Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Fancy Food Show Winter 2010 – Flavor Trends


DSC04374 Wild Tea Seed Oil

I told you about some of this year’s trends in food preparation and packaging here, but now I will tell you about the flavor trends my foodie friends and I observed when we attended the 2010 Winter Fancy Food Show.

Exotic Citrus
Exotic citrus fruits were well-represented throughout the show. We, and everyone else who hovered around the booth like bees in a beehive, all loved the 100% fresh squeezed blood orange juice by Aliseo Foods. No big surprise that this won the gold Sofi Award for best cold beverage.

The grapefruit gelato by PreGel America was our hands-down favorite frozen dessert of the day.

Pink Grapefruit gelato

Stephanie loved all the products she tasted in the Yakami Orchard booth but she was especially partial to the marmalade featuring the Japanese citrus fruit yuzu.

Yakami Orchard

Bacon
Last year I wrote about meeting the Baconnaise boys, this year bacon is popping up in more
places. Linda found bacon-flavored chapstick, bacon popcorn, and even bacon-flavored glue on the flaps of envelopes. Another unusual, and surprisingly delicious, bacon offering was the bacon peanut brittle by Sir Francis Bacon.


Peanuts, butter, sugar, salt, and now bacon. Why not deep-fry it and make it a forbidden-food homerun? On the other hand, peanuts are protein, butter gives us calcium, this has zero trans fats and all ingredients are natural. If I have it with a glass of red wine to protect my heart, I might call it a health food.

Coconut
A very welcome trend I observed was the increased use of coconut across many products. My favorites were the toasted coconut salt and the coconut curry ice cream (though I still keep hoping that I’ll have another scoop of the coconut lemongrass gelato that Ciao Bella served at the San Francisco Ferry Building one day). I failed to make a note of the booth number for the gold Sofi winner for Outstanding New Product Danielle Fruit Chips so I missed the chance to taste their Roasted Coconut Chips.


Just from the description of it, this sounds like something I would like to sprinkle over coconut gelato or just eat by the handful.

Tea
Now that tea has been proven to be powerful antioxidant, it is showing up in more and more products every year. It seems that every self-respecting chocolatier must have a green-tea chocolate. In fact, The Tea Room won a silver Sofi Award for their Green Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Bar.

The most unique tea product I found was tea seed oil made by Arette, think flax seed oil but made with tea seeds. This oil is expressed from the cousin of the tea plant (Camillia Oleifera instead of Camellia Sinensis). Not only do these oils taste delicious, they are loaded with enough monounsaturated oils, unsaturated fatty acids, poly phenols, and vitamin E to make me live to a hundred. But wait, there’s more. It is very desirable for cooking because it has a high smoke point ( 485˚ F).

DSC04376 China Mist teas

Bottled tea drinks are not new but new flavor combinations continue to pop up. China Mist creates a beautiful and delicious line of organic teas with flavors like Tangerine Black Tea with Pomegranate Juice, Blackberry Jasmine Green Tea with Lemonade, or Dragon Fruit Black Tea. They are offered in a glass hourglass-shaped bottle that is attractive and comfortable to hold.

Next time, our favorites!

9 comments:

Ruth said...

There are so many things I haven't heard of here it's quite astounding. The grapefruit gelato sounds fantastic.

We are using a lot of coconut milk and cream, as I think you noticed in my eggplant garlic soup.

Bacon flavored stuff surprises me - chapstick?? Envelopes!

The tea seed oil - how fascinating, and good to know it's healthy. Something we will have to look into.

Wonderful as always. I love when you post food.

melissashook said...

bacon chapstick? for shame...
there are some wonderful character shots here...
thanks..

Kala said...

Bacon popcorn, coconut curry ice cream and green tea chocolate, I never knew they existed!

Vagabonde said...

So many new products and new flavors – it’s great. Do you know that when I moved to San Francisco in the 60s I could not find yogurt? I lived on Castro – don’t know if you know where it is – it was a working class neighborhood but it has changed I hear – anyhow the corner grocery store had hardly anything and no yogurt – and now all these delicacies…

A Cuban In London said...

Oh, dear, you're making my mouth water and it's only 9.20am in GB.

Great post and pictures. Many thanks.

Greetings from London.

Susan said...

Yum! You had me at gelato!

I saw a recipe on a blog for chocolate chip cookies with bacon and bacon brittle. Have yet to try either one.

Johnny Nutcase said...

that ginger ale sounds awfully tasty! looks like a lot of fun!

dutchbaby said...

Dear Ruth,
It's the surprises that I love most about this show. It's truly a celebration of the ingenuity of those in the culinary industry. I've been looking for the tea seed oil; I hope they found a distributor on the West Coast.

I bought some boxed 100% coconut water at Whole Foods a few days before this show. It's delicious, refreshing and loaded with Vitamin C, potassium (I think), and it has zero fat. I was hoping to see the vendors of this fantastic product so that I could thank them. Alas, they were not at the show.

Dear melissashook,
I was given a stick of Baconnaise chapstick at this show last year. It's rattling around in the back of a drawer somewhere in my house.

LOL about your comment regarding my shots.

Dear Kala,
Crazy isn't it? Those were the delicious ones, but sometimes they are...not so much.

Dear Vagabonde,
I remember The Castro way back then. There was a very good Indonesian restaurant there. The neighborhood went in decline before the gay population moved in and fixed it all up. It looks great now and it is now known as San Francisco's gay village.

I can't imagine not having access to yogurt. Now there are loads of organic fresh yogurt cafes popping up everywhere. It's become quite the hip trend.

Dear Cuban,
I apologize for the gelato so early in your morning.

Dutchbaby said...

Dear Susan,
The grapefruit gelato will complete you ;)

Bacon chocolate chip cookies? Unbelievable!

Dear Johnny Nutcase,
I love ginger ale and this one is definitely a good one!

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