This macaron was featured in Butter love and hard work combining peanut, black currant, vanilla.
And…no surprise black currant is one of the best fruit combinations. Have a look to the Foodpairing tree of roasted peanuts;
We asked some of our American friends their opinion about their most favorite Super bowl snack. Most of them claimed chicken wings. But crips, nachos also seems to be popular. So what about combining the two, taking the skin of chicken and turn it into a crispy fried texture.
Which Foodpairing combinations can you make with roasted chicken skin?
How do chefs interprete this?
Combine it with carrot puree by Kobe Desramault of In de wulf.
Or what about trying a hummus of chickpea with roasted chicken skin crisps and hibiscus?
Or make a chocolate inspired by the Mexican Mole Poblano; chicken skin – hazelnut- dark chocolate(by Dominique Persoone of The Chocolate line)
Or another dessert version by Francois Geurds of The Ivy; pistacchio, pop-corn, chicken skin (source picture Elizabethonfood)
Other Super bowl restaurant combinations you can also find in a post by Starchefs featuring pig ears, pig tails and foie gras corn dogs.
Comfort food is great, but we still want to experience thrills and new tastes. We see Foodpairing being used more and more frequent to uplift classical dishes, to give them a surprising twist.
Gourmet burgers are a nice example that there is no limit to add surprising great tasting ingredients; bone marrow, porcini, sesame oil aïoli… or rework cheese burgers
or chicken burgers. Find here some of the combinations you can make with e.g. chicken
Components like hummus will come in a dozen of more new flavors, Guacamole will be enhanced with surprising additions
These are some of the combinations you can make with Avocado to make your new version of Guacamole;
Use everything and use different parts on different moments.
For example; from elderberry you can use the green elderberries to pickle (example by the Flemish Foodies)
Or in early springtime you can eat bleached shoots of Jerusalem artichoke (source picture)
A nice example of using bycatch in a positive way, is what Northsealife is doing with e.g. swimming crabs; making fantastic tasting bisque with an ingredients fishermen were throwing away.
Or using different parts of the fish, giving great tasting products for gastronomy and a higher revenue for fishermen continuing what started at The Flemish Primitives (movie included in dutch).
In 2011 we added a post on hay following MAD Food camp which was quite appreciated.
Examples of hay by Noma or by Kobe desramaults of In de wulf (pigeon in hay), are known for a while, but we expect to have more different combinations with hay this year.
Not only limited to meat or poultry (or cheese) anymore, but also with fish like Matthieu Beudaert of table d’amis is doing. Have a look at the Foodpairing tree of hay and come up with new variations of combinations with hay.
Pickled vegetables complementing a dish with (less but better e.g. aged) meat or inserted into sandwiches, are already clearly present. In 2012 you will even see more of them; pickled shallots, beets,…but certainly more creative interpretations of this ancient technique. Home-made fruit and vegetable pickles will appear on more and more on chefs’ menus.
Chefs like Gert De Mangeleer of Hertog Jan, Sang-Hoon Degeimbre of L’air du temps, Jonnie Boer of De Librije have their proper garden and are higly creative with their produce. This is an example of red cabbage fermented juice by Jonnie Boer as presented on ChefSache in 2012 (source pictures verygoodfood).
There are several reasons why we think umami will become even more prominent.
Last year there was already a lot of talking about umami; we got several interviews, talks on television, but it will still increase;
1. umami interacts with salt and reduces the amount of salt needed. Consumers are looking for salt-reduced food without any concession on taste. Glutamate-added food can dramatically increase the acceptance of salt-reduced foods. Comparable results were shown across the cultures (US, Japan) and food categories, by using not only salts of glutamate but also other umami ingredients, such as dried bonito stock (source).
Here you can find a list of umami rich food.
2. Linked to Foodpairing, we see products containing umami like parmesan, tomato, cepes, marmite combined with even sweet ingredients like thi chocolate by Dominique Persoone of the chocolate line.
But also Paul A Young has for some years a chocolate-marmite truffle combination. We see combinations like this only increasing this year.
Next to umami, we see more asian foods enter the market and become more easy accessible even by comsumer (yuzu e.g.).
Since last year we started to analyze more and more asian foods. Not only different types of soy sauces or yuzu, but also more and more specific premium asian products.
So no wonder the website will extend this year in asian products and this year the site will also become available in Japanese.
Next week we will post some trends for 2012. But before, a short overview of some Foodpairing moments in 2011.
we started the year with Madrid Fusion showing the first interactive Foodpairing trees (source picture) and dressed dishes on prints of Foodpairing trees;
In March we organised The Flemish Primitives
and launched the new foodpairing.com website.
We made presentations (quite a lot) in Belgium, France, UK, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switserland, …
Added loads of new ingredients and recipes to the database including brands like Belvedere, Havana Club, Cointreau, Grey Goose, loads of chocolate of Belcolade, Organic Italian apple vinegar, water to add to whisky (Ardaich), belgian strawberries,…
We showed at BCB how to make lemon without using lemon (but lime, orange, basil,…we also do)
We launched the embed codes for interactive Foodpairing trees (video how to)
And launched a few weeks ago a lite version, a free registration which is growing quite fast.
That makes us long to what 2012 will bring 
How to integrate the tree in your own website?
The following tutorial will provide more information;
In the pop-up of the Foodpairing tree there is an ‘Embed’ button, if you click on it, the code will appear.
The static tree is scalable. Select one of the 5 preset dimensions.
Just copy and paste the code into your post (the html part).
Possible vegetable combinations with cardamom?
Yotam Ottolenghi of Nopi pairs leek with cardamom ; leek-and-cardamom fritters
Shawn McClain of Sage combines carrot with orange juice, ginger and cardamom
recipe glazed carrots
Or a carrot cake, pineapple walnut dessert, a green chutney with green tomato, cardamom, ginger or a puree of parsnip, cardamom and celery root…