A perfect pairing

Confectionery Production spoke to John Csukor, CEO and CMO of KOR Food Innovation, about his background and his role as culinary ambassador for the Almond Board of California.

What is your background?
With beginnings in the US Marine Corps, it has been my pleasure to create and serve consumer palates for more than 29 years. My formal culinary instruction has given me the motivation to pursue fine dining as well as higher cuisines, and I have dedicated my passion to healthy and energising cuisines.
I started out in marketing and product development on behalf of manufacturers including McIlhenny Company, Rich Seapak and Schwan’s Food Service. This led to a desire to market products to a wider audience. I worked in marketing for the California Raisin Marketing Board before moving to strategic product development positions within the Starbucks Coffee Company and AMF Bowling centres.
I aim to continuously pursue food knowledge through KOR’s international endeavours and by continuing education. My strong desire to balance art and science is strengthened by strategic ties and my memberships of both the Research Chefs Association and the American Culinary Federation.
Industry ties and connections often lead to perfect pairings, and with regard to the Almond Board of California (ABC), it was just such a pairing! In 2009, just a few years after KOR Food Innovation was established, ABC was seeking a culinary ambassador to bridge communication and creativity in product development to the industry. The match was made following an invitation to assist during a trade show.

Describe your current role
My duties as the CEO / CMO of KOR Food Innovation include leading teams to succeed in meeting all aspects of our business partners’ needs. Our partners consist of international hotel and restaurant chains, non-commercial management companies and marketing organisations. KOR Food Innovation is a full service food agency, so our actions are centred on efforts in product development, marketing, public relations and consumer needs research.
My work with our partners at ABC varies from idea generation for a unique and crave-able chocolate creation to ambassador activities with food manufacturers and large chain restaurants. I spend much of my time thinking about items that could be well paired with almonds. For example, we seek out cultural experiences that have solid roots in nuts and similar ingredients. Most noteworthy of late was our epiphany of roasting and brewing almonds much like one does with coffee beans. Delicious.

Describe a typical day
What makes our company such a rewarding place to work is the fact that no two days are the same. It is better to look at a week in our life than a single day. Monday and Tuesday can consist of photo styling and photo shoots for a food manufacturer, Wednesday brings a consumer focus group followed by idea generation and product development sessions on Thursday and Friday. This then leads to the development of prototypes, which are sent to clients for taste testing and evaluation.

What do you like best about your job?
Leading an innovation company can be a bit intimidating and I am humbled by the great opportunities we have. Being relied upon for inventiveness and outside the box idea generation, means that it has always been critical to surround myself with brilliant young thinkers. Creative thinkers and chefs constantly seeking inspiration help to create a team of brilliant minds that are not only versatile but collaborative in terms of both culinary and marketing ideation. For example, we have been working with ABC for more than five years and the creative minds at KOR are always thinking and experimenting with different forms and techniques for working with California almonds!
While many may measure success in terms of personal accomplishments, I have come to realise that my success really comes from my team. Valuing my employees’ ideas, creating an open work environment where communication is always encouraged and seeing my team thrive and succeed is what I like best about my job. I believe a successful company values every employee and sees the value in each individual’s unique talents.

How do you come up with new recipes?
My team at KOR Food Innovation have taken steps to look outside the box when creating seasoning and pairings. In 2013, we committed to a notion we called ‘trilogy cuisine’. This was the balanced combination of a herb, a spice and almonds. Almonds are our favourite nuts whether roasted, ground, crushed or buttered, and they became a worthy sidekick to the herb combinations we were creating.
As I travel the US and abroad, I continue to see agriculture influencing everything in food. How we grow, where we grow and what we grow has all gained dramatic importance in our feeding/consuming cravings. Not only do our customers want to know the intricacies of these stages of ‘fooding’, but we as chefs like to tell the story of our harvest and our hunt in these themes that we’ve identified and idealise against. Think: wise farming; smart harvesting (no waste); smart ingredients (no meat, no gluten, no GMO and so on); interesting seeds (brought back from the grave grains and seedling mash-ups).

Who do you ask to test new recipe ideas?
Our recipes are tested by professional chefs and those we classify as professional cooks; they may not be classically trained as chefs, but are experienced in the world of cooking, either through extensive home cooking or through restaurant association.

How do you keep up to date with the industry trends?
My team and I regularly partake in research work pressing us toward understanding the actions and eating habits of people throughout the world. We confirm many of these activities with our travel and our own experiences. We travel on behalf of our American partners as well as dignitary partners who seek our council in food and beverage. It is one thing to think and write about a trend that came to our tables from distant cultures, but it is a true testament to our teams’ expertise and verified ability to bring to light the dining intricacies of the world in a word.

What do you think will be the big flavour trends for 2014?
Some great flavours and effects on food we see becoming more prevalent come from the refining American culture and also activities abroad. We see flavours combined in ways that we have defined as ‘latitudinal cuisine’. This is a phrase trademarked by KOR Food Innovation that references connecting two cuisines that are tied together by similar growing regions and indigenous ingredients but can lie up to half a world apart.
This is the difference between meaningless mash-ups and a proper pairing of two cuisines that are bound by harmonious flavour matches and paired indigenous raw goods. This area of development is where we enjoy the application of California almonds. Almonds are one of the most powerful ingredients, not only because of their contributions in texture and flavour, but also from the perspective of acceptability in bridging cuisines. The world recognition of almond processes makes it easy for us to achieve acceptability in whatever we are creating. Almonds have an old world connection to so many cuisines that provides a more than logical understanding of the purpose of the inclusion.
Also in terms of flavours we continue to see activity in ‘bold beverages’ such as barrel aged cocktails and coconut in all forms from milk, to water and pulp.
We see continued strong activity in American Southern, and recently launched an American BBQ concept in Indonesia. Tart flavours such as house made pickles and salads are something that we have recently dedicated some time to developing and will continue to work on through the year. We have even worked on a process for one of our wine restaurant concepts to use spent or leftover wine to create house prepared vinegar.