January 2007 archives

The word ‘consulting’ always sounds like a dream job when you’re stuck working in a restaurant kitchen, slaving over a hot stove, on the line. As a consultant, it sounds like you sweep into a kitchen, where the staff welcomes you with open arm as their savior, and you magically transform the meals coming out of the kitchen into extraordinary feats of culinary magic.

In fact, it couldn’t be more different.

Restaurants call in consultants when they’ve exhausted all other possibilities, and the kitchen is in such dire trouble that they need to get some poor sucker from the outside to come in a try to fix what they’ve screwed up. The pay seems great, until you walk in the kitchen and realize no one wants to talk to you, no one wants you there, and worse, no one wants to change anything, since it means more work for them (and if they really cared about their work, they wouldn’t have had to call in someone from the outside in the first place.)

I was once a consultant for a corporation that owned several prominent restaurants. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out that one of their major problems was that there were a lot of high-paid executives sitting in meetings upstairs, while there were a lot of low-paid people downstairs, in the kitchen, putting the food on the plate. And let’s face it: Customers don’t care about executive meetings, they care about the food.
And that’s basically it.

When I mentioned this discrepancy to the high-paid executives (who hired me to tell them things like that…right?) we had another round of meetings, discussing things for hours and hours, until I told them I couldn’t sit through any more meetings since I had work to do in the kitchen. (Stupid me! What was I thinking? Those meetings were totally cush. Why slave over a hot stove? Maybe those executives weren’t so wrong after all…)

Continue Reading Chocolate Cake Recipe…

Welcome to Sugar High Friday #27!

What?
You might be saying, it’s not Friday yet, David!

To be honest, I was blown away by the amount of entries and the quality of responses, and decided to start the round-up early in the week to get them all in. Thanks to everyone who participated and although I tried to leave comments on many of your blogs, time didn’t always permit me to, so I thank you all here and now.

So, dear readers, here’s the chocolate entries, based on the theme I chose: Chocolate By Brand. Bloggers made chocolate recipes, including an infinate variety of cakes, cookies, creams, and candies, using a particular brand of chocolate and talked about why.

Enjoy!…

Veronica at Kitchen Musings was a double-dipper and made Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes X2, two recipes from two cookbooks…using two chocolates! One recipe with ScharffenBerger and the other using Valhrona.
If you like lots of lick-able chocolate frosting, you’ll love ‘em both.

Over at Winds and Breezes, Treasa used Lindt 70% chocolate for a scrumptious-sounding Chocolate Cake, with chocolate she brings back from France every time she “sets foot in the place.”
(The French are wild over Lindt chocolate, as you’ll see in other entries, and apparently so is Treasa.)

It’s a Rocky Road over at Sui Mai, who used Cailler dark chocolate to bind together marshmallows, almonds, and dried blueberries. And where did she get the chocolate she used? And why did she use that one?
The plot thickens…like her chocolate…

In the Très facile category comes Chocolate Hazelnut Madeleines from Marie-Laurie of Autres Delices using Nestlé chocolate.
Her tiny, shiny, shell-shaped little cakes would make Proust proud!

My Franco-American compatriote stateside, Béa falls for chocolate with a petite Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Cake with Chocolate-Ginger Mousse, infused with ScharffenBerger cocoa powder and Valhrona‘s Manjari chocolate.
Although it seems pretty fancy-pants, Béa makes it all look so easy, mais oui!

Check out Orange-Flavored Milk Rice with White Chocolate Icing from Nemisbéka in Hungary, which her dessert will make you, especially when you see how she uses both Nestlé Caramac bars and Milka hearts from Switzerland.

Lighter-Than-Air Chocolate Roll by Kristin at Dine and Dish, with a heady suspicion of Grand Marnier. Like her chocolate cake roll, Kristin got so light-headed on chocolate she forgot to note which brand she used. When she came back down, she noted it was San Francisco’s Ghiradelli.

Claudia at Food For Food made some very tasty-looking Chocolate Honey Caramels using Valhrona chocolate. Even though she claims the recipe was supposed to be difficult to make, she did an admirable job, as you’ll see…

Across the border in Umbria, Judith at Think On It! got over her aversion to chocolate (!) to participate, and added some chilies to the spun sugar to give it an extra kick. Check out her dessert, simply titled Hot Silk, made with Valhrona, which she says makes everything, including stuff on her other site, a little yummier.

Although the name One Whole Clove doesn’t make one normally think of chocolate, check out Lou’s sinful Boules au chocolat et au rhum. They’re enriched with Montignac 85% sugar-free chocolate, sweetened with maltitol, which she found at her local chocolate shop Cupidon.

Continue Reading Chocolate Dessert Recipes…

One of my favorite things to do in Paris is just wander around, often in neighborhoods that aren’t really known for anything special. There’s always something interesting to find; shops specializing in vintage hairbrushes and combs, a locksmith for doors installed only during the reign of Napolean III, or the recently-departed Reptiles World (sic), which was one of my favorite places to pass the time while waiting for a train at the nearby Gare du Nord.

And of course, I’m usually on the lookout for food, and am especially keen when I come across a shop specializing in candymaking or chocolate. If I get lucky, I discover some little treasure, often in the most unlikeliest of places.

Le Furet Tanrade was opened in 1728, and it’s still one of the sweetest little chocolate shops I’ve found in Paris.

Sure, their chocolates aren’t nearly as sleek or refined as their Left Bank counterparts, but I appreciated their handmade charm all the same. Especially the petits dark squares filled with a crisp morsel of mint fondant cloaked in brusque, dark chocolate. And the chocolates filled with caramel and feuilleté were certainly as delicious as those found in swankier boutiques.

One chocolate that piqued my curiosity was flavored with chanvre, a word I wasn’t familiar with. Although I’ve been previously familiar with the green leaf embedded atop the chocolate in my younger days, she offered a sample since she was having difficulty explaining exactly what was inside. (The French word for what I thought it was is a four-letter word in English…madame might not have appreciated my translation.)

But then, in that little shop, I learned my Word-For-The-Day: the ganache was infused with hemp. So should you find yourself near the Gare du Nord or Gare d’Est, and need to pass a bit of time (or want try to get a bit of a buzz)…or if you just want to take a journey to a less-visited quartier of Paris, Le Furet Tanrade certainly makes a tasty stopping point.

Le Furet Tanrade
1, rue des Méssageries (10th)
Tél: 06 99 41 61 31
Métro: Poissonière

Gretchen di Limur…come on down!

You’re the winning contestant for my Paris Chocolate & Gastronomy Tour in the Menu For Hope III auction.

Am I going to have to take my fabulous culinary tour of Paris all by myself?

Get in touch.

Sorry about the less-than-stellar photo.

I was trying to take a picture in a hectic métro station, and when there was a break in the frenzy of commuters, I tried to get my shot. But soon the people behind the glass in the information booth started taking notice of me snapping a few pics of the high-security features of the métro, like metal railings and door handles.

So I snapped quickly and packed up my camera fast, especially when I saw one of the guys stub out his cigarette (a sign I took that he was really serious about coming out of that booth), fearing he’d ask me what I was doing. Then I’d have to explain that I have a food blog but I write about Paris as well and I was going to do a post about something called ‘Métro Hands’ and wanted to take a photo to accompany the text for the edification of my readers which was all in the name of fun but sometimes encompassed serious topics, although often shrouded in stories that are either offbeat, funny, poorly-written, lively, contains typos, insulting, unedited, over-edited, timely, insightful, amusing, pathetic, or when all else fails, is accompanied by a recipe for a chocolate cake or cookies.

(I doubt that he would have understood what I was talking about, though in his defense, I can’t blame him—neither would I.)

Anyhow, I don’t know if the French have a phrase that corresponds to this, but when you arrive at someone’s house or at a restaurant, often one will excuse themself shortly thereafter to wash up, claiming a case of ‘Métro Hands’, which usually gets paired with a slightly queasy expression. I’ve seen both French people do this, as well as Americans, who many folks view as a band of raging germophobes (although curiously, you can’t touch produce at the market, and men must wear bathing caps and a barely-there Speedo in a public pools in France, for l’hygiene…mais oui!.)

So what are ‘Métro Hands’?

Continue Reading Métro Hands…and Cheeks…

Just a chocolaty reminder that next week, I’m hosting Sugar High Friday #27, and the theme is Chocolate By Brand.

Readers will be able to enjoy a cavalcade of chocolate desserts from all over the world!

Continue Reading Chocolate By Brand: SHF #27…

The winners of Menu For Hope III have been announced!
Click on the link, or the logo below, to find out if you’re one of the lucky winners.

You can read the original post to review the prizes and the information provided by the donor.

Here are instructions for the winners:

• Visit the blog which hosts the prize or prizes you’ve won (just click on the prize name at Pim’s site) and let the blogger know that you’re the lucky winner of his/her fabulous prize. Their email address should be at their site. If not, please contact Brett (below).
  
• Please be sure to use the same email address you gave us on your donation form. The email address will identify you, and not any other ‘Liz’- as the real winner.
  
• You are responsible for contact the blogger and providing him/her with the shipping information so the prize could be mailed to you or to make arrangements for tours or events.
  
• Then sit back and wait, your prize should be mailed to you shortly. (Please be aware that mail service varies in certain regions.)
  

Please Note!
A few of the links on Pim’s site are broken, for prizes EU01-05, EU06, EU19, EU21, and EU34. They lead back to my site, which is incorrect. To contact the donor, please email them directly using the following links:

O-Chateau (EU1-5)
Divina Cucina (EU06)
Context Travel Gift Certificate (EU19)
Gale Gand Chef’s Jacket (EU34)

Instructions for the donating bloggers:

• For bloggers hosting European prizes, with the code prefixes EU, please contact Brett at In Praise of Sardines to verify the email address of the winner of your prize(s) once you hear from the winner.
  
• Please ship your prize to the winner promptly, or be in touch with the winner with instructions to make arrangements for their tour or event.
  

Please contact the Menu for Hope Prize Manager for European Prizes: Brett at In Praise of Sardines.

Or you can also contact Pim directly with additional questions.

In the previous post on chocolate-making, I included some information that was given to me that was erroneous.

The original post contained information told to me by one of the world’s leading chocolate experts, which didn’t relate to the quality of the company’s products, nor reputation of the company, which was then taken and reprinted. When I received a message questioning its authenticity, I telephoned the person that gave me the original information, who couldn’t recall his source.
So I deleted it immediately as well as any comments relating to that topic.

The post has been amended and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

The intention of the post was to highlight the exciting world of American chocolate, which many people are unfamiliar with, most notably in other countries and it was not my intention to print misinformation.

In that post, and in many others I write, I generally include links.

As always, I encourage readers to visit the site of the companies listed to learn more about their products.