% COCOA

70-80% is good. Especially those le petit ecoulier gay french child cookies that are covered in 72% dc. yummy. 99% though why not just eat hershey's baking cocoa.

pretty high, depending. my father made some truffle things at x-mas that were almost entirely cocoa, butter, and some sort of nut..touch of brandy...those i couldn't touch...

i am suddenly reminded of the great great hillarity my father found in handing me a block of serious baking cocoa when i was about 6. i found it less funny.

Only Chuao's collection of gourmet handmade bars fully indulges your senses by combining specially selected single origin Venezuelan chocolate, with all-natural spices and ingredients to create new and inspired flavor combinations. Enjoy Chuao bars with your favorite coffee or espresso beverage for a pairing that brings out the best in both. Comes in packages of three bars (approx 0.75 Lb)

Named after the beloved patron virgin of Maracaibo, Venezuela, the Chinita Nibs bar blends chocolate with a sprinkling of fresh nutmeg and Caramelized cacao nibs from Maracaibo's famous plantations. With each indulgent bite, feel the nibs crackle, taste the smooth dark chocolate, and breathe the lingering nutmeg aroma.

it seems wrong to name a candy bar after the beloved virgin of Maracaibo.

not exactly up there in sacriledge as "Christ Coffee" on 166th and Amsterdam but pretty bad.

not only eat the virgin, but feel the nibs crackle.

our lady of perpetual lovehandles

ok there's no way I'm typing "chocolate virgin" into GIS at work. I almost did, without thinking, and then realized what I was doing.

first GIS response for "chocolate virgin":

http://freespace.virgin.net/rusty.goffe/Image11.gif

so wrong, but so right.

the dudes who own and run chuao are both from venezuala, they use fair trade single origin organic chocolate from venezuela and they work hard to promote fair trade / organic farming at home.

what are you, chocolate street team?

he's like the miller lite girl but for virgin chocolate

did you ever get a call-back?

dude, i managed an artisinal cheese shop, i know my shit. don't get me started on olive oil, organic honey, sea salt, fennel pollen, balsamic, etc

chuao is from my hometown and i know the dudes. it's the best chocolate in the world, as far as i'm concerned, though i've got a soft spot for bernard castelain french dark chocolate.

as far as mass-produced chocolate goes, you can't get much better than authentic spanish caro chocolate from aragon. 1kg from $20!

no. i don't know what happened to their phone # either. there's this mysterious gibberish entry in my phone "saved numbers", that must've been them. Maybe that night never really happened.

xpost fennel pollen?

you sprinkle it on your meats before you throw them on the grill.

but why?

Fennel Pollen has a flavor that is incredible--like taking the fennel seed, sweetening it and then intensifying it a hundred times.

In an article for Saveur magazine, Peggy Knickerbocker wrote, "If angels sprinkled a spice from their wings, this would be it."

What is Fennel Pollen?
The fennel plant grows wild on the sunny inland and coastal fields of California. With its umbels of tiny yellow flowers and dark green or bronze wispy leaves, fennel is an extremely aromatic plant with many uses - the most intriguing and flavorful being fennel pollen as a spice.

Why is it 25¢ per gram?
Fennel flowers are hand picked and laid out to dry. They are then screened many times to remove the stems and gather the pollen. It is kept frozen to assure freshness. Flowers are picked at the peak of their bloom so the best pollen is obtained.

i'm cuckoo for cocoa puffs

huh! Thank you for this tip! I will be on the lookout for this item now. Do you think they sell it at Whole Foods or will this be a chore for me to get in the wilds of DC? What is it you have to say about the balsalmic?

vahid's brief history of fennel pollen

fruit and nut farmers in italy dust the trees w/ cheap and plentiful fennel pollen to attract bees so that they get as much fertilization of the trees as possible. one day in the 19th century, the dudes were making their lunch (simple grilled fish in olive oil) on a skillet under the trees when some of the pollen drifted onto the fish. voila. a new cooking spice had been discovered.

since nobody cared how tuscan farmers eat, fennel pollen was a local secret until the 1980s, when "california cooking" ignited an interest in simple recipes made w/ fresh ingredients, and people started looking closely at the local cuisines of small farmers in the mediterranean.

wana have a FAFP, ally?

you may be able to find sugar ranch fennel pollen at whole foods. it comes in a small tin and costs about $10. yeah, that's pricey (about as much as saffron). but you only need a tiny pinch for a 1 lb filet of fish.

also you ONLY use it when you're doing quick grilling. putting it in sauces kills the taste (like w/ sea salt, it's a finisher or a rub, not a spice ingredient).

how does the flavor compare to the seeds?

pete, yes. let us venture to the whole foods for fennel pollen so we can sit in my apartment and drink WINE while we eat fennel pollen dusted meat dishes. for once in our lives we will be rich grown ups.

i sound like i'm being sarcastic but i'm actually not. i've been reminded now i do need to get more saffron as well as i ran out.

balsamics:

the best thing you can get for salad dressings is CAVALLI BALSAMIC SEASONING. it's not a true balsamic vinegar - they make it using acetified musts (the left-over crushed grape pieces) and they don't age it. BUT it tastes 100x as good as the american "balsamic" vinegars. cavalli makes high-end "real" "balsamico" (aged in barrels, running $75 and up for a perfume-sized bottle) so they know what they're doing.

you can get their balsamic seasoning for $20 a bottle if you go to a shop. they sell it for twice that on the internet, which is a total rip-off. look for it at the gourmet stores.

if you want a "real" balsamic, the best by far is VILLA MANODORI BALSAMICO. it's pricey, at $40- a bottle, but if you want to use it the way italian cooks do (less than a teaspoon drizzled straight-up on chicken or veal, fresh fruits, quick sauteed veg w/ pasta, gelato, etc) then it's the only one that has that barrel-aged sweet flavor.

$100 / bottle balsamic vinegar is syrupy, w/ a sweet and savory maple sugar flavor. slopping grocery store balsamic on fresh fruit and meat and gelato is DISGUSTING, if you had a sweet, thick aged balsamic you can see how that application makes sense.

basically anything other than "expensive" balsamic is a trendy scam. in italy it's a "special occasion" condiment, not something you mix 50/50 w/ your everyday salad dressing. your everyday salad dressing is good olive oil + lemon juice, which is cheap and light enough that you don't get sick of it day in day out.

when you want to eat a nice, rich salad, you use olive oil, lemon and mustard.

when you want to impress a date or celebrate, you drag out the expensive bottle of balsamic and make a balsamic dressing, drizzle a bit on the fish or chicken, drizzle a bit on the gelato + strawberries.

more pls

Yeah I get grocery store "balsalmic" for salad dressing purposes (mainly because I prefer vinegar taste to lemon taste in salads 9 times out of 10), not for cooking applications. I have wanted to use it (it meaning proper balsalmic not grocery store balsalmic) for dessert/fruit applications though and haven't got the faintest idea whether or not the ones I see in the $30/40 range are just rip offs or not. I hate buying things to be shipped off the internet when they're food items really. I'll try to find the Villa Mandori one.

other things I need to get:
rice vinegar
arborio rice
uhh 72% cocoa chocolate, to get back on track, I guess

i mean, whole foods 365 balsamic already costs $10 a bottle, and tastes what you'd get if you made a reduction of red wine vinegar w/ some sugar + wine thrown in. why not just bust out on a $25 bottle and use it half as often?

cavalli balsamic seasoning and villa manodori balsamic are the only ones i've seen in the $20-$40 range that aren't fancy packaged rip-offs. they're credible!

personally i can't afford to eat like that, so i basically don't. olive oil + lemon in this house, seven days a week.

this is the dark chocolate you are looking for

get it here

haha I already have strong opinions on Olive Oils but I'm intrigued by what you might have to say on that topic :)

xpost that is good to know! Cos yeah I bought that Whole Foods $15 a bottle one and it doesn't taste any different from, like, Trader Joes "white balsalmic". I just like vinegary flavor so for salad dressings I'll go with that kind of thing over lemons generally. My favorite is actually rice vinegar and dark sesame oil but I'm out of rice vinegar. But it's good to know about those two good balsalmics because quite frankly I can't justify the $100 a bottle prices some of 'em have at all but I was wary of that price range because of pretenders :(

t/s: Eating a square of baking chocolate thinking it's regular chocolate vs. eating a foil-wrapped bullion cube thinking it's regular chocolate.

ugh. I refuse to even keep boullion cubes in my house so I know my answer to that one.

olive oils? i like four

1) jean-marie cornille is the best in the world. HANDS DOWN. this is pretty much the saville row suit of olive oils. $35 bucks a 500 ml bottle, hard to find.

2) olive oil di bolsena. produced by consortium and DOC controlled like parmigiano reggiano. still not cheap, at around $20-25 a bottle. robust and peppery italian style.

3) i personally really like the unfiltered arbequina olive oil from spain made by aguibal. $15-20 for a corked bottle. it's more citrusy than most, but you already know i go for citrusy foods, so there. i don't think arbequina olive oil is DOP protected so look for aguibal.

4) since i am on a budget i get bariani olive oil. it's locally made (for me anyway, since i am in norcal). it's a little more straightforward than the others but it's good. strong + peppery, italian style. $10-15 a bottle.

whoops, i misspoke. bolsena olive oil is not DOC, as far as i can tell.

i buy battaglini olio di bolsena

vahid --

what is your feeling on green & black's?

99 all the time baby

yes, bring this beat back!

I tried Green and Black's once and it wasn't that good, but I bought it at a crusty organic coop and it may have been old.

i like it! the "espresso luxury" is one of the only flavored chocolate bars i'll go near. the "maya gold" and "dark" are good too when i don't want scharffen-berger and don't want to spring for chuao (which is like $6 a bar).

i think as far as south american chocolate goes, you can get better than "maya gold" - there's a company called "bernard castelain" from france that make nice south american chocolate bars, and of course, chuao rules.

the dark chocolate is probably about as good as scharffen-berger flavor-wise but i don't think it's as good for cooking purposes.

for cooking, i really don't think scharffen-berger can be beat. maybe caro is as good. maybe.

green and black's dried cherry dark chocolate is so, so good (and this is coming from someone who hates fruit/chocolate combos and fruit-flavored things in general).