Reading Food

Chocolate is a favorite subject of mine. I like the smell of it, how it feels in my mouth and the taste...ooohhhhhh the taste of chocolate.

Paradise for the taste buds. I'm addicted to the stuff.
I was wondering if there are any other chocaholics out there who are crazy about the stuff too.

Yes..oh..yes..oh..YES, Oh, YeS!!!!!! I love chocolate in the springtime, I love chocolate in the winter... I love baking chocolate when there is nothing else on hand...you know, like Vahlrona baking chocolate, Mexican El Rey baking chocolate...I like Droste orange slices, SKor candy bars, Canadian Orange Kit Kat bars without the yucky U.S. preservatives...eeeew!

I love Ghirardelli chocolate, and I love Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. I love the movie: "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"(which I understand unfortunately, that Satanists consider their manifesto- too bad).

I love the seasonal chocolate-covered raspberries that Karl Bissinger's( a confectioner here in St. Louis, MO) displays in the turn-of-the-century storefront in the Central West End...my home, sweet home, sweet home... I can walk there and back, under tree-lined avenues with sidewalks, antique stores, and independent bookstores, novelty stores, and restaurants that serve chocolate while eating my chilled, chocolate-covered raspberries in July - the month in which they are made. Or, I can walk down those same tree-lined avenues in November, while sinking my teeth into the dripping, purplish-black juices, tasting ever so faintly of roses and violets, of chocolate-covered blackberries...no cherry-popping for me...he..he..

I love The Chocolate Bar in LaFayette Square, near the house of the woman who sells me my hand-spun angora and wool, to make scarves and hats, because I can wander up there, and partake of the wondrous fare. Mexican El Moro hot chocolate, like what I had in St. Mark's Square in Venice, is on the menu there. Ditto, a truffle for each burrough-like neighborhood of St. Louis: The Central West Ender, The Claytonian, The Soulardian, and on, and on, and on... I can't remember which one has chili pepper in it, with chili pepper on top?

Oh pretty please with chili pepper on top?

I love Raisinets in the movies with beer. I love to smear the chocolate in my ear... well, no, not really. :)

I love mints, and bon-bons, truffles, and squares. I'll eat them all day, anywhere.

And when I have time to whip up a batch, I will stand at my stove and carefully simmer the heavy cream with fresh mint leaves, while melting Valrhona chocolate disks, and stirring with a wisk, until I can strain the cream into a fresh-mint dream, mixed with chocolate and placed in a bain-marie to cook in the oven. Finally, I'll fire up the cooking torch, while sprinkling sugar on the little custards, and flame them till they crust. Then it is into my living room I go, with a little stainless steel spoon, you know, to carve up small, sumptuous and heavenly bites; but I will save some for other nights. Then again, maybe I'll just invite friends.

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

Ditto.

;-)

I'll believe in anything if you'll just believe in anything

Yummmmmm....I'm drooling now...

I love willy wonka too. He is the chocolate man.
Your excurstion to the kitchen sounds wounderful, I would love to make the desert you discribe,...umm maybe just have it for dinner and forget making it for desert.

I love the part about putting it in your ear. :)

Dr. suses and chocolate and willy wonka...sounds like a good time! :)

Girrrl... I did actually eat seven of those Creme Brulees in a row one night, but they were not Chocolate-Mint creme brulee, they were Ginger Chili Creme Brulee- sounds 'savory' I know, but it is actually very, very sweet. The recipe called for two habaneros, which would have called for the fire department, in my opinion, so I only used one-quarter of a habanero... and dry-roasted at that, in the pre-Columbian style. Fresh grated ginger, went in as well, and, oh it was heaven..

I love sweet and spicy mixed together, and wonder if I would like a certain Mexican candy made with chili powder and tamarind? Can't seem to find it here; I must not be looking in the right places. I love Mexican food and sweets, including that 'Three Milks Cake', or 'Trois Leche'. My friend in Chicago got some for me from a Spanish bakery when I came to visit once.

The only thing I've found here remotely like that is a dessert called Biscoccio Boracchio, or something like that, which they serve at Modesto's Restaurant - the only tapas bar, or Spanish restaurant for that matter, on 'The Hill' here in St. Louis. 'The Hill' is an exclusively Italian-restaurant area, with only one Spanish restaurant. Their wine list is extensive with lots of Riojas that aren't carried at The Wine Merchant.

But, I digress... and have begun to make this sound like a cross between a post called: 'Peppers, peppers, peppers...' and 'Desserts I love..', both of which do not exist, yet...

Above all I love chocolate.

And I am going to get myself some right now, even if walking through the West End in the early fall triggers my asthma... I have my trusty inhaler, and if I eat enough chocolate, maybe I'll get an adrenaline rush to carry me back home.

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

In Châteaubriant, I bought a kilogram of hazelnut chocolate for about 80 eurocent, and I can honestly say it's much better than anything I've ever had stateside. The only chocolate I've had that was better came from this store we found in Munich that's run by a very nice French lady who has a magnificent candy-reconstruction of La Cathédrale de Sacre-Coeur in Montparnasse.

I'll believe in anything if you'll just believe in anything

Dude... When I went to Canada I found this little candy store on Queen Street West, that carried Orange Kit-Kats... now I know that is not homemade chocolate, but it blew my mind that something in a wrapper could taste so good! They said it was because it didn't have all the preservatives that the FDA requires here in the States. Figures.

So, I had them ship me a box - since that was the smallest amount they would ship. I had 48 candy bars! All mine! I felt like a girlscout with her stash of cookies waiting to be distributed. I decided that I had best eat them right away, since, of course, they contained no preservatives. They didn't last a month. Everyone I shared them with loved them.

Now, I am back to Karl Bissinger's chocolate here, and my requisite piece of raspberry-caramel wrapped in the dark chocolate of my dreams. No man could compare!

You say you bought hazelnut chocolate in Chateaubriant (pray tell how did you get the accent mark over the 'a'?), and I am salivating....And that chocolate store in Munich where you said the French lady had a

...candy-reconstruction of La Cathedrale de Sacre-Coeur in Montparnasse,

I wonder if wOlf has been there or knows of it...OOOh, I'm sooooo jealous! I'll bet you've been to Montparnasse too. *sigh* I want to go...

So, on another note, have you seen the film based on Laura Esquivel's novel called: 'Like Water for Chocolate'? Not the movie 'Chocolat', but 'Like Water for Chocolate'? In the early nineties it was one of the highest grossing foreign films, and the book that it was based upon starts each chapter with a different month, and a different seasonal recipe.

The recipe for Turkey in Mole Sauce (which includes chocolate among other things like coriander, raisins, cinnamon, anise seeds, cloves, chiles and sesame seeds) was heavenly! After going to Mexico and having Pollo Con Mole, it took gleaning the recipe from that book, finding two recipes in 'Chili Pepper' magazine, and the recipe for Mole Sauce on the back of a package of Ancho chiles marketed by Frieda's to give me enough information to create my own version which tasted much like what I'd had in Mexico.

My friends like to call it 'chocolate chicken'. It sounds strange, I know, but it is simply luscious! I wish I could find my recipe so that I could post it here.... I haven't made it in a while, so I can't remember it by heart. When I get my living room, and my desk organized after I paint the walls, then I'll hunt for it.

Until then, may everyone keep looking for new and creative ways to ingest chocolate.

Hey! What about Nutella? I think I'l go buy some of that to spread on my French bread. Yuuummmm!

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

The accent over the a is done by holding 'alt' and typing 0226 on the number pad. The chocolate itself was by no means high-grade by the standards of our French hosts (my French teacher and his brother, who run a château/hotel near Saumur called La Giraudière), but it was still amazing. As for the Cathedral in Montparnasse, I did see the real one, and I was amazed by the detail of what must have been marzipan in the candy shop in Munich. If I remember correctly, she also had a Notre Dame de Paris in the back of the store. My memory's awful (as well it should be, given my indulgence in Paulaner and Hopfbräu that day), but I think it was near either Schwedenplatz or Marienplatz on the U-bahn/S-bahn (if'n any visitors to Munich might recall the place).

I've never heard of the book or movie you mentioned, but I'm curious to find a copy now. And the Mole sauce is something I've heard of, but never tried. I understand that traditional cooking including chocolate from central america is quite tasty, though.

I'll believe in anything if you'll just believe in anything

Here we are once again, to follow the continuing saga of chocolate lovers digging for chocolate!

Off the subject for a moment, though, Magnifico: You said the -candy-sculptures of cathedrals in the candy store in Munich were possibly made of marzipan? How fabulously yummy could that be? In the true Danish spirit of my mother's side of the family, I was raised on marzipan, and absolutely love it, though some of my friends tell me that they think it tastes like ass. And of course, I replied with: How would you know?

Marzipan, which I dearly, dearly, dearly love seems to be one of those things which has no middle road. Either one loves it or one hates it. I, for the record, loooove it! (I said that already, I know, but I figured it bore mentioning again.)

Two other things I wanted to mention to both you and harold_maude:

Chocolate Martinis.... :)

... and a little British group called 'Death by chocolate'. They have a song on their CD of the same title entitled: 'The land of chocolate'. It is just a little ditty about the pleasures and foibles associated with indulging in chocolate to excess...which, obviously I love to do.

Anyway, in the song someone sits on a candy bar, and it melts all over the sofa... Funny, I seem to remember a guy I was dating once fell asleep on a huge Hershey bar that he had been eating, and had set down on the pale green sofa in his living room. He melted the chocolate into the sofa, and woke up when I came in the door. He asked me, rather groggily, if I had placed the candy bar there, and I replied that it was not possible for me to stretch my arm that far from the doorway where I stood. I later heard the song and laughed. Such is the life of chocoholics.

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

The store owned by the kind French lady with the marzipan montparnasse monument is Yves Laporte, southeast of Marienplatz, on Heiliggeistraße in Munich. Yay for the internet.

I'll believe in anything if you'll just believe in anything