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Kitchenware News & Housewares Review Show Daily Tuesday, March 13, 2018 2 6 Save Time, Money and Space with Starfrit The One Pot trend is still in full swing and The Rock has consumers geared up for long term money, time and storage savings. With four specially designed cooking utensils, Starfrit sets the stage for delicious and healthy meals for the whole family, ready in 30 minutes or less using only one cooking vessel! The One Pot line showcases four items, each with their own specialty. The Rectangular Baker works especial- ly well for roasts and blends of produce with meat. The 7.2 Qt Stock Pot is ideal for those cold-season comforters like chili, stew, soup and more. The 5 Qt Dutch Oven is the most versatile option; from casseroles, sautés to mac n' cheese, it can take on just about any recipe. Lastly, the 5.2 Qt Deep Fry Pan works particularly well on the stovetop because of its long handle, making it ideal for any recipe that requires a lot of stirring and mix- ing over a burner. These high- performance pieces go from stove top to oven to dinner table to dishwasher and are all treated with Starfrit's patent pending Rock.Tec surface enhance- ment. Their textured surface is a rock- like finish with tiny air pockets, so the food does not have a flat surface to stick on. The result is an un-paral- leled non-stick release per- formance, equal to no other. Make sure to visit www.starfrit.com/en/onepot and see for yourself why the One Pots are sweeping the cookware category. For more information on The Rock One Pot products, stop by booth #S462, email informa- tion@starfrit.com, call 800.361.6232 or visit www.starfrit.com/en/onepot. Techko Unveils New Robot Vacuum Models Techko Kobot Inc. announces its newly designed robot vacuum models: the KOBOT Slim Series Robot Vacuum and the KOBOT Cyclone Series Robot Vacuum. With the latest release of the KOBOT Slim Series, Techko Kobot Inc. brings automated cleaning to help people spend less time on chores and focus on the more important parts of life. The Slim Series Robot Vacuum features efficient cleaning by utilizing its unique roller brush and its patented vacuum cage mechanism. After cleaning, the Slim Series Robot Vacuums finds its docking station and charges all on its own. The KOBOT Cyclone Series fea- tures high-powered cyclonic vacuum technology. Dubbed the "Pet Hair Specialist," the KOBOT Cyclone Series is specifically designed to clean up after hairs and debris that might easily get tangled in other robot vacuums. "As we've had many conversations with our customers, we've come to realize that robot vacuums are the perfect companions for pet own- ers. Cleaning up after them every day can be a hassle and we're here to help solve that problem," says Techko Kobot Product Manager Ted Ko. As Techko Kobot designs new products each year, it's important to build things that fit people and their everyday needs to help fulfill the mission of making daily cleaning simple. For more information, stop by booths #L13147 and #L13148 or visit www.techkokobot.com. A Serious Foodie Delivers a World of Peppers By Lorrie Baumann Jim Pachence takes peppers more seri- ously than most. He's the entrepreneur behind Serious Foodie, which offers a line of cooking and finishing sauces that feature fusion flavors, most of which cel- ebrate 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 bio- physics, started Serious Foodie in 2015 after a 40-year career as a serial entrepre- neur in the medical devices industry, fol- lowed by culinary 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 ama- teur cook," he said. "While phasing out my biotech career, I wanted to do some- thing 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 pep- pers. Why and how do peppers taste dif- ferent when they're grown in different places?" "Some chilies are very harsh and are bred simply to be hot, not to be flavorful, sometimes 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 vari- etals?" The answer to those questions, he decided, is that different varieties of pep- pers are cultivated around the world to complement the various flavors that typ- ify their cuisines as a whole. For instance, the aji panca pepper from Peru is used in just about every Peruvian dish in one way or another, Pachence said. It's used both fresh and dried, sometimes in a paste. When it's fresh, it has a sweet, slightly smoky, fruity flavor that inspired Pachence to experiment with how it could be used in sauces that would com- plement the vegetables and proteins that comprise the American culinary 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, incorporated into a ceviche – those are some of the examples where we reflect 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 Cooking 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 interested in the local cuisines of semi-exotic places around the world," Pachence says as he explains how a visit to a small-town harvest festi- val evolved into a family business that employs his son, Paul, as its marketing executive and his daughter Lisa as a part- time sales executive, with the occasional assistance of his wife, who's still a prac- ticing physician. "I wanted to teach my children what it meant to be an entrepre- neur," 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 community – that whole idea of thinking globally but acting locally." "The science geek in me went about creating the sauces systematically, trying to find the flavors in the chile that would match with flavor profiles," he said. He ordered himself a supply of Hatch chiles and started playing with different combi- nations of fruits and herbs with the pep- pers, 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 different 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 experi- ment with flavors in their own cooking. The sauces are all natural with no artifi- cial preservatives or genetically modified organisms. They have low salt and low sugar. "We approach cooking as a holis- tic, 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 calories." 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 artisanal 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 tolerate 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 associated with it," he added. "We'd tast- ed something like this somewhere else that we wanted to recreate." For more information, visit www.serious- foodie.com. Scientists Searching for Benefits of Berries Initial findings from several studies – including both human subjects and ani- mals – on the potential health benefits of red raspberries were presented earlier this year at the 2017 Experimental Biology conference in Chicago. Participants in short-term human trials experienced an improvement in glucose control and increased satiety, while longer-term animal trials revealed prom- ising effects on the gut microbiota after red raspberry intake. The observations from animal and in vitro studies provided insights that support future hypotheses for red raspberry research exploring potential beneficial effects on pathways related to reducing inflammation, obesity and type 2 diabetes risk. "We are excited about this new flurry of studies, which builds on previously pub- lished research aimed to better understand the potential health benefits of red raspber- ries," said Tom Krugman, Executive Director of the National Processed Raspberry Council (NPRC). "Our Council is committed to delivering the highest quality nutrition and health science that consumers can use to make informed choices when aiming for a healthy diet." While additional research, particular- ly in humans, is warranted, preliminary evidence from these studies suggests that the actions of essential nutrients, fiber and polyphenolic phytochemicals found in red raspberries may play a role in support- ing key metabolic functions, including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative and metabolic stabilizing activity. While this emerging research is promising, and con- tributes to the overall understanding of the health benefits of red raspberries, con- clusions cannot be drawn at this time.