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GOURMET NEWS AUGUST 2017 www.gourmetnews.com Supplier News SUPPLIER NEWS 1 2 Sultry Spices and Silky Fruits Skyrocket 1st-Time Entrant to Stunning Five sofi Awards BY LORRIE BAUMANN Le Bon Magot ® surprised the specialty food community at this year's Summer Fancy Food Show with a display of five sofi Awards, all earned this year with the new company's very first entries into the sofi Award competition. Naomi Mobed, the company's Founder and CEO, launched the brand in February 2015 and then exhibited in the 2016 Summer Fancy Food Show to test its flavors with Fancy Food Show at- tendees before she was really ready to face the sofi Award competition. "Actually, we validated the taste and flavors of our prod- ucts with trusted palates even before being incorporated into a company," she said. With her five 2017 sofi Awards on her shelves, Mobed is ready to scale up produc- tion to meet the demands of the national market. She's debt-free and looking for in- vestment capital to help her grow. "We're keen to attract external investment and be- lieve we have a sound and scalable business model," she said. Le Bon Magot currently offers just five products, all based on regional African, Middle Eastern and South Asian flavors, with sophisticated spice blends with depth and nuance that also appeal to contempo- rary American palates. Each of them re- flects their branding – "magot" is a French word that means a hidden treasure. "The name was for a variety of reasons – one was the pure marketing reality that the com- mon language among gourmets continues to be French," she said. "I like the fact that it doesn't have one specific meaning, not just a treasure, but jewels, loot, coffers, bounty and booty. Each one of our prod- ucts is of a vibrant gem-like color. I came from a finance background and I am pas- sionate about jewelry, so our name also has a tongue-in-cheek element to it." Her Tomato and White Sultana Chutney, winner of this year's gold sofi Award in the condiments category, was her first product and is still her company's top seller. The chutney marries the sweet fruitiness of tomato to Kashmiri chiles, ginger and garam masala. Next in production were the White Pumpkin and Almond Murraba and the Brinjal Caponata, made of purple aubergine, cumin and curry leaves and the winner of the bronze sofi Award in the pickles category. The Brinjal Caponata is a traditional western Indian condiment made from a recipe that came from Mobed's grandmother by way of her mother, who tweaked it a little bit, and that Mobed her- self played with also before settling on its current formulation. The White Pumpkin and Almond Murraba includes cardamom, cinnamon and vanilla in a preserve that's traditionally used for celebrations in Cen- tral Asia and the Middle East. Spiced Raisin Marmalata won a gold sofi Award and an award for the best new prod- uct in the jam and preserves category. This product offers jumbo black raisins imported from South Africa blended with ras al hanout, dried rose petals, green cardamom and smoked cinnamon. "We wanted to recreate the oud scent but for the palate," Mobed said. While oud is the distinctive scent of a resin found in agarwood trees that is used for incense and perfumes and valued in many cultures for its distinctive fra- grance, Mobed uses smoked cinnamon alongside dried rose petals, cardamom and other spices to recreate the musky notes. Like the other products in the Le Bon Magot line, Spiced Raisin Marmalata was made to pair with cheese and charcuterie, but can also be used as a cooking ingredient, per- haps to be added to a spiced oatmeal raisin cookie or a Linzer cookie. The company's final product is its Lemon-Sultana Mar- malata with Caraway and Saffron, the win- ner of a bronze sofi Award in the jam and preserves category. All of the products are made from recipes that came from Mobed's grandmother and great-grandmother that were originally written down in a dialect that Mobed speaks but doesn't read. Her mother trans- lated them, interpreting measurements that came from a system that was once used across Asia but is no longer common. Mobed is a Parsi born in Pakistan with family from India. Her father was employed in the oil industry, while her mother worked in the pharmaceuticals industry, and they raised Mobed in Iran, Hong Kong and Eu- rope as well as in the U.S. Her first American home was in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. She left the U.S. to go to the London School of Eco- nomics when she was 21, after receiving her undergraduate degree at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. "I'd always wanted to be in the food business since the latter years of my undergraduate degree," she said. "I was applying to grad school and culinary school. I decided to go to the London School of Econom- ics, thinking I could do culinary later." Mobed lived in London after finishing her education there, eventually moved to Muscat, Oman, then came back to England, and did some more moving around from Johannesburg to Dubai and all points in- between before returning to the United States two years ago. Her business is now based in New Jersey, where she says she is settled for the immediate future. "A busi- ness settles you," she said. "My mother lives here. My grandmother now lives here. I'm as settled as I ever will be." She says that, while she brings her fi- nance experience with her into her busi- ness, making and selling food is a part of her family culture that she values highly, and a number of her female family mem- bers have flourishing food businesses around the world. "For a lot of women in Iran and Pakistan, catering and foodservice is a way for women to gain independence and empowerment without leaving their homes," she said. "The same goes for other countries in the Middle East as well. That's why you have so many female entrepre- neurs." GN Mixed Milk Cheeses Offer Affordable Adventure BY LORRIE BAUMANN A few cheesemakers who brought their wares to the Summer Fancy Food Show this year are offering new mixed-milk cheeses that they hope will be a gateway for inexperienced consumers into artisanal cheeses from the milk of animals other than cows. These cheeses blend flavors from the milk of goats and/or sheep to re- sult in cheeses that have flavor notes that might be unfamiliar and interesting to neo- phyte cheese-lovers, but they're combined with the reassuring familiarity of tastes of cow milk. One of these is Landmark Creamery's new Switchgrass, a mixed cow and sheep milk cheese for which the Wisconsin Cen- ter for Dairy Research collaborated on the recipe. The cheese has sweet, nutty charac- teristics like a sheep milk cheese, but be- cause the cheese is made from cow milk as well, it can be offered at a retail price point in the lower $20s range rather than the price point dictated purely by the cost of sheep milk. Landmark is a small Wisconsin creamery, just four years old, owned by Anna Thomas Bates and Anna Landmark, who make and age their cheeses in space belonging to other cheesemakers. The company has just launched a new Kickstarter campaign that the two Annas hope will produce the fi- nancing for new aging equipment and get them into their own aging space, Bates said. LaClare Farms Cheesemaker Katie Fuhrmann is pursuing a similar idea with her GoCo, a fun cheddar cheese made with cow curds melded with goat milk curds. She's also offering Blueberry Merlot Chan- doka, a holiday spread made from her Chandoka, which tied for a second place in the Brest of Show category at the 2015 American Cheese Society Competition & Judging. That version of Chandoka was aged by Standard Market, but LaClare Farms, owned by Fuhrmann's parents, Larry and Clare Hedrich, now has enough aging space to allow Chandoka to stay home to be aged there. The Blueberry Mer- lot Chandoka is a deeply decadent cheese spread, soft enough to be dipped out of its container with a finger when it's at room temperature. The Merlot helps give it a beautiful caramel color as well as a deep fruitiness that helps to round out the flavor of the blueberries. This cheese is rich enough to make a satisfying after-dinner dessert as well as a cocktail party offering. If you were lucky enough to have the chance to visit the Wisconsin Milk Market- ing Board booth during the Summer Fancy Food Show, you probably enjoyed the flight of five Wisconsin cheddars that the WMMB had there. These included Vat 17 World Cheddar from Deer Creek Cheese, Hook's Triple Play-Extra Innings from Hook's Cheese, Heritage Weis 5-Year Cheddar from Red Barn Family Farms, Red Rock from Roelli Cheese Haus and 8-Year Aged Cheddar from Widmer's Cheese Cellars. Widmer's Cheese Cellars is known for tra- ditionally-made cheeses with assertive fla- vors, but Master Cheesemaker Joe Widmer also knows how to make a cheese that's perfectly balanced so that these strong fla- vors comfort and satisfy. The Hook's Triple Play is another example of these interesting mixed-milk cheeses, as it combines milk from cows, goats and sheep. Extra Innings is an extra-aged variety of the original Triple Play, which received a third-place award in the 2015 American Cheese Soci- ety contest. The Vat 17 World Cheddar was made from a mix of cheese cultures from the different styles of cheddar cheese that are made around the world, ending with a cheese that combines the flavors of a famil- iar American-style cheddar with the nu- ances of British cheddars. Altogether, these five cheeses offered a world of new flavors from a cheese you thought you already knew. GN

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