Gourmet could be considered any food that is high end. You would expect a gourmet food to be made with great care, precision, and skill, and you would expect it to be flavorful and pleasing to your palate. These are the kinds of expectations that restaurants will play on when they advertise their food as being gourmet. The word and the idea of gourmet bring certain connotations to mind. The notion of gourmet food has been co-opted by eating establishments that are savvy about what their customers are looking for.
Unscrupulous business owners may take the same food they were offering at a low price and simply slap a gourmet label on it to charge more for it. You may find gourmet used as a promise of quality, flavor, and skill. In other words, gourmet is sometimes used as the customer satisfaction guarantee. People expect gourmet food to be made by someone who has years of experience at making that particular dish.
They become an expert in that area, qualifying any food of that sort that they make as gourmet. Using gourmet as an advertising term can give the consumer the idea that the food will be very tasty and bursting with flavor. It gives the notion that the seasonings and spices used were carefully selected, freshly picked, thoughtfully sourced, and professionally applied. When you bite into a dish that is classified as gourmet, you expect it to have plenty of flavor.
You would be disappointed if it were bland or lacking flavor. To be gourmet is to love tasting. To appreciate the scent as it rises from the fork and wafts into the senses, to delight in the temperature and texture of the morsel as it first brushes your tongue.
The presentation of the food is to be as pleasing to the eye as it is to the taste buds. To eat gourmet is to eat for pleasure. In the 18th century, wine merchants would require the gourmont to have a refined palette and be able to detect high-quality, delicious wines using only their senses.
Gourmet cooking is more and more accessible to home chefs with the advent of refrigeration and expansion of global commerce. Ingredients that were once extremely rare in certain regions of the globe are now commonplace. Gourmet food is more accessible than ever. Home chefs are realizing that the barriers between them and gourmet cooked home meals are minimal.
There is not an exact gourmet food definition. There are external factors that influence whether a dish is gourmet. Ingredients that are rare or hard to cultivate on one continent, thus considered gourmet, can be common on another. In more recent times a growing and more wealthy middle class has increased demand for traditional gourmet products which in turn has reduced their cost. In addition the definition of gourmet now encompasses a much broader range of food and drink as consumers either through travel, growing ethnic communities exposing more people to different cuisines and the ever present media has exposed people to a much more varied choice of food and drink.
What is considered gourmet today does vary between individuals and does depend on a number of factors such as lifestyle, socio economic position or where they live. A Parma ham in Parma may be considered everyday but gourmet everywhere else. Such a food enthusiast is into edible luxury. Gourmets enjoy the experience of eating, making, or displaying food.
Some even explore the history and the anthropology of the foods they eat. A gourmet takes time and care in preparing food and usually eats food slowly. Gourmets frequent places that offer extra information about a food's origin, have ingredients of top quality, prepare foods from scratch, and serve dishes in a luxurious manner.
The person you may have called a gourmet years ago might today be called a "foodie. Gourmet food refers to food and drink that takes extra care to make or acquire. Gourmet food is often found or made only in certain locations, and its ingredients may be unusual, hard to find in regular grocery stores, only be available in limited amounts, rarely exported outside of their place of origin, or available only for short times of the year.
Some, such as truffles , must be wild harvested and can't be cultivated. These foods often are unique in flavor or texture. Gourmet ingredients may blend herbs and spices in an interesting manner or add flavor to foods that are usually not flavored.
For example, lemon olive oil spray, black truffle balsamic glaze, and Calvi white wine vinegar are unique takes on otherwise simple ingredients. You will find gourmet ingredients in a gourmet section of a grocery store or in stand-alone gourmet stores. For example, some grocery stores have typical cheeses in the dairy aisle but have a gourmet cheese section for higher-quality and imported cheeses. A gourmet store will often stock ingredients of the highest quality from around the world, thanks to special contacts that help import foods that otherwise are not readily available in the area.
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