QUALITALY_134

May/June 2023 XI MAGAZINE __________________________________ Sunday appointment Brunch is much more than lunch as Carlye Klick reports in the pages of Iconic Life. Although food is at its core, brunch is a meeting with friends, an opportunity to dress up, enjoy a drink, listen to music, learn the latest news from one’s circle of acquaintances. It is a social meal of sharing, a solid and structured event that over time has become a Sunday institution, cheerful, stimulating, compatible with chatting. Capable of putting one in a good mood and in harmony with oneself and others, it banishes the worries and cobwebs of the week. __________________________________ AT PAGE 36 DID YOU KNOW? First in - First Out: even in the warehouse priority is given USING PRODUCTS THAT EXPIRE FIRST IS A GOLDEN RULE TO ENSURE FOOD SAFETY AND AVOID WASTE by Elena Consonni If the popular saying ‘first in, first out’ could be applied to customers, the expression ‘first in is first out’ should (and this time the conditional should not be used) be applied to foodstuffs. It is in fact the literal translation of the English ‘First in - First out’ (or more succinctly FI-FO), which is used to emphasise the importance of proper rotation of goods/ingredients during storage. ‘It is a recommended method,’ explains Serena Pironi , food technologist and CEO of the consultancy firm PS, ‘to use products according to their expiry date. It is sometimes expressed with a similar phrase: ‘First expire, first out’, i.e. ‘the first one to expire, is the first one to go out’. It is a principle that absolutely must be adopted in the administration, and is part of the hygienic and sanitary prerequisites to be implemented, at the basis of one’s own self- control system’. HOW TO DO IT? When food and beverages are to be arranged for storage, some basic guiding principles should be kept in mind. For example, place food with allergens at the bottom and place those with a short expiry date within easy reach, so that they can be used immediately. “In practice,” she emphasises, “if these actions are not observed, it may happen that food which expired earlier runs the risk of being used by mistake, leading to food safety risks for those who consume it and penalties. Or it becomes necessary to change the menu at the last minute, to include the expiring ingredient, with the risk of making dishes with a different sensory profile and texture from the standard, and more often than not even worse, due to the inclusion of expired ingredients. In addition, products that would have been great are thrown away, simply out of distraction, fuelling food waste’. Operationally, the FI-FO methodology does not necessarily involve economic investment. The first thing is to train goods receiving and storage employees to check the expiry dates of newly purchased foodstuffs before placing them on the pantry shelf, and to check the expiry dates of the same products already there. ‘Materially,’ says Serena Pironi, ‘products with a shorter shelf life should be placed at the front, so that they are used first, and the others - with a longer shelf life - should be placed at the back. This also applies to refrigerators and cold stores. The expiry date of newly purchased ingredients should also be checked, because perhaps the supplier is providing the same batch of product with the same expiry date from several deliveries, or it could happen that he is giving an ‘older’ product than the previous time. A computer system that allows the loading and unloading of goods to be managed automatically obviously helps and simplifies, and allows deadlines to be checked more thoroughly, even if the operator is involved. Usually, such systems involve the use of barcode readers, and if the operator makes a mistake, the system gives false information’. According to Serena Pironi, the FI-FO method should always be adopted in a catering business. “It is one of the hygienic practices that allow you to make your work more efficient,” she emphasises, “minimise waste and provide food safety for the consumer. THE WORD FROM THE CHEF The practical experience of a chef demonstrates how First In - First Out principles can be put into practice in normal restaurant management. ‘Inventory management,’ says Vincenzo Butticé , owner of the Il Moro restaurant in Monza and honorary national vice- president of APCI, ‘is very important in order to always guarantee the use of ingredients within their shelf-life. We have three storage areas: the temperature-controlled area for perishable fresh and frozen products, the room temperature warehouse and the area for chemical products. For all products we pay attention to expiry and minimum shelf life, but especially with fresh products. Before placing new orders we check the products in stock and their expiry dates, in order to consume those that are closest to this date first. Digitisation helps in this process: there are systems whereby products are equipped with a chip that, through a special reader, signals when they are close to expiry. In the United States, fridges are already on the market that read the expiry dates of the products they contain and suggest which Serena Pironi , food technologist, owner of the consulting company PS Vincenzo Butticè , of Ristorante Il Moro in Monza