Have you ever really gotten to know some chocolate? Have you touched its inner soul, felt its hows and whys and little idiosyncrasies?
I have. Making chocolate truffles is an experience, let me tell you. One, in my case, fraught with innovation, peril, excitement, and frequent personal references to Miracle Max and Valerie from The Princess Bride. First, I had to figure out how to form the centers. The recipe kindly says "form into 1 inch balls". Well, that's helpful. Ever try to form chilled butter compound into a ball? It splinters. "Warm it up", you say. No, no, no. Then it sticks to your hands. This is really fabulous if what you're looking for is an emollient, but when you want firm balls of chocolate filling, it just doesn't cut it. Ah, well. We finally hit on the idea of using the pastry press. Bam! (shudder) That worked beautifully. I tempered my chocolate coating beautifully, tested it, and it worked well.
Of course, the problem with dipping the chocolate centers as the recipe says is that it doesn't work.
The centers are too soft. "Chill them", you say. Nope. Temperature shock makes the coating lose temper. In the end, I used a different method. Stuck the centers out on the back porch so they'd chill, and when they came in, I got my mother to help me with the palm-rolling method.
And this is why I know what it feels like to have chocolate running over and between my hands, oozing through the interstices between my fingers, and hardening on my knuckles. You pour a spoonful of molten chocolate into a palm, and then roll the centers in it with your other hand. Beautiful, simple, and imperfect, but it worked. She did the spooning and the passing of centers, and I rolled. And now I have a trayful of first-batch chocolates. Cool.
Can you tell that I watched Chocolat recently? And really, when you're tempering chocolate, it looks rather like the vats of chocolate that Vianne stirs in the movie.
Todd Alessi came to tune our piano today, which was cool, because he taught me basic piano tuning. Also sold me enough tools that I can work on tuning the pianos at school, since it becomes increasingly apparent that the administration has little interest in hiring someone to do so. A tuning hammer, set of mutes, and a felt temperament strip. Eventually I'll get another tuning fork or a chromatic tuner, and I'll be all set.
A couple of recipes for your amusement.
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Cheese and chile soup Ingredients:
Heat your pan, etc., per my normal laborious instructions. Start sauteeing the onions and garlic. While you do that, puree (no, it's late, and I'm not going to type out the escape codes for accents, so you can just deal with my self-indulgent-not-quite-French) the chiles and the tomatoes together. Dice your potatoes, after washing them and peeling if that's your thing. Add the flour to the saute mixture and cook it for a bit, then add the pureed vegetables and the potatoes. Toss in the cumin seeds and sage, along with about a cup of water, and cook it for a few minutes. Put in a lot of water, the pepper, and the corn. Cover, and turn your heat to medium high. Stir, and cook until the potatoes are soft. Chop your cheddar into small bits during this time. Don't eat too many of the small bits, silly. I have this problem. Anyway, just before serving, turn off the heat, dump in the cheese, and stir. Pour in the milk, and toss in your jalapenos. Stir some more, for 3-5 minutes, until the cheese melts. Eat. Yum. I want more now. |
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Saganakiopa! Ingredients:
Heat your pan, oil it, yes, I'm not very original, everything I cook involves these steps, jeez, if I were going to make lemonade or ice cream it'd probably involve olive oil, a pan, and careful heating. Start warming your bread in the oven, too. Cut your lemon in half. Squeeze half into a bowl. Slice your cheese in something like 1/4" or 1/2" slices. Dredge each slice in lemon juice, then in breadcrumbs, and sautee. You want the slices to become slightly browned and a little crispy. When you're getting close, put the brandy in a saucepan and heat it to just below boiling. Take the cheese out of the pan, put it in a flameproof serving dish, and take care to mind your eyebrows for the next bit. Pour the hot brandy around it, and say in an appropriately stentorian voice, "Opa!". Say it like Opie's father, you know, "OHp-pa!", and as you do so, apply the fire to the brandy. Now, if you know me at all, you'll know that this is a truly great dish, because it combines two of my favorite subjects: fire/pyrotechnics, and food. Do not serve this food in a room with a low ceiling, and please don't stand over it when you light it, as the flames are sometimes 3-5 feet high. Once they've gone out, squeeze the other lemon half over the cheese. Spread it onto hastily-ripped hunks of the bread. This dish rarely lasts 4 minutes. |
And there we go.
