Magazine Editorial
Fancy Food Magazine January 2011
Fancy Food Magazine January 2011
Using fresh baby walnuts that are picked when still green and curd, Harvest Song's (516/773-7356 or www.harvestsongventures.com) Fresh Walnut preserves are used in restaurants as a garnish for pate, game dishes and foie gras. The product won a Sofi award this year and Sylvia Tirakian, president, says it is an old Armenian recipe that was used in rural parts of the country.
"We're probably the first company that turned it into a commercial product, and we're still doing it the old-fashioned way - everything is done by hand," she says. With its "very simple" ingredients, including the full walnuts, pure cane sugar and citric acid, over time the syrup gets infused with the natural oils of the walnut, which lends itself well for basting. Tirakian also suggest pairing the walnut itself with a variety of chesses.
The company also won Sofi for its Black Currant preserves With is black currants picked wild from the mountains in Armenia. Tirakian says the product has a "tartness, but it's very sweet at the same time". She prides the company on working with only fresh fruits and the fact that there is 80-percent fruit in each product. "Within six hours of taking the fruit from the farms, we're bringing it into our local cannery and cooking it".
All of the company's products are topped with original handmade rice papers from Kathmandu, Nepal. What Tirakian does now is a far cry from her background in fiberoptics engineering, but her passion for encouraging the artisan farmers and craft people in Nepal goes a long way, she believes.
With only five to six grams of sugar in each product and the absence of pectin, she says these products enable cooks to make wonderful sauces when diluted. "And as soon as heat touches our product, it doesn't change its elements like other preserves, which become watery".
Tirakian also believes consumers are looking for unique products that have a story to tell. "Our products are a conversation piece," she says. "Food is passion, people love to share that with each other, and they want to share that with their families."