Feature Stories

September 2002 Issue
Maxwell's Gearing Up For Holiday Season
By Daniel Pearson

Food's father–and-son owners Don and Paxton Kempf tell Gourmet they are starting to create inventory for the upcoming holiday season and will be introducing two new flavors of gourmet candy.

Paxton say's Maxwell's fans will be crunching through chocolate-dipped pecan brittle and chocolate-covered cashews, which will probably retail between $10-$15.

Maxwell's, founded in 1993, is a true gourmet treasure that's tucked inside the Parker - Lincoln North Industrial Park in North Raleigh. The company largely targets corporate clients but is branching out into retail and online sales, Don says.

If you haven't sampled their product, tempt your taste buds by visiting their retail store or going online to www.maxwellsgourmet.com.

April 18-26, 2001
Going Nuts
Pecans, peanuts and cashews put Maxwell's Gourmet on the map
By Fred Benton

April is more than the Azalea Festival in Wilmington or Passover and Easter: it's National Pecan Month! And it's my affection for pecans – the name of which comes from the Algonquin Native American language meaning "nuts requiring a stone to crack" – that took me to the hub of Extraordinary Pecans. These crisp, mammoth delights, delicately toasted and seasoned to a buttery aftertaste, are part of a product line produced by Maxwell's Gourmet, a locally-owned and operated company located in North Raleigh that has gained in its eight years an international market and reputation.

Although Maxwell's Gourmet now carries ready-made pastries, fine chocolates and coffees geared to mainly to wholesale customers, nuts — peanuts, pecans, peanut brittle and cashews — put Maxwell's on the map. Sitting down with co-owners and operators, Paxton Kempf, whose father began the business, and Eric Fortune, was a treat for me. And "treat" is the operative word. I happily noshed on the best of the best nuts, enormous in size and tastefully-apparent in quality. I now have a new addiction. It's Maxwell's Extraordinary Chocolate Dipped Pecans. Better, in my opinion, than any praline I've ever had.

One can't visit the glistening kitchens of Maxwell's Gourmet and take in the heady scent of frying Super Extra Large peanuts and not want to be more nut savvy. So, in honor of my hosts I did a little research. Did you know . . .

— The peanut, sometimes referred to as a groundnut, isn't a true nut at all. It's a legume, hence the appellation "pea"-nut.

— "Get your hot, roasted peanuts!" was a call first heard in the late 1800s at P.T. Barnum's circus.

— Peanuts have more protein per ounce than any other legume or nut, providing per ounce 15 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein.

— Peanuts as a valuable food source were known as early as 950 BC and are thought to have originated in Brazil or Peru and were later carried to Africa by early explorers and missionaries.

— The first commercial peanuts in North Carolina were grown near Wilmington.

— According to the science of glyco-nutritionals, a Snickers bar will raise your blood sugar considerably less than a bagel. Why? It's the presence of peanuts in the popular candy bar.

— Peanuts, like red wine and grapes, contain a particularly important phytochemical called resveratrol which has been shown to be an effective antioxident, exhibiting anti-cancer properties.

— The pecan is the only major nut that grows naturally in North America. It is believed that Native Americans first cultivated the pecan tree.

— New Orleans is considered the birthplace of the pecan industry. It's through this Louisiana port that pecans were shipped all over the United States and the world.

— Pecans could be considered an aphrodisiac. They're a good source of zinc. And if you aren't getting enough zinc in your diet your body may have problems producing testosterone which is a key hormone important to the sex drive in both men and women.

— Cashews are native to Central and South America. The kidney-shaped nut was spread to Africa and India by Portuguese traders.

— Cashew trees can grow up to 50 feet in height, but a single tree only produces about 10 pounds of edible nuts per year.

— Cashew trees are related to poison sumac and American poison ivy. The nut has a double shell. Between the inner and outer shells is an oil that will blister human skin when the skin is exposed to it. This has led to the cashew as sometimes being referred to as "blister nut."

Basic facts about nuts are readily available, but I learned from Paxton and Eric that the industry has its share of secrets. From a purveyor's standpoint, methods for taking high-quality nuts in their raw form to the realm of edible ecstasy are closely-guarded "trade secrets." Each company has its own recipes for cooking and seasoning. But I did discover that with peanuts the best product begins with blanching in hot water (for how long, my hosts countered with, "trade secret"). But it's the blanching, I learned, that makes for crispier peanuts once they're fried and also accounts for the "blistered" appearance of the final product. According to my hosts, blanching is a step that most big companies, such as Planters, skip: peanuts go from raw state to dry-roasted or fried.

Paxton pointed out that not only does his company blanch peanuts before flash-frying them they buy only the top of the line: Super Extra Large. On average, only 3 percent of the entire peanut crop reaches this size. This calls for some far-sighted planning since, as with any other crop, the amount and the quality of peanut harvest is subject to the vagaries of weather. All the peanuts Maxwell's use come from North Carolina and Virginia. And their product line includes Extraordinary Peanuts, Extraordinary Peanut Brittle, Extraordinary Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Brittle and Extraordinary Jalapeno Peanuts. (I recently entertained out-of-town guests with a small gathering of friends. The star of the table was these Jalapeno Peanuts which were happily washed down with traditional silver tequila Margaritas with lots of lime. Sensational!).

You should be able to find these superb Maxwell's nuts in fine food and gift stores. Or you can order them online by visiting www.maxwellsgourmet.com. For more information on Maxwell's, call 878-4321.