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GOURMET NEWS FEBRUARY 2017 www.gourmetnews.com Naturally Healthy NATURALLY HEALTHY 1 4 A Serious Foodie Delivers a World of Peppers BY LORRIE BAUMANN Jim Pachence takes peppers more seriously than most. He's the entrepreneur behind Serious Foodie, which offers a line of cook- ing and finishing sauces that feature fusion flavors, most of which celebrate the flavors of peppers grown around the world. His idea was to focus on the unique flavors of the peppers, rather than relying solely on their burn. Pachence, who has a Ph.D. in biophysics, started Serious Foodie in 2015 after a 40- year career as a serial entrepreneur in the medical devices industry, followed by culi- nary training in the U.S. and Europe. He and his family then worked for a few years to develop recipes based on the peppers and flavors he'd discovered during his world travels. "I started off as a very serious amateur cook," he said. "While phasing out my biotech career, I wanted to do something around the culinary business. We had thought of wanting to do something in culinary art, and I had an interest in – not necessarily hot – peppers. I wanted to know why the world has so many peppers. Why and how do peppers taste different when they're grown in different places?" "Some chiles are very harsh and are bred simply to be hot, not to be flavorful, some- times painful," he continued. "We started to look at the opposite: What are the species that are bred to be flavorful? Why are there a thousand Mexican varietals?" The answer to those questions, he de- cided, is that different varieties of peppers are cultivated around the world to com- plement the various flavors that typify their cuisines as a whole. For instance, the aji panca pepper from Peru is used in just about every Pe- ruvian dish in one way or an- other, Pachence said. It's used both fresh and dried, some- times in a paste. When it's fresh, it has a sweet, slightly smoky, fruity flavor that in- spired Pachence to experiment with how it could be used in sauces that would complement the vegetables and proteins that comprise the American culi- nary lexicon. "It's slightly spicy, has multiple levels of flavor, is truly unique to the cooking of that country," he said. "The taste is used everywhere. The Peruvians use it on their vegetables, so we played with that. Meaty fish, incor- porated into a ceviche – those are some of the examples where we re- flect how the sauce is used in the U.S. versus how it's used in Peru. We made a Blood Orange and Aji Panca sauce, which reflects the bracing acidity that you see in the Peruvian dishes, but using our own fusion twist." The Blood Orange and Aji Panca Cook- ing Sauce is one of seven different sauces in the line that started three years ago with Roasted Hatch Chile Cooking Sauce, which was the result of a friend's invitation to visit him in New Mexico and take in the Hatch Chile Festival, an annual Labor Day weekend celebration of southern New Mexico's most famous crop. "As I started to do my culinary experiences, I was inter- ested in the local cuisines of semi-exotic places around the world," Pachence says as he explains how a visit to a small-town harvest festival evolved into a family busi- ness that employs his son, Paul, as its mar- keting executive and his daughter Lisa as a part-time sales executive, with the occa- sional assistance of his wife, who's still a practicing physician. "I wanted to teach my children what it meant to be an entre- preneur," he said. "I'm just very strong on the entrepreneurial spirit and how that helps people around the community. It helps create jobs. It helps improve the local community. I like to connect the commu- nity – that whole idea of thinking globally but acting locally." "The science geek in me went about cre- ating the sauces systematically, trying to find the flavors in the chile that would match with flavor profiles," he said. He or- dered himself a supply of Hatch chiles and started playing with different combinations of fruits and herbs with the peppers, and ended up with a blend of the peppers with passionfruit juice and herbs. "We created something that people really liked and wanted to buy," he said. From there, the line grew to seven differ- ent sauces targeted at consumers from 25 to 55 with discretionary income, who are really interested in both gourmet food and healthy eating, but who don't necessarily have a lot of time to experiment with fla- vors in their own cooking. The sauces are all natural with no artificial preservatives or genetically modified organisms. They have low salt and low sugar. "We approach cooking as a holistic, healthy, flavor-packed experience," he said. "We show people how you can make a gourmet meal without using a lot of fat that adds extraneous calo- ries." The sauces are also gluten-free, and while a couple of them include anchovies, the others are vegan. They're made in small test market batches at a commercial kitchen in St. Petersburg, Florida, and by a co-packer based in Albany, New York, who's familiar with the demands of arti- sanal food production, according to Pachence. "We try to keep the flavor profile medium or lower, as far as the spiciness is concerned," he said. "Most people can tol- erate the sauce. We always say that you can always add hot back into it, but you can't take it away." The sauces are currently sold in 150 stores around the country and perform best for medium-size gourmet shops that also have meat and cheese departments, Pachence said. "Almost every sauce we have has a personal travel experience asso- ciated with it," he added. "We'd tasted something like this somewhere else that we wanted to recreate." For more information, visit www.seri- ous-foodie.com. GN NutritionFacts.Org Launches Podcast Series NutritionFacts.org, a source for independ- ent, non-commercial and science-based ar- ticles and videos on virtually every aspect of diet and healthy eating, has launched a new audio podcast series that lets people get the latest evidence-based nutritional re- search and healthy eating advice on their mobile devices. The weekly podcasts, which are freely available from iTunes (iOS) and Google Play (Android), are led by Nutrition- Facts.org's founder Michael Greger M.D. FACLM. As with all other content avail- able on the site, the podcasts offer unbi- ased, evidence-based information and insights on key topics such as heart health, men's health, women's health, nu- trition facts, Alzheimer's prevention, and more. "Our goal with the new podcast series is to educate as many people as possible on the latest in clinical nutrition, includ- ing information on how to treat and even reverse some of the leading causes of death and disability, so they can make the best choices regarding their health, and the health of their family," commented Greger, who in addition to being an inter- nationally-recognized physician and speaker on nutrition, food safety and pub- lic health issues, is also author of the New York Times bestselling book "How Not to Die." "Doctors receive surprisingly little nu- tritional training in medical school, and they typically do not supplement this knowledge gap after graduation," com- mented Joseph Ram, whose company Is- sues & Advocacy is producing the new podcast series. "As such, there is a great deal of misinformation out there that is steering people in the wrong direction, and damaging their health instead of strengthening it. The podcasts expand Dr. Greger's platform to carry out his critical work, which is to educate and empower people to take control of their health and future." GN

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