Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Fancy Food Show yesterday

Yesterday I visited the 3-day FANCY FOOD SHOW
at the Jacob Javits Center.
Someone once advised me to just taste olive oils the first day.
Tasting olive oils from Spain, Italy, Napa, France, Greece could keep you very busy.
This they advised was the best way to find tune your taste buds..
Then you could proceed to Balsamic vinegars or whatever and keep comparison tasting.
But when good old fashioned Butterscotch sauce beckons your taste buds nearby,
temptation gets the better of you and fine tuning goes out the window.
EVERYONE said I must taste Charles Chocolates...
David Lebovitz implored readers to taste Charles' bars.
It's so much easier to sample at a wine tasting.
You sip and spit, followed by bites of bread to cleanse your palate.
With food, you taste, bite, chew, swallow.
Often I try to take samples home to taste at leisure.
But these chocolate shards, if they make it home without melting, get confusing.
Which was which? I've yet to come up with a solution to these massive tastings...
A VERY BIG item at the show was S-A-L-T !
Was there more salt than anything else at the show?

I already have 4 kinds of salt in my kitchen
One I got at last year's show, Cyprus Flakes
I bought Fleur de Sel de Guerande at the Fauchon Closing because you're supposed to have it.
I keep forgetting to crack open these jars.
And 2 kinds of Greek sea salt I use regularly.
A 250 gram jar lasts me a year.
Do I really need more salt?
These are pink Himalayan rock SALT are from David Burke and Donatello
You lay raw tuna on the rock salt and it's cured..?
Bella Cucina had one of the prettiest displays at the show.
They also had SALT - flavored salts...
Please tell me why I don't get this?
This I get :)
Single origin chocolate and vanilla ice cream from CHOCTAL.
Like all the single origin chocolate bars around,
From Ghana, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic etc.

Very Yummy even if my taste buds can't remember what those different chocolates taste like.
Not ice cream but balls of evervescent bath lotions!
This blurry picture gives you an idea what the show looks like...
HUGE and this is just the downstairs!
I haven't made it to the upstairs yet.

Do you want more? Let me know :)
I've always heard about New Zealand's/Australia's national dessert,
The Pavlova dessert was first created in the early 1930s in honor of Russian ballerina, Anna PAblove by Australian chef, Herbert Sachse.
It's a soft meringue cake, crispy on the outside but light and fluffy inside and topped
with whipped cream and fruits!
In ALMOST FRENCH, author
Sara Turnbull, makes it for her French relatives and knocks their socks off.
Delicious but sweeeeeeeeet!

New Zealand saved the day with their fresh Kiwis.
You long for some real food at these tasting extravaganzas.
The spare carrot or a Kiwi cleanses and refreshes your palate

so you can keep going and forge onward tasting, tasting, tasting.
Very selectively of course!

12 comments:

  1. gorgeous pictures. I feel fatter just having looked at them. Incidentally I always use Fleur de sel Guerande too.

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  2. Anonymous7:41 AM

    Why don't I ever know about these things until AFTER they are over???? I'm only a train ride away.... *sobbing uncontrollably*

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  3. Yummy! The wine ice cream sounds very interesting. ~Heidi

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  4. What a feast for the eyes! Thanks for sharing.

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  5. Ah I miss the Fancy Food Show! Did you get to Charles Chocolates?;) Glad to see you're having so much fun!

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  6. Enough already. I feel sick now. Salt, choclate, Pavlova and olive oil all in one hit. Still I would love to go to that show.

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  7. Salt-flavored salt?

    Maybe to distinguish it from rose-flavored salt?

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  8. Anonymous5:50 PM

    WOW. I can see I'm behind in Paris Breakfast Land!! Thanks for the tour. Merci!

    Years ago I met the owner of Bella Cucina through a friend of mine in Atlanta. She had a little sandwich establishment in an Antique store. I loved her logo, which at the time had a line drawing of an Italian woman with a basket of food on her head. Because I loved it so much I bought the t. shirt, it was the ONLY shirt I have ever worn with words on it!

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  9. Anonymous10:59 AM

    I always love those bella cucina items. That pavlova looks to die for. It all looks to die for, now that I think of it. I'll bet that wine ice cream would do the trick! Yum.

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  10. Ohhh, I am drooling! Thank you for sharing these delicious photos!

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  11. I've had Australian Pavlova a number of times - and it is one of my favorite desserts. The local shop here makes it with a *passionfruit* custard on top of all that meringue, which is then garnished with fresh fruit and bits of very dark chocolate. There couldn't be a more luscious combination of flavors, in my tongue's humble opinion.

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  12. I'm crazy about food shows, but don't get to enough of them. Thanks so much for sharing!

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