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GOURMET NEWS JUNE 2018 www.gourmetnews.com SUPPLIER NEWS 1 6 Blackberry Patch Continued from PAGE 1 Raspberry syrups to the Summer Fancy Food Show. "They're mostly berries with a little cane sugar and lemon juice. It's some- thing that we're really excited about," Jones said. These introductions appeal on two counts – their short ingredient deck and their organic certification. "The fruit-first trend is snow- balling. We were 12 years early. About a year ago, it passed the tip- ping point. People used to talk about dis- c r i m i n a t i n g tastes. Now they are living it," he said. "This year, or- ganic. ... It is b e c o m i n g more than just a narrow niche." A couple of years ago, Blackberry Patch ventured into fruit toppings for yogurt, then relabeled them for use with ice cream after grocers said their customers were more interested in toppings for ice cream than for yogurt. The first four ice cream toppings came out in 2016 with Strawberry, Blackberry, Blueberry and Raspberry. Peach was added in 2017. Jones and Harvey continued their explo- ration of fruit preserves paired with dairy products with the development of fruit pre- serves designed to pair with cheeses. Straw- berry Fig, Raspberry Pepper and Peach Pepper Fruit Preserves for Cheese debuted in 2016. The company partnered with Sweet Grass Dairy, located just down the road in the small southwest Georgia city of Thomasville, to follow those with Blue- berry Lemon Thyme and Peach Bourbon Car- damom Fruit Pre- serves for Cheese. This year, Black- berry Patch and Sweet Grass Dairy have partnered up again to develop a suite of products that feature the flavor of Satsuma, a zipper-skinned citrus fruit that's native to Japan but that has also been grown in southern Georgia for almost 100 years, Jones said. "It's mak- ing a huge comeback," he said. "Our neigh- bors are growing them, and we're able to take that juice, or fruit, and make it into a range of products." At this year's Summer Fancy Food Show, Blackberry Patch will be introducing two syrups, a jelly and two cheese pairings made from Satsuma. Those are Satsuma Pepper and Satsuma Cane Vanilla, each with flavors that pair particularly well with Sweet Grass Dairy's farmstead cheeses, ac- cording to Jones. Sweet Grass Dairy makes six traditional European-style cheeses from pasture-raised cow milk. Sweet Grass Dairy's Thomasville Tomme won a gold sofi Award and a Good Food Award in 2018; Asher Blue won a bronze medal in the 2015 and 2009 World Cheese Awards; Green Hill, a double-cream cow milk cheese with a bloomy rind in the style of a Camembert and the dairy's best seller, is an eight-time winner at the American Cheese Society's annual Judging and Competition; and the dairy's Pimento Cheese won a first place award from the American Cheese Society in 2015. All of Blackberry Patch's products are handmade in small batches. "We use pre- mium quality ingredients that are recogniz- able, that you might have in your own kitchen. Never any artificial color, flavor, or preservatives. It's really the craft approach – our grandmother would have made it, but it's available from a GFSI, SQF- Level III facility. Level II covers food safety, level III covers food safety and quality. It's a rig- orous program to be involved with," Jones said. Jones and Harvey were two farmers who bought the Blackberry Patch business in 1999 as a w ay into the specialty food business. "It was our ticket to the dance to get into the specialty food industry," Jones said. The existing business had a premium quality product line, and Jones and Harvey streamlined the product range from about 400 products to around 40. "We quickly realized that what the com- pany did better than anything else in the world was fruit syrups," Jones said. "Around 2006, we decided that the com- pany needed a higher end product and started making three-ingredient fruit syrup. ... Our business is now focused on making great fruit syrups and not being in the retail business and not distracted by growing all or most of our ingredients. We have farmers we work with.... We do search the world for the finest fruits, but many of our products are made with items from our area." In addition to making their fruit syrups and toppings, Jones and Harvey have made their business into a vehicle for Christian stewardship. "We recognize that this busi- ness is a blessing, and as a consequence, we share profits with causes that we feel are worthwhile," Harvey said. Currently, a por- tion of the profits from Blackberry Patch is donated to support Marion Medical Mis- sions, providing clean water in developing nations; and The Gideons, bringing the Word of God to millions each year. Habitat for Humanity, which builds homes for those who need them, and ECHO, which fights global hunger by helping subsistence farmers develop better, more sustainable agricultural methods, also benefit. "Our commitment to stewardship is at the core of our business," Jones said. "We're very proud to be able to give something back to the global community." GN A Condiment that Comes with Community gredients and the overall appreciation of food and wine." After the family moved to the U.S. when Gerard, the youngest of three broth- ers, was 15, the older boys went off to col- lege, one to UCLA and one in Pasadena, and the whole family focused on finding a sense of community for themselves in West Hollywood. "In Argentina, everyone was home for dinner at 9 p.m. In the States in the '90s, honoring a nightly family dinner sched- ule was a challenge. There was an in- creasing feeling of separation," Bozogh- lian says. "In Buenos Aires, extended family gatherings were the norm on the weekends. Here, we just had the five of us, and the Los Angeles work/university travel times and dis- tances were spreading us thin. Maintain- ing our strongly bonded family unit meant everything." The family worked hard to turn Azniv's recipe collection into the basis for a menu for an authentic Argentinian steakhouse that began attracting other Argentine emi- gres. "Slowly we developed the community we dreamed to have," Bozoghlian says. Today we're blessed to have guests who have been dining with us for 22 years. Families that discovered us when their children were toddlers are now hosting their college graduation celebrations at Carlitos Gardel." Eventually, Max Bozoghlian, the oldest of the three brothers, became one of an early wave of professional sommeliers in Los Angeles, Rodrigo went off to law school, and Gerard, at 21, graduated from his apprenticeship under his mother to be- come the restaurant's general manager. A couple of years later, Azniv decided that she'd laid enough of a foundation for the restaurant's kitchen that she could take a step back from working a regular shift at the restaurant — although she is still very much in charge of the desserts there. Somehow, Gerard decided that he wasn't busy enough just operating the restaurant, and he began working on the development of recipes for the sauces so they could be preserved as shelf-stable products while still maintaining their au- thentic character. He found mentors in Freddy Carbajal, Founder and CEO of Dotta Foods International, Inc., and Eliot Swartz, co-Founder and co-Chair of Two Chefs on a Roll, Inc."Freddy really took me under his wing. Introduced me to some of the top food scientists," Bozogh- lian says. "He wanted to see me succeed. Even with his and others' help, it took five years to formulate the first product that's shelf-stable, authentic in terms of composition: staying true to authentic ingredients found in chimichurri; and also authentic in terms of consistency. We don't produce an emulsified paste. We produce a hand- crafted, free-flowing sauce, and it goes into the jar that way. There's never a time when the full in- tegrity of the sauce is not hon- ored." "Argentines respond to Gardel's Chimichurri because they recognize it as what they've always known chimichurri to be," he continues. "That was my goal — to stay true and honor our traditions." Some of that story is now on the label of each of Gardel's Fine Foods' chimichurri sauces. All made with 100 percent extra virgin olive oil and no added sugar, they are Chimichurri Balsamico, Chimichurri Spicy Balsamico, Chimichurri Autentico and Chimichurri Lime. Each jar holds 8 ounces of sauce and retails for $8.99 to $11.99. Nationwide distribution is avail- able. For more information, visit www.chimichurrisauce.com. GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN To make it in the U.S., you need either fi- nancial capital or intellectual capital, ac- cording to Gerard Bozoghlian, whose family emigrated from Argentina to the U.S. in 1991; "Mom's rich intellectual capital is an archive of Argentine culinary methods and traditions." Those recipes included authentic recipes for Argentinian chimichurri sauces that his mother, Azniv, had developed while she was cooking for the Bozoghlian family and friends. Azniv, herself of Greek descent and who had grown up in a Greek neighborhood in Ar- gentina; the food she'd been served at home was what she knew. After she mar- ried Bozoghlian's father, Carlos, and set- tled into housekeeping, she felt the need to expand her culinary repertoire, so she took herself off to culinary school. "The running joke in the family is that Dad told Mom that he could eat dolmades and moussaka a couple of times a week, but that he wanted his dose milanesa, lasagna and empanadas as often as possible," Bo- zoghlian says. "She really has an ardent passion for food, to become one with the essence, the roots and eventual influences of Argentine culinary traditions. Every family vacation was grounded and planned around culinary excursions. Vis- iting the Rosa Mosqueta harvest in Bar- iloche or the tomato harvest in Rio Negro. As a family, much of our time spent bond- ing revolved around the discovery of in-

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