The Palm Beach Food & Wine Festival, now in its 16th year, is a gastronomic extravaganza that promises to be a feast for the senses. Scheduled to run from December 7-10, the festival is a four-day culinary journey that brings together a star-studded lineup of renowned chefs, live cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, and much more. This year, the festival has partnered with Wine Spectator to elevate the experience, offering an array of fine wines and spirits. A portion of the festival’s proceeds will benefit the Els for Autism Foundation, a nonprofit organization serving individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families globally.

A Star-Studded Affair

The festival kicks off on December 7 with six multi-course sit-down dinners across Palm Beach County, all starting at 7 p.m. One such event, “Sustain,” focuses on sustainable seafood and will be held at PB Catch Seafood & Raw Bar. The event will feature dishes from guest chefs Valerie Chang, Ashley Christensen, and Sarah Grueneberg and is hosted by Kevin Sawyer. Another highlight is “An Evening with Robert Irvine,” where guests can enjoy cocktails crafted with Irvine’s Spirits at Okeechobee Prime Event Hall. The dinner costs $275 per person, and $100 from each ticket will go to the Robert Irvine Foundation.

A Feast for the Palate

Day two of the festival, December 8, will feature three signature lunch events followed by three dinner events. “Lunch with Friends” at Meat Market will offer a four-course seated lunch with wine pairings from Paul Hobbs Wines. The event will feature guest chefs Maneet Chauhan, Antonia Lofaso, and Ken Oringer, and host chef Sean Brasel. Another intriguing event is “Sunset & Swirls, A Progressive Wine Tasting” at Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa. Here, guests can enjoy a tour of four distinctive wines by Banfi Wines, guided by a distinguished wine expert.

A Learning Experience

The third day, December 9, is all about fun, food, and learning. “Kids Kitchen,” presented by Kroger Delivery, will invite young cooks for two 60-minute cooking sessions at the Four Seasons Resort. The event will be hosted by chefs Robert Irvine and Duff Goldman. Another event to look forward to is “Master Taste,” where Master Sommelier Virginia Philip will offer insights into select wines’ color, aromas, flavors, and acidity.

The Grand Finale

The festival will conclude on December 10 with its most anticipated annual events, including two unforgettable brunch experiences and the always popular Grand Tasting. The Grand Tasting will be held at the Palm Beach County Convention Center from 2 to 6 p.m. Guests will sample dishes and dessert samplings from dozens of South Florida’s best restaurants, as well as wine and spirit tastings from various distributors and vineyards. The afternoon will culminate in the Grand Chef Throwdown, where three local chefs will compete for a $10,000 local charity prize.

The Takeaway

The Palm Beach Food & Wine Festival is not just a food event; it’s a celebration of culinary artistry, a gathering of like-minded food enthusiasts, and a platform for chefs to showcase their talents. With its diverse range of events, from intimate dinners to grand tastings, the festival offers something for everyone. Whether you’re a foodie, a wine connoisseur, or someone looking to explore the culinary world, this festival is a must-visit.

For more details about individual events, participating chefs, or to purchase tickets, you can visit the official website or call 800-210-0689.

Researchers in Japan have achieved a breakthrough that will make farms more efficient and curb food wastage throughout the value chains.

The team that is based at Tokyo’s Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo will be working with Laser-induced Plasma shockwaves which create vibrations on a fruits surface. 

These vibrations are what the scientists ate using to tell the ripeness of fruit.

This technology can potentially help to make agriculture more efficient right from the farm.

With a more accurate measure of ripeness, growers can now pack fruit that is just ripe enough to the picked. Neither too rope nor too unripe.

Farmers will be able to time their harvests perfectly.

Retailers will not purchase overripe or unripe fruit. 

When consumers buy unripe fruit or underripe fruit, this equally results in wastage.

Farmers, retailers, and consumers use different methods to check ripeness of fruit.

Most of the time, this involves putting pressure on the fruit either using hands or a hammer or some type of instrument. 

These methods register varying degrees of success, depending on what fruit they are applied on. 

Mechanical techniques are most popular, even though some professionals use optical as well as biomedical techniques.

Mechanical methods assess the firmness of the fruit and this measure can be used to deduce the ripeness of the fruit 

It doesn’t suit softer fruit that easily suffers mechanical damage.

The new method does not require any form of mechanical pressure or contact. 

It uses LIP (Laser Induced Plasma) instead of force to assess the ripeness of fruit. LIP is so much better because it does not damage the fruit. 

LIP works better with hard fruits for whom mechanical pressure may not work. In a plasma state, atoms are already stripped of electrons and they now have an electric charge. 

When a high energy laser beam is focused onto a small pocket of air, it produces a similar effect of inducing an electrical charge.

The plasma bubble expands and emits shockwaves faster than the speed of sound. 

Researchers have experimented with shockwaves before, generating them near the skin of a fruit and observing the resultant vibration which they dubbed ‘football mode vibration’ because of the way spherical bodies deform to create a shape that resembles a football. 

The researchers checked that the vibrations had a frequency that reflected how firm the skin of the fruit was. 

The scientists used Rayleigh waves which appear on the fruit’s surface because fruits don’t show this kind of vibration. 

The technique was first demonstrated using Kent mangoes to prove that the speed of the Rayleigh waves can be used to tell how ripe the fruit is, even without touching the fruit or applying any pressure to it. 

Mangoes have large seeds that change the way surface waves are propagated and this makes the measurements harder to read. The researchers found that they could measure rayleigh waves along the mango’s equator line for consistent results instead of using the prime meridian line.

Besides large seeds, deformities like cavities and decay have the capacity to alter the measurements of rayleigh waves. 

With time, the scientists came up with a set of best practices to guide them in measuring the ripeness of soft fruit using rayleigh waves. According to Professor Naoko Hosoya, the system has enabled contact free ways of measuring the firmness of a fruit: “Our system is suitable for non-contact and non-destructive firmness assessment in mangoes and potentially other soft fruits that do not exhibit the usual [football mode] vibrations.” 

All-purpose flour will always have a place in our kitchens, but Jullapat has made it easier than ever to cook with ancient grains. 

Roxana Jullapat’s buckwheat, sorghum, and spelt creations are not just delicious – they are quite easy to make. 

Roxana Jullapat co-owns Friends & Family, an L.A. bakery and her passion for brains is contagious.

Her insights about barley and buckwheat are nothing short of a revelation, and her enthusiasm is exciting. 

So, it was not surprising that I soon found myself rushing to the nearest bulk foods store to buy items like spelt flour, sorghum flour, and buckwheat. 

I even gave considerable thought to choosing between normal rye flour and dark rye flour. Ended up going home with both. Of course, cornmeal was on the menu.

Armed with my copy of Mother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution, and my stash of whole grains, it was now time to get down to some cooking. 

Jullapat’s recipes were amazing and I loved preparing them. I was about to become a self-appointed ancient sorghum flour aficionado. 

Jullapat has successfully made ancient grains not only relevant to current food lovers, but also positively exciting. The fact that they have stayed the same for centuries only makes them charming. 

The cookbook Mother Grains is centred around eight kinds of whole grain. All of which you can find anywhere in the US. These grains are:

• Barley
• Corn
• Buckwheat
• Rye
• Wheat
• Sorghum, and
• Oat

Jullapat’s recipes cover a surprising variety of uses for the grains. Imagine indulging in a cup of toasted barley tea, or some sorghum syrup. 

I was more interested in her ancient grain baked goods. They offered me a new twist to trusted recipes. The whole grains tended to give the end result a distinctly nutty flavour. 

It was a pleasure to make low gluten blueberry muffins with spelt flour. The flavour and nutrition were amazing. Even the streusel topping was more nutritious. 

Spelt made for better texture, deeper flavours, and all-round more interesting end results. This particular recipe was good enough to warrant making multiple batches of blueberry muffins. One batch was not enough. 

Some of the interesting recipes in Mother’s Grain include blondies made with barley flour. The resultant flavour is very malty and resembles cereal milk. 

The shortbread made from einkorn makes for easy cooking. The granola scones are more than worth the effort. The pound cake made from ricotta-cornmeal is positively heavenly. The recipes incorporate ingredients like cashews, sweet sorghum flour, health bits, and coconut such as in the Trouble Cookies. They kept me going during a camping trip. 

Ancient, whole grain flours need special care. Store them in the fridge to keep them from going rancid. Zip lock bags, or cambro can do. 

In Roxana’s own words: “You have all these spices. You have two, three options of breakfast cereals. Yogurts, you might have two or three flavours. It’s the same with grains. And with more raw material, there’s more potential.” 

While it may seem daunting to work with spelt flour, the truth is that these grains offer lots of versatility, health, flavour, nutrition, and of course fibre. 

Mother Grains is exciting to work with, but it offers a valuable education in food and empowers cooks to access a wider variety of grains.

Only a tiny number of wheat varieties is mass distributed to consumers, and Jullapat takes readers through the history of wheat as well as its environmental and nutritional aspects.

Buying heritage grains from smaller producers gives you an opportunity to not only support the economy but also support biodiversity and sustainable farming. It is an investment in the future. 

One of these producers is Skowhegan, Maine’s Maine Grains which sells milled organic grains and heritage grains. The grains they mill are all grown rotationally with complementary crops that help to balance soil nutrients. 

Buckwheat is one of the crops suitable for planting on nutrient depleted soil. It helps to restore the fertility of the soil.

Jullapat includes a buckwheat chocolate cake recipe. You will be enjoying a delicious confection as you contribute to a healthier environment. 

Sorghum on the other hand, is a hardy crop that grows even in dryer, hotter conditions and consumes less moisture. It also makes more efficient use of space than other crops.

Using sorghum contributes towards restoring grain farming in more arid areas and bringing back more sustainable agricultural practices. 

Perhaps the best reason to bake with these ancient grains is that they taste amazing. “Just buy a bag of flour. We’ll help you figure out what to do with it” says Jullapat.