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Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Pearl River Pastry

Chances are you've had one of their ridiculously yummy products and didn't even realize it. 

Pearl River Pastry specializes in making various desserts that can be finished by pastry chefs and then served to hungry customers. Most people don't realize that the majority of desserts served in restaurants are not made on site. Making desserts in house requires a lot of resources for a course that a lot of people don't even order. 

I'm telling all the chefs I know to start using Pearl River products. They're that good. I want to grow a third thumb because two thumbs up isn't enough.

Cheesecake! Mousse! Tarts! Muffins! Layer cakes! Their booth was overwhelming in showing off the sheer size of their product line. We spent about fifteen minutes trying all of their different products. All of them were amazingly tasty. This is super convenient for their customers. You can build a huge dessert menu and only have to deal with one vendor.

While I was standing in their booth, a chef was passing by and asked one of the Pearl River Pastry people why he should pick them over another vendor. The answer was simple: "We don't compromise." 

These guys are using the same ingredients and same techniques as if you hired a world class pastry chef and set them up in your restaurant. 

Did I mention they have several vegan products?

They wouldn't let us leave until we tried their new vegan muffins. Now, for me, vegan=FLAVORDANGER. The rep from Pearl River Pastry assured me that they would never release anything that wasn't perfectly tasty just so they could stamp VEGAN on it. 

The above picture is Actual sharing a muffin with Designer Girlfriend. The vegan muffins were fantastic. Actual tweeted out "better than muffins that are made of animals!". Note the jealous yet happy look from the person in the background!

You can check out their extensive product line at their website.

http://www.prpastry.com/

 

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Porta Mangiare

Rest of Chomple Team: Yod, how many booths do you have marked for day 2 of the Fancy Food Show?
Me: One. 
Rest of Chomple Team: ONE? What is it?
Me: Meatballs. They tweeted out that they had meatballs.
Rest of Chomple Team: MEATBALLS?
Me: You don't understand, nobody brings meatballs to the Fancy Food Show unless their utterly fantastic. 

The meatballs were indeed fantastic. But this is really about the meatballs. It's about being a Kitchen Hero.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile then you know that my favorite kitchen products are what I call Kitchen Hero. These are the products that allow you to make fantastically tasty stuff with little to no more effort than you would have spent making something, well, normal tasting. Impress your family! Wow your neighbors! Avoid getting nominated for one of those "worst cooks" shows! An arsenal of Kitchen Hero products stashed in your kitchen goes a long way to smoothing out untasty situations.

Porta Mangiare meatball mix is definitely something you need to keep around.

It's pretty simple. Take the mix, add 2 eggs, 6 oz of a dry cheese, 1 lb of meat and a tiny bit of water or milk. Mix it up, then cook up the meatballs (oven or pan). Easy.

But, there are plenty of meatball mixes. What makes this one so special?

Porta Mangiare does the hard part: the breadcrumbs and spice mix. Breadcrumbs especially. For any Italian style meatball, the breadcrumbs are the make or break ingredient, although most people don't realize this. Most mixes use your standard, cheap, baking process remnant crumbs. Not this stuff. They actually have three types of bread that are baked specifically for their meatball mix. The bread is then sliced, dried, toasted, and turned into breadcrumbs. That's incredible attention to detail, and you can absolutely taste it in the final product.

For the rest, you can follow their instructions to the letter or mix it up a bit. You determine what kind of ground meat you want to use. You can use Romano cheese as recommended, or use another kind of cheese to change up the flavor (just, please, please don't use the stuff I won't name that comes in a green can. Actually, don't use anything that comes in a green can).

Go get some right now at www.portamangiare.com

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Sir Kensington's

It all started when this strange fellow named Sir Kensington started tweeting using the #NASFT hashtag that people use at the Summer and Winter Fancy Food shows.

This silly chap was offering free moustaches. 

Moustaches? For free? And what is he doing here at the Winter Fancy Food Show? Surely a moustache is not food! Surely he has some splendiferous food product?

We should investigate this forthwith.

Me: Hello, kind sir!
Sir Kensington: Hello! Would you like to try my wonderful gourmet scooping ketchup?
Me: Scooping?
Sir Kensington: Why, yes! Scooping. Dipping is not enough for my wonderful creation! 
Me: Ok, scooping some now...
Sir Kensington: Make haste, chap! Ketchup so important has no time to waste!

It was fantastic. Best ketchup I've ever tasted. Seriously.

Me: Why is your ketchup so good? 
Sir Kensington: Jolly good, you noticed! We use real ingredients.
Me: Doesn't regular ketchup have real ingredients? 
Sir Kensington: Do camels care about your well being?
Me: No?
Sir Kensington: Exactly, my old taster. Exactly.

While Sir Kensington retired to his drawing room situated in an old bunker under the Moscone Center, one of his representatives decided to take mercy on me and explain why the ketchup was so good. Sir Kensington's sacred creation uses actual tomato puree and not tomato concentrate. Agave nectar, honey, and raw brown sugar instead of HFCS. And real, actual spices. You can taste the difference immediately. Sir Kensington's ketchup is the real deal. Or as Sir Kensington puts it, "the true arrogance of a bowler hat's attitude"... whatever that means.

Sir Kensington returned.

Sir Kensington: It appears you have arrived with some lovely ladies. Do they wish to have moustaches?
Girlfriend Actual: No?
Designer Girlfriend: No?
Sir Kensington: YES!

[Note: the guy on the left is just one of Sir Kensington's mortal representatives. That's Sir Kensington on the right there, wearing the top hat. His awesomeness is so epic that my camera couldn't handle it and rendered him in black and white 2D. Also, Designer Girlfriend is not that short. She's sitting on Sir Kensington's cane, which apparently can be altered into a circa 1760's rococo fainting bed, Transformers-style.]

Sir Kensington: You must order your readers to visit my website. Or else you get no scooping ketchup.
Me: Yes, Ketchup Lord.

So please, go here:
www.sirkensingtons.com 

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Julian's Recipe

One of the best waffles any of us have ever eaten.

So luscious and flavorful that there's absolutely no syrup needed whatsoever.

Guess what? It comes frozen!

Given the best ingredients and the best waffle iron known to man, I still wouldn't come close in my own kitchen to creating a waffle this good. Hands down the best waffle I've ever eaten that wasn't personally made for me by the Waffle Lady.

 

Julian's Recipe waffles are the brainchild of Alex Dzieduszycki. Alex has already brought the world Alexia Foods and Terra Chips. Both are tremendously successful businesses which make tasty products that I personally consume frequently. You know what? These waffles are his best creation yet. And that's saying something, because I love Terra Chips more than rainbows.

Buttery. Great crust. Tender inside. Perfectly sweet. I literally can't even put into words how great these waffles are. Add to that how easy they are to prepare and this product is just end to end phenomenal. Parents: this is straight up Kitchen Hero stuff. 

Fantastic. Just fantastic. Waffletastic, even.

www.juliansrecipe.com

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: SanTasti

Best of show product at only the third booth we went to? That's crazy.

It might happen. We shall see.

On the first day of the show, we encountered SanTasti. They claim to have developed a fizzy drink that cleanses your palate.

Does it work?

F*** YES it works.

About 30 minutes after trying SanTasti, we had the unfortunate experience of trying something completely foul (I won't name who served it/what it was). Needless to say it was completely nasty. Actual and Designer ran to the water station to attempt to get rid of the flavor. It didn't work. 

I had a better plan.

I ran all the way back to the SanTasti booth.

Me: ANDREW!
Andrew (one of the co-inventors): Hey, welcome back, um, what's wrong?
Me: Bad sample. Help. Give SanTasti now. Please. Taste buds. Danger. Help.
Andrew: [laughing] Let me give you a full cup so you can take it with you.
Me: THANK YOU

[By the way, SanTasti people, will you fill a CamelBak with SanTasti for me so I can take it around the show? PLEASE? haha]

It worked. The horror of the bad aftertaste was over. I took the rest to Designer and brought her back to the happy nice tasting world. 

So what's up with this awesome product?

Meet Andrew and Nicole. Nicole's the partially obscured one of the left. 

Andrew and Nicole became buds at CalPoly. They ended up going into some sort of viticulture program. They had a pretty awesome senior project. They didn't reveal what the senior project was, but it lead to some sort of problem which they solved with the product that would become SanTasti.

SanTasti works by [REDACTED]. They told us, but we're sworn to secrecy. Actually, there's an explanation on their website: crackersareforslackers.com

These guys are going to be wildly successful. VC firms, get in now while you can.

San Pellegrino, you have met your match. 

www.santasti.com