Fabio Viviani Talks Practical Cooking, Entertaining
By Micah Cheek
Halfway through my interview with Fabio Viviani, I had to interrupt the restaurateur, entrepreneur and Top Chef winner to catch up with the quote I was typing. He jumped at the chance to interrupt me back. “You can make it so much easier on yourself if you record everything, get a voice recognition program,” he said. “Get in the 21st century!” Viviani had just reiterated an attitude that has followed him through his restaurants, kitchenware collections and media outlets – keep it simple.
Viviani’s outlook is worth listening to, especially because of the media presence he commands. The “Fan Favorite” status he earned on his initial “Top Chef” appearance put the spotlight on the chef’s undeniable charisma, which he has leveraged into a variety of appearance and endorsements along with his restaurant interests. This media savvy has been placing him on everything from local newscasts to “The Rachael Ray Show,” and the videos just keep coming. Aside from the celebrity factor, the appeal is clear. Viviani is feeding the desires of consumers who want to cook more, cook healthier and do it all with a gentle learning curve.
Viviani’s history, growing up watching his grandmother cook and making his way up through the restaurants of Florence, made me expect to speak with a stickler for tradition. I was surprised to hear that three of his home kitchen essentials are appliances: a food processor, immersion blender and high speed blender, in addition to wooden spoons and a few good knives. And how good should those knives be? “A $30 knife is as good as a $300 one, as long as it’s kept sharp. A $1,000 dollar dull knife is not gonna work,” says Viviani. The chef’s standard fresh pasta recipe, a mainstay of his kitchen demonstrations and TV appearances, avoids the classic volcano of eggs in flour in favor of a minute or two in a food processor. When tradition comes up against practicality, practicality wins every time.
This jelly starts working in fifteen minutes while the pills start working in an hour. cialis no prescription uk A person requires stimulating and finding himself energetic by feeding a good amount of arousal tactics and if it fails the issue will require medical assistance. deeprootsmag.org levitra samples The magic of Kamagra on sexual health- Everyone, while suffering from a disease like diabetes. on line cialis I on line levitra have girls coming to me fearing pregnancy (and some really are pregnant). Viviani was raised with a bent toward this efficiency. “I grew up on food stamps. My grandmother was paralyzed from the waist down, and she was always cooking,” says Viviani. “I was witnessing her making a meal out of nothing.” Viviani’s family didn’t have the luxury of stringent preparation rules or of waste. This has informed the way Viviani’s recipes are crafted and executed. Viviani seems excited to encourage consumers to simplify cooking with fresh ingredients. The only time I heard him taking a serious tone was when we starting broaching the subject of home cooking. Viviani said he was expecting home cooking to continue to rise in prominence, and then things began to take a turn. “Eventually people will have to get back in the kitchen or else they’ll go to the cemetery,” said Viviani. “[If] people are lazy, then they get fat, and then they get sick and die.” Viviani has the same passionate outlook on food waste, recalling the times that his family could not even afford to throw away potato peelings. He says he often deals with people who think he can only advocate these changes because he has the expertise to cook in a healthy way. “People say, ‘For you, it’s easy,’” he said. But Viviani grew up watching someone with no formal training feeding a family in this way. “My grandmother was cooking for six people every day, and we didn’t even have food.”
I mention home entertaining, and just like that, Viviani’s usual cheer is back. “I think the best concept for home entertaining is tapas,” says Viviani. “As long as it’s not complicated and it’s easy to consume, everything is good.” Tapas are a good standby, because the format can be as formal as you like, and guests can easily get involved in the kitchen with simple room-temperature snacks. “Food is meant to bring people together. When you have a lot of people and everyone does their share, it’s fun.” Viviani recommends serving for parties on small wooden plates, because the style can be adopted for both formal and casual scenarios. The chef has lent his name to the Fabio Viviani Heritage Collection, a set of acacia wood tableware that fits the bill nicely.
When discussing wine pairings, Viviani said the words that every novice oenophile was hoping to hear. “Everything about wine is an opinion, and I don’t follow opinion much,” said Viviani. “When you think about food and wine, you can think too much.” For Viviani, a few general guidelines can point a consumer in the right direction more than worrying about tannin levels or jammy undertones. “You don’t want to drink a dry white wine with something spicy, or your face will be on fire,” says Viviani. “You want to drink a pinot noir with a lighter meat, while you can save a bolder wine for something heavier.” Viviani’s line of wines, first released last year, promotes this attitude. “The most important rule for us is to keep the wine easy for people to understand,” he says.
If Viviani’s continuously rising star is any indication, consumers are starting to heed the no-nonsense advice. Meanwhile, I’m headed back to the kitchen to sharpen my $30 knives.
Wholesome Goodness: A Brand of Foods that “Love You Back”
By Lorrie Baumann
Wholesome Goodness is a brand based on three key tenets: that food should taste great, that food should be nutritious, and that nutritious food should be affordable. Because it fulfills all three of these goals, Wholesome Goodness’ product line aligns with the way that Millennial generation consumers want to eat today, according to company founders Jeff Posner and Rick Letizia.
Posner and Letizia had 70 years of experience in the food industry between them when they decided to leave behind their executive positions in major food companies like Kraft and General Foods to strike out on their own with a brand reflecting their beliefs about how more nutritious foods can help address health problems related to diet. Posner himself suffers from high blood pressure, while Letizia has type-2 diabetes, so they are personally aware of the burdens that nutrition-related diseases place on health care costs, quality of life and longevity.
From experience, they knew that major food companies use ingredients that make products cheaper to manufacture but may offer less nutrition to the consumers who used them. They wanted to go another way; to start a food business that would serve consumers’ ever-increasing expectations for healthier foods. “Wholesome Goodness products emphasize positive ingredients like protein, antioxidants and whole grains, while de-emphasizing negative ingredients like saturated fats, added sugars and added sodium,” Posner said.
“Part one of the Wholesome Goodness promise is that for every calorie consumed you get relatively more nutrition than the mainstream national brands,” he continued. “Part two is affordability. This requirement recognizes that 75 percent of the country is overweight or obese, and the barriers to eating healthier foods are both taste and price. Conceptually, if you take nutritional density and divide by price, our products provide consumers with the optimal blend of high nutrition and affordable cost. That’s our unique value proposition. At Wholesome Goodness, we want the 75 percent of the population that’s overweight or obese to be able to afford and enjoy each and every one of our products.”
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As the two developed other products, they stayed with the directive that they wanted their foods to be nutrition-dense, a concept offered up by Yale University childhood obesity and nutrition expert Dr. David Katz. This concept, simply stated, requires that for every calorie contained in their products, the consumer will get a healthier blend of more positive nutrition and less negative nutrition. They wanted clean ingredients without excessive sodium or added sugars. “We currently ban 127 ingredients that other food companies use today, including all 85 identified by Whole Foods,” Letizia said. “We have the cleanest ingredient deck in the industry at the present time.”
And while they were creating clean ingredient labels for their products, they also wanted to produce foods that were more affordable than mainstream competitors’, Posner said. “These are the kinds of products that my mother would have served the family: great-tasting and affordable for the family. Not that she did anything different from all my friends’ mothers; the only thing my friends and I knew growing up was just good, old-fashioned food,” he said. “Frankly, there is no reason why anyone today should have to pay a premium to have better-for-you products.”
“We don’t have anywhere near the cost structure of the large companies. We don’t own any plants; instead, we use highly-qualified third parties to manufacture our proprietary product formulations, so we don’t have the overhead and capital requirements of a big company. We certainly don’t make the multi-million dollar salaries of the executives of the large food companies. We don’t have the requirement to deliver a 15 percent bottom line just to maintain shareholder value – we can make do on a much smaller percentage,” he explained. “We want our products to be accessible to the masses…. For example, our award winning Sweet Chili and Omega Tortilla Chips come in a 9-ounce bag that retails for $3.99 – and even less on feature. A 5.5-ounce bag of competing better-for-you brands will cost about as much as Wholesome Goodness. Consequently, we’re less expensive, averaging about 20 to 30 percent cheaper, ounce for ounce, than these other brands. When you divide our products’ nutritional density by food budget dollars spent, we’re really the best deal in town.”
The Wholesome Goodness product line includes snack chips and crisps; granola bars, snack mixes, and hot and cold cereals. Learn more at www.wholesome-goodness.com.
Seviroli Foods, Inc. Announces Asset Purchase of D’Orazio Foods, Inc.
Seviroli Foods, Inc., creator of artisan filled pasta and sauces and the world’s largest frozen tortellini manufacturer, has announced an asset purchase of D’Orazio Foods, Inc, also a purveyor of frozen Italian fare, such as shells, crepe manicotti, stuffed rigatoni and more.
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