FLUFFY LUV PATTIES...

...or the greatest chocolate chip cookies known to mankind. How many people can honestly say that they themselves created the best chocolate chip cookie they've ever tasted? I am a lucky girl indeed. Jenna and I make these whenever we're together. They are so called because, well, they are chewy and perfectly fluffy (which is to say, not dense in the least bit), so full of love that one can even misspell the word, with a flavor vaguely redolent of tollhouse cookies but infinitely better because, duh, they're fresh. Mmmmm the butter. There's just enough salt in there that you get that very subtle aftertaste that prevents the cookie from being cloying. Here we are with the cookies; obviously, we hadn't stirred in the chocolate chips during the photo shoot, since they looked so much prettier in that freshly-poured puddle:





Okay, yeah, we were too hyper to scrape that little clump of flour off the side of the bowl (honestly, we didn't even notice it was there; I'm just now noticing it), but the cookies didn't suffer for it, I promise. The patch of white on my cheek is thanks to the flour that Jenna hurled at me vindictively.

Feast your eyes, lambs

...because unless you're ridiculously fortunate, your eyes will be the only things feasting on this marvelous array of foods from French Laundry in the Napa Valley.


My family used to vacation in Sorrento, Maine, and we'd always stop at this restaurant on the water where one could get the freshest of fresh Maine lobster for a ridiculously low price, considering. You sat with bibs at picnic tables, swabbing your lobster in melted butter, while water rushed over rocks in the river. So of course, lobster is sentimental for me as it is. It's like dessert, no matter how you do it. In this case, it's poached in butter and served with King Richard leeks, pommes maxims (imagine a gourmet potato chip), and red beet essence. Mmmm.


It seems that this is essentially a glorified chocolate-mint ice cream sandwich, done with Thomas Keller's unique finesse.


These are the truffles they serve you at the end of your meal. The ones second from the left look like Sucre's port chocolates. They're all beautiful. For some reason, the one on the right cracks me up -- it's faceted like a precious gem!

Credit to Google Images. I wish I could say I'd taken them.

I am preparing myself

for a deluge of baking in epic proportions. I've felt it coming for a while now, and as the suspense builds, so does my mental list of things to bake. Somehow I got suckered into baking snacks for the entire Upper School during exam week, so at least my cooking will be put to good use. I'm planning on doing some roll-and-cut sugar cookies with this delicious icing, chocolate-mint thumbprint cookies, my famous oatmeal-craisin-white-chocolate-chip cookies, vanilla cupcakes, shortbread, and hopefully some peppermint bark as well. All from scratch. More to come. It's too bad I actually have ambition, because I'd make a kickass stay-home-and-bake housewife.

I can't help it

I have to put in one last word about the holiday macaroons that have been newly introduced at Sucre. I went to get my monthly fix of chocolate yesterday and picked up a box of eight macaroons while I was there because I just couldn't walk out. I got two each of the pistachio, strawberry, and hazelnut ones, which are staples, but what I simply can't get over are the triple-chocolate macaroons. The girl who was helping me accidentally broke one of the macaroons as she was putting it into my box, so I got to eat it right then and there. The cookieish outside is feathery and indescribably fragile; as soon as you bite in, the inside just explodes and it's this warm dark brown that's decadent and tastes exactly like brownie batter. I wish I was kidding. It's unbearably delicious. There are little cacao nibs as garnish that add to the adorableness factor (although they didn't add that much in the way of taste).

A few new chocolates have been added. I tried the pecan praline, which has a pecan-infused dark chocolate ganache and is itself a plain old square enrobed in dark chocolate, which was good but not great. The pistachio and passionfruit chocolates have been slightly changed -- they used to be rectangular and now they're taller, denser, more substantial squares. The grand coeur (a heart-shaped chocolate with a Triple Sec- and orange-infused ganache) and port (a dark chocolate bonbon in an intriguing but mildly frightening dark eggplant color) both caught my eye, but I wasn't in the mood to experiment. Next time I go, I'll pick up a grand coeur -- Giada de Laurentiis's show today featured a chocolate cake with hazelnut brittle and a garnish made of chocolate and orange zest... hopefully, Giada can train me out of my skittishness of that orange/chocolate combo.
My only disappointment? I was all ready to get five each of the passionfruit, gianduja crunch, bolivian palet d'or and avery when I discovered that their boxing has been revamped. If I wanted to pay the price I was used to paying ($30) for my usual medium-sized box, I could only get fifteen (rather than eighteen) chocolates -- they used to charge by weight, and now they have a flat price of $2 (steep even by my standards) per chocolate.

So I guess this'll be a lighter month... but at least I've got my macaroons to console me in my times of need. :]

National Cupcake Day and other baking sprees...

I realized today that I completely forgot to mention National Cupcake Day, which happened several weeks back on October 18! That was a Saturday, so the night before school on Friday, I slaved away at a triple batch of bittersweet, dense chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing so that all my classmates and teachers could celebrate. Imagine a giant Tupperware of about 40 or 50 cupcakes, accompanied by two smaller Tupperwares filled with cream cheese icing to be added accordingly. It was quite an absurd scene, but it did earn me a round of applause in senior study...

Anyway, this realization occurred to me because today, I had a similar such experience with a baking tantrum. It would appear that I am becoming increasingly and unknowingly domesticated. In the middle of poetry class, it dawned on me that I wanted to have chocolate soup. Stream of consciousness: chocolate soup --> chocolate soup for the class --> announcing this thought out loud --> this thought being met by a few dubious glances --> me reevaluating my plan for socialized desserts --> me settling on the idea of creating variations on the brownie theme. I ended up with the following:

First, a batch of a chocolate brownie-cake -- less chewy and melty than usual brownies, but equivalently glorious in its novelty -- with white chocolate peppermint icing and a preposterous amount of dark chocolate ganache that has since solidified in the fridge. Imagine: a glorified peppermint patty. It really doesn't get much better.

Second, a batch of my more famous fudgy brownies smeared with some really delectable homemade peanut butter frosting -- PB and powdered sugar and butter, oh my! -- as well as a thinner, sweeter bittersweet chocolate glaze. These are ideal because they're baked in a 13x9x2 pan, so the batter spreads pretty thin = easy nibbles. Okay, so they wouldn't make the most impressive birthday cake, but still...

Ode to Appetizers

Well, hello, it's been a while. Mainly because I've been borderline nomadic and haven't dabbled in many culinary wonders of late. HOWEVER, this weekend... everything changed.
You see, my best friend flew in from college, and in doing so unleashed as much of an extravaganza as could be fit into the course of 24 hours.

First:
Surrey's- breakfast for them, "lunch" for me (I had previously devoured a CC's chocolate chunk cookie, which, by the way, is sent directly from Jesus to us). I haven't gone to Surrey's much because it's on Magazine Street way down where it turns one way. For some reason, this repels me; presumably because it's one way the wrong way when coming from my house? So psychologically, I reason that the restaurant doesn't want me to come. Every time I'm there, though, my heart breaks a little. It was there that I enjoyed the greatest bowl of shrimp and grits I have ever, ever encountered, and it was there this past weekend that I devoured a fabulously perfect Cuban beef sandwich, comprised of realllly really tender beef, ham, Muenster cheese, and dill pickles that tasted homemade. All on sourdough. Need I say more? It was juicy.

Then:
My monthly venture into Sucre- six each of the Gianduja Crunch, Avery, and Bolivian Palet D'Or, plus two Passionfruit for the road. The guy who was ordering before me seemed to be waffling and amateurish. I didn't let him go before insisting that he try the Gianduja Crunch. Other moments: Joel, who works there, surveyed my selection and said, "Ooh, that's gonna be a good box." I explained to him that I knew what I was doing; in fact, I wrote my college essay on this, such is my expertise. He shook my hand and snuck me a free tasting of macaroons -- two pistachio, two strawberry. I had one of each yesterday, and I now know NEVER to pass them up again (I was previously a bit wary of their colors and went straight for the chocolate-hazelnut ones instead). Sucre macaroons melt in your mouth; they retain a perfect gooiness redolent of chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven. I'm not sure if this is an accurate representation of the Idea of the Macaroon, but whatever it is, it's AMAZING. I'm going to get every color of the rainbow next time I'm in.
Before I left, Joel introduced me to Tariq Hanna, Sucre's chocolate chef, and explained that I had written the essay that might determine my future gushing over his creations. Then... the man KISSED MY HAND. My hand has been kissed by the genius of Sucre. It was a major watershed.

Last:
Baru- A veritable deluge of tapas! And oh, what amazing inventions they are. After all, why would you limit yourself to the steak entree when you can order 10 tapas with three friends and enjoy a bit of all of them? Every time I am at Baru, I am struck by how obsolete the idea of traditional dining is nowadays. All I have left to say on this subject is that the Mazorca -- a plating of smoky roasted corn, Salao cheese (a farmer's cheese), "pink sauce" (a sort of tomato aioli), and potato sticks (imagine whisper-thin crunchy potato fries) -- will save my life. That, and I want to devote my entire life to the ceviche there. It's superb.

A picture of me basking in the glory of my Cuban sandwich will be up as soon as I get it from Jenna.

MAX BRENNER: CREATING A NEW CHOCOLATE CULTURE.

First snippet of groundbreaking news: upon entering this restaurant, I knew that I could only achieve salvation if I converted my religion to Brennerism. I have seen the light.
Second snippet: I actually managed to attend lunch here with someone who owned a working camera -- finally, I get to post photos of my own (or at least Margo's)!

So here goes the deluge of photos. Prepare yo'self.
As soon as you walk into Max Brenner, here is what you see: a large glass case of beautiful chocolates and truffles arranged aesthetically on printed trays; decadent gift boxes the size of a beagle and filled to the brim with chocolate novelties; a sign on the wall that proclaims "VERY MUCH CHOCOLATE"; a gigantic vat -- like a narrow, deep kiddie pool -- filled with melted milk chocolate and connected to an intricate framework of dark brown pipes. The pipes are this color because, of course!, they are filled with 100% chocolate, and they transport the chocolate you see at the front of the restaurant up through a tangled nest of pipes under the ceiling and back into the kitchen. Take note:

T-shirts for sale in the boutique up front:

One of the many kinds of artisan chocolates for sale:

Believe it or not, though, Max Brenner has more to offer than just plain, straight-up chocolate. So upon sitting down at our table, we were handed giant glossy lunch menus. To drink, each of us essentially decided that any hope of being nutritionally conscious was shot to hell, so we each chose one of Mr. Brenner's many variations on the classic hot chocolate (Andrew got toffee, I got hazelnut, Tess got spicy Mexican, and Margo got mocha). These came in heartbreakingly adorable "Hug Mugs," which are ergonomically designed for optimum holding capacity (imagine a teardrop-shaped mug that fits perfectly in one's cupped hands, thus creating both a cozy sense of euphoria as well as allowing the warmth of the mug to travel to your hands. Genius!).
To eat, Tess got a smoked salmon sandwich on some luscious-looking poppyseed-and-what-have-you bread; Margo got a perfect omelette that came with roasted potatoes, hollandaise sauce, and (why not?) chocolate sauce (in case it occurs to you that an omelette or potatoes might be even better with some rich milk chocolate -- it occurred to Margo, and boy was she happy!). Andrew and I split a smoked turkey/mushroom crepe and a bowl of the most perfect penne carbonara I have ever had. This includes all the carbonara we ate in France, and God only knows how many different kinds we tried while we were there.

But, of course, it's always a good idea to save the best for last, so after thoroughly sating ourselves with the savory stuff, we were ready to usher in the sweets. The final verdict? We all decided to split two desserts: the banana split waffle and the intense double chocolate fudge cake. The waffles were topped with fresh bananas, melted chocolate sauce, and candied hazelnut bits, served with fresh berries, vanilla ice cream, and a cute little beaker of MORE chocolate sauce. The fudge cake was dense, dark, moist and succulent, filled with the kind of dark chocolate lava you could drown in. This, too, was served with fresh berries, ice cream, and an extra beaker of chocolate sauce.

Here's a close-up on the cake:

In case you were wondering, the chocolate sauce in the beakers was warm and oozey enough to be chugged, as such:

Mmmm... I'm not embarrassed in the least bit. In fact, I embraced it so wholly and so lovingly that I felt inclined to spread it all. over. my face... but I'll spare you the picture of what Margo calls my Dali-stash, considering I do need to get into college. Explicit as the photo isn't, I do have to set boundaries somewhere. Here we are, eating away (sorry you're excluded, Margo; I guess you were being the photographer? So at the very least I'll give you due credit for that):

Here I am, quite obviously enjoying myself to no end:

And the damage:


At long last, when our stomachs were happily but uncomfortably full and our faces were becoming exhausted due to the inordinate amount of laughing we had done over the course of the meal, our suave waiter handed us the check -- and at Max Brenner's, not even the usual black leather folder is good enough to encase such a thing. No, our check came inside of a tin box that looked strangely like a box of chocolates. So as per usual, I painstakingly agonized over the check, giving everyone an accurate-to-the-cent (I'm only slightly OCD, actually) amount of what they owed...
...and as though I wasn't left COMPLETELY ecstatic by my marvelous meal, hot chocolate, and entirely over-the-top desserts, the waiter dropped by with one last thing. He handed me a small plastic container full of -- guess -- CHOCOLATE. Beautiful, hand-cut slices of the very milk chocolate that Max Brenner liquified into his god-like creations. "A gift for the freak," he muttered under his breath as he turned to get back to his other tables -- a reference, probably, to the fact that, before he could even give dessert menus to the rest of the table, I enthusiastically extracted my own tattered, printed copy from my purse. "It just makes me so happy that I always carry it around," I explained. So, YES, my lunch experience was capped off by a personal gift from (let's hope) Max himself to me. You must understand, this kind of miracle doesn't happen everyday.

So that was that, and after paying the check, we ventured back out into the torrential downpour for a jaunt into the Virgin Megastore to leaf through inappropriate books and a quick outside tour of the Met Opera. Good day? I seem to think so.

I went ahead and bought a box of 19 chocolates

in celebration of my completed college essay on the famed Sucre.
Here's a picture:


The green ones are a white chocolate ganache with Sicilian pistachio, vanilla, and a dash of cinnamon + a dark chocolate couverture.
The fleur de lis is the Meuniere -- dark chocolate on the outside, brown butter and vanilla on the inside.
The shinyish square (shiny for a reason; it's edible glitter!) is chicory coffee with a really soft creamy dark rich core.
The plain dark chocolate square in the lower right corner is the Bolivian Palet d'Or -- perfect simplicity -- "bittersweet chocolate ganache made from the rarest Bolivian cacao bean."
The triangular chocolates with flecks on top have a really satisfying density, and they're made with hazelnut gianduja, crispy wafer, and caramelized cacao nibs. (!!!)
The purple ones are Paris, my love; dark chocolate couverture, white chocolate ganache infused with tea, orange, and vanilla notes.
The red is Earl Gray. Straightforward? Yes. lovely, too.
Yellow is passionfruit -- in light of this blog! I have been saving it so I can't say yet how it tastes. It'll be blissful, to be sure.
Last but definitely not least (quite the contrary, in fact): the Avery. God has indeed manifested himself. Caramel + dark milk ganache with salt from the Avery Salt Mines, all wrapped up in a delicious dark chocolate blanket.



This isn't my actual box, but as I've so sickeningly reiterated, my camera got smashed so sometimes I have to resort to photos stolen from the Internet. Hm at least this will do justice to the excellent verdancy of the box.

harrumph

Well, hello!

It's been a little while; I took a weekend trip to New York and got back in school yesterday, so schedules have been tumbling around and crystallizing. The good thing is that my girlfriend-who-doesn't-know-she's-my-girlfriend, Gloria Steinem, wrote an article about Sarah Palin, and it was nothing short of kickass. More good news: I definitely won't be short of things to talk about; in fact, I'll bullet them out now so that, as I catch up with everything, I won't forget:
-lunch at Max Brenner's
-breakfast at Sip
-mushroom brie cheese
-superb macaroni and cheese

But for now, I'm going to talk about Criolla's, where I had dinner on my last night in Florida. Rather than get entrees for everyone, we split into two "teams," if you will, and ordered an inordinate amount of appetizers. On the menu for us:
West Indies crab & Johnny's guacamole with tropical root crisps
Griddled black bean queso cakes with tomatillo-avocado salsa
Flash-fried domestic calamari, island-spice dusted, with Creole mustard and key lime aioli
Criolla's Caesar salad with Cascabel Chile dressing, cumin flatbread, Dry Jack cheese, and applewood smoked bacon

I wanted so badly to get the plaintain-encrusted fried oysters with green tomato chutney, marinated cabbage, grilled cornbread and coconut creme fraiche, but alas, it appears that oysters aren't as agreeable to everyone as they are to me. As for the entrees, there were some tempura-fried Maine lobster tails on a sweet pea risotto cake and served with heirloom tomato jus that sounded divine; how could it not when it was a culmination of tempura, Maine lobster, sweet peas, risotto, and heirloom tomato? Given, I've never thought too heavily about the idea of fried lobster, nor of the idea of risotto in a dense cake form, but I can't imagine it would be possible for anything to go too terribly wrong.

So back to my praise, critique, and analysis. The crab was in the form of a dip -- a yellow one, curried, at once spicy, sweet, and creamy. I love crab, but I have to say that I'm a bit of a purist, or at least a traditionalist, and a devout New Orleanian at that; as such, I have a hard time enjoying crab when it strays too far from its perfect form, unless we're talking about the fried softshell crab po-boys at Jazz Fest or numerous other decadent New Orleans creations. Nonetheless, I am sure now that crab shouldn't be combined with curry. Like steak and ice cream, they're both amazing on their own, but shocking and offensive when combined. The guacamole, however, was to die for, and I'm such a freak for foods' consistencies that I seldom like the mushiness of guacamole. The chips were fried, paper-thin slices of "tropical roots" (which roots, I do not know), perfectly salted, and they were divine.

The queso cakes were... alright. A little bit grainy and just a bit bland for my taste; I would've loved just the slightest hint of jalapeno baked into the cakes. As it were, they tasted exactly how they sounded -- like warm black beans with a small core of melted white cheese and some cornmeal thrown on for kicks -- and left very little to the imagination. Swished around in the salsa, which looked like a thinned-down version of guacamole, they were infinitely more enjoyable, though still probably my least favorite dish of the night.

I have to admit that I was very bitter when I started eating the calamari because, as I said, I was so eager to have the plantain-crusted fried oysters, but my mother made the spur-of-the-moment decision to get the more innocuous calamari instead. They didn't knock my socks off (I don't think it's possible to do a truly OUTSTANDING version of something as simple and as relatively common as fried calamari), but the delicacy of the batter and the combination of flavors -- key lime, island spices, and that Creole mustard I know and love so well -- was harmonious and delightful. Like designer potato chips, though, they were ultimately unremarkable, despite how easy it was to eat them ceaselessly.

For me, the Caesar salad truly stole the show -- and that's saying a lot for such a simple salad, but I guess the originality lacking in the calamari took center stage with the salad. It wasn't even like any Caesar I'd had before; imagine it as the Caesar's sultry and enigmatic older sister, who has exotic coloring and knows how to tango. The dressing, first of all, could be bottled and sold as shampoo; I'd buy it simply because it's invariably flawless -- smoky, spicy, warm and autumnal. Bottom line: it tastes like hearth and woodburning ovens and smoky little chiles. I didn't even try the flatbread, but the cheese, which was nutty and hearty with a bit of grit, was a perfect complement to the dressing, and the bacon (I don't even like bacon!) added an ideal crunch and an extra layer of substance. Toasted pumpkin seeds made it feel like a true present.

We were all so sated that by the end of the meal, none of us really wanted dessert. However, being the true dessert aficionado that I am, and given the fact that one of my major criteria for a good restaurant is a great dessert menu, I needed to at least see it... but you know how that goes. I laid eyes on the chocolate gateau with ice cream of the day and raspberry coulis and couldn't pass it up. This is one dish that requires no innovation, no excitement, and no creativity to satisfy me -- all I need is mastery, and the dessert chef at Criolla's definitely had that to spare in this case. The chocolate ice cream was so creamy and smooth; the coulis waxed fudgey in its perfection; and the cake was the awe-inspiring combination of textures, consistencies, and nuances that it should be at its best.

All in all, a good meal for me and a great meal for Grayton Beach. I wouldn't describe it as the "cutting edge, dazzling" cuisine as it has been described, but it was undoubtedly a nice change from the Italian and Asian fusion foods I'm so used to, and in a town that has, I'd guess, 8 restaurants, Criolla's is definitely worth a return trip.

Andrew love, this is for you

since evidently you will refuse to believe in the value of our friendship until you are mentioned by name in this blog. Pause for a moment and reflect about the patheticness of that statement. Consider also the fact that we have shared no earth-shattering culinary experiences anyway.

That said, I will make it known to everyone that, as soon as I make it up to New York City (whenever that may be), I will look forward to what could only be a whimsical romp and gourmet extravaganza. What's planned? A jaunty little spree over to La Maison du Chocolat for some binging -- a skip through Central Park -- a wild-eyed wondrous whirl through the MoMA -- and lunch at Max Brenner's.

Did you know that Max Brenner wants to start a chocolate nation? The dessert menu is twelve pages. I carry it around in my purse (no, actually, the saddest part is the fact that that's true) because it makes me happy when skies are gray.

Anyway, Max Brenner and his fancy-free creations fill me with inspiration.

If only all breakfasts could be like this

Heath toffee crumbles in a ramekin with melted semisweet chocolate chips are sinfully good and dangerously simple. It's warm, it's decadent, and you can eat it with a spoon. Molten oozing scrumptiousness -- how could you find any better way to start the day?