Er – maybe not like this. They are pretty, though! Maybe you want to:

1. Grow your own sprouts! (Sprouted chickpeas are great for hummus)

2. Grow random crap from your pantry and fridge! (Special shout-out to potato sprouter extraordinaire Judith Ternes – you inspire us)

3. Check out Carolyn Cope‘s advice for edible windowbox gardens!

4. Find out who among your friends and family are undercover garden wizards! They’re everywhere, and they’ll definitely give you advice, probably bring you their extras, and maybe even deliver you some transplants.

Don’t forget to have fun and not worry too much! This spring, I tried to let go of my desire to read and read and read about gardening, and just gardened. It’s been great. Maybe (read: probably) I’ve made some serious technical errors, but I’m too ignorant to know the difference! And as long as I’m not perpetuating pests, I figure my amateurish behavior is acceptable. And the herbs are hard to kill. And it feels good to eat food you’ve grown. And it feels almost as good if not better to not pay $3 for a pathetically small bunch of “fresh” herbs.

Max and I threw a bunch of stuff in the ground this spring. Click on for some photos of our -likely-unimpressive-to-you-but-totally-life-changing-for-me garden! I’m practicing for my hopefully long career as a slightly senile but very proud grandmother who has impressively but inconveniently learned to use snapfish.

We started out with some super cute herbs from various farmer’s market stands (background), some tiny squash and melons, and some rhubarb. Special thanks to previous tenants for the tulips, mint, and marjoram! I think this photo is from May-ish.

Here’s a (slightly) better look at our herbs: three types of sage, rosemary, marjoram, basil, thyme, mint, oregano, chives, purslane (technically a weed, but apparently edible!), cilantro.

We were out of town for two weeks and our cilantro bolted! We could hardly believe it.

The rest of our herbs didn’t do so poorly either. The weeds, as you can see, are also well. We also added a jalapeno pepper plant and a serrano pepper plant. And our toes!

Here’s a closeup of our little squash:

They grow up so fast! From total cutie-babies to beautiful adults! But they’re overwhelming us. Maybe they’re more like teenagers.

We’ve also put in eggplant and tomatoes. Angela has graciously allowed us to plant our watermelon and extra pepper and eggplant seedlings in her garden. We can’t wait for harvest to continue! We’re so sick of lettuce!

Dan Barber on ‘a farm that doesn’t feed its fish, a farm that measures its success by the health of its predators, a farm that’s literally a water purification plant’.

‘We need a radically new conception of agriculture…one where the food actually tastes good.’

Insightful, inspiring, educational. Hilarious.

Promise me you’ll watch it when you next have a free 20 minutes.

This image is courtesy of Hyperbole and a Half, a blog that had our office on its knees in paroxysms of laughter for a good portion of the workday. Thanks, H+1/2, for destroying our productivity like a 7000% deadly shark-sloth.

Anyway, those links. Here’s some cool stuff we’ve been reading when not stuffing our faces with defenseless chocolate creatures.

Eat-onomics: The Ten Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food [Fast Company]

Q&A with Chef Dan Barber: Can Organic Farming Feed The World? [TED Blog]

People Who Photograph Food and Post the Pictures Online [New York Times] Who are these freaks?

Jamie Oliver’s TED Wish: Teach Every Child About Food [TED]

20 Fascinating Lectures for Serious Foodies [Online Universities] Lots of our faves here, from Malcolm Gladwell to Dan Barber to Jennifer 8.  Lee to a ‘renegade lunch lady.’

How To Make Perfect Pork Crackling [Guardian] Finally, a decent reason to buy a hair dryer.

Q & A: Oscar Week: Food Inc. Director Robert Kenner [TIME] Yeah….this was from a long time ago.

Most Fast-Food Per Person and Other Food Facts [Daily Yonder] – some cool maps of eating habits across the U.S.

How Eating Grass-Fed Beef Could Help Fight Climate Change [TIME] – that’s as self-explanatory a title as you can get.

Behind the Organic Pasture Rule at the USDA [Chewswise]  – a blog by the author of Organic, Inc.

The Great Grocery Smackdown [The Atlantic] – on buying organic at…Walmart? Plus a blind cookoff between Walmart and Whole Foods. Some interesting results…

The Spotless Garden [New York Times]  – a great article about backyard and basement aquaponics systems and the ‘otherworldly yields’ from this type of growing.   ‘It is either a glimpse into the future of food growing or a very strange hobby — possibly both.’

More photos and cool stuff here. All credits to NYTimes.

Seems like everyone is talking about urban agriculture these days, with innovative new ideas ranging from tiny little crowd-funded SF city farms to fantasy skyscraper-high vertical farms.  From pundits to policymakers,  foodies to farmers to futurists, a lot of people are starting to think about urban food production for the sake of local economies, the environment, community resources, jobs creation, urban design, potential food security issues. and many more reasons.  I’ve been reading this really interesting report by the London Assembly called Cultivating the Capital: Food Growing and the Planning System in London (big PDF here) about working with city planners to increase the growing potential of the city.

Nerdy, I know.  In case you don’t want to read the 93 pages yourself (almost half of it is just appendices!), the report looks at the current situation of urban food producers, the barriers they face in growing and getting their products to market, and potential innovative solutions.  It also analyzes the city land that could be used for food production and encourages the use of  unconventional growing spaces, from rooftops to parks to housing developments.  And in terms of specific action, the report recommends that the Mayor of London promote and support policy and planning to increase Greater London’s food production and distribution channels.  They’ve got lots of important reasons to back up their suggestions:

‘There is a good case to be made that commercial agriculture is one of the best and most productive land uses in the Green Belt [an undeveloped area around London, set aside primarily for agriculture, forestry and outdoor leisure, but mostly not actively farmed]. The benefits include: opportunities for local job creation, skills development,  regeneration, preservation and management of green space, potential for waste management, providing healthy locally produced food and so reducing food packaging and food miles and the potential for improving food security.’

One of the big points is how much unused space there is within London that could be directed towards food production. The UK has these small plots called allotments that are available to the public for gardening/farming, but there are also swaths of unused industrial land and vacant building sites that could be improved visually and put to good use by developing for small-scale agriculture.   And it can get really small.  The report says, ‘Almost any site, irrespective of size, location or soil conditions can be used for food growing operations by making use of raised beds, skips and builders’ bags filled with good quality soil.’  Why not use green roofs or land along highways or railways or unused office land?

And it doesn’t even have to be a profit-making food-growing enterpise – it’s just fantastic to be able to produce any of your own food. And then you can get reaaaaally small. Because it doesn’t really get any tinier  in terms of space and literal lack of land than living on a houseboat (shoutout to my friend Olivia living on a houseboat in Alaska right now). And yet, this creative houseboater has developed an innovative way to grow tomatoes in a space smaller than that occupied by our forlorn and all-too-neglected barbecue grill.

I always talk about how much I’d like to grow my own food (despite my propensity towards immediately and invariably killing every single plant I’ve ever owned, including the cacti).  But I always live in the middle of cities and never seem to have enough space or enough land.  Yet these boaters have taken a very unexpected site and turned it into a mini growing area.  How sweet would it be to go pick tomatoes off your roof while enjoying this view of City Road Basin along Regent’s canal?

And looking back towards my hood…

A bit of inspiration for those of us who support the idea of more local food production. Until I get my act together to actually plant something, I’ll continue to buy vegetables from my local CSA veg box (and a shoutout to Growing Communities for being mentioned as one of the best programs in the report!), but I’m glad that other people are doing lots of growing in unexpected places.

Someday, I’ll be able to walk outside and pick what I want for dinner. Someday, someday…

Link roundups are awesome. At least the happy faced chocolate chip and vanilla citrus  panettone bread pudding from last week’s Rambling Restaurant thinks so. This alleged weekly roundup of link love  is not so weekly – right now, we’re going for bi-monthly. Might get worse. May get better (unlikely).

But anyway, some interesting stuff we’ve been reading:

Is There Enough Food Out There For Nine Billion People? [The New Republic]

San Franciscans Turn Abandoned Lot Into Full-Fledged Farm [Inhabitat]

This is awesome – London has city farms all over the place. More American cities should do this, especially with abandoned unused spaces. Great for food production, community involvement, education, improvement of city aesthetics and urban landscape, and general awesomeness. For more on city farms, see below!

Rules Worth Following, For Everyone’s Sake [The New York Times]

On Michael Pollan. Yeah, we talk about him a lot. But it’s an article worth reading, for everyone’s sake.

Whole Wheat Muffin, the Remix [The New York Times]

Bittman is another foodie fave. I am excited to make this.

And the best interactive/participatory link of the week? Put your money where your mouth is on the urban farming tip. Help fund an amazing San Francisco urban garden (in my old beloved hood of the Mission) on this seriously phenomenal crowdsourced funding site called Kickstarter.

Here’s how it works: You pledge a bit of money to support a really cool project. They only take your money if they get enough funding. In return, you get to support a great idea AND you get something in return. A piece of artwork, dinner, a shoutout in a music video, whatever small piece of the project you helped get off the ground according to the level of your donation. For example, you could get an adorable set of seed packets like these for pledging $25:

Or get a gorgeous set of screen-printed posters by one of the farmers who’s also an artist by donating $250.

You can give as little as $5 or as much as you want.  Everyone wins!  I only wish I could have given $1000 for my very own garden picnic.  Someday…when I’m a baller…

Read all about Little City Gardens: An Experiment in the Economic Viability of Urban Farming.  Support an SF farm!

It’s not because of my skill at baking, which can more accurately be described as the ability to read and generally follow instructions. This brownie is based on a great recipe from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from another great recipe from Baked in Brooklyn. Eat anything from these justly celebrated dessert creators and you’ll probably bust out the superlatives too. Plus, it’s got a lot of butter in it, and we all know the important kitchen equation: butter = awesome.

But the brownie got me thinking more about the food we eat and how it’s produced. If you just want to skip ahead to learn how to make these brownies yourself, scroll all the way down.  But first, some brownie pondering…

***

Sitting at my crumb-covered kitchen table with a belly almost uncomfortably full of dessert and one hand still clutching a few chocolatey morsels, a surprising realization came to me: I almost never eat brownies made from scratch.

Do you? I’m curious. Think about it. Despite being a fan of brownies, I rarely buy them from bakeries.  Restaurants don’t often offer brownies on the dessert menu, and even if they do, I’m not likely to order something I can just as easily bake at home.  And that’s the thing – brownies are a homestyle, comfortable, familiar, fifties housewife/school bake sale kind of dessert.  A dessert that almost universally, at least in my world, came straight out of a box.

A brownie recipe from my childhood would look like this: pull the Betty Crocker box out of the cupboard. Pop the plastic bag of brownish powder, add an egg and some vegetable oil, stir in a big bowl, bake in a pan and cut into squares.  No need for complicated baking equipment, kitchen knowledge, or really any degree of thought or effort.

On the contrary, baking brownies from scratch takes not only a fair amount of time and effort but also a great deal more money.  I decided to make spiced brownies for the Rambling Cafe at Somerset House Design Fair over the holidays and found myself choosing between a box of brownie mix under £2 and the ingredients to make them myself for almost £8, which didn’t even include the flour and spices I already had in my cupboard.  Since we care about making good, real, food with high-quality ingredients at Rambling Restaurant and it fits into my general ethos of food and cooking, I went with the expensive choice. But I was annoyed that these were my options.  I’m willing to put in the work;  shouldn’t that save me money?

pause for brownie ogling.

I was chatting about this mid-brownie devouring with my friend Alexis, who mentioned that a roast chicken from her supermarket costs less than buying the whole raw chicken and taking several hours to season and roast it herself. Like so many pre-made items in our supermarkets at refrigerators these days, you have to be crazy to make it yourself. Or you just have to be willing to spend more money, take more time, and expend more effort. You have to love the process of cooking and appreciate the taste of homemade food and value the act of creating something yourself (and enjoy the kudos you get for preparing something delicious from scratch). Sure, sometimes the professionals do it way better, and that’s absolutely worth paying for. But too much of the time, you’re trading flavor, health, and taste for convenience and price. And all too often, the money you save reappears as hidden costs externalized in our health care system, the polluted state of our environment, serious issues with factory treatment of workers and animals, the little time spent enjoying the sharing and eating of food with people in your life, the disconnect with where our food comes from, and so many more problems associated with our current methods and industries of food production and consumption.

Michael Pollan, in books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, has written a great deal about the American food industry over the past century and how governmental systems were put into place with the goal of creating cheap calories so people could afford to eat. In addition, companies like General Mills (owner and creator of brand name Betty Crocker) produced convenience items that allowed people, almost exclusively women, to spend less time in the kitchen and more time pursuing their own careers or interests. It was a profitable enterprise for those huge conglomerates that arguably had the positive social benefit of achieving more gender equality in the home and workplace (I’d actually be very interested to research that exact connection). But these industrial methods also made high-calorie treats like brownies and chocolate chip cookies and french fries and microwave pizza widely accessible,  affordable and effortlessly replicable in your own home. Which, in turn, have contributed towards making people extremely unhealthy and so we find ourselves in the midst of this obesity crisis the United States and increasingly more Westernized countries face today.

Browsing a bookstore a few weeks ago, I flipped through a few pages of Michael Pollan’s new book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (full review and commentary coming soon from Irene Bean!). One of the rules talks about the notion of treats and how we’d all consume a lot less junk food if we had to make it ourselves. Imagine how much work it takes to produce a french fry and how much less you’d eat them if you had to peel and slice potatoes, purchase and heat large quantities of oil, and risk first-degree burns instead of sidling up to the McDonald’s drive-thru. And you could probably cut down your brownie eating if you had to spend $10 on chocolate, eggs, sugar, and flour rather than $2 on a box of dehydrated chocolate mix.

Clearly this doesn’t make sense for plenty of people who have neither the time nor the money nor a general idea of ‘fun’ that includes two sticks of butter and a cupboard full of spices for experimentation. But it speaks to a way that perhaps we should all be eating, both for our own health and the health of our planet. New York Times writer Jane Brody covers this idea succinctly in her recent article on Pollan’s book, ‘Rules Worth Following, for Everyone’s Sake.’

So take a stand. Make those expensive, rich, chocolatey, effort-full, amazing brownies.  Shun the prepackaged and the processed in favor of the butter and the eggs and the chunks of good chocolate. They might take a bigger chunk out of your wallet, but you can feel good about making them. And most importantly…they just might be the best brownies of your life.

gratuitous brownie porn shot

Ridiculously Good Spiced Brownies With Almonds

Adapted from the Smitten Kitchen recipe who adapted it from another great recipe from Baked. I added a few more spices, took out some other ingredients I didn’t have around, got rid of an egg (my mom walked by while I was baking and said ’5 eggs? Do you really need 5 eggs?’ and I said…you know, probably not. And I didn’t miss it).  Feel free to play around with the spices depending on what you like and what you have in your cupboard.  Also, I only had chocolate with almonds in the kitchen, which I never would have bought but ended up being surprising little crunchy bites of toastiness.

What You Need:

1 and 1/4 cup flour
1tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp white pepper
12 ounces dark chocolate with almonds, or add separately if you want ‘em. Or walnuts. Whatever’s your bag, really.
1 cup (2 sticks yeeaaaah) butter, chopped into small chunks.
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

What You Do:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter the sides of a pan.

2. Mix the flour and all the spices in a bowl.

3. Stick the butter chunks and the chocolate chunks into a heatsafe bowl over a pot of boiling water. Stir every so often until the mixture becomes chocolatey smooth, so silky and fragrant that you could pour it into a chocolate fountain and jump in. Don’t though – you have brownies to make. Unless of course you’ve changed your priorities.

4. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the sugars. Once the mixture has cooled a bit, whisk the eggs in one at a time, trying not to overmix or the brownies will get cakey.

5. Fold the flour/spice mixture into the chocolate soupiness using a spatula.

6. Bake for about 30 minutes. Important note: contrary to what you might have learned back in the day from Betty Crocker about using a toothpick to test for doneness, you DO NOT want your toothpick to come out clean or your brownies will not be moist and fudgy. You want a few little crumbs on the toothpick. For an adorable illustration (complete with brownie-eating monster!) check out this drawing from the amazingly talented Claire Murray.  She’s got some other fantastic and whimsically illustrated recipes as well as some funny random drawings.

I wish I had a brownie monster friend to help me finish off the pan sometimes.  Eating way way way too many brownies is just a possible side effect of baking some of the best brownies you’ve ever eaten. Oh, and I’m still curious. When was the last time you ate a brownie from scratch?

I’m in the process of migrating the blog over to another server, so apologies for any missing pages, weird links, and other bad things caused by my lack of coding skills and demonstrable inability to follow step-by-step instructions.

More importantly – we want to start a weekly link roundup of good articles, essays, ideas, and generally interesting and thought-provoking links from around the interwebs. Because other people are smart and do good work and write excellent pieces and we think they’re worth reading.

Thus. What I read this morning in bed and yesterday when I should have been working:

1. Food writer Corby Kummer in The Atlantic on the value of school gardens, rebutting another Atlantic writer who decries schoolyeard gardens as cruel, elitist, oppressive, and plain out wrong -  without bothering to speak to any educators, parents, children, or community members who have experienced such a program. Corby, on the other hand, actually makes the effort.

2. A GOOD article on aquaponics and making urban farming sustainable. You know how we love Will Allen of Growing Power and his vertically integrated closed loop sustainable urban farm programs. This article talks more about urban agriculture and introduced me to a fantastic San Francisco-based company called Cityscape Farms seeking to develop local food economies and transform the urban landscape by creating urban greenhouses.  I truly think that it’s these types of thoughtful, sustainable yet also business-minded approaches that are going to change America’s food system for the better.

3. Another GOOD article – yeah, I like them – on how Better Meat Requires Better Butchers. So true and so needs to be said. We pay so much attention to the bucolic ideal of small farmers with excellent animal husbandry over factory-farmed meat. But if the pasture-grazed cow is still sent to an industrial slaughterhouse because there are no small licensed facilities available, we’re very likely still losing out in terms of food safety, animal welfare transportation efficiencies, environmental pollutants, and numerous other problems associated with these industrial systems. So we need more butchers. Better for the animals, better for the eaters, better for the planet.

Plus, butchers are badass. Looks like it’s time for a new hobby. Way to begin the fight, Irene.

4. Lastly, a final GOOD article (I know it’s been 3 articles from them, it’s just…they’re really…don’t make me say it…you get the picture…) on the Slow Money Alliance, which is trying to be the Slow Food of the financial world by promoting value-added investment into local and regional farming enterprises. Can you imagine the impact it would have if more and more people directed their money towards small business rather than big business, companies that prioritize local production over international destruction, people rather than profits? (Note, this isn’t just some money-draining, feel-good hippie operation – the goal is to provide a return on your investment while supporting these ideals).  I’m interested to research this further myself.

UPDATE: Another interesting article called Who Will Grow Your Food? Part 1: The Coming Demographic Crisis in Agriculture by the author of A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil.  What will happen as farmers grow old or can’t afford to keep their land if no one is being trained to replace them? How will this affect our food system and the way we eat?

So. Hope you enjoy the articles. I sometimes find it overwhelming  trying to ingest just a few valuable drops of the tidal wave of information crashing towards me every day online and it’s nice to have things carefully picked out for you every once in a while. These pieces make me start copying and pasting links into various emails with the heading ‘YOU HAVE TO READ THIS ARTICLE NOW’, so this is just my lazy way of putting them all in one place. We’re going to try to do this weekly at least, so keep your eyes open…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/01/16/read-this-now-introducing-the-weekly-link-roundup/feed/ 0 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/12/12/a-golden-ticket-tasting-at-artisan-du-chocolat/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/12/12/a-golden-ticket-tasting-at-artisan-du-chocolat/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:11:25 +0000 mei http://familystyles.wordpress.com/?p=2512

The invitation from Yelp read: ‘a tutored tasting of one of a kind cocoa creations, chocolate bars, and chocolate cocktails from the chocolateria menu at Artisan du Chocolat’ and I felt like little Charlie Bucket when he peeled back the wrapper of his hard-earned Wonka bar and first caught the glint of his Golden Ticket.  I’d never say no to a chocolate tasting in the first place, but a private behind-the-scenes showcase of the couture creations from one of London’s most illustrious chocolatiers? My eyes grew bigger than Everlasting Gobstoppers.

My excitement only continued rising upon stepping into the shop in Bayswater, a curious composition of luxury boutique crossed with gleaming white and futurisitic space pod.  Squares of etched chocolate as colorful as works of modern art, rounded truffles piled like jewels on a queen’s dressing table, boxes of caramels as classic and streamlined as the most expensive French perfume. My mouth dropped open, and stayed open for the next two hours as we lucky Yelp Elites were plied with chocolate, caramels and cocoa in an stunning array of forms and flavors.

Elise, our knowledgable and well-spoken Willy Wonka leader (much less insane) presented our group with a nearly comprehensive tasting of Artisan du Chocolat’s offerings, starting with a smooth and tongue-coatingly rich malted hot chocolate. As we then sipped a fizzy and bright Cocoa Pod and Prosecco Bellini, Elise began walking us through the chocolate-making process from the harvest of the cocoa pods from equatorial tropical rainforests through fermentation, drying, cleaning, roasting, and removing of the shell to get 100% cocoa nibs.

These nibs are then processed into chocolate liquor and then further processed to remove the cocoa butter.  The best producers add cocoa butter back in order to keep the chocolate solid at room temperature,  but it’s often replaced by less expensive vegetable oils in crap industrial chocolate because the fatty cocoa butter can be sold at high cost to the cosmetics industry. This is why, unsurprisingly, eating cocoa butter bits tastes like a mouthful of moisturizing lotion. You would think this is not something I would need to test out for myself, but you’d be wrong.

Elise knows all this and more because Artisan du Chocolat is actually the only UK company to process their own chocolate in the country, which they do in their factory in Kent. I am already hatching a plan to get myself invited (or break in) some day for my very own Chocolate River-Ooompa Loompa experience.  While Elise continued explaining the production process, she illustrated each step with a delectable (or not, at least at the beginning) little morsel.  Here’s the mindblowing rundown of what went into our mouths as we journeyed through country of origin, ascended sugary peaks and frolicked through whimsical flavors:

Part One: Exploring Chocolate Terroir and Cocoa Content

1. Pure cocoa liquor from Bali. Looks and tastes like dirt.

2. 100% chocolate from Bali. No sugar but ‘conched’ to get a more familiar silky texture. However, still like sucking on a piece of bitter chalk.

3. Dark chocolate (72% cocoa) from Bali. This is when the sugar starts entering the picture. Mmm. Now we’re getting somewhere.

4. Dark chocolate (72% cocoa) from Java. Just like wine and coffee, chocolate flavors are affected by the terroir, or the environment in which the original and unaltered product (grapes, coffee plants, cocoa pods, etc) is grown.  Smoky with the barest hint of bananas.

5. Dark chocolate (72% cocoa) from Jamaica. This chocolate had a subtle spice and an almost savory element, like a whiff of meatiness or mushroom. Umami, perhaps?

6. Milk chocolate (40 % cocoa) from Jamaica. Smooth and familiar, lots of spice notes.

Part Two: Experimenting With Flavor Infused Bars

7. Almond milk chocolate (40% cocoa). Nutty and light.

8. Milk chocolate (40% cocoa) infused with Tonka, a spice from Venezuela. Layers of vanilla, almond, warmth.

9. Milk chocolate (40% cocoa) infused with Lumi, sundried limes. Subtly citrusy, reminiscent of a Moroccan feast.

10. Matcha White chocolate. This green tea flavored bar, like all white chocolate, contained no cocoa, just a mix of cocoa butter, milk powders and sugar. A bit sugary for my taste, but still that soothing green tea essence of one of my favorite ice cream flavors.

11. Gingerbread Spice White Chocolate. Christmas in your mouth.

Part Three: Sampling Our Way Through The Couture Chocolates

This is when things started to go crazy, like we had stumbled into the Inventing Room of the Wonka Factory. As inventive as Scarlet Scorchdroppers and Galumptious Gobstoppers, but classy and artistic in both taste and presentation.

12. Chocolate Ganache with Fresh Mint Leaves. It’s a mojito in my chocolate! (You can tell the sugar high is starting to kick in).

13. Chocolate Ganache with Tobacco Leaves(!) This insane little bite of nicotine was designed for Michelin-starred molecular gastronomist I-cooked-a-whole-pig-sous-vide-in-a-hot-tub crazyface chef Heston Blumenthal to serve at the Fat Duck. After swallowing, you can actually feel the slight burn at the back of your throat like you just took a drag of a cigarette.

14. Feuillantine. An elevated version of the Ferrero Rocher, all hazelnut and crunchy wafer with a bit of gingerbread spice.

Part Four: The Absolutely Mindblowing Sea Salt Caramels

Salted caramel is everywhere now (I miss you, Bi-Rite Icecream) but Artisan du Chocolat claims to have developed it first back in 2002 for Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s to a slew of accolades and copycats.  Whether or not it’s true, these spherical dark chocolate shells bursting with liquid  caramel and unrefined grey sea salt are sublimely, ethereally, orgasmically perfect little bites of heaven. Pop the whole ball in your mouth and crunch into it, allowing the indescribable mix of sweet and salt spill out over your tongue until you quiver with delight. I would like to purchase this liquid by the gallon and bathe in it. Dangerously enough, it is sold in liquid form.

15. The original Sea Salted Caramel. Amazing.

16. Salted Caramel with Lemongrass. Lovely and aromatic.

And our final bite:

17. Sparkling Wine Truffle. Champagne truffle is the more usual phrase, but this one features a British sparkline wine from Kent instead called Chapeldown Brut. Instead of the horrid shock of liquor you get from cheap alcoholic chocolates, this truffle effortlessly rides the edge between dessert and cocktail.

Seventeen chocolates? That should have been that. Except our friend Sarah was curious about the banana flavored chocolate and we walked over to ask Elise: What’s the banana chocolate like? Is it…really intensely banana-y? Barely was the question out of her mouth when Elise marched us over to the display and handed one each to Sarah, Chris and me.

Part Five: More Chocolate? Well…If You Insist…

18. Banana Chocolate. Nope. Not too banana-y. In fact, just right.

But it didn’t stop there. Standing as we were in front of the bowls of imaginative new salted caramels, Elise reached over and doled out more.

19. Salted Caramel with Balsamic Vinegar. Oh.

20. Salted Caramel with Sage and Thyme. My.

21. Salted Caramel with Pink and Black Peppercorns. God.

….<stunned silence>…..This might just be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.

I managed to collect myself enough to purchase a box of salted caramel with peppercorns and then spent the rest of the time wandering around the shop in a sugar-induced haze.  I may not have been able to put anything else in my stomach, but the shop was also a feast for the eyes, a tastefully curated museum of confection.

I loved the silver, gold, and pearlescent chocolate balls, but was even more entertained by the ‘Monster-Covered Lolli’ below, placed directly at eye level for someone of smallish stature who might be entranced by this particular combination of candy and cartoon.

It was virtually impossible to leave without handing over all the money in my wallet.  They’re for Christmas presents! Really. I swear. But alas, we had to finally say goodbye. And then promptly turned around and peeked back in the window.

If only the Golden Ticket Charlie Bucket experience analogy continued to Mr. Wonka appearing and handing over the keys to Artisan du Chocolat: I want you to be my heir and run the factory, Mei. It’s all yours!

Oh well. I may not get the full Charlie Bucket story, but at least I didn’t get fall into a chocolate river like Augustus Gloop. Although come to think of it, a liquid salted caramel river sounds pretty damn good…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/12/12/a-golden-ticket-tasting-at-artisan-du-chocolat/feed/ 6 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/11/11/two-excellent-articles-on-improving-american-food-and-my-relationship-to-childhood-obesity/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/11/11/two-excellent-articles-on-improving-american-food-and-my-relationship-to-childhood-obesity/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:54:20 +0000 mei http://familystyles.wordpress.com/?p=2381 Some seriously excellent articles I’ve just encountered:

1. Avoiding Factory Farms: An Eater’s Guide, by Nicolette Hahn Niman

2. Good Food Nation, by Peter Dizikes of the MIT News Office

Seriously, go read them. Or if you just want me to summarize, click after the jump for brief overviews, some additional thoughts, and an amusing childhood connection…

Ok. First off, Avoiding Factory Farms: An Eater’s Guide, by Nicolette Hahn Niman

An excellent, comprehensive, and informative guide towards how to eat well for yourself, your community, and the rest of the planet. Niman gives broad general advice (be prepared to pay more, ask questions, consider it an adventure!), helpful tips on where to look (supermarkets suck, farmers markets are awesome, look for sustainable restaurants) , information on animal-based products (buy domestic and pastured, grass-fed and organic are good but flawed, free-range means very little) and even more details by animal and by dairy product.

Go read, now.  Niman is a livestock rancher (wife of Bill Niman of Niman Ranch Meat), a lawyer, and author of a book called Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. Yeah, she pretty much kicks ass. The only thing I’d add to the article is the importance of cooking yourself! It’s cheaper, it’s fun, it’s engaging and interesting and creative and educational.  Sure, it can be time-consuming, but it’s worth it in so many ways.

2. Good Food Nation, by Peter Dizikes of the MIT News Office

A very exciting article on two studies  by MIT researchers: one concluding that America’s childhood obesity epidemic is a result of our national food system subsidizing and surrounding children with unhealthy processed food, and another in conjunction with Columbia researchers proposing that regional food systems could be a solution to the health problem.

The team suggests that regional food production and distribution efforts such as urban garden plots and ‘lawn to farm’ conversions would help increase access to good, healthy, affordable, non-processed food. Another amazing suggestion: ‘entrepreneurs or government should invest in a new concept: “food terminals,” retail developments combining grocery stores with greenhouses, farmers’ markets, restaurants, and even education centers as magnets for city residents who otherwise lack access to fresh produce.’  Plus, fresh food buses! Love that idea. Goal for the future: open a food terminal. Check.

The researchers also tied in ssues of costs, lifestyle, transportation and  health care and plan to address some of these other economic factors in a future study. For now, they acknowledge that it’s a huge task trying to overhaul America’s food system, but a critical issue that needs to be addressed and these ideas are a step in the right direction. I heartily agree.

A very entertaining footnote: I’m pretty sure I was in this exact MIT obesity study as a kid.  First off, I would like to make clear that I was not obese as a child. Seriously. I may like butter-fried pasta, but let’s not get out of hand (although that would be kind of hilarious but only in retrospect as a now-completely-the-opposite-of-obese person). My mom works at MIT and knew one of the researchers and I used to go in once a year to get weighed and measured, run on a treadmill, talk about what foods I ate, stay in the hospital overnight, and most terrifyingly, lie down for a long period of time with a weird plastic box over my head and electrodes all over my body. Hmm. Wonder what that was all about. But I remember it being fun to pick out what hospital food I wanted and to write down a food diary with one of the researchers while playing with weird plastic fruit replicas.  Perhaps that was the beginning of my food obsession.  It all comes full circle…