What happened in the Horeca world in 2022?

The year 2022 is drawing to a close. A great time to look back and also to look forward. Weastern cuisine, a combination of Eastern and Western influences, seems to be here to stay, creating flavourful synergy. There also seems to be a bigger role for vegetables. With a little help from Debic, you can make surprising vegetable desserts, for instance.

Weastern

It’s a small world! And it's only getting smaller. Chefs are increasingly looking beyond their own borders to other cultures and traditions in their pursuit to stand out and shape their own identity. In our Western kitchens, we see more and more culinary influences from Asia. Japanese refinement and Korean innovations are regularly combined with traditional French techniques and popular classics from Italy. We call these traditional recipes with a modern twist Weastern cuisine. The result? Exciting new flavour and texture combinations based on the best ingredients and exchanged techniques.

Japanese influences

Japanese ingredients like soya, miso and katsuobushi are very pure and yet complex in flavour. Dairy, too, is a pure product which is open to a marriage with other flavours. For example, with kombu: it is the basis for umami and cooked or pickled it is the creative challenge in the kitchen for 2023. Kombu goes perfectly with everything from the sea and also goes very well with dairy products. Take a look at our recipes of a miso parfait with caramel of stewed pear and sea salt or a tofu parfait with caramel of red fruit and sea salt.

Vegetable desserts

Vegetables play an increasing role on the menu of European restaurants. Vegetables are no longer a garnish, but are increasingly taking centre stage. And not just because vegetables are very healthy; they taste great too!

The versatility of vegetables makes them ideal for use in desserts. Beetroot, for example, has long been used to make granulated sugar. And roasted parsnip gives a sweet caramel flavour. To incorporate vegetables into a dessert, use a vegetable puree as a base. You can use different techniques for this, depending on the type of vegetable you choose. Hard vegetables like carrots can be vacuum cooked, but you can also roast, stew or grill them. Then you finely chop them in the blender and to make sure you have a nice, smooth vegetable puree, pass it through a fine sieve once more. Combined with Debic, you then turn your vegetable puree into flavourful desserts, such as this sweet potato parfait with carrot caramel and basil.

On to a new year with new inspiration and trusted suppliers!