More Adventures in Chocolate (Truffles)!

For the perfect truffles, I sort of combined two recipes from two of my favorite Food Network chefs. I like this one from Tyler Florence because I like the idea of whipping up the filling to be creamy and smooth, and I like this one from Alton Brown because I like the idea of a Lindt Lindor truffle-like thing.

My truffles have only three ingredients, though. Great chocolate (70%+), cream, and some decaf espresso.

First, chop the chocolate finely. It has to be chopped because unlike with the chocolate cake, where the chocolate was melted over a double boiler, the chocolate is melted by just a little bit of hot cream:




Cream and espresso heating together. It's done here, when you have the little bubbles around the edge... don't want to burn it!



Pour cream/coffee mixture over finely chopped chocolate:



And stir til nice and smooth. This is pure ganache at its finest. Gimme a spoon!!!!



Per Tyler Florence's recipe, I mixed it for about a minute with a hand blender. You can see that it has lightened a little, grown a bit in volume, and has a really lovely glossy sheen



Pour mixture into saran wrap-lined plastic container and spread til relatively even. I go for tasty, not pretty, as you can see LOL:



After letting cool in the fridge at least 2 hours, I cut the ganache into squares. Here, you could take the time and mess to roll these into round balls, but uh, why? Or, at this point you could roll the truffles into anything you want - cocoa powder, chopped nuts, etc.



But I followed Alton Brown's recipe.... chopped more chocolate really finely again, this time I did melt it - VERY SLOWLY - over boiling water. as you can see in the finished truffles, they are fairly shiny and because I melted it so slowly and took care to make sure the chocolate never got too hot, they have a nice chocolate "snap" that they should have. Nah, they don't look perfect. But oh boy.... they taste it :)

"Sendoff" Dinner

I decided I would start this new 'diet' yesterday (Monday), so on Sunday I pretty much ate like crap all day ;) For dinner I decided to make chicken wings and a potato cake.

First I defrosted the wings in their ziploc bag they were frozen in and whizzed up a marinade consisting of extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, lots of garlic, a little fresh parsley and cilantro and half a canned chipotle pepper (I love the spicy smoky taste it imparts). I tried adding a pinch of flaxseed meal to thicken it up a bit. Zapped it in the mini-chopper and dumped it into the bag and smushed it around. I took the marinating in a plastic bag thing from my mom. I've seen Alton Brown and others do it on the food network now, but I think my mom was first ;) Anyway, I let it marinate in the fridge for a few hours and roasted in the oven for about 35 min at 400ish (my oven temp is kooky) or until nicely brown.


But the real YUM thing was the potato cake. I'll give credit where it was due, my parents and I saw it on the Food Network a few years ago and tried it that night and I've loved it ever since. It's a bit of a pain making it for one but as you can see the point is to shred up Yukon Gold Potatoes (yes it MUST be Yukon gold, I've tried it with both russets and red-skinned potatoes and it's just not right), squeeze out the extra water, mix in a little salt and pepper and like you see in the pan, flatten it out to be a cake. cook on fairly low heat with a little butter and oil in a nonstick pan for about 10 min per side or until dark brown. I like to drain it on paper towel for a sec to remove some of the oil.




As you see in the final picture, it looks like the potatoes might be burnt. I assure you they're not. The goal is to take the cake out in that perfect minute window right before the potatoes burn. It's fantastic. SO crispy on the outside and so soft and luscious on the inside - it's the way potatoes were meant to be. Oh how I will miss these potatoes over the next few weeks. :(

Welcome!

I've been talking a lot about food lately. I've also been getting more into photography. So I thought, why not chronicle my quest for food perfection with a little blog? When I make something interesting or find something interesting in the markets, I can photograph it here using the techniques I'm studying and share it (it will improve when I get a new camera, so til then bear with me!).

I know, you're probably wondering, who the heck is she and why should I care, there are a million food blogs out there? I think what makes me different is that I'm a picky foodie. No, REALLY picky. I hate cooked vegetables, I hate most sauces, I hate things mixed together, I hate all seafood - yes all seafood, I hate fruit and chocolate/dessert mixed and the list just goes on and on and on. I don't even like wine.

So you are asking, what DOES she like? I like meat, yeah I do, especially beef (prime rib would be my ultimate dinner of choice). I also like random things like olives (I'm obsessed, I admit it), chocolate (only dark!), I love most fruits and vegetables (but only raw!), I like spicy things, pasta, I loooooove pizza, and pickles, and cheese and most kinds of salty chip-like foods, and the list goes on!

So to get it started, here are a few things i've made recently. the way I'll do it is if I use a recipe, I'll link to or post the recipe in case people are interested in trying it :) Have fun and please comment!

Margherita Pizza (Ingredients: Trader Joe's pizza dough, Trader Joe's Italian Tomato Starter Sauce (which they seem to be out of now, so substitute the marinara sauce in the green can), and WHOLE MILK mozzarella - sliced THIN. And that's it. the secret is a super thin crust, super hot oven, not too much sauce and cheese, and a pizza stone.


Tried these Nutella Cookies from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe I had seen a while back. I changed it up a bit by making them bigger than her recipe called for (I did 1.5 ounces each) and I didn't use any of the sugar. Also instead of a Kiss in the middle I used a Dove Dark Chocolate square. I also cooked them a bit less (about 10 min, and then just 1 min after I put the candy in). This combined with the larger cookie size resulted in a really lovely soft cookie that stayed soft for days. yyyyyuuuuuum.


Bucatini all'amatriciana (ingredients: Bucatini (available at TJ's now as 'bucati'), good tomato sauce, some bacon with fat removed, a little onion, garlic, and lots of grated cheese).

Had this dish in Rome in the Jewish Ghetto overlooking the Teatro Marcellus, what a memory. A traditional Roman dish, my recreation comes close. I don't like onion much, so I leave it out for the most part. Next time I make it I'm going to try some Pancetta cubes I bought in TJ's. Mine's not perfect, of course, but it's also not bad :P



So anyway, this is the kind of thing I'll keep posting. I hope you enjoy! And if not, it's at least a way for me to chronicle my discoveries and creations for myself ;)