Zarela helps put a New Face on Peanuts

On March 4, 2009, Zarela will participate in an event with the National Peanut Board to unveil its new slogan  at a reception for media, the PR industry and VIPs at NYC’s Astor Center.

With the help of Michael and Ariane Batterberry, Zarela, alongside a handful of well-known New York City chefs will each give a 20 minute cooking demonstration.  Each chef will represent the cooking of different parts of the world,  including Asia, Africa, American and Mexican and prepare a traditional dish using peanuts, peanut butter,  peanut oil and/or peanut flour and update it in a unique and innovative way.

Zarela will demonstrate how to make a Chihuahua-style salpicon de carne, a beef salad with an unexpected dressing of Veracruzan salsa macha.  In addition she will be serving another Veracruzan specialty –peanut ice.  Peanuts figure prominently in the cooking of this Gulf state because it was a major culinary link with Africa along with other slave territories like Brasil and the southern United States.  And penauts are a major ingredient in some moles and other main-dish sauces.  You can find many of these recipes in Zarela’s book, Zarela’s Veracruz (Houghton Mifflin 2001) and others in the recipe section of this website.

Zarela will be cooking for roughly 100 guests, from consumer and trade magazines, newspapers, blogs and syndicated columns as well as peanut industry VIPs.

For more information on all things Peanut visit: http://www.nationalpeanutboard.org/