chocolate and fruit- two delicacies

Chocolate is an interesting food. It can be a sweet treat, one that you take in your bag as a sugar boost for when you feel tired and sluggish. It can be dark chocolate- you take a cube of it with your japanese tea in the morning. Perhaps you like to make cookies with chocolate chips in them... so chocolate is an ingredient that holds many possibilities.

Fruit. You've eaten a raw orange I'm sure. Maybe a poached pair, a baked apple, or some gingered pineapple. You can mix different kinds of fruit to make a fruit salad. You can put pear slices in a horseradish sauce for you salmon, or make a fruit yogurt. The possibilities seem infinite.

So here's my creation (which I know many before me also came up with...). I made chocolate dipped fruit... except the chocolate mixture was my own recipe! I know, it sounds so simple, but you have to make sure the chocolate doesn't harden, the taste is sweet enough, its not too liquidy, so it seemed like an interesting adventure. I melted chocolate for a few seconds in the microwave, and added an egg yolk, mixing really fast so that the egg does not cook with the heat of the chocolate- and then you add some heavy cream.

Now I cut the fruit I wanted to dip: pineapple, oranges, kiwi, and (my favorite-) strawberry. I dipped them and did not let the chocolate drip off, placing the fruit directly onto the platter I had prepared. The plate looked absolutely beautiful! Really a refine dish, I think. You can serve this with a dry cake...

So, I hope to post some pictures soon, to show you my creation (which I am so proud of!)!

Good night!

Bon Apetit

talk about dessert!

This dessert, I think this was one of the best ones I have ever made. Let's start with the meal itself- it'll build up to dessert.

For lunch, we began with soup. Squash soup with boursine-French cheese- in it. It was very good, especially on that rainy, cloudy, chilly afternoon.

Then came the main course. One of the dishes was paratha with hummus-tehina. But here's the cool catch- it was all home-made. Paratha is a bread-type of food. It's flat, and made with lentil flour, garbanzo bean flour, water and salt. You fry it until each side is a bit golden, and make sure to serve it hot! Also, the salt is quite crucial in this recipe, otherwise it's really too bland. The hummus-tehina I made in my brand-new chopper/grinder! I served it on a plate with Parsley nicely decorating it, and splashes of olive oil here and there. Then the fish- we had golden salmon. I baked it with a simple mayo-mustard sauce, but to serve, I made a horseradish cream sauce. Really delicious. Basically, the trick is to whip it well, so that it stays puffy. You serve it with a sprinkle of cut red onions and slices of pears.

We also has leek mushroom pie. A bit more complicated to make, but definitely worth the time! A good accompanying dish was potatoes- cooked in the oven. For those who obsess over eating light, there was also sweet potatoes, baked in the oven.

So, those were some of the dishes for the main course.

Now for the dessert.

I began by making a cheesecake. Now this cheesecake was like none I had ever tasted before. It had the perfect tiny twist of lemon, and the cheese was whipped for ten minutes, so that when you bit into the final product, it was soft and airy. The crust I made from GF cookie crumbs, sugar, and butter. Then I made pears. But these were not just any pears. I had left them in a mixture of boiling water, red wine, honey, galic cloves, lemon zest, cinnamon sticks, and cinnamon powder. When I served it, it was with chopped pistachios sprinkled on top of the standing pear, which was laying in a tiny puddle of chocolate syrup, with a small spoon of vanilla ice-cream on the side.

Makes your mouth water, right?

For afternoon snack I made chocolate dipped fruits- strawberries, pineapple, kiwi, and oranges. I simply melted the chocolate, added an egg yolk, and heavy cream until I felt it was good. And it came out great!

Continue to enjoy your cooking,

Happy eating!