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GourmET nEWS SEPTEmbEr 2017 www.gourmetnews.com SuPPliEr nEWS 1 6 Farm to Table Decor at Home in the Kitchen by lorriE bAumAnn Kitchens used to be spaces defined by the color of their cubical steel appliances. But over the past few decades, they have evolved from quasi- industrial work spaces for the assembly line production of meals into gather- ing places for the entire family. As they've become living spaces rather than just working spaces, they've also be- come a setting in which the home cook can demonstrate good taste in a multitude of ways and add warmth to the space without turning on the oven. Now, kitchens can be beautiful, worthy of being seen by anyone invited into the home. Thus, the continuing popularity of the open plan kitchen. As kitchens have opened out, so have the opportunities for you, as you continue to redefine your store to meet the changing needs of customers with an evolving sense of the role they want their kitchens to play in their lives. You've become the place they come to gather the things they need to help them enjoy their time in their kitchens. You don't just help them feed their families; you also help them feed their souls. The marketplace has a lot of help for you as you figure out how to do this, and many of the vendors who displayed their prod- ucts at this summer's Las Vegas Market have ideas for you to consider. Ganz, a giftware company estab- lished in 1950, is offering a Kitchen Clock that features serving utensils and eating utensils to mark the hours. It retails for about $75. The same company offers a va- riety of decorative plaques, many inspirational and spiritual, but the line also includes some sassy spark. For instance: "The Woman's Guide to Love & Lasting Rela- tionships," which advises that it's good to find a man who makes you laugh, a man with a good job who can cook, a man who is honest, a man who will pam- per with gifts, a man who is awesome in bed and then to make sure that these five men never meet. Timeless By Design's Friendship Recipe plaque calls for "2 Cups of Trust, 2 Cups of Mutual Respect" and other ingredients listed on a faux cork board. The model number for this item is 13501, and the same com- pany offers plaques featuring silverware pieces and is featuring a new Spanish line. Melrose International has a farmhouse collection that features sculptural pieces made of metal to help home cooks create "farm to fork" am- biance in their own homes. Model 66335 GY/BR is a wire basket in a pig design, and 70728 is a metal basket that holds two mason jars. Model 70047 is a 6-inch tall by 11.5-inch wide container suggest- ing a pig that would work as either a serving tray or platter, and model 70268 is a two-piece set of metal pig platters that retails for about $39. P. Graham Dunn celebrates its mission-driven family heritage and small family farmers with its range of inspirational and aspirational wood plaques that are handcrafted in the U.S. The Farmer's Market box, which hangs on the wall, is model PNL0595 and retails for around $30, while the plaque that reads simply "Farmers Market" is new to the collection. Designs Combined Inc., which has been importing home décor and seasonal products since 2005, offers a line of signs made from corrugated galvanized in that make a definitive farm- house kitchen statement. Model HK453 reads "Market," HK454 reads "Kitchen," and JE577 reads "Organic." Model JJ213 is a cute ceramic set of salt and pepper shakers in the form of hatching eggs, and MP403 is a ceramic sugar and creamer set decorated with a cow image in relief. From RAZ Imports, Inc, model 3857244 is a 10-inch set of pig bookends that would be cute for the cook- book shelf, and 3857236 is a 50-inch tall sign reading "Welcome to the Farmers Market" that the company says is a top seller. Model 3810234 is an 8-1/2-inch-tall set of ceramic dancing chef pigs. burton + BURTON, known mostly for its balloons and party supplies, has jumped into the farm to table spirit with model 1821138, which is a ceramic oval tray that reads "Farm to Table/Table to Soul" and 9732492, its Decor Milk Jug, which retails for $44. GN Meat with a French Accent from Fabrique Délices by lorriE bAumAnn With more than 100 different cooked and cured charcuterie products, including pates, mousses, duck confit and duck ril- lettes, as well as sausages and boudins, Fab- rique Délices has earned its place as one of the USA's premier producers of artisanal French-style meat products. "We do products for chefs to cook with and products that are ready to serve," says Sébastien Espinasse, Fab- rique Délices' Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "We believe that if we do quality food, the chef will recognize that and put their stamp on the product. They put our food on their menu, and that is a big recognition to us.... When you come from a foreign country to the U.S., when you have a French restaurant, you try to recreate the food you had at home, and the most important part is to find the ingredients." Fabrique Délices makes all of its prod- ucts in California's Bay Area, from pork that comes from Iowa, chicken from Mary's Free Range Chickens and pasture- raised lamb from New Zealand. "The recipes are traditional and authentic. We are not trying to Americanize the product, to tweak the recipe to suit American tastes so we can sell more product," Espinasse says. "This is the closest to French tradi- tion you can find in the U.S. We want to keep doing it." America's free-wheeling food culture that allows for fusions like kosher Korean tacos and barbecue brisket banh mi might tempt other meat processors to in- novate their recipes to create products that would be unrecognizable to Fab- rique Délices' founders, who started the company in 1989 as a subsidiary of French pate producer SAPAR, which was established in Meaux, France, in 1920. But Fabrique Délices has stayed true to its original mission to recreate traditional French charcuterie in the United States, Espinasse says. "We don't want to com- promise the product. This is our iden- tity," he says. "The market is so wide open that sometimes you can lose your head and do many things, but at the end of the day, you need to keep your focus and do what you do best.... Mostly what we try to do is whenever we put a recipe together, you put the protein in your mouth, and it goes up in your head, and it brings back memories of your childhood with the flavor, and if the flavor is approved by your mind, then you say, 'This is what we need.' We grew up with these products so it is very important to keep it like this." "We don't use preservatives, arti- ficial ingredients, MSG, any of that," he adds. "We use the real spices, no extracts. Sometimes you can have some variation: when you use cayenne pepper, sometimes there is variation from one year to the other, and sometimes people notice it. In the U.S., people are very sensitive to change. Artisan products, sometimes this is the way it is." Authenticity and quality are so impor- tant to Espinasse that he's now organizing an American Charcuterie Society to pro- mote those values. "I'm going to try to push it through and get some retailers, some dis- tributors, manufacturers, maybe put a party together and try to move forward," he says. "We are a group of people and we are going to try to move this forward because we need to grow the charcuterie industry, and the only way we can grow charcuterie is for the whole industry together." Those who are interested in being part of the American Charcuterie Society should contact Espinasse at sébastien@ charcuteriesociety.org. GN

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