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Food & Lifestyles Local Flavors: VEGETAS by Melissa Castleman Click Here to go back to the Vegetas Article Archive

“Nine years ago vegetarianism was not accepted,” Donna Knopf says as she pries open the banana leaf surrounding a fat green corn and black bean tamale, unleashing a slow cloud of steam. Say the “V” word back then and noses automatically wrinkled in disgust. Mouths snapped shut. Knopf, who carted samples of her meatless southwestern cooking from one Phoenix-area grocery store to the next, discovered that free food doesn't always make people line up. “Where’s the beef?” the good people of Arizona wanted to know.

Enter mad-cow disease and a host of other diet-related scares, and suddenly the “V” word began to take on a pleasant ring. Nine years down the road, Knopf’s baby, as she calls it, has metamorphosed into a small, bustling company named Vegetas. It has grown from one employee to nine, and from one vegetarian product (a spicy seitan sausage) to over 30. Its super-chunky salsas, dips, tamales and thick, deliciously salty tortilla chips are now stacked high in the coveted shelf-spaces at AJ’s, Whole Foods and Wild Oats.

It all started with Phil Donahue. Knopf was watching the show one afternoon almost two decades ago, at home sick with an ulcerated colitis, which had been plaguing her for years. Donahue’s guests were experts on macrobiotics, the bean-and-rice—centered diet recently made trendy by Gwyneth Paltrow. After the show, Knopf jumped into her car and promptly bought $80 worth of books on the subject. “Within a week of eating macrobiotic, I felt really normal,” she says, ‘for the first time in five years.But she’s quick to add that the diet isn’t a cure-all for everyone. Nor can the Vegetas line be described as hard-core macrobiotic, and that is how Knopf wants it. “I set out to make good, wholesome food,” she says. “Food that no matter who you are, just tastes good.” And it does. Vegetas tamales are light and fluffy, “like corn souffles,” as Knopf puts it, with sweet, whole kernels flecking the dough. The typical restaurant tamale, brimming with invisible lard, has 30 to 60 grams of fat, which makes it about as healthy as a McDonald’s double cheeseburger. One of Knopf’s, in contrast, has no more than five fat grams. Not bad, but how does the thing taste?

“Like you went to the store, bought all the ingredients and made it yourself,” Knopf says. Indeed, several years ago, when a grocery-store chain asked her to create meatless tamales, in addition to her vegetarian sausage, Knopf shrugged obligingly and said, “Sure, I’ll just give you what I do at home.” So, each Vegetas tamale, from the Tillamook cheddar to the sweet potato with pickled jalapeno, is handmade, and comes wrapped up as an enticingly rustic bundle, with banana-leaf and corn-husk—paper packaging. “They use banana leaves for their tamales in Nicaragua and Guatemala,” Knopf explains. “It imparts a special flavor during steaming.”

When her tamales started selling like hotcakes, the stores cried out for salsas to pair them with. Once again, Knopf obliged. She has created nine varieties, including a knockout avocado-tomatillo salsa with an addictive vinegary tang. Her cranberry-mango salsa simply begs to be slathered on a thick swordfish steak, though it’s equally scrumptious piled onto a Vegetas sweet potato—corn tortilla chip. Everything is fresh, from the just-peeled tomatillos to the Anaheim, poblano and serrano chilies in Knopf’s roasted green-chili salsa (“We tried canned roasted chilies once,” Knopf admits, “but they just didn’t have that true, roasted flavor.”) While the bulk of Vegetas dips and salsas are made in true southwest fashion, with plenty of fire, they are nothing that a cold beer can’t put out.

Like many an entrepreneur before her, Knopf’s education had nothing to do with her ultimate career. Her degree is in interior design. But you could say that Knopf’s tamales are like her rooms, and their fillings her furniture. “That’s where I get creative,” she says. In the future she hopes to go national with distribution, and international with her flavors. “I’m thinking of an oregano, basil and mozzarella tamale with pesto, and I’d love to try out curry”, she says.

http://www.gourmetfoodmall.com/Articles/press_F-L.html

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