Innovative Food Holdings Inc (IVFH)

[davidam]

Quintessentials Magazine is a publication from usfoodservice . com
Here are a couple articles from that magazine. Chef Joe played an instrumental part in these publications. The first I have a PDF file the second has been copy pasted thanks to a poster on RB
1.
http://www.usfoodservice.com/flash/services/quintessential/exotic.pdf

2.
It's amazing how many different sizes, shapes and colors mushrooms come in," said Joe Di Maggio, CEO and Founder of Food Innovations, an origin-specified specialty food distribution company based in Naples, Florida. "They can be any color-orange, blue, red and black-and shpe, from tiny smooth caps to ones that look like a lion's mane. Among chefs, these mushrooms foster so much creativity."

Creativity comes in the form of a maitake mushroom salad with asparagus and garlic shoots tossed with a truffle vinaigrette and offered at Levain restaurant in Minneapolis, or portobello, shiitake-dungeness crab egg rolls flavored with sweet onions, blue cheese and pecans and served with an asian dipping sauce at Sbicca American Bistro in Del Mar, California. How about a free-range chicken breast stuffed with foie gras, spinach and porcini "raviolis" and black truffle sauce prepared at Tapenade in La Jolla, California.

"Ten years ago mushrooms were mainly paired with meats, but now you can find them in almost anything including risotto, pasta, salads and many main dishes," says DiMaggio, "vegetarian entrees using mushrooms are especially popular. Plus people are becoming more and more sophisticated and demanding. They want more exotic items and they're challenging chefs to find them".

Consequently, many chefs are pulling out all the stops when it comes to searching out exotic mushroom varieties. To introduce these unusual fungi to customers and build on a medley of tastes and textures, many chefs will blend several specialty mushrooms together. "Our Chef's Mix- a blend of six different specialty mushrooms, some cultivated and some wild, is one of our biggest sellers", says DiMaggio.

Sometimes thiese wild varieties are blended with common white mushrooms to cut costs, but more often they are now culled from only exotic varieties, such as shiitake, crimini and oyster mushrooms.