Food trends come and go (did anyone actually start eating chocolate cake for breakfast?), but one that has certainly stuck around is the avocado. We arguably reached Peak Avocado years ago, but our infatuation with the stuff is still going strong (case in point: London is about to get its first permanent avocado restaurant).
But the buttery fruit had better watch its back, because the culinary oracle and kitchen goddess that is Nigella Lawson has thrown her weight behind a new food trend that could knock it off its perch. Enter: pandan, a tropical plant grown in southeast Asia that's often used to flavour desserts and cakes.
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According to Lawson, the ingredient is already popular in the US and she believes it will sweep across Britain soon enough. “I think it’s going to be the new matcha,” she predicted in a recent interview, The Times reported.
“I may be wrong, but we seem to be interested in that. It’s not in Waitrose. I don’t know where it is in this country yet. But I notice more and more people in America baking with pandan essence. Which comes from that leaf.”
The aromatic leaves of the pandan, known as "sweet plant" in Chinese, are used in a similar way to vanilla essence in everything from rice to drinks, as well as sweet puddings, in south Asian and southeast Asian cooking.
Lawson is known for calling the next big thing in food, having triggered a soar in sales of goose fat before Christmas in 2006. Back in 2015 she sent avocado sales up by 30% after revealing her toast "recipe" on Simply Nigella, and last year she was right on top of the bowl food trend.
Whole Foods claims to be the only major supermarket in the UK that currently sells the leaves. We're predicting pandan-monium (and obviously, a pandan-Instagram takeover).