03-07-2010

Golden syrup perfect for moist, spicy gingerbread

Having a lion as a logo is common enough; from MGM studios to Lion Dates in South India, the big cat has often become a brand. Having a dead lion as

a logo is a bit odd, and having one that appears to be rot-ten and swarming with flies is truly weird. Even when one learns that the flies are really bees, and the image represents the Biblical story of Samson finding a beehive in the carcass of a lion he had once killed, it does seem an unusual basis on which to build a brand.

But then Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which uses this logo on its distinctive green and gold tin, is a product like no other. This column is not about specific brands but one can hardly talk about golden syrup without mentioning Lyle’s, the world’s most famous golden syrup brand by far. Abram Lyle, a Scotsman from a strongly religious background, got into sugar refining in 1865 because, like others, he saw the opportunity in catering to the cravings for sweetness of a fast industrialising country. Unlike most others though, he decided not to produce crystal or lump sugar, but a better version of the syrup that was a by-product of sugar refining.

Harold McGee, the food scientist, explains that sugar needs refining because, unlike other sweeteners like honey or maple syrup, it doesn’t just involve concentrating or tapping a simple sweet liquid, but crushing sugar cane whose juice contains “proteins, complex carbohydrates, tannins, pigments — that not only interfere with the sweet taste themselves, but decompose into even less palatable chemicals at the high temperatures needed for the concentration process.” One could also argue though that it is these ‘impurities’ which give raw sugar like jaggery more interest than the single taste note of pure sugar.

Pure sugar crystals though are what most people want and several refining processes were devised to remove sugar crystals from the mass of uncrystallisable simple sugars and other chemicals which formed a syrup in which the crystals were caught. This syrup was called molasses, or treacle, a name it gets from the Latin theriaca, meaning antidote against poison (therapeutic has the same root). Treacle or molasses became a common ingredient in medicines and also for cooking, particularly in cakes like gingerbread.

Gingerbread is why I started searching for molasses. There are times, like now when the rains have started and colds are in the air, when I crave its moist, warm spiciness. Molasses is really essential for it, for giving a combined sweetness, moistness and dark depth to its taste. But despite our huge sugar industry molasses can be really hard to find since it nearly all of it goes into making the extra-neutral alcohol that is the basis for all our Indian Made Foreign Liquor. The further complication is that, even when you can get some from a sugar company, it is often almost inedibly crude and strong tasting, the waste from the final stages of refining.

This is when I discovered kakvi, a light golden liquid occasionally made by sugar mills in Maharashtra and sold as a liquid sweetener (sometimes under the rather dubious assertion of being better for diabetes and weight loss). It was, I realised, the light form of treacle called golden syrup abroad, and was good for gingerbread – not as deliciously dark tasting as some forms of molasses, but more reliably usable. Kakvi was available, though only sporadically, and it could suddenly disappear for ages. Which is why, when I found a sugar mill’s distributor who was willing to sell it to me, but only by the case, I decided to buy all 12 bottles.

But then Chenab Impex, a Mumbai based food importer, started getting in Lyle’s Golden Syrup and suddenly I felt I had made a mistake. Because kakvi, while physically fulfilling the properties of golden syrup, is just blandly sweet, whereas Lyle’s is anything but bland. It is darker and has a rich, rounded taste, with both hints of the caramel of cooking sugar, as well as some of the aromatic, grassy tastes of raw cane juice. Lyle’s Golden Syrup in fact tastes like the best butter toffees in a gloriously thick and sticky form. It is not as aggressively strong as molasses, nor bland like kakvi, but a beautiful blend of both.

And a blend is exactly what Abram Lyle created as I learned from Heston Blumenthal’s book Total Perfection. In this book Blumenthal, the much celebrated British chef, tries to find the perfect way to make popular foods ranging from tandoori chicken to Black Forest cake. One of them is the old British specialty of treacle tart and for this he visits the factory of Tate & Lyle, as the company was called after it merged with Tate, another equally old sugar company. Blumenthal found that a company both modern and traditional that still took great pride in making what it called “’Goldie’ as though it were a character in its own right.”

Blumenthal discovered that what Lyle had done was reverse engineer golden syrup. Rather than being a waste product, it was freshly made from sugar cooked with citric acid to dissolve its structure into syrup, which was then further cooked and concentrated to different levels, which were blended to get the characteristic taste. This was the product on which Lyle, drawing on his religious background, had bestowed the imagery of dead lion and bees and the impressive sounding, if rather mystifying Biblical slogan: “Out of the strong come forth sweetness.”

There’s one other odd thing about Lyle’s which I discovered while trying it in gingerbread, biscuits, teigellach (a rich Jewish candy made by boiling dough in hot golden syrup) and Blumenthal’s treacle tart recipe (maddeningly hard to make and amazingly rich in taste). What was odd was that in almost none of them, delicious as they were, did I get that wonderful taste of plain Lyle’s. This is probably not something Tate & Lyle’s wants you to think, but I see little point in using it as an ingredient, but only by itself, to be drizzled on waffles or pancakes or just eaten one indulgent spoon at a time. For cooking all my remaining bottles of kakvi will work just fine.

Usually for this column I buy all the products myself, but in this case, since there was a temporary shortage of Lyle’s when I began researching it, I used some samples kindly furnished by Anil Chandok of Chenab Impex. The product is now easily available in large stores.
 

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09-06-2010

All India Men's Open Tennis Tournament Co-sponsored by Chenab

Our director Mr. Anil Chandhok with Chief Guest Mr. Naseruddin Shah, famous film and stage actor.

 

Our director Mr. Anil Chandhok, with the Winner & Runner-up

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23-04-2010

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08-02-2010

Tennis Tournament sponsored by Chenab Impex

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15-01-2010

Chenab Co-Sponsor's the Maharshtra State Veterans Tennis Tournament

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23-6-2009

Aperitif Francaise 2009, held at Novotel, Mumbai

Mr. Vijaya Mallya, Chairman of UB group, Kingfisher Airlines, visit the booth
 

The risotto with BORDE mushrooms



The G.M. of JW Mariott enjoying the delicacies
 

The G.M. of Novotel
 

A view of the crowd
 

Paul Perrot visits our booth
 

Another distingusihed visitor
 

Mr. Anil Chandhok with Chef at the booth
 

A distinguished visitor
 

The display of our booth
 

A visitor enjoying himself

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03-03-2009

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03-03-2009

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09-02-2009

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09-02-2009

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07-02-2009

Thai Festival in Bombay Stores - Blue Elephant gourmet Thai food

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11-09-2008

Caveat Emptor! Buyer beware! An old Italian saying of great value. Read below to find out why……..

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mueller  - MUST read article on the front page of NYT (excerpt in Wikipedia, below). Just read the BIG BRANDS in this article – an eye popper! Some excerpts…….
(Also visit - http://intlxpatr.wordpress.com/category/italy/ )

Adulteration is especially common in Italy, the world’s leading importer, consumer, and exporter of olive oil. (For the past ten years, Spain has produced more oil than Italy, but much of it is shipped to Italy for packaging and is sold, legally, as Italian oil.) “The vast majority of frauds uncovered in the food-and-beverage sector involve this product,” Colonel Leopoldo Maria De Filippi, the commander for the northern half of Italy of the N.A.S. Carabinieri, an anti-adulteration group run under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, told me.

In Italy, eight of the nine remaining panels of record—those empowered to pronounce legally binding opinions on olive-oil quality—belong to national govern-ment agencies. The only panel of record that does not belong to a national body, in Florence, curtailed its taste-testing activities in 2004, after it and two other local panels determined that extra-virgin oils made by Carapelli, Bertolli, Rubino, and other leading Italian brands were in fact virgin or lampante, and one of the panels was sued by Carapelli. (A Florence court threw out the case.)
The investigators discovered that seed and hazelnut oil had reached Riolio’s refinery by tanker truck and by train, as well as by ship, and they found stocks of hazelnut oil waiting in Rotterdam for delivery to Riolio and other olive-oil companies.
The investigators also discovered where Ribatti’s adulterated oil had gone: to some of the largest producers of Italian olive oil, among them Nestlé, Unilever, Bertolli, and Oleifici Fasanesi, who sold it to consumers as olive oil, and collected about twelve million dollars in E.U. subsidies intended to support the olive-oil industry. (These companies claimed that they had been swindled by Ribatti, and prosecutors were unable to prove complicity on their part.)


In April, Paolo De Castro, the agriculture minister, announced that the government had investigated seven hundred and eighty-seven olive-oil producers and found that two hundred and five were guilty of adulteration, false labelling, and other infractions. Yet it will be years before the cases are adjudicated, and most of the alleged violations are unlikely to result in substantial fines or jail sentences.

Leonardo Colavita, the president of ASSITOL, the olive-oil trade association, and the owner of Colavita, the olive-oil company, told me that the group’s policy is to expel member companies that are accused of illegal activity, so that, as he put it, “no one can attack us, no one can say, ‘You have criminals in your organization!’ ” According to Colavita, when Ribatti resigned from the organization he said, “If I leave, everybody’s got to leave.” Using the diminutive of Ribatti’s name, Colavita said, “Mim-mo Ribatti was a gentleman, because he didn’t name names. If he had named names, a lot of folks would have gone to jail.”

While investigating Ribatti, the E.U. anti-fraud team discovered that the two tankers he had used had also transported contraband olive oil to the port of Monopoli, in Puglia. The team traced the oil to an acquaintance of Ribatti’s named Leonardo Marseglia, the managing director of an olive-oil and vegetable-oil company in Monopoli. The company, now called Casa Olearia Italiana, became one of the leading olive-oil importers in Europe and owns one of the largest edible-oil refineries in the world.

Marseglia estimated that ninety per cent of oil sold in Italy as extra-virgin isn’t of premium grade. “It’s anything but extra-virgin, the oil we have here,” he said. He did not seem to think that this was a problem. “First of all, let’s give people good oil,” he said. “Then the excellent—all the extraordinary stuff at forty or fifty euros a kilo, which a few idiots in the world can afford—we’ll think about that later, no?”

Marseglia dismissed the notion that such a measure could be effective. “Oil doesn’t have an identity card; it just goes,” he said. “When someone has two silos of oil, one Italian and the other foreign, you just have to switch them: the other one becomes Italian oil, this one becomes foreign.” Noting that oils labelled “Made in Italy” sell for more than other oils, Marseglia said that De Castro’s legislation would only inspire more fraud. “So what’s going to happen? They’ll do another swindle, and behind the mask of ‘Made in Italy’ there’s foreign oil labelled ‘Made in Italy.’ ” Leonardo Colavita is equally skeptical: “I say that a criminal ought to make the law, because the criminal knows how to outwit the law.”

According to an article by Tom Mueller in the August 13, 2007 Issue of the The New Yorker, regulation is extremely lax and corrupt. Meuller states that major Italian shippers routinely adulterate olive oil and that only about 40% of olive oil sold as "extra virgin" actually meets requirements.[5] In some cases, colza oil with added color and flavor has been labeled and sold as olive oil.[6] This extensive fraud prompted the Italian government, in 2007, to mandate a new labeling law for companies selling olive oil, under which every bottle of Italian olive oil would have to declare the farm and press on which it was produced, as well as display a precise breakdown of the oils used, for blended oils.[7] In February 2008, however, EU officials took issue with the new law, stating that under EU rules such labeling should be voluntary rather than compulsory.[8] Under EU rules, olive oil may be sold as Italian even if it only contains a small amount of Italian oil.[7]
In 2008, 400 Italian police officers conducted "Operation Golden Oil," arresting 23 and confiscating 85 farms after an investigation revealed a large-scale scheme to relabel oils from other Mediterranean nations as Italian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil )

Italian police crack down on olive oil fraud

By Malcolm Moore in Rome

Last Updated: 1:55am GMT 06/03/2008


Police in Italy have arrested 23 people and confiscated 85 farms in an operation that has exposed the scale of the country's fraudulent olive oil trade.

More than 400 officers took part in Operation Golden Oil after an investigation discovered as many as 91 people may have been involved in passing off low quality oil, made with olives around the Mediterranean, for the finest Italian product.


Many olive oils sold in British supermarkets are blended from a variety of different oils

Italy's thriving fake olive oil business involves importing oil from Tunisia, Greece and Spain and re-labelling it as Italian oil.

Other ploys include labelling inferior oil as extra-virgin olive oil and claiming EU subsidies for growing olives in Italy while actually importing them from elsewhere.

Police found invoices to the EU for €6.5 million of subsidies during the raids, as well as receipts for €39 million of 'Italian' oil made with non-Italian olives.

Coldiretti, the farmers' union, said the amount of foreign oil being imported and re-labelled as Italian "rose by a quarter in 2007".

A spokesman said: "Almost half the 'Italian' oil sold inside Italy is pressed from olives of an unknown provenance."

According to the latest statistics, Italian olive production fell by 15 per cent last year, and the country does not produce enough olive oil to feed its domestic market.

Many olive oils sold in supermarkets in the UK are "blended" from a variety of different oils before being sold as Italian extra-virgin.

"This sort of fraud damages Italy's image," said PaoloDe Castro, the agriculture minister.

"We are even more sensitive to this type of fraud and we will keep monitoring the entire production line. For example, we are now insisting on proper labels, which are more detailed than European laws require."

Mr De Castro recently revealed that the government had investigated 787 olive oil producers and found that 205 were guilty of adulterating their products with low-grade oils, or falsely labelling their bottles.

The Olive Oil Scandal

By Raymond Francis

Reprinted from Beyond Health Copyright 1998

Another reason why you can't trust extra virgin olive oil is exemplified by a problem that manifested last year, and may turn out to be the biggest food fraud of the 20th Century. Despite the fact that details of this scandal have been published in Merum, a Swiss-German magazine, and in Italian journals such as Agra Trade, and the newspaper Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, this information has been successfully suppressed and is known to only a handful. Investigators are gathering evidence indicating that the biggest olive oil brands in Italy have for years been systematically diluting their extra virgin olive oil with cheap, highly-refined hazelnut oil imported from Turkey. International arrest warrants have been issued and so far documents indicate that at least ten thousand tons of hazelnut oil are involved. As much as 20% hazelnut oil can be added to olive oil and still be undetectable to the consumer. In fact olive oil labeled "Italian" often comes from Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, and Greece. Considering what has happened in Europe, where there are strict regulations, imagine what can happen in California where there are no regulations. Apparently, more oil is "produced" in California than there are olives available. The truth is, most of the extra virgin olive oil on the market does not supply all the nutritional value and health giving properties that we have a right to expect from olive oil.

OLIVE OIL ADULTERATED.; This Is What the American Consul at Leghorn, Italy, Reports.

So you can see that even 100 years ago this was commonplace.

Why take a chance when you are paying top prices? Buy Borges, the World’s leading brand of olive oil, available in more than 110 countries. Guaranteed 100% Spanish Olive oil – no adulteration, no mixing with inferior olive oils from other countries.



 

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09-08-2008

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05-07-2008

It is a matter of great pride to report that AMEDEI has once again swept the  2008 Academy of Chocolate awards in London. As the Sole representatives for Amedei in India, we take this opportunity to invite you to taste this amazing range of chocolates as our guest. Read below to learn about Amedei’s success: 

After an examination by a committee of experts at the 2008 Academy of Chocolate Awards in London of over 40 companies and 350 products operating in the chocolate sector, for a third year, Amedei wins Gold for best chocolate, with Toscano Black 63% winning the 'Golden Bean' Award for best 'bean to bar' chocolate, whilst obtaining another three Gold and four Silver Awards.

CECILIA TESSIERI WITHDREW IN LONDON THE "GOLDEN BEAN"

LONDON, 15th of MAY 2008. Cecilia Tessieri, President of Amedei, withdrew in London the Award given by the Academy of Chocolate. The ceremony to award the "Golden Bean", won by Amedei for its valuable Toscano Black 63%, took place in the fabulous setting of the Arts Club, in the presence of one hundred and fifty guests including many journalists. The Award was given to Cecilia and Alessio Tessieri by Sara Jayne, Director of Academy of Culinary Arts and founder member of the Academy of Chocolate and by Nigel Barden, known presenter of the BBC channel.

"I would like to thank the Chocolate Academy for this prestigious award and I would like to dedicate the Golden Bean to my brother, my family and to all those who collaborate with Amedei. We are very pleased to have received, for the third year in a row, a very important prize, awarded after a careful selection by a team of experts", said Cecilia Tessieri.

Also this year we are particularly happy because the Golden Bean rewards a blend, our Toscano 63%, which enhances the harmonious fusion between the work being done on plantations, followed personally by my brother Alessio, and the creativity that our company puts into the realization of chocolate".