"schwans" news and stories

With the Manhattan gripped by frigid temps, it seemed like an appropriate day to sample Fresco by Scotto's new frozen dishes for Midwest delivery giant Schwan's.

Back in 2009, Schwan's approached the telegenic cooking family about replicating dishes from their Midtown eatery for its customers. "So the conversation starts, 'We could really use a Fresco in Minnesota.' And we're like, no way, too cold for us," Elaina Scotto explained, perhaps eating her words a bit today. "So they said, 'What about doing your great dishes, in a frozen food format, and we can ship it anywhere in the United States?'"

We review the Fresco by Scotto dishes after the jump.

The term "California roll" may prove to be something of a misnomer as students in southern states rapidly embrace school-cafeteria sushi.

This fall, Schwan's Food Service, the frozen food powerhouse and one of the nation's leading distributors of school pizza, rolled out a new line of fully cooked, frozen sushi. According to company spokesman Chad Stelter, schools in Florida and Tennessee are among the most enthusiastic early adopters.

While pizza has long been the backbone of Schwan's school menus, the company is gradually expanding its product line.

"We sell breadsticks and egg rolls," Stetler says. "But the topic that kept coming up in focus groups was sushi. So we took a look at it."

Schwan's tested eight different rolls across the country, staging a roadshow that included a stop at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Tampa. "We have no idea what the acceptability will be," school nutritionist Maggie Giunta told the St. Petersburg Times before the one-day event. As it turned out, the students were big fans –- although their excitement was apparently tempered by adolescent nonchalance.

At this point in the usual "Top Chef" season trajectory, you might expect a certain focus and discipline that naturally comes with narrowing the playing field down to seven ambitious young chefs, each working at the top of his or her game. This year, however, is another story.

Maybe it's that the talented and reliable Jen is off her game, or that the universally derided Robin is still around or that the twerpy Eli can actually put together an interesting plate of food for once. In any event, Wednesday night's episode felt like a detour into a "Top Chef" bizarro-world, where up is down, left is right and nobody knows anything anymore. Well, almost anything: Robin still sucks, Michael V. is still a cocky jerk and Kevin is still the model of modest brilliance.

Rattling off the random highlights of the episode sounds as scattered as Robin's cooking philosophy: Dirty jokes! Vegetarianism! Natalie Portman! No Toby Young! A Quickfire challenge that revealed itself to be a desperate marketing ploy! Make that two marketing ploys! In fact, Portman's description of one dish neatly summed up the entire episode: "It makes me smile and laugh -- and I'm confused!"