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Congratulations to Jessica, who won an advance reading copy of Hello Cupcake! What a craftster. When she was 12, she made her sister a farm/bug cake with gummy fish and swirly blue-green icing. I enjoyed reading all of your comments. You are a creative bunch!
Photo: Hello Cupcake! blog |
Today is World Nutella Day, my favorite food holiday of the year! It’s a day to cook with, eat and fantasize about chocolate-hazelnut spread. Try making your own or putting some in babka. Don’t forget to vote for my chocolate-hazelnut butter in Culinate’s Death by Chocolate contest. Everyone who votes can win a free trip for two to Napa’s Chocolate Festival on Feb. 23.
For more Nutella recipes, see the roundups, part one and two.
Wow, this year’s Menu for Hope raffle raised $91,188 to feed schoolchildren in Lesotho, Africa! That’s 50% more than last year. Many thanks to the following:
Without any further ado, congratulations to Eric for winning the Wild Sweets Chocolate cookbook and Yunlin for snagging my homemade nut butters. For the full winners’ list, check Chez Pim’s site.
I won Charles’ Chocolates deluxe box assortment from Dessert First, Roni Sue chocolate buttercrunch and seasonal truffle subscription from Serious Eats, L.A. Burdick Chocolate Mice from Breadchick and Rancho Gordo beans to make it sort of healthy. Yowzers, that’s like a lifetime supply of chocolate.
Forgive me for being away so long. This blog has been broken, with viruses, post spam (yes, someone found a way to tack on info about male enhancement), and funny formatting. I restored my databases from backup and reinstalled Wordpress about five times. Hopefully, there will be no more fixes!
Did you ever think you could make this? In Wild Sweets Chocolate, you’ll get a breakdown of the components (chocolate nut cream, chocolate sucree and cocoa nibs nougatine), plus these tempting recipes:
You have until this Friday, Dec. 21, to win this book in the Menu for Hope campaign. To refresh your memory, every $10 donation (which will feed school children in Lesotho, Africa) gives you a virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. As of writing, only two tickets have been sold for this book. You have a very good chance of winning if you donate and specify prize code UE26. Did I mention that it’s valued at $40 and comes all the way from Canada?
Don’t forget, I’m also giving away all-natural, homemade nut butters (prize UE27). If you like Nutella, you’ll love my chocolate-hazelnut, cashew, walnut and peanut butters.
There’s two days left to win “free” prizes and fight world hunger. Last year, Menu for Hope raised more than $60,000 for the U.N. World Food Programme. This year, founder Chez Pim wants to raise $100,000. We’ve got $48,000 so far. We can do better than that!
If you lost out in my chocolate-hazelnut butter giveaway, here’s your second chance. I’m throwing in the aforementioned spread, plus all-natural peanut, cashew and walnut butters. Each variety is full of freshly roasted nuts and has no trans fats. How do you use them? You can make a deluxe PB&J, rich walnut pesto, pumpkin hummus or a fragrant swirl-in for coffee. Of course, you can always dip your finger in the jar, too. Don’t forget, the chocolate-hazelnut butter has a new caramelized sugar base with three times the nuts of commercial Nutella.
Because it’s the holidays, I’m also offering another gift, the Wild Sweets Chocolate cookbook, by Dominique and Cindy Duby. These Vancouver pastry chefs are renowned for using chocolate in both the savory and sweet realm. Fueled by imagination and science, their recipes include slow-roasted salmon with cocoa muscovado consommé and milk chocolate caramel confit. The book’s stunning photography and detailed steps guide you through more than 150 recipes. It’s a must for anyone interested in unusual flavor combinations and molecular gastronomy. The Dubys’ first book, Wild Sweets: Exotic Dessert and Wine Pairings, won Best Book in the World for Food and Wine Matching from the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
One or both of these prizes can be yours if you participate in Menu for Hope, an online charity campaign that Pim Techamuanvivit (of Chez Pim) organizes every year. Five years ago, the tsunami in Southeast Asia moved her so much that she had to help. She rounded up bloggers around the world and asked them to contribute food-related prizes for an online fundraiser. Every year, the prizes get bigger and better. Last year’s Menu for Hope raised $60,925 for the U.N. World Food Programme, which seeks to fight hunger worldwide.
This might be wishful thinking, but let’s see if we can raise $100,000 this year. For every $10 you donate online, you get one virtual raffle ticket toward the prize of your choice. Please remember to specify prize code UE27 for the nut butters and UE26 for the Wild Sweets Chocolate cookbook. Here’s more detailed instructions.
How to Enter the Menu for Hope Raffle
Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday, January 9 for the results of the raffle.
Thanks for your participation, and good luck in the raffle!
It’s hard to believe that chocolate can make someone grumpy, but that was the case at New York’s 10th annual Chocolate Show last Friday. The show has declined in recent years, with cheap-o brands slowly taking over the artisan booths. Of course there were stand-outs, but do you really need another cliche “chocolate is delicious” wrap-up? Okay, come back in Part 2 for recommendations. For now, I’m going with the more entertaining (and arguably more useful) Worst in Show.
Greedy if you ask me!
Photo: Niko/Dessert Buzz
When the Chocolate Show first began, it only cost $5 to get in and sample chocolates from all over the world. Two years ago, the admission ballooned to $25, and this year, it again rose to $28. In the words of a fellow chocolate lover: “Greedy if you ask me!” Upon entering, the coat check costs $2 (you can’t really skip out on this in chilly NY), and water costs another $2 (you need something to wash all that chocolate down). You’ve just spent $32 without eating a single piece of chocolate.
Sample Snobbery
A note to the booths: please stop hiding your samples. Visitors have just spent $28 on admission and are entitled to a taste. They don’t enjoy inquiring about a possible sample, hearing a long sales pitch and then getting their requisite treat at the end. Ironically, the more the vendors gushed about their chocolate, the worse the product tended to be.
Photo: Robyn Lee/The Girl Who Ate Everything
Some vendors offered samples up front, but they came with tweezers and little spoons. I understand we’re all concerned about cleanliness, but when there’s 20 people waiting in line, using chopsticks to pick up pebble-sized chocolates is hardly efficient. At the very least, please offer more than one spoon per bowl. And when vendors slice a piece of a truffle and insist on handing it to me, I just think, “I’m perfectly capable of picking up my own chocolate!” True, there are some people who horde samples in plastic containers, but it’s not fair for the rest of us.
Shiki Matcha Crunch truffles, why must I pay $2 to sample you?
The worst policy is not even offering samples at all. I think the chocolates should sell themselves, and if I can’t try them, I won’t buy them.
The Bad and the Irrelevant
This being a chocolate show, you’d think that every booth sold something related to chocolate. Let’s just say that this year’s show offered one-stop shopping, so you could get a Capitol One Visa card, a subscription to the NY Times and book a Marriott vacation.
Photo: Robyn Lee/The Girl Who Ate Everything
Two booths sold cocoa-rolled truffles that were ostensibly from France and had hydrogrenated vegetable oil. The French would roll in their graves if they had to eat these!
Photo: Niko/Dessert Buzz
Mars also had their own booth. Not only were they out of place, but they pretended to be up to par with the prestige chocolatiers. They bragged about selling 100% real chocolate, but did you know that they’re part of the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association, the same trade group that wanted to replace cacao butter with shortening in chocolate? Last month, Mars turned around and said they’d only sell chocolate with 100% cocoa butter, as they always have. That’s not true. Dove dark chocolate (which I admit tastes pretty good) has milk fat and technically isn’t pure chocolate.
Bueller, Bueller, anyone?
The same chocolate lover above reported that some exhibitors had no idea where their cacao beans came from or whether they were bought for a fair price. Call me a snob, but how and where cacao is grown makes a world of difference in the finished product. When vendors don’t know their product, it’s unattractive to the consumer.
In another puzzling case, Gobo restaurant demoed a vegan chocolate cake, which called for vegan flour and vegan cocoa powder. It pains me to say this, since Gobo and its sister restaurant, Zen Palate, are among my favorites in the city (and the owners are really nice), but I almost laughed at those ingredients. Flour comes from a plant. Cocoa comes from a plant. When are animals involved? If you can find me animal-derived cocoa, I’ll give you a lifetime supply of vegan cocoa as consolation.
For the Chocolate Show highlights, check out back here later or visit Dessert Buzz and NYCnosh.
David Lebovitz, author of Perfect Scoop
The last time I was at the City Bakery was when Adam, aka the Amateur Gourmet, celebrated his blog’s second birthday. That was my first time trying the bakery’s legendary chocolate chip cookies and tarts.
Photo: The Wandering Eater
This time, I passed another rite of passage: eating my first pretzel croissant. Oh. my. goodness. The outside had that magic shatter factor and a healthy dose of salt. I think Dunkin Hines cakes are too salty, so if I like salty dessert, it must be really good! The inside had a whisper of sweetness, hefty chew and lots of grease (in a good way). Some people complain that City Bakery croissants are too bready, but it worked here.
Also in attendance were Adam (now author of a book memoir
Deb and we (mostly Deb) tried to decode the pretzel croissant’s secret. After careful examination, we guessed that the dough was made with bread whole wheat flour and malt syrup (also found in New York bagels). To get the dark brown pretzel shell, it was probably boiled in lye solution for a couple seconds and sprinkled with salt before baking. According to David, The City Bakery the recipe is a closely guarded secret, just like that of their hot chocolate.
Julie, several other bloggers and I recently split a 24-pound order of Valrhona chocolate. Her share is still in my apartment. Um Julie, can I just eat it? It’s okay that you haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet.
Adam was a sweetheart. Fame hasn’t changed him. Actually, he was even nicer now than when I met him two years ago. He remembered my food service trip to New Orleans and was proud of the work that CulinaryCorps was doing.
David was easy going and funny, just like on his blog. At one point, the group talked about being unphotogenic, and David’s motto was, “Does it really matter?” Nice.
I must admit that I was a mooch that day. The catch about socializing in New York is that nothing’s free. If you meet somewhere, you’re supposed to support the business and buy something. I rushed into the bakery and went straight to the signing because I could only make it at the end of David’s appearance. In between chatting, I forgot about everything else. As I left, I meant to buy something, but they were packing everything away. Now I have an excuse to go back and buy my own pretzel croissant.
City Bakery
3 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011
(212) 366-1414
Left to right: Sandy, me, Danielle, Christine, Courtney and Jeff during an earlier reunion in July.
Although my relief trip to New Orleans was only a couple months ago, I didn’t want my team mates to fade into obscurity. A CulinaryCorps update was in order, so we met for a gluttonous potluck a couple weeks ago.
Jeff graciously opened up his apartment and made Sullivan Street Bakery’s crusty no-knead bread (I make mine with 100% whole wheat flour), chilled zucchini soup and about three other dishes. He also biked in the rain to get heirloom tomatoes for the tuna nicoise salad. Sandy donated kobe beef at $98 a pound, foie gras and aged balsamic vinegar. Everything was in such excess that the foie gras terrine, which is normally spread as sparingly as butter, was cut as if it were cake. The best balsamic vinegars can cost a couple bucks a drizzle, but we poured it like pancake syrup. Man, I felt cheap bringing in stewed chickpeas. Kelli made her famous chocolate-peanut butter mousse cake with an Oreo cookie crust, two layers of crushed corn flakes (if it sounds weird, they’re similar to Rice Krispies) and ganache topping. Oops, I forgot to mention the cheese plate!
My favorite of the lot? The bread, tomatoes and cake. Go figure.
Besides enjoying the meal, there was another reason to celebrate. Christine, the founder of CulinaryCorps, reported that things were getting better in New Orleans. It seemed like a miracle, since some of the conditions seemed hopeless when I went in June. You might remember the Emergency Communities relief kitchen, which had about 2,000 pounds of pre-Katrina chicken. Or how the Cafe Reconcile restaurant was missing 73% of its teen workers and was arguably dirtier than Emergency Communities.
Look at this glowing e-mail from Christine:
1. Emergency Communities looks fantastic! Mark made it very clear that without our wake-up call the days we were there, EC was headed down a very slippery-slope. So thanks to all of you for stepping up to the challenge and getting things back on track. Looks like they will be serving meals through December and possibly into next year.
2. Cafe Reconcile is a sight to behold! Not only did Chef Jo keep the kitchen to the standard that we left it that day, he has improved upon a lot of the other issues we mentioned. He bought a power-washer for the floors, those gritty and gross storage shelves that Courtney scrubbed have been painted, the outdoor “storage” is being phased out and the students are learning how to plate starting with the desserts (the shortcake was very pretty).
3. The Edible Schoolyard garden is totally transformed! From the flat, packed dirt wasteland rises a beautiful arbored landscape. It’s still in its very first stages but things are looking up.
4. Holy Angels Market is still going strong! The vendors are happy, the community is coming out to shop and they even have a local chef (Chef Chris DeBarr of Delachaise) signed on to do execute the ongoing brunches.
However, much work still needs to be done in New Orleans. In June, about half of the hospitals remained closed. A school in the Ninth Ward was still closed despite being fully operable. The levees are so thin that Katrina could happen all over again.
The NY Times and Time Inc. have done a great job raising these issues. Unfortunately, I predict they will be forgotten in the next couple of months. Stories run in the media because of a news peg: an anniversary, a new study, a new book, etc. Since rebuilding has been slow, there isn’t much to report on, except during the obligatory anniversary.
I urge you not to forget about New Orleans. I’m guilty of wanting to shut it out, too. It’s so emotionally overwhelming that it’s easier to pretend that the problems don’t exist. Remember, you can help in these ways:
What about the “Where Are They Now?” updates on the CulinaryCorps alums? Courtney left the Institute of Culinary Education to work as an associate food producer on the Martha Stewart Show. Gerald got an internship at Per Se. Sandy is leaving the Four Seasons Hotel for a dream job near Puerto Rico. Allison graduated from the pastry arts program at the Culinary Institute of America. Lamont got a new e-mail address. Everyone else is pretty much doing the same thing as before. I don’t want to jinx myself by disclosing the details, but I’m working on two national food articles.
Three participants from the first trip are relocating to New Orleans. April will teach at Edible Schoolyard, founded by Chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse to bring sustainable gardens to urban public schools. Angela will work as a recipe tester for Emeril’s Home Base. Since she doesn’t have that much restaurant experience, her employers are graciously placing her in Emeril’s restaurants for three days a week. As they say in Lousiana, laissez les bons temps rouler!
As promised, here’s the remainder of my favorite items from this year’s Fancy Food Show. Sorry for the delay. I’ll be on vacation for the next 10 days, but in the mean time, why don’t you make an ice cream float with cold-brew iced coffee?
Best novelty oil
There was tea oil (how do they get the oil out of those leaves?) and stoplight-green avocado oil, but at the end of the day, those novelty oils tasted as plain as canola. Not Miguel & Valentino’s smoked olive oil. It had the heady aroma of pine cones and borderline bitterness to go along with it.
Best novelty oil runner-up
J. Leblanc roasted hazelnut oil
Best cocktail nuts
Brookfarm macadamias with bush pepper spice have bush tomatoes, Tasmanian mountain peppers, Dorrigo pepper, Byron Hinterland Lemon Myrtle and Australian sea salt. I don’t know what half of those things are, but they had the perfect balance of sage-like herbs and salt.
Best cocktail peanuts
Technically, peanuts aren’t nuts, so I had to give out an separate award to Earth Family’s salt-blistered peanuts. The ridges give the peanuts extra crunch. In an age where green packaging is largely marketing, the words "organic" and "sea salt" really do mean something here. These are worlds beyond Planter’s.
Best savory sweet
Salt in caramel and chocolate is becoming common nowadays, so I thought the most creative salty sweet was Blue Bay Crab Co.’s peanut brittle with bay seasoning. Salty toffee peanuts are as old as Crackerjack, but sweet nuts with paprika, mustard and herbs is a new taste sensation.
Best gourmet chips
Tyrells from the UK makes parsnip, beetroot and carrot chips. If you like Terra chips, you’ll love these. They are hearty, so they won’t get crushed under the pressure of your fingers. They also have five varieties of potato chips, including jalapeno and sausage.
Best fruit-sweetened soda
In the realm of designer drinks, there was mint-flavored water, calorie-free drinks and fruit-sweetened sodas. Wild Fruitz’s sodas stood out because they taste just like the fruit itself.
Best gluten-free product
Michael’s gluten-free chocolate chip cookies are some of the best cookies I’ve ever had, and they don’t even have wheat flour! I’m even biting my tongue because I’ve previously said that all-butter cookies are the only way to go. These gluten-free cookies have palm oil margarine (gasp!), but at least they’re free of trans fat.
Best ice cream flavors
Max & Mina’s in Queens has kitschy flavors: rugelach, halavah (sesame candy) birthday cake and if you can stomach it — garlic and lox. Their flavors are creative enough to satisfy adult palates, but they also bring you back to your childhood. Sometimes I just want fun ice cream without all the shiso-Meyer lemon bla bla bla madness.
Best packaged cookie line
I just about gave up on Chips Ahoy and the like because I can taste the chemicals. If I wanted a cookie, I’d usually bake it, until now. Immaculate Baking Co.’s all-natural chocolate chunk, key lime and pumpkin ginger cookies are great for snacking. May they replace all your Famous Amoses. They also have organic bake-at-home cookie dough. The only drawback is that their bagged cookies are all crispy; I don’t think it’s possible to make soft packaged cookies without preservatives.
Best sandwich cookies
Late July Organic Snacks make great Oreo knock-offs. I couldn’t make something better if I tried. Too bad they don’t have as many flavors as Immaculate Baking Co.
Complete Fancy Food Show 2007 Gallery
Related posts:
Fancy Food Show 2007 Favorites, the Chocolate
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 1
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 2
It’s that time of year again: the Fancy Food Show! From July 8-10, more than 5,700 booths from 73 countries and regions populated New York. Established and fledgling companies hobnobbed with food service professionals and the media, hoping that their product would be distributed to the masses. It’s a preview of what’s to come to the supermarket shelves.
The natural food products were greatly improved. Last year, there were pseudo whole-grain products and stuff that tasted like medicine. This time around, there was lots of flax, peanuts in all forms (salt-blistered cocktail nuts and natural peanut butters), whole-grain crisps, creative oils, fruit-sweetened sodas and even gluten-free experimentation.
As for non-healthy foods, there were gourmet potato chips and sweet/salty/savory confections. I had some good peanut brittle with seafood seasoning. Long a practice in France, there were also several salted caramels. I think U.S. candy is actually pretty salty to hide the flaws. These candies, however, used salt deliberately and carefully.
On the chocolate front, there was a continuation of single-origin chocolates and cacao nibs. Nothing ground breaking, but there was fine tuning. I felt bad for chocolate giant Ghirardelli, who was proudly handing out 73% chocolate. Cacao percentage is so 2005; artisan makers are focusing on cacao quality rather than quantity.
I enjoyed going a second year in a row, because I developed a better strategy: eat a light meal beforehand (there’s enough food in the Javits Center to feed a village, but all that random stuff churning around in your stomach doesn’t feel good) and go to the Focused Exhibits first. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the random food booths. Also, it was nice seeing the fruits of last year’s show. Whole Foods now carries Skotidakis Greek yogurt and 34 Degrees fruit pastes, two of my favorites from last year.
Let’s get on to my personal Best in Show, shall we? I had a hard time paring down my favorites, hence the super-specific categories. First, the chocolate.
Best Chocolate Bar - two-way tie
Amano - At 4,441 feet above sea level in Orem, Utah, Art Pollard is one of the few remaining independent American chocolate makers (Hershey’s bought out Scharffen Berger and Dagoba a couple years ago). He doesn’t use emulsifiers like soy lecithin, which create smoothness but can interfere with flavor. He also swears by the mountaintop setting, saying it allows him to process the chocolate at a lower temperature and preserve more flavors. He only makes 70% chocolate, but they taste radically different because of the origin. The Ocumare from Venezuela tastes like berries, apricots and plums, while the Madagascar tastes like oranges. He also has a limited edition Cuyagua.
Domori from Italy also doesn’t use emulsifiers, and it’s a wonder how they get their chocolate so smooth and thick. Two of their 70% Venezuelan chocolates are also very different. (Which is why the percentage gives you limited information. Purists swear by the country of origin, and super-purists insist of single plantations.) The Rio Caribe Superior has notes of plum, apricot, peppercorns, coffee, milk, and sugar. If you think that’s a mouthful to say, wait till you taste it! The Caranero Superior, also from Venezuela, tastes like mocha, nut, raisins and dirt.
Best Fair Trade and Organic Chocolate
Theo - Okay, so they don’t have competition because they’re the first roaster of Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa beans and the only roaster of organic cocoa beans in the U.S., but they’re darn good. My favorite is the nib brittle, which has nuanced chocolate bits encased in hard candy. Going along the salty-sweet trend, their Bread & Chocolate bar has toasted bread crumbs (it’s not so weird; they’re crunchy like nuts) and salt. I wanted to like this bar, but I found it too salty. They also have several single-origin chocolate bars and tasty truffles. The bars are a bit hard though.
Best Truffles
Garrison Confections - Chocolatier Andrew Shotts was the executive pastry chef at the Russian Tea Room and helped formulated Guittard’s high-end couverture, E. Guittard. In 2001, he started his own chocolate company with seasonal truffles. His coffee truffle sang in my mouth.
Best Healthy Chocolate
Vere - This New York company only uses Ecuadorian cacao, which is naturally sweet. As such, Vere adds just a little sugar and some fiber to their chocolate. My favorite is the chocolate coconut cluster, and I don’t even like coconut that much. It’s wonderfully crunchy and paper thin. Although their chocolate is delicious, I wouldn’t shell out $2.50 for a truffle. No worries though, you can get generous free samples every Friday from 12:00-6:00 at their factory (12 W 27 St. between 6 Ave. and Broadway).
Most Creative Use of Chocolate
Rabitos Fig Bon Bon - Imagine a truffle encased in a bulging dried fig and then covered in chocolate. Genius! These figs are Pajaritos, which only grow in the southern Spanish region of Extremadura.
Best Cult Chocolate
Pralus claims to be one of only three chocolate makers in France. I’m not sure what criteria he’s using, since Valrhona, Bernachon, Weiss and Michel Cluizel also make chocolate. No matter, each of his single-origin chocolates taste like a different color of the rainbow. They take a little getting used to, since they have sharp white cheddar and mushroom notes. The Madagascar chocolate-covered cocoa beans have that signature Pralus taste. His chocolate is hard to get in the U.S., so treat yourself if you can find it.
Best Snacking Chocolate
Charles Chocolates from San Francisco makes fun things, like triple-coated chocolate nuts, tea truffles and peanut butter butterflies. They use a combination of Guittard and Cacao Barry chocolate, which are pretty neutral (no high notes of fruit or soil). I like my chocolate stronger, but this chocolate is nice if you don’t want to think too hard.
Coming up in part two: everything else.
Related posts:
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 1
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 2
