Wednesday, October 2nd

Trend Time

Picked up a food magazine recently? Then you are probably aware of some of the latest "trends" in food.

The restaurant and food business is a cornerstone of the American economy, and everyone knows that Americans love nothing more than "the newest thing." To that end, every year food producers, brokers, marketers, writers, and purveyors push new and newsed concepts and food items to the public. Much like every fall's fresh crop of new sitcoms, some might make it and some never get out of the gate.

After prodigious research, littleplate has compiled the following list of the top three food trends for 2003. (Needless to say, this is a terribly biased list based on opinion. You should remember that it is worth exactly what you paid for it!)

It is believed that tea was first consumed around 2737 B.C. by a Chinese emperor. Although tea has been second to coffee in the United States for some time (since approximately 1773, when the whole of Boston Harbor was turned into a teakettle), tea seems to be regaining a solid foothold in the States. In addition to the standard black teas – your grandmother's tea – there is now an army of choices: green tea; herbal tea; French tisanes; and the increasingly popular milky chai tea flavored with spices and served hot or cold.

New this year: tea oils for cooking (supposedly lower in saturated fat even than olive oil) and bubble tea (milky sweet beverages, some of which contain actual tea, in which gelatinous sweet tapioca balls float, waiting to be sucked into your extra-wide straw). The tea oils might be a go, but the bubble tea is incomprehensible to me – though not to the many teenagers I see lurking about the bubble tea cart at the mall. Ahh, to be old and clueless at twenty-seven.

Next up? Cheese! No one had to tell me that cheese was in, but evidently it's a hot product in the specialty food world. There are more and more artisanal cheesemakers in the US, and they are making a real difference in how our cheese tastes. Consumers are no longer restricted to blocks of annatto-orange Cheddar and canned "parmesan." Local grocery stores now carry everything from French Camembert to Greek feta, and we're all the better for it.

The Internet is an invaluable tool in spreading the "power of cheese." Now it doesn't matter where you live. Whether you make your home in the traditional cheeselands of Wisconsin or Vermont, or if you spend your time in relatively cheeseless Arkansas or North Dakota, you can get the very best delivered right to your door.

I can personally recommend the amazing raw milk blue cheese from Great Hill Blue Dairy in Massachusetts (www.greathillblue.com), and the Hunter's Cheddar from Cabot Cheese (www.cabotcreamery.com) in Vermont. The Mozzarella Company in Dallas (www.mozzco.com) makes award-winning mozzarella from your choice of cow's milk or goat milk, and offers various other handmade cheeses (including goat's milk ricotta and Mexican queso blanco). If none of those appeal, try the website of the American Cheese Society (www.cheesesociety.org), which lists dozens of American cheesemakers.

Littleplate's third trend? Organic.

There is more and more importance being placed on where food is from and how it is made. We have all gone to restaurants that wax eloquent on exactly where each ingredient in each entree was grown/produced/churned, and it can get annoying when the diner feels like he or she now has an exact recipe for an item after reading its description on a menu. Still, though, organic foods are gaining. It's not comforting to eat food that you know is shot full of hormones and antibiotics, or that is rife with pesticide.

Since the FDA has finally bothered to actually define "organic," it is much easier to feel comfortable with what you eat. Regular grocery stores now stock loads of organic produce and free-range chicken. Do the majority of Americans eat organic food every night? No. But it is becoming more and more present in the marketplace, and more and more common on the table. I predict that ever more restaurants will be bragging about their Neiman Ranch meats and their pesticide-free veggies.

Unfortunately, I do not have any recipe that combines organic tea with cheese, or vice versa. But I can give you a hint: the accompanying recipe tastes best if you can use ripe pears right off a tree (yours, or a responsible nearby farmer's), pecans you shelled yourself, and a delicious Great Hill Blue cheese. There's no tea in it, but you could have a bubble tea for dessert, or not. I mean, it's just a trend, after all – next year, I'm sure we'll all be into something completely different.