What’s On Your Plate For 1998?

Only a decade ago, Italian was as ethnic as cuisine got. A timid few dabbled with vegetables, and gourmet cooking - no, slaving - was sweeping the country.

For the coming year, ethnic foods inspired by the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia are in the forecast. Vegetarianism may change the way our supermarkets are designed, and convenient cooking with the help of prepared supermarket dinners and colorful home will drive the way we do dinner.

Here’s a look at what we can expect in our kitchens, our markets and restaurants in 1998.

In our kitchens

Noncooks may call it counter clutter, but serious

On the front burner for this year:

Pressure cookers that turn out perfect risotto in 7 minutes.

Fill-your-own olive oil misters to use on pans or salads.

Heat-resistant rubber spatulas that can withstand 450 degrees.

Watch for ethnic influences to continue to be big: paella pans, tortilla presses, rice cookers, Swedish and German baking tools, tandoor cookers, nacho pans and salsa bowls.

Consumers are opting for vividly colored cookware that is both stove- and table-worthy. Cooking tools have cheery, user-friendly handles. At the same time, commercial-looking stainless steel continues to be chic.

In our markets

Walk through a supermarket in 1998 and you’ll likely walk out with dinner ready to heat or eat - perhaps something prepared by one of the growing number of professional chefs being hired by supermarkets.

Howard Solganik, a retail food consultant in Dayton, Ohio, predicts the boom in supermarket entrees will force consumers to buy additional microwave ovens to handle all that reheating.

The supermarket menu isn’t confined to the main course, of course. More trends:

Grocery customers will be more likely to bring home a loaf of bread that’s as good as you can buy in an upscale bakery. State-of-the-art supermarket bakeries are moving well beyond the early ventures into crusty but airy bread.

Full-scale vegetarian sections as an adjunct to the produce section. A prototype at a Kroger supermarket in Louisville, Ky., in conjunction with the California produce supply company Frieda’s, is expected to spread.

A continued interest in nutrition, as baby boomers come of age, will bring products such as “power sprouts” to the market. The ‘90s version of sprouts includes baby broccoli sprouts - three-day-old shoots topped with just two leaves. Marketers at Frieda’s say the sprouts don’t taste like broccoli, but provide 50 times the cancer-fighting antioxidants found in the full-sized vegetables.

Fruit juice/carrot juice blends: Big companies like V-8 have expanded their lines with these nutrition-packed blends that transform a health-food elixir into a beta-carotene-rich beverage palatable enough for the masses.

In our restaurants

Among the trends being cooked up by leading chefs across the country:

Beets, turnips and cauliflower - all those veggies we used to turn up our noses at as kids - are coming back with a vengeance on upscale menus. “Vegetables that were never considered chic are trendy now,” said Caitlin Storhaug of the National Restaurant Association.

Beef is back: The National Restaurant Association reports that 13 percent of all entrees served in 1997 were beef - more than any other meat. And move over, Babe: From 1992-97, pork sales in restaurants decreased by 50 percent.

Unusual ethnic flavors in non-ethnic restaurants: The hot cuisines, according to the National Restaurant Association, are Moroccan, Caribbean, Thai, Korean and Russian. Appetizers and entrees at the neighborhood bistro will start playing with these exotic flavors.

Finally, the association notes a trend toward shorter menus with fewer items and less blabby descriptions. ‘Nuff said.