ABC Radio Darwin interviewed Dion Potter, Tomato Product Manager for Syngenta Australia New Zealand
ABC Radio Darwin interviewed Dion Potter, Tomato Product Manager for Syngenta Australia New Zealand last Thursday, in which he highlighted several aspects.
Here we highlight some headlines:
YOOM ™ from a chef’s perspective
“From a chef's perspective how something visually looks is very important to how we construct the menu how we present a dish and what ingredients we're getting in. So, the tomatoes immediately catch your eye very striking almost stunning. You don't get a tomato. Well I've never seen a tomato until now of that colour with the almost perfect round shape. So immediately it catches my eye and I would be very interested to try them and get them on the menu”.
About umami taste
“Now your umami is that something you deal with much so umami is the sixth taste coming from Japanese cuisine and it's commonly or more easily described as something that's very moreish. You know if you eat something and you just keep going back and back it's sweet and savory and just delicious. And it's really hitting a note while you eat it. That can be considered as you Umami Now Umami is very closely related to naturally occurring mono sodium glutamate which is as I said naturally occurring and a lot of ingredients seaweed being a big one right Parmesan cheese bean another one. And actually, tomatoes as well. Tomatoes do have naturally occurring glutamate. So, it sounds to me through some selective breeding they've really bumped up the levels of that. And if you can increase the flavor and increase in the umami hit at a tomato or any food can deliver the more likely you are going to be able to sell more of them”
About trendy tomates
“Tomatoes at the moment in terms of food trends. Tomatoes are having a very lovely renaissance and I think for years and years and years they were selectively bred and cold down until we had just two really common types of the cherry tomato and the trust tomato and then all of a sudden you know we had these great farmers not only in Australia but around the world. What have we done? We've lost a lot of the tomato heritage in history and they've brought back some beautiful historic and flavorful tomatoes from the past. And you can see dishes throughout Australia that are built just on the tomato the same way as you would serve a steak as a centerpiece or a beautiful piece of barramundi. Tomatoes are doing that same job now and menus and that and that's due to the popularity that has been there has been growing over the last few years”.
Listen to the full interview right here:
