Curious Cook fronts new gourmet food line
By Meredith Ebbin
(Business from 2005-03-16 Edition)
Liquor merchant Gosling’s is rolling out a new gourmet line with its best-selling Black Seal Rum as a key ingredient.
Cakes, preserves and sauces comprise the nine products in the Gosling’s Gourmet line. Ed Bottone, who is known as the Curious Cook, is back in Bermuda to help launch the new products he developed in his kitchen in Philadelphia for Gosling’s.
They include Cocorumba Double Chocolate Cake, Gombey Passionate Plum and Mango Tango Habanero glaze and dipping sauce and Mr. Bottone says they are delicious.
The chocolate cake, for example, contains chocolate chunks, dates, pecans, cocoa and brown sugar —“anything anybody could possibly want in a chocolate cake,” Mr. Bottone said.
Malcolm Gosling said: “There is a Dark’n’Stormy preserve, sauce and rum cake; Rum Swizzle preserves and rum cake; Passionate Plum Gombey Sauce, a double-chocolate rum cake we call Cocorumba.
“Those flavours are amplified by Bermuda’s rum—Gosling’s Black Seal. The world-wide recognition of Gosling’s Black Seal will help to boost the gourmet products’ quality perception.”
Black Seal Rum is sold in the U.S. and is even available in Japan, Mr. Bottone said. The products were developed over the last two years from stovetop recipes Mr. Bottone cooked, tested and retested in his kitchen in Philadelphia.
The nine products in the line, which were inspired by a Bermuda cocktail, contain Black Seal rum and have ingredients that Bermudians are familiar with, said Mr. Bottone, a food writer, consultant and advertising account executive who lived in Bermuda for 10 years up to 1999.
He has maintained his connections with Bermuda and linked up with Gosling’s two years ago to develop the new gourmet line.
The products, which come in various sizes, will be available in Bermuda the first week in April and will be launched in the U.S. in July at a food show in New York.
The products are made outside Bermuda — the cakes in Mississippi, the preserves in Scotland and the sauces in Philadelphia.
Mr. Bottone said he oversees the production of the foods, which he described as “natural” with no chemical addictives.
With more than one rum cake already on the Bermuda market, Mr. Bottone was asked what distinguishes the latest ones from the rest.
He said: “All those {rum cakes} are good. It’s like fish chowder. You can have six recipes for fish chowder and they’re all good. I think our recipes are more inventive. The cocktail aspect makes them more interesting and the Black Seal makes them unique.”
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Chef2Chef News Desk