Sweet Fruit Meets Savory

CULINARY

Sweet Fruit Meets Savory

By George M. Sideras, C.E.C.

It is a commonly held assumption thatfruit belongs to a class of foods primarily used as a snack, a dessert or, atmost, a sweet accompaniment to a main meal. However, on further examination, fruits are extremelyversatile and have many applications in savory foods that benefit from the touchof sweetness and other appealing benefits fruit can bring.

Much historical evidence suggests that sweet and savory havegone hand in hand since the beginning of recorded culinary traditions. MiddleEastern cooks have long combined dates and pomegranates, as well as raisins andpreserved lemons, with cooked meats.

European culinary tradition has also used savory and fruitcombinations. Medieval cooks added dried fruit to large pots of simmeringsalted, preserved meats, which toned down the saltiness, thickened the liquidand provided overall flavor. One possible carryover is the uniquely Britishmincemeat—rendered, boiled-down meat or suet combined with fresh and driedfruits that creates a thick, protein-rich food that could be preserved forfuture consumption. The current incarnation found in most supermarkets todaydoes not do the original justice; it provides little more than a sweetened fruitpie. Northern Europeans likewise have a strong culinary tradition of pairingfruit with meats. For example, dried plums often find their way into the famousbraised-rabbit dish of hasenpfeffer.

The viability of fruits in all their forms—fresh, dried,puréed, frozen and powdered—offers the modern product designer a wide rangeof options to explore and to inspire new ideas.

Chutney versatility

Chutneys area time-honored tradition in the culinary world. Chutney is a classification ofcondiments used to enhance the flavors of a dish. They may be sweet, salty,spicy, sour, pungent, hot or a combination of these. By definition, chutneys areslowly cooked fruits with spices and herbs. They traditionally follow asweet-sour profile, although they often include aromatics, such as garlic andonions, in addition to typical sweet ingredients, such as papayas, dates,raisins, mangoes, coconuts, tomatoes and tamarind. Chutneys also may contain chile peppers for a lingering heatand complementary flavor. As is often the case in culinary development, flavorpreference directly results from adapting one’s palate to a necessary oravailable flavor. Chutneys come in a variety of flavors that range fromtraditional Indian green mango, peach brandy or more fusion-influenced styles,like dried fig with star anise.

Chutneys are not meant to stand alone; they are meant toaccent or accompany a wide range of products. These flavor amalgamations most often enhance the flavor ofproteins, but it is not hard to envision them originally masking meat rancidity.

Whatever their original function, fruity chutneys remainanother tool in the culinary treasure chest and provide product developers withthe ability to manufacture a condiment that is readily scalable and shelfstable, and makes use of seasonal low-cost ingredients to add depth to mainentrées and other applications.

Product designers could adapt a broad range of chutneys tomeet any flavor profile or application. Consider the cheese puff. Thisubiquitous appetizer would be much improved if a small amount of dried-cherryand onion chutney was wrapped inside. In vegan and vegetarian cuisine, chutneyslend themselves perfectly to many vegetable and meat-analogue applications. Face it: Tofu can use all the help it can get.

One on-trend dish found at Quarter Bistro in Mariemont, OH,pairs a chutney of dried apricots, apples, cherries and pears with a pan-searedfoie gras. The tartness of the sweet-sour chutney makes the perfectaccompaniment to the rich, fatty taste of the duck liver.

Fruitful salsas

Salsa, thekissing cousin of chutney, has proven to be the most widely used and successfulitem in the culinary world. Fresh or cooked, it has become the No. 1 condimentin the United States—even surpassing ketchup.

Traditionally, we think of salsa as a chunky, tomato-baseddipping sauce that accompanies a Mexican meal. Yet it is not hard to find chefsusing fresh fruit salsas to create new taste sensations. A simple Google searchfor “fruit salsa” yielded over 100,000 hits.

Generally, chefs combine fresh fruit with aromatics and hotpeppers, adding tomatoes, and possibly including some vinegar or citrus juice tocontribute acidity. The most-common fruity salsas tend toward variations onpineapple or mango. From a culinary point of view, when making a salsa, the keyis to blend sweet with acid and have a spicy heat source tie the dish togetherand finish.

The category is only limited by the depth of a fertileimagination, and one can easily find inspiration in many cuisines. What about aMoroccan salsa with fresh oranges, mint, cumin and red pepper on a grilled fish?Or how about a Pacific Rim approach of Asian pears, ginger and rice-wine vinegarover roasted pork?

Salsa’s applications go beyond a side dish or garnish; theycan add significant impact to the dish’s overall impression. Salsas contributetexture and color while enhancing the entire meal. They make excellent additionsto wraps and panini sandwiches, and are the perfect accompaniment to grilled vegetables. Imagine how wonderful a grilled-pineapple salsa with freshcilantro and lime might be on a bed of fresh, steamed asparagus.

New takes on purées

As we delvedown into this subject, we inevitably come to fruit purées. While certainly notat the forefront of savory-fruit applications, they do have a place in theculinary world. They provide cost effectiveness, because they can use blemishedor less-than-perfect fruit that might not work elsewhere. Also, purées stand upto processing and freezing with minimal color and flavor loss, and they permitease of handling and more-compact storage solutions than fresh fruit.

Today’s trendy chefs are using purées in several guises.One approach is to pair the purée with a pepper (that sweet-and-hot effectagain) and use it as a foil against a rich, fatty, savory item. For example, theNapa Grille in Cincinnati pairs a blackberry Thai chile purée with a sautéedgoat-cheese roulade. Paired with a simple salad of mesclun and roasted shallots,this is a sensory party in your mouth. The sweet berry and the heat from thechiles are the perfect foils to the acid-creamy texture of the goat cheese.

Chefs are also using fruit purées to create salad dressingswith unique mouth-feel and flavor. Also, the bulk of the purée can help reducethe fat content of the dressing; the purée acts as a kind of fat mimetic byproviding body and altering the flavor. Blood-orange vinaigrette, red-currant andchampagne-vinegar dressing, and chukar-cherry-cider dressing would all pair wellwith any salad, especially one that sports some of the more-bitter lettucetypes.

Purées can also act as ready-made dipping sauces. After all,what is ketchup but a fruit-based condiment? A growing and persistent trend in ketchup is using differentfruit bases. Every day, you see them creeping onto upscale menus as chefssearch to find the next big thing. They come in many guises, includingtomato-apple, mango-curry, grilled-peach and even banana types.

While these flavors may not immediately appeal to widespreadsensibilities, it is important to note that current agreement on what definesketchup has only been around since the middle of the 20th century. Ketchup started out as a general term for sauce, typicallymade of mushrooms or fish with herbs and spices. Some popular early main ingredients included anchovies,grapes, cucumbers, cranberries and lemons.

Pomegranate purée is currently trendy—and has been aroundsince the dawn of time. This time-consuming and messy fruit, whose seeds are themain attraction, has become the new darling in the product-development world.Pomegranates have a rich, astringent, ruby-colored juice loaded withantioxidants and vitamins. It pairs well with fatty food.

Powder power

Another tool in theproduct-design arsenal is fruit powders. For years, chefs have been adding theseto breadings and coatings. However, most restaurant chefs have limited access tofruit-powder ingredients and often find themselves dehydrating fruits and zestto make their own powders.

Mixtures of sea salt, herbs, spices and fruit powders can formthe basis of new coatings or breadings. Imagine a dried lime zest, fine sea saltand wasabi powder rub on a seared tuna steak, or possibly a pork chop lightlydusted with a strawberry powder, rosemary and smoked paprika, and grilled. Fruitpowders in breading can work as a natural sweetener, which can add coloring orsweetness and help create a more-wholesome ingredient declaration.

A cutting-edge application is using powders to enhance trendyculinary foams. A powered mango and-chile foam to accent scallops might be thenext big thing. Powders might not always be the most cost-effective way todeliver a fruit flavor. However, if the trend in labeling continues toward “cleaner”and “natural,” you can bet that these items will continue to grow inpopularity.

Indispensable IQF

Freezing allows product designers to take advantage of fruit year-round. Individually quick frozen, or IQF, fruits have becomeindispensable in the foodservice arena, because no additional ingredients areadded, and it best replicates the quality of fresh-off-the-tree fruit. Thebenefits are many and the downsides few. Stable pricing, consistent quality andfixed labor costs make using IQF a winning scenario. They work in mostapplications, with minimal change in the outcome.

Often, processors can take some of the prep work out of fruitin an IQF product. For example, one company recently released an IQF fruit linethat included roasted Fuji apples. This product captured the imagination ofchefs around the country as they embraced it for chutneys, dressings andstuffings. One favorite application is an apple-stuffed pork loin wrappedin prosciutto.

Reduced-moisture IQF fruits can provide advantages whenadditional moisture in an application might affect finished-product quality.

Stepping out with savory

Anotherarea of interest for savory fruit items is in beverages. Often, fruits are relegated to the sweet end of the spectrum,such as simply increasing the sugar content of alcoholic drinks. However, thereis a small trend in the restaurant industry to infuse drinks with “housemadeflavors.” These flavors have run the gamut from kumquat-ginger to spicy-cherryor mint-shallot-orange types.

While some of these experiments have met with various degreesof success, one of the most appealing combinations was grilled-pineapple vodka.The smoky, grilled flavor combined with pineapple in a chilled martini glass canonly be described as memorable.

This is a rich and fertile area of exploration, not only inthe adult-beverage market but also for soft and sports drinks. Perhaps anaudience exists for adult tastes not predicated on sweet, but rather with anemphasis on savory.

And while we’re on the subject: Has anybody ever thought about savory fruit applications forsports bars? How about a dried-pear blue-cheese energy bar? Stranger things havehappened....

Fruit is an exciting palette to the chef. It offers theopportunity to use color, taste, texture and flavors in a multiplicity offunctions. To create the next million-unit seller, product developers have tokiss a lot of frogs. But with fruit, sit back and survey the plethora ofingredients and the rich culinary traditions that exist—and be assured that afew princes or princesses are out there waiting.

George M. Sideras, C.E.C., is a charter member of the ResearchChefs Association. He is currently employed at SYSCO Food Services, Cincinnati,as marketing associate, and is teaching a course to aspiring research chefs atthe University of Cincinnati on “American ethnic cuisine.” Together with wife Paula, the best chef he knows, they havecooked up two sons, Luke and Zachary. In between eating bouts and recipedevelopment, Sideras is an avid rock climber.