Belligerent Fruit

The brandied cherries were a good start. Two things I hate about tasting liquor and fruit are that the fruit is always too soft and squishy for me and the flavor is cloyingly sweet. I want my fruit to have more pluck! My first batch of cherries were pitted and drenched in brandy with a small amount of sugar syrup. After a few weeks, I set a bunch of them out to dry. With most of their color drained out into the brandy, these cherries looked inedible. With the lack of sugar, they didn't taste that great either. Think of a sangria with not enough sugar and you will understand. Enter fondant and chocolate. Mmmm... Fondant is easy and fun to make and, in my mind, is the most simple way to realize the complexities of sugar. Once they were dipped in fondant (flavored with brandy, of course) my drunken, anemic, and quite disagreeable cherries were transformed. Dipping them in dark chocolate completed the flavor profile. For the next batch, I added peppercorns, star anise, and cloves to the brandied cherries. Quite tasty. So tasty, in fact that they were gobbled up before I could break out the camera.

Now inspired, I am working on a line of spirit infused fruit. Pears and Gin, Peaches and Rum with Habanero Chili, and Pineapple and Tequila. More to come.

Hold On To Summer

I always think about brandied cherries around December. Not a good time to think about making them unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere. This year I got off to an early start.

So simple, yet I'm often so busy eating the cherries during our summer that I forget to preserve any for use during the winter months. The worst part is that I have to wait for six weeks to taste them! I guess I have six weeks to come up with ways to use them. That's not so bad.

Oyster, Party of Two

I love to eat raw oysters. I don't find them any more of an aphrodisiac than freshly shucked summer corn. I just love them. Normally at the Hillcrest farmer's market I stop by the Carlsbad Aquaculture stand to have my usual Sunday breakfast, five Luna oysters. Deliciously briny, they taste just like the ocean.

In early April I was on vacation with my family, cruising down the inland waterway from Charleston, SC to Jacksonville, FL. The find for me on the trip was an oyster shucker modeled after an 18th century design. Very cool. I had to have one. "The greatest part about buying this shucker," the kind sales lady explained, "is that when you are at an oyster party, you will never lose it because it is so unique!" I smiled excitedly and thanked her, not willing to reveal the fact that not only had I never been to an oyster party but that I had never actually shucked an oyster.

After arriving home with my new treasure, I found myself at the Sunday market buying my usual breakfast and confidently buying a dozen oysters to take home with me. So excited, I immediately called my mother, another oyster lover. "Mom. I just bought a dozen Luna oysters from Carlsbad Aquafarm. Can you come over, teach me how to open them, and eat them with me?!" Her reply - "I'd love to eat them but I've never shucked an oyster." What??!!! "Ma, you grew up eating seafood, tearing apart crabs and lobster in record time and eating oysters." "I know," she replied. "I've just never shucked any." My mother arrived and we opened a few. It was very messy business and a bit crunchy at times from the bits of shell we mangled, but we managed and enjoyed them.

Back to the market for a shucking lesson and another dozen. It really isn't that hard once you get the hang of it. I've heard that once you open them and slice through the adductor muscle, you should turn them over "belly" side up for presentation purposes.

Now I'm just waiting for that invitation to an oyster party.

The Best Hot Chocolate

OK. So I know that I said that my favorite non-alcoholic drink is club soda with a lime twist. Here is my favorite drink of all time. Hot chocolate made with water, not milk. Of course, the better the chocolate, the better the drink.

Good chocolate, like wine, beer, and golf apparel, is subjective. What is "the best" chocolate? For me, it has to be dark, usually 70% or more. For this batch I used a mixture of Andoa Noire - a 70% from Valrhona, and Grand Cru Hacienda - a 74% from Felchlin.

Ingredients
6oz chocolate
2 cups water

Preparation
Melt chocolate with water. Transfer to a blender for 30 seconds. Serve.


If you have any leftover, wrap it up and put it in the fridge. It tastes great cold too. But not as good as that first sip when it's hot.

If any of you reading this use milk or white chocolate, let me know how the recipe turns out for you. I'm curious, but not curious enough to try it!

Road Trip

This piece of fast food was so captivating, so perfect in form, that I had to document it.

Long trip driving north
No organic vegetables
Who brought Mylanta?

Declined fries with that
Coke bubbles soothe my stomach
Must pack food next time

Razing The Bar

So warm today! It feels like summer. I was thinking about a project I started last year to write a non-alcoholic drink book. Most of my friends and family were totally confused by the thought of it. "Ummm... O.K. But what's the point?" Our gatherings revolve around two things, food, and drink. When we eat we talk about what it was that we ate earlier and what we will make to eat later. Oh yeah, and it's always 5:00 somewhere. Pretty much wherever there are two or more of us together it is 5:00. At times it can be exhausting. I do drink alcohol and don't plan on giving it up any time soon but I consider myself to be a responsible drinker. I am small and have no choice in the matter. The little card that comes in the mail with the car registration? The one that looks like a sizing chart for panty hose? My height and weight are way up in the left corner. "One drink in one hour = possible D.U.I. Two drinks in one hour = DEFINITE D.U.I." Enough said. All of this got me thinking about the ritual of alcohol.

In the world of alcohol there are fancy glasses and various tools that you will never get to play with if you settle on a club soda with a lime twist (my all-time favorite non-alcoholic drink). Muddlers, shakers, strainers, and shot glasses are mysterious tools to the non-drinker. Well, maybe not a shot glass but definitely a muddler. My spell-check doesn't even know what to do with that one. So, I thought, why not create a book of drinks for those of us who, for whatever reason, have chosen not to drink alcohol but still want the ritual of creating a really good tasting drink?

So to celebrate this day of summer weather, I broke out my martini shaker and mixed up a tasty strawberry lemonade.

Ingredients
4 strawberries
1/2 oz fresh ginger, sliced thin
1/3 c. lemon juice
1.5 oz pear syrup
4 oz water
Ice
Mint

Preparation
Using a muddler, mash together strawberries, ginger, and half of the lemon juice in a martini shaker
Add the rest of the lemon juice, the pear syrup, and water
Add ice, leaving room for shaking
Shake well, strain into two martini glasses
Bruise a couple of mint sprigs and float them on top

Enjoy your drink and your day!

Alive and Blogging

I'm back! My only excuse for not keeping this blog up is that I get too preoccupied in what I am doing and don't take the time to write anything down. So here I am giving this blog thing another shot.

I participated in Art Alive this past Thursday and had a wonderful time. I brought over 1,000 chocolates (a little over sixteen pounds!) to the museum fundraiser. As I arrived to set up I started to feel like Dorothy in the poppy field. So many flowers! The museum itself was a display, with fresh flowers from floor to ceiling. No time to be seduced by all of the sights and smells, I got right to work setting up and passing out chocolates to the attendees. The most fun for me was seeing all of the flower themed outfits and hairstyles and having people come back for seconds, sometimes thirds or more. I did make it back to the museum on Sunday to view the exhibition, where master flower arrangers created designs inspired by famous works of art in the museum. Incredible! My favorite was by Marilyn Panel from the Point Loma Garden Club. Her piece, inspired by Emile Bernard's Breton Women in a Ferry Boat, reflected the painting beautifully. Sorry, no photographs were allowed. My favorite chocolate of the evening? My Dark Chocolate Raspberry Truffle.