Noshi Ume

Noshi Ume, 乃し梅 

from ¥ 648 for 5 pieces

Like many things that we now enjoy as treats (soda, hard candy, mints…), noshi ume started life as medicine. The recipe for a plum-based throat soother may have originated in Nagasaki, but then travelled to Yamagata Prefecture in the 1600s. In the 1800s, a gelatinizer of powdered seaweed (kanten or agar) was added to improve and stabilize the texture. 

Today the 5th generation owners of Satoya make noshi ume using sour, aromatic plums from Yamagata. Thick slices of the chewy, sticky gel are packaged as they have been for over a hundred years, between dried bamboo leaves; simply peel back the leaves to nibble away without dirtying your hands (and then toss the “wrapper” in the compost!). Nostalgic, portable, and delicous, noshi ume can be found in the souvenir section of many department store food halls throughout Japan. 

If you like fruit roll-ups, membrillo, or even gummi bears, this is a treat to seek out. Satoya also sells shigure, strips of noshi ume rolled in sugar, for those who prefer their plum goo a little chewier and crunchier. 

 

Goshiki-mame

Goshiki-mame 五色豆
Sohonten Funabashi Mamecho Shoten, from ¥270 for 100g

Goshiki-mame, or five-color beans, have been popular Kyoto souvenir since the Taisho era more than a century ago. At the core of each crunchy little pebble is a roasted bean; as with konpeito, the core is repeatedly tumbled in a vat of melted sugar until a substantial candy coating builds up. The colors represent the north, south, east, and west districts of Kyoto, with the fifth color (brown) representing the Imperial Palace. Brown definitely tastes of cinnamon (an appropriately elite flavoring back in the day) and yellow is ginger, but the others…?  

I found these in a little shop next to the Nishijin Textile Center. I was temped by the wooden gift boxes of goshiki-mame and candied sweet potato, but already weighed down by more sweets that I could safely consume. Luckily, they also sell loose mame in smaller quantities from boxes so I got a small handful bundled up in the shop’s wrapping paper.

Sohonten Funabashi Mamecho Shoten 総本家 船橋豆長

396 Tatemonzencho

Kamigyo Ward 

Kyoto 602-8434

Japan

Macadamia Coconut Brittle

Macadamia Coconut Brittle
Ed & Don's

If someone you know is heading to Hawaii for vacation, and if you selflessly volunteer to take care of whatever needs tending in their absence, you might just be rewarded with some tropical delicacy or other. Try hinting that a can of Ed & Don's Macadamia Coconut Brittle would be just the thing.

Made by hand on O'ahu since 1956, this crackly brittle is full of both actual butter and buttery macadamias.  Add in the toasted coconut, and this confection's perfume is so potent, you get some residual satisfaction by huffing the empty can. 

Goat Milk Fudge

 Goat Milk Fudge
Toggenburg Goats of Arizona, $8

Two questions to which I will always answer YES: 

"Would you like a sample of fudge?"

"Would you like to hold a 3-week-old goat?"

I heard both from Suzanne Eaton at the Yuma Farmers Market stall where she and her husband Bob sell goat milk-based soaps, lotions, cheese, and fudge.  The Eatons raise Swiss Toggenburgs, the oldest domesticated breed of goat.  Because the girls need to get used to being handled during milking, the Eatons often bring youngsters along to the market, where the spend the morning charming the crowds from a playpen next to the tent.  

Although her mother sounded about as happy as a car alarm, the baby only struggled for a few seconds when Sue hoisted her out of the pen and into my arms.  Then she leaned in and started to nibble delicately at my chin.  I was proud to play this small part in creating the next generation of rich, chewy goat milk fudge. 

Brown & Haley's Mountain Bar

 

Mountain Bar

Brown and Haley, $1.25

Seattle's gritter neighbor to the south, Tacoma was long renowned for a distinctive "Tacoma aroma" produced by its many local industries.  But since the early twentieth century, at least one inner-city manufacturer has given locals a good reason to inhale deeply:  the Brown & Haley confectionery company.  

Starting their business in 1912, founders Harry Brown and JC Haley faced both challenges and opportunities similar to those faced by budding confectioners in 2008.  With the country on the brink of crisis, the demand for affordable luxuries rose steadily even as supply chains became increasingly unpredictable.  

Launched in 1915, the "Mount Tacoma Bar" became a particular favorite with the young soldiers training at nearby Camp Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis McChord).  A center of vanilla fondant layered with tempered chocolate and crushed peanuts, the confection was soon renamed the "Mountain Bar" as its popularity spread beyond the city limits.  A cherry version was added in the 1920s and a peanut butter one in 1974.  The female "dippers' who originally made each bar by hand (below left) were eventually replaced by machines capable of making 592 bars per minute.

Brown & Haley is still operating in downtown Tacoma, led by JC's granddaughter Anne Haley.  Although the factory floor is now closed to visitors, you can visit the outlet store (housed in a kiosk recycled from Seattle's 1968 World's Fair) for seconds, specials, and generous samples. 
 

Brown & Haley Factory Store
110 E 26th St 
Tacoma WA
253 / 620-3067

110 East 26th St, Tacoma, WA 98421(253) 620-3067

110 East 26th St, Tacoma, WA 98421(253) 620-3067

Roslyn Candy Co.

 
















Bite-sized truffles
Rosyln Candy Co., $1 each

Relative to its size, tiny Roslyn WA is packed with attractions.  It still has many of the buildings familiar from the TV show "Northern Exposure," but also surprises like a fascinatingly multi-cultural cemetery (in the heyday of mining workers were recruited from all over the world) and budding businesses like the Roslyn Candy Co.

From a colorful little house in the heart of downtown, Roslyn Candy dispenses ice cream, retro candy by the pound, and chocolate truffles and treats created by owners Alesha Schmedeke and Otto Cate.  The confectionery lineup features both revived classics (Italian-style hazlenut-and-chocolate gianduja creams) and contemporary crazes (chocolate-dipped local bacon from Owens Meats), as well as an assortment of bite-sized truffles (above) ranging from the 80% dark chocolate "Kumabo" to a fennel-infused white chocolate ganache coated in white chocolate and topped with colorful candied Indian fennel seeds. 

Roslyn Candy Co. 
104 1/2 Pennsylvania Ave
Roslyn WA
509/649-3390

Mom's European Food & Deli

Russian Mini Chocolate Bars
Mom's European Food & Deli, $6.99/lb

Soap Lake is a tiny town in central Washington built around a lake long famed for the healing properties of its foamy waters and slimy mud.  Modern environmental factors have put a dent in those powers--and in the number of tourists visiting the town's spas and resorts.  From the car I saw two going-out-of-business sales, several vacant storefronts, and the empty lot where town boosters had once planned to erect the world's largest lava lamp.

There was no one else in sight when I parked by the public swimming area just a block from downtown, rolled up my pants, and waded into the shallow, slightly effervescent water.  There was no one in sight as I stood ankle-deep in mud, creamy and insubstantial as Cool Whip, and wondered what it would be like to live here. 

I was starting to get a little spooked when a stroll down main street finally filled in a few of the blanks.   As I passed a strikingly well-stocked yarn store, there was a flurry of activity; car after car pulled up and a dozen chatty women got out carrying snacks and projects for the weekly "stitch and bitch."  

At the other end of the street, I found Mom's European Deli, a strikingly well-stocked emporium of foods from Russia and the Baltic region--deli staples like meat, cheese, and specialty breads, but also row upon row of sweet snacks.  The dozens of individually wrapped hard candies, caramels, and nutty little dark chocolate bars  (like Clumsy Bear, Nut Cluster, Kara Kym, above) are sold pick-and-mix style by the pound, as is sesame and sunflower halva, cut to order from huge marbled blocks.  There are also sweet drinks, boxed cookies, and bags of confections like zephir, a pastel hybrid of marshmallow and divinity.   The cold case is stocked with fresh cakes from Russian bakeries on the east coast, carried back by long-haul truck drivers returning from a New York run.  

The beach may no longer be bustling, but an unexpected bounty of beautiful yarn and Russian treats prove that there's still life, creativity, community, and celebration behind Soap Lake's hard-luck facade.   

Mom's European Food & Deli
331 Main Ave E
Soap Lake WA
509/246-1121

Colt's Bolts

Colt's Bolts
Nashville Airport, $1.99

On the one hand, a Colt's Bolt is a dressed-up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup; on the other, it's a country song wrapped in foil.  

On the label of each confection is a 1980's glamor shot of blonde in a red power suit, company owner Mackenzie Colt.  A teenage wife and mother with talent and ambition, Colt was a regular at open mic nights at the Ramada Inn lounge near her St. Louis home, where she was discovered by Buck Owens.  After touring as Owens' protege, she moved to Nashville for a six-season stint as a scantily-clad "Hee Haw Honey." 

When she aged out of her Hee Haw role, Colt had a Plan C waiting in the wings:  a lifelong passion for baking and confectionery.  In 1984 she began to combine chocolate, peanut butter, and roasted almonds into candy cups she called Colt's Bolts.  At first she mixed all of the ingredients in her own Cuisinart and wrapped the finished cups in the foil left over from chocolate bars she melted down for her coating.  All that had to change after Colt's Bolts won the Fancy Food Show's Outstanding Confection Award and a Japanese distributor ordered 60,000 pieces. 

Seafoam

Seafoam
Boehm's Chocolates 

Isn't science wonderful?  The same volcanic combination of vinegar and baking soda that I rely on to de-gunk my drains gives seafoam candy its distinctive honeycomb texture.  Molasses adds a rich depth to the flavor and a dark chocolate coating seals in the foamy freshness so each bite is crisp and crunchy.  

Boehm's Chocolates
255 NE Gilman Blvd, Issaquah, WA 98027
425 / 392-6652

Karume

Karume
Daiso Japan, $1.50

Thanks to Daiso, the Japanese "dollar" store, you can try a treat that would have been familiar to children living in Japanese cities more than 100 years ago.  

Karume are feather-light hard brown lumps with hexagonal sides and ravaged-looking tops.  Pop one in your mouth for a rather straightforward brown sugar flavor and a comparatively intricate textural experience:  the porous sweet slowly erodes from the inside out and collapses in on itself in a jumble of shards and syrup.  

Karume are a kind of dagashi, a category of "cheap sweets" that became popular among urban children during Japan's Meiji period, when increased foreign trade made sugar affordable for the masses. 

According to Eric Rath in Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan, the historic precursor to our modern factory-formed karume was called karumeyaki, and it was then as much as taste of the future as karume is now a taste of the past.  Although the -yaki suffix is more usually attached to something that has been cooked or grilled, these candies get their bubbled appearance and hard shell from a chemical reaction caused by the addition of baking soda--an ingredient first introduced to Japan in the Meiji period.

This reaction is so spectacular that a university handout I found characterizes karume-making as a science experiment rather than a recipe.  In essence, you beat egg whites to a soft froth, stir in baking soda, then combine the egg with melted brown sugar.  The mixture foams furiously, and the bubbles can be hardened by cooking over a gentle flame. 

Budapest Bistro and Schnitzel House

 
















Cheese Pocket and Almond Cookie (top)
Cheese Strudel (below)
Budapest Bistro and Schnitzel House

Growing up in Hungary in her grandparents' home taught Elizabeth Muszka a particular kind of self-reliance.  Since there wasn't much money to spare on restaurants or fancy ingredients, Elizabeth learned young that in order to eat well, they had to cook well. 

Today the owner of Mukilteo's Budapest Bistro and Schnitzel House specializes in Hungarian, German, and Gypsy dishes--and in cooking well.  Starting with traditional recipes and simple ingredients, Elizabeth lavishes attention on each item. 

The pastry case stuffed with fresh zserbo (apricot-walnut-chocolate pastry), dobos torte (layered sponge with chocolate and caramel), sour cherry cake, German chocolate cake, strudels (below), and cookies (above) is even more of a marvel when you consider that the strudel dough alone takes three hours to make.  

 
















But for ex-pats who hunger for something other than home cooking, Elizabeth also stocks a large selection of packaged European candies and treats (below).   

Budapest Bistro and Schnitzel House
12926 Mukilteo Speedway
Lynwood WA
425/513-9846

Buko Pandan Polvorones

Polvorones
Aling Conching at Seafood City, $1.99/10

Based on a Spanish cookie named for its dusty texture, these Filipino polvorones are bite-sized blocks of compressed flour, milk powder, sugar, and butter, given a faintly tropical flavor with the addition of buko (young coconut) and pandan (screwpine) extracts. 

Honey Coconut Marshmallows

Honey Coconut Marshmallows
Sweet Coconut Bakery, $7.75/bag

A single bag of fresh honey coconut marshmallows from Hazel Lao's Sweet Coconut Bakery can cancel out a lifetime's reluctant memories of stale, chalky Stay Pufts.  Hazel uses honey instead of corn syrup, and dusts her marshmallows with velvety shredded coconut instead of cottonmouth-inducing starch.  The plus-sized squares are as plump as a toddler's tummy, meaning that you don't have to dissolve them in cocoa or melt them over a fire to render them edible. 

Abu Afif Sweets

Assorted nougat
Abu Afif Sweets

Established in Baghdad in 1973, Abu Afif Sweets makes a wide range of traditional Arabic pastries and candy.  The descendants of founder Mounir Jamal's have continued to expand into new markets, adding more modern sweets such as chocolate to their offerings at a growing number of retail stores. 

Luckily at least a few of Abu Afif's fresh sweets travel well, making plastic-wrapped bites like those pictured a great souvenir of the region.  On the top left is a square of something that may be called helawa (I'm guessing--it's not identified by name on the Abu Afif website), pistachios held together by a dense, chewy, slightly sticky, and translucent brown gel.  To the right, the same helawa is surrounded by milky nougat and a strip of qarmar-el-deen, a tart apricot fruit leather.  On the bottom is a ball of the same nougat simply caked in pistachios. 

Versions of nougat have been made and enjoyed throughout the Arab world for centuries.  In Iraq it's known at min el sama (or mann al-sama, etc.).  In Iran, it's gaz, derived from from gaz-angebin, a reference to an indigenous tree.  White, nut-studded panish turrón was probably the product of long-ago Moorish settlement, and it likely influenced the development of Italian torrone. 

Since nougat is such a tradition in the Middle East, I wondered why all of the recipes I found online called for corn syrup, a relatively modern ingredient.  Wikipedia to the rescue!  The sap that gives gaz its name is found on the plant but doesn't come from it:  "The sticky white substance, exuded from the anus of the last instar nymph of a small insect which lives on the plant, is collected annually and is combined with other ingredients including pistachio or almond kernels, rosewater and egg white."  Corn syrup is a modern substitute for the insect excretion. 

Survival Crackers and Shelter Candy

Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum

Built in 1902, Fort Worden is one of three bases that make up the Northwest's "Triangle of Fire," an interconnected artillery system designed to repel any attempts at a sea invasion of the Puget Sound.  Although the Fort was decommissioned in 1953 without a single aggressive shot ever having been fired, today's Fort Worden State Park and museums contain countless reminders of just how tense times could get for the hundreds of men once stationed in the Fort's damp concrete bunkers. 

While sweets can often appear frivolous, a couple of displays at the Coastal Artillery Museum remind us that as sources of quick, comforting energy, sweets are ideal to have around when the s**t hits the fan.  The Museum's mock fallout shelter is stocked with 31.5-pound tins (photo above) of 756 long-lasting "Bulgur Type" survival wafers; they're made from wheat, shortening, and salt--with a generous amount of corn syrup to make them more palatable. 
 
The Museum also displays small cubic "Carbohydrate Supplements" (photo below):  "In addition to the three types of survival crackers there was also a Carbohydrate Supplement which became known as 'Shelter Candy' and is shown above.  This came in two flavors, Cherry and Pineapple, and was basically hard sugar. "

Other displays reveal that even everyday life at Fort Worden had its sweet side.  One case contains illustrated cookbooks designed for military mess halls; the books are opened to recipes for cinnamon rolls and "sugared snails."  A collection of souvenir menus testify to the lavish nature of the Fort's annual Christmas feast;  the dessert section of each menu features up to a dozen different cakes and pies--along with fruit and cigarettes. 

Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum 
Fort Worden Building 201
200 Battery Way
Port Townsend, WA 
360/385-0373

Boehms Chocolates

Cherry Cordial (left)

Motzartkugel (right)

Boehms Candies

Calling all producers of romantic biopics:  wake up, smell the chocolate, and give the late Julius Boehm the big-screen treatment he so richly deserves!

Born in 1897, Boehm was a Swiss-Austrian who represented Austria in the 1924 Paris Olympics and was a torch-carrier in 1936--the same year he fled the Nazi invasion by skiing over the Alps to Switzerland.  Boehm eventually immigrated to the US and arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 1941.  

As if all that weren't epic enough, Boehm was also the grandson of a confectioner, from whom he learned a thing or two about treats.  In 1934 he and a friend opened the Candy Kitchen in Ravenna, a quiet residential neighborhood on the north side of Seattle.  In 1956, Boehm moved his business to Issaquah, where the surrounding Cascade range recalled the mountains of his childhood.  Next to the shop he built a replica 12th century Alpine Chapel, dedicated to the memory of lost mountaineers.  Boehm himself was one of the lucky ones, safely summiting Mt. Rainier for the third time at the age of 80, just three years before his death in 1981.  

The business Boehm built thrives to this day, cranking out an enormous variety of filled and flavored chocolates.  For the cherry cordials, ripe cherries are soaked in brandy for nearly a month, then double-dipped in milk or dark chocolate.  Mozartkugeln are Boehms' signature sweet, a dollop of soft marzipan blanketed in creamy chocolate ganache, encased in a chocolate shell, and dressed in foil imprinted with Mozart's silhouette.   Honoring the centennial of the composer's death, the Mozartkugel was invented in Salzburg in 1890 by one of Julius Boehms' ancestors, and could itself be the subject of a pretty gripping movie; the confection was a fad that has since become a classic--and the subject of lawsuits, industrial innovation, and consumer obsession.  

Boehms Candies

255 NE Gilman Blvd

Issaquah, WA

425/392-6652

Tamarind Candy Sweet

Tamarind Candy Sweet
Rising Produce, $0.69

"Whenever I hear the word chua, Vietnamese for "sour," I think of tamarind, the sticky brown fruit that grew in abundance on shading trees in my old schoolyard back in Saigon, and its intense sour-sweet memories inevitably cause my molars to vibrate and my mouth to water. I hear "sour" in English and I don't feel a thing."
--Andrew Lam
East Eats West

Even without the amplification of childhood memories, the mention of tamarind provokes in me an identical Pavlovian response. Indigenous to Africa, the tamarind tree has spread to just about every hospitably tropical climate, and the flavorful pulp cushioning the seeds inside its long, leathery pods makes star turns in a number of ethnic cuisines. Although its bipolar flavor is not dissimilar to dried apricot, tamarind pulp has a funky, fetid edge that adds exotic depth to everything from to pad thai to paletas to Worcestershire sauce.

A simple showcase for tamarind's charms, these Thai sweets are made from pulp, sugar, rice flour, and a bare pinch of salt. They're doughy-soft and crystal-crunchy--except when concealing a scrap of shell, which will cut you like a shank if you're not careful. Exotic and dangerous.

Yeot

Yeot
Paris Baguette

This new addition to the category of sweets I've dubbed "performance confectionery" comes courtesy of my former colleague Candace, now a teacher (and Sweet Travel corespondent) in South Korea.

Inside a primly-wrapped package from Paris Baguette (a popular chain of bakeries found throughout Korea) were 16 nuggets of yeot, a quintessentially Korean sweet. This stiff grain-based taffy can be made from rice, wheat, sorghum, or corn, to which may be added various nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits, and spices. My best guess as to the flavors pictured above (top to bottom): molasses with pine nuts and sesame seeds, toasted soybean flour, peanuts, and ginger.

Yeot is such a complex tradition that specific words differentiate different consistencies and ingredients, including the famed regional variations of various provinces (eg maize or radish). The harder versions are eaten as candy, while softer yeot mixed with therapeutic herbs offers relief from colds and sore throats.

While Paris Baguette is a high-end treat boutique, yeot is more commonly sold by street vendors working from small stalls or carts. In order to attract attention and customers, these vendors take advantage of yeot's Silly Putty-esque properties; although chewy, yeot will shatter like safety glass if hit correctly. Many YouTube videos show vendors cutting a slab of fresh yeot into bite-size pieces by striking a chisel with a huge pair of rattling metal scissors, keeping up a syncopated racket as cut candy shoots into a growing pile. It's a mesmerizing performance, but leaves me wondering if yeot is also a cure for headaches.

Hankering for more? Check out other travel-related food posts at Wanderfood Wednesday.

Pralines

Pralines

Several New Orleans guidebooks suggest that a cash-strapped tourist could make a meal out of hitting the sample trays at the French Quarter's many praline shops. Pralines aren't especially expensive, but as a quintessential souvenir they add up to big business. Competition is fierce, with some shops specializing and others casting a wide net in an effort to have something for everyone: you want your pralines creamy? Crunchy? Flavored with chocolate, peanut butter, coconut, maple syrup, or rum? Or how about Tabasco?

Pralines have come a long way since they first appeared in France in the early 17th century. Although candied nuts had been around since the Middle Ages, almonds coated in caramelized sugar only came to be called "pralines" through association with the Duke de Plessis-Praslin. One story has it that the recipe was discovered when the household cook Lassagne caught his children improvising a fragrant treat using stolen almonds and sugar, which was then an expensive luxury. Another says that Lassagne added sugar to help the Duke digest almonds, since sugar was also considered to have medicinal properties. The treat became popular across France, and the praline shop founded by Lassagne is still in business today.

The recipe for pralines arrived in New Orleans with the French, but the confection quickly took on a New World form. Almonds were replaced by pecans, which then grew in abundance throughout the city. Refined sugar was replaced by cheaper brown sugar, and the candy coating increased in proportion to the nuts until in New Orleans "praline" meant a matrix of solidified sugar studded with whole or crushed nuts.

The beginnings of the local praline industry also reflect New Orleans' unusual socio-political structure. In contrast with other areas of the US, New Orleans was subject to the French Code Noir; under its terms slaves were given Sundays off and permitted to meet, play music, and dance in Congo Square to the north of the Quarter. With their owners' permission, slaves were also able to engage in trade, and at the Congo Square public market they were could earn extra income by doing odd jobs or selling food or crafts.

Pralines were a common sight at the market. Made from byproduct sugar and nuts gathered from public land, they cost next to nothing to make, and even when sold cheaply, represented almost pure profit. As noted by Liz Williams of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, "Selling pralines and other candies offered a regular and socially sanctioned source of income for many free women of color and slaves." Some of this income could have been directed towards a particular purpose; under New Orleans law, slaves also had the opportunity to purchase freedom, and at least some praline vendors were able to contribute to buying freedom for themselves or their families.

In the period after the Civil War, pralines continued to be a popular treat and an important source of income for women who might have few other options. With their bright kerchiefs and fly-shooing fans, the praline marchandes became a city icon (see vintage postcard, top). In SoFAB's "Pecan Candy" display, curator Chanda Nunez explores the complexity of this image: "Because of the popularity of these confections, the highly visible praline vendors were simultaneously celebrated and caricatured by white observers who depicted them as 'mammy' figures. However, these women were entrepreneurs adapting to their time and place." As praline making became more industrialized, manufacturers exploited that historic association; an "Aunt Sally" emblazoned on a candy wrapper amounted to a seal of authenticity (above, two 20th century examples).

Pralines continue to evolve today, with consumers rewarding both tradition and innovation, and tending to define both in terms of ingredients. Laura's Candies (established in 1913 and possibly the city's oldest candy shop) sells an "original Creole" praline ($1.85) based on an 18th century recipe. The crisp, translucent treat is made from brown sugar and pecans with a touch of vanilla.

Laura's Candies

331 Charters St

504/525-3880

The next generation of pralines were made more complicated and luxurious with the addition of butter or cream. Typical of this type is Southern Candymakers' tender and rich "Original Creamy Praline" ($19.95/lb).

Southern Candymakers
334 Decatur St
504/523-5544

As the food culture in New Orleans evolved, so did the praline, reflecting new technologies and new cultural influences. Recipes were modernized to include convenience ingredients such as condensed or evaporated milk, or updated with flavorful additions such as coconut or chocolate.

Wandering through the Marigny, a more workaday neighborhood that borders the French Quarter, I poked my head into Loretta's Authentic Pralines looking for something they didn't have, and walked out with a couple of free pralines; it happened to be Valentine's Day and the woman behind the counter said she just couldn't let us leave empty-handed.

The pralines were delicious--creamy, slightly chewy, one plain and one chocolate, both huge and distinctively ovoid. Even luckier, it turned out that I had also stumbled across one of the most fascinating stories of the new praline economy. Loretta's motto, "Not just a creamy, chunky, delicious piece of candy, but a piece of New Orleans", holds true from almost every angle. When Loretta Harrison started her company 30 years ago as a divorced single mother, her only assets were $700 in seed money and a praline recipe four generations old. Loretta's Authentic Pralines became the first candy company in New Orleans to be owned by an African-American.

Loretta's retail shop in the French Market was destroyed by the flooding during Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath, with insurance payouts delayed and debts mounting, Harrison had to go back to the drawing board. With help from a Seedco development grant she remodeled her production kitchen to accommodate a new retail store and a popup restaurant, which attracts crowds for Friday lunch. Today, Loretta's has two locations and 15 employees and Harrison is a local figure, even appearing in a 2010 Super Bowl commercial with a tray of her signature pralines.

Loretta's Authentic Pralines

2101 N Rampart

504/944-7068

or

1100 N Peters St Stall #9

504/529-6170

If your mouth is watering, have a look at some posts from other WanderFoodies!

Roman Chewing Candy

Chocolate Chewing Candy
Roman Chewing Candy Company, $1.00

While the French and the Spanish have had a more noticeable influence on New Orleans' architecture and language, the city has also been shaped by centuries of Italian migration. Given opportunities to work in fishing and agriculture, Italians from the poorer and more rural south of the country were particularly drawn to Louisiana. Towards the end of the 19th century, New Orleans' Sicilian population grew to be one of the largest in the country, exacerbating racial tensions and leading to a notorious criminal case. In 1890, Police Chief David Hennessey was murdered while investigating a vendetta killing within the Sicilian community. An enraged mob took eleven Sicilian suspects from the jail and lynched them.

Twenty-five years later, New Orleans saw the start of a much happier cross-cultural exchange. In 1915, a young street vendor named Sam Cortese had the idea that the traditional taffy his Sicilian mother made for special occassions might be a big seller. Angelina Napoli Cortese was happy to share her recipe but too busy to make as much candy as Sam needed. So in collaboration with a local wheelwright, Sam Cortese designed and built a mobile candy kitchen, a trim little cart equipped with a stove, a marble cooling slab, and a sturdy hook for pulling taffy. With the jaunty red-and-white cart hitched to a mule, Cortese crisscrossed the city making and selling his taffy--dubbed "Roman Chewing Candy" since "Sicilian" still had some negative connotations.

Sam Cortese continued to trade in taffy until his death in 1969, always keeping to the original price of 5 cents per foot-long stick. His grandson Ron Kottemann took over the business in 1970 and still sells Roman Chewing Candy from the original cart, changing only the stove (a butane replacement for the old coal-burner), and the price (now $1 a stick). Roman chewing candy is available in vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate (think "artisanal Tootsie Roll"), and if you don't happen to live on Kottemann's route you can also buy it online.