mixture and romaine lettuce from refrigerator. Using a slotted spoon, drain liquid from salad mixture and distribute salad over romaine lettuce. Drizzle dressing evenly.

For Garnish

1. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds, pumpkinseed kernels and cilantro.
2. Note: Dried cranberries or dried cherries may be substituted for pomegranate seeds. Pumpkinseed kernels may be purchased already toasted. Toasted pine nuts or toasted sliced almonds may be substituted for pumpkinseed kernels. To toast nuts, place in a roasting pan in a single layer in a 350° F oven. Toss several times until light golden brown, being careful not to overcook.

– Read illustrated instructions on how to section a grapefruit.

– Find more fruit and salad recipes in The Nibble’s Fruit and Vegetables sections.

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TRENDS: Cutting Edge Flavors For 2009


Grains of Paradise: Largely confined to West
Africa, these tiny seeds are related to
cardamom, and resemble the seeds inside
cardamom pods.
Want to know what the cutting edge flavors will be at top restaurants this year?

According to trade weekly Nation’s Restaurant News, they’ll be these rarities:

– Grains of paradise from Africa
– Korean black garlic
– Torch ginger from Singapore
– True red pepper from India
– Unpasteurized barley miso—from Massachusetts

Read more about them, and who’s using them with what kind of dishes.

Two of the obscure ingredients, grains of paradise and true red pepper, are in THE NIBBLE’s Varietal Peppercorn Glossary.

For more flavor fun, see McCormick’s 10 flavor pairings for 2009, with 12 tempting recipes.

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PRODUCT: Claire’s Squares

Bi-Rite’s specialty food store has a lovely chocolate section with many of our favorites, including Recchiuti, Michael Mischer, Vosges, Coco-luxe, Lillie Belle, and some specialty items we had never heard of but bought up to try. The most tempting looking, which we attempted to have for breakfast Saturday morning, are chocolatae shortbread and caramel squares, melodiously called Clairesquares. Alas for us, Claire, though a dedicated artisan who makes her products by hand, has a tooth far sweeter than ours. Both milk and dark chocolate squares were far too sweet for us to eat. If only we had looked at the ingredients label before we bought them, it would have been a clue; the milk chocolate has a cocoa content of 31.7% and the dark chocolate has 51.8%, both indicative of more sugar than cacao for our taste. To us, a minimum 60% for dark hits the spot.
Buttery shortbread topped with rich
caramel and coated with Belgian
chocolate.

Although, we still love the concept: a half-inch-thick slab of buttery shortbread, covered with a quarter inch of chocolate caramel, topped with a thin slab of milk or dark chocolate bar. The overall size is three inches; all measurements are approximate, as we are writing in a hotel room without a ruler. Available at Clairesquares.com.

Breakfastless, we ventured forth to the famed farmer’s market at the Ferry Building in search of other nutrition.

Valentine’s Day Cookies

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