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This months cooking with the Choc-a-holics group: Chocolate With Francois we had an excellent opportunity to create little fried donuts. The name Pets De Nonne literally means nuns fart. That really doesnt sound very good to me but ignore the name, take a bite and all skepticism melts away. The pick was by Maggie of The Other Side of 50. Great pick Maggie!

I dont like to fry. I dont have a deep fryer and I am afraid of hot oil. The result of my fears was a very ugly looking fried lump of very dark (some might say black) dough. I thoughtwho the heck is going to eat these.The only major change to the recipe, other than not deep frying, was my use of Schokinag Drinking Chocolate instead of cocoa.

After cooking, I sprinkled on the confectioners sugar. That made them look a little better. Then I approached my resident guinea pig taste tester, Ted, and he said Sure! Ill try one. He bit in and mumbled something. I said Pardon? is it ok? He said Yeah. Its good. I just cant tell what it is.At that point I didnt declare Its a Nuns Fart! Since on a previous day I had baked a carob-honey sponge for diarrhea and he was certain to begin wondering where my baking was going. Ted came in the kitchen, hovered over the brown-black lumps of fried dough and said I want another. I pointed out a smaller one and he said too small. He went for a bigger one, sprinkled on the sugar and said Its a good thing we have the gym or youd be looking at Two Ton Tony! I guess if he gained an exorbitant amount of weight, hed change his name to Tony.

My Pets De Nonne are not pretty as they flattened out because I didnt deep fry. In fact I initially had the oil too hot (suppose to be 350F). But the taste.the taste IS feather light and they are sinfully delicious. A nun would NEVER indulge in such an extravagance. Orwould she?Wonderful recipe by Francois Payard from his book Chocolate Epiphany. Go to this link for all the details: Apple Crumbles

Joanne

More than 600 purveyors of gourmet foods sought the attention of buyers, brokers, shopkeepers, party planners and journalists this month at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. And plenty of them were stretching the definition of "gourmet."Retail shops and supermarkets from around the country sent their buyers on a mission of taste to this semiannual trade show Jan. 17-19, sponsored by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. Among the products they encountered: a meatball mix (which was surprisingly good), countless crackers, kosher sparkling water and even Bacon Marshmallow S'more Kits (unspeakably bad).Even in the recession, food-makers created lavish booths and flashy installations. Costumed ladies passed out penny candy like old-fashioned cigarette girls, and the bowls of free food samples seemed bottomless.Blood Orange Marmalade and Triple Nut Kentucky Bourbon Brittle were among recent winners of the Sofi Award, a spotlight for excellence. Bacon Popcorn made the San Francisco Chronicle's list of highlights. On the darker side of the spectrum were big, clumpy chocolates designed for shelf stability (meaning, no cream, butter or any ingredient demanding freshness) and price point (cheap). The result: bad bonbons.Savor California, a collection of gourmet artisans, sent its members out to roam the floor in search of the unofficial worst-in-show product. The dubious honor went to a bag of truffle popcorn. When opened at the Savor California booth, heads turned, brows wrinkled and a chorus of "What's that smell?" resounded. At this show, popcorn served as a vehicle for both the sublime and the malodorous.Can't miss: 'Hippie Chips' and tequilaEvery show has big spenders whose booths draw a crowd of shoppers, gawkers and swag-seekers. Stubb's, a prominent Texas barbecue sauce-maker, wheeled in a full-size trailer replete with smoker, grill, front porch, rocking chairs, red gingham tablecloths and overall-clad salesmen. Freshly barbecued ribs and a smart lineup of tasty products delivered on the promise of the presentation. Another dazzler was Rock 'n' Roll Gourmet, sellers of "Hippie Chips," whose booth became a surf shack where loud music, psychedelic lights and free-flowing shots of tequila -- a winning combo in any trade show setting -- accompanied their products.But it was chocolate maker TCHO that stood out for presenting substance, not just style. The craft batch manufacturer of premium chocolate based on San Francisco's Pier 17 started five years ago as a marriage of high-tech and food cultures. Founder Timothy Childs, a former NASA engineer, pioneered the flavor wheel -- a way to organize chocolate's flavor profiles beyond the standard description of cacao percentages, such as "72% cacao."

TCHO's chocolate flavor wheelIn September, TCHO launched an organic, fair-trade chocolate line that stands out in a slim field. Most organic chocolates are limited in flavor depth because they are limited in bean selection; only a small percentage of the world's cacao beans are organically grown and fair-trade certified. TCHO passed out its flavor wheel to visitors, and they were donned by chocolatiers who support the brand, and by extension, the effort to make chocolate as ethical as it is delightful.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Susie Norris is a chocolatier, TV producer and author of the new book "Chocolate Bliss."Photos, from top: Buyers and journalists tried out the latest offerings from more than 600 gourmet food makers at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Credit: National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. Bottom, the TCHO chocolate taste wheel. Credit: Susie Norris.

It's like chocolate Facebook? I'm not sure I follow.I joined because I don't know anyone who appreciates Chocolate in the way I do. Everyone I know is crazy about M&Ms, and Hershey's Kisses. I'd much rather have something richer and smoother. My friends think those are smooth. So, I'm ready to get to know people who understand. But how do I do that?Right now, the best chocolate I'm familiar with is Lindt. Is there better chocolate that's readily available? Also, for those who live in Phila., PA, there's a place called Naked Chocolate Cafe. I have no idea why it's called that, but they have some really good chocolate there. They have things like sipping chocolate, and delicious chocolate drinks.So, if you can see this, and care enough to help me get acquainted with this community (and new chocolates), I'd greatly appreciate it!

The Knave of Hearts would like to say how proud we were to represent Pilesgrove, N.J. in the Chef's Competition at the Philly Candy Show in Atlantic City. It was a true pleasure to meet many of you at the show!Sincerely,Gary Curry, Ex. Chef / ProprietorThe Knave of Hearts, LLC. www.theknaveofhearts.net

Sometime in 2006 in the oppressive summer heat that invades Phoenix, AZ, I was introduced to a new chocolate - Cru Sauvage ; the newest entry in Felchlin's Grand Cru line and made from "wild" beans harvested in the middle of absolutely nowhere in Eastern Bolivia.The story of their making it to market is quite remarkable and is testament to the patience of my host on my trip, Volker Lehmann. Convinced the beans he had were something special Volker traveled around the world trying to get chocolate makers interested in making chocolate from them. One of the main complaints he got about the beans was that they were too small to make chocolate economically.Entranced by the story, I was astonished when I saw where the trees were growing and what they looked like. The trees (which are technically feral, not wild, because they were planted - over 500 years ago even though they have not been tended in hundreds of years), grow on islands in the middle of a seemingly endless savannah. Amazingly, the savannah (some 70,000 acres) AND the islands are all man-made. The multi-trunked trees also amaze; they are unlike any other trees I have seen.

Ever since that day in 2006 I have wanted to visit this place - the Hacienda Tranquilidad and meet with the gentleman who persevered to sell the beans to Felchlin. In my opinion (and that of others), the 2006 harvest especially made one of the great chocolates produced anywhere in the past decade or more.

So, it is with great delight that within about 12 hours I am going to be boarding a plane at LaGuardia airport in NYC headed to Miami where I will catch a red-eye to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. There I will be met by Mr Lehmann and after spending the day in Santa Cruz Volker and I will board the overnight bus for Trinidad where we will catch a plane to Baures , a little more than 100km from the border with Brasil and near the Itenez Forest Reserve. There we will take a jeep the last few miles to the Hacienda Tranquilidad.It is the peak harvest season in this part of Bolivia and even though the weather forecast calls for a greater than 50% chance of thundershowers for my entire trip, I will do everything that I possibly can to make my way to one of those islands to stand among those remarkable trees, open a pod, and suck the sweet pulp off perfectly fresh-ripe cacao seeds.I apologize for the dearth of pictures (these were taken from Felchlin's web site), but I do hope to have many more to share in the coming days. Stay tuned ...

Dear Friends,I am putting together a Chocolate, Dessert and Wine Lover's 'Tasting' Evening to benefit the Shelter for the Homeless. The 'Tasting' event will take place on Thursday, February 11th at the Hilton in Stamford, CT from 6pm - 9pm. Tickets are only $35 each if purchased by February 8th, all proceeds will be donated to the Shelter for the Homeless.I am very pleased to share with you that we have 34 Chocolate & Dessert Vendors confirmed including Adreanna Limbach and Adreanna's Fabulous Chocolates!In addition, there will be 10 Wine and Beverage Purveyors and 11 Merchants selling items such as Jewelry, Clothes, Flowers, etc. Just in time for Valentine's Day!I have also signed-up Moffly Publications and 95.9 THE FOX to promote this event.Additional information can be found on the following link, including the link to buy tickets: http://shelterbenefit.jbakerwebdesign.com/ My contact information: sweicker@sbweventsgroup.com or, (203) 536-9377.Thank you for supporting this event to benefit the Shelter for the Homeless!Your friend,Scot

This article was written for and originally appeared in the Top Chef for Foodies blogs sometime in late 2007 or early 2008. BravoTV/NBC Universal in their infinite wisdom saw fit to remove all references to it when I stopped writing for them. As I was nearing the final draft deadline for my book, Discover Chocolate, my editors asked me to rethink the content of the fourth major chapter of the book. Originally it was going to be a section on the health benefits of chocolate but as we got closer and closer to finishing the rest of the book, that topic began to seem less and less appropriate.Since probably forever there has been a connection in people's minds between chocolate and wine. From personal experience I knew that the conventional wisdom about pairing chocolate and wine (dark chocolate goes with red wine) was just about as useful as the advice about pairing wine and flesh (red wine goes with meat, white wine goes with fish). There are enough exceptions to that rule to fill a very large book.So, the fourth chapter ended up being all about pairing various kinds of chocolates with various kinds of wines and spirits.The first rule about pairing wine and chocolate is that there are no hard and fast rules.Anyone who knows anything about wine can tell you that there is no one single flavor description for Syrah/Shiraz wines. Depending on where the grapes are grown, the weather in any particular year prior to harvest, and the individual sensibilities of the winemaker there are huge differences between wines that are produced from grapes grown just a few miles apart.Similarly, anyone who knows anything about chocolate can tell you that there is no one single flavor description for chocolate made from Trinitario beans, or Porcelana. Extrapolating that to a general descriptor (e.g., dark chocolate) and a percentage cacao (e.g., 70%) is so vague as to be meaningless.But that's just what some chocolate companies try to do. One very public example of this can be found online at the San Francisco Chocolate Factory ( www.sfchocolate.com ). They produce something called "The Wine Lover's Collection." This set is comprised of six, 3.5oz tins of chocolate each matched with a particular style of wine. The 54% is said to be good with Ports (Which kind? Ruby? Tawny?) while the 72% should be paired with Zins. There are percentage matches between Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Syrah - 31%, 38%, 55% [sic], 58%, and 61%.These kinds of pairing recommendations are simply wrong in most cases.One place I did not spend enough time thinking about was in pairing chocolate and beer; in fact I mentioned that I preferred to put the chocolate in chili and eat that with beer.What, you say? Ick? Chocolate and beer? Well, then, you probably haven't tasted any good pairings. And neither had I, even though I had been thoroughly introduced to the concept by Pete Slosberg, the creator of Wicked Pete's Ale and the founder of Cocoa Pete's ( www.cocoapetes.com , currently undergoing renovation), a gourmet chocolate brand. Obviously, Pete sees the connection and in fact spends quite a bit of time promoting his chocolates at chocolate and beer tastings around the country, but especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.SO, I was very intrigued when chocolate-maker Shawn Askinosie of Askinosie Chocolate ( www.askinosie.com ) sent me an e-mail asking me what I knew about a chocolate, cheese, and beer tasting event in NYC and whether or not he should try to get involved in it.I contacted the organizers of the event, the New York City Degustation Advisory Team ( www.nycdat.com ), to see if I could get myself a seat at the next tasting (I did), not really knowing what to expect.NYCDAT founders Chris Cuzme and Mary Izett are both huge fans of and hugely knowledgeable about craft beers and have been parlaying that interest into a series of hugely fun tasting events at Jimmy's #43 ( www.jimmysno43.com ) on Manhattan's lower east side.Mary makes the case, very early on in her introduction to pairing, that because both chocolate and beer are made using ingredients that are roasted, it makes sense that they contain complementary flavors and aromas. Wines contain few if any of these compounds (and only if they are aged in wooden barrels that have been charred by fire) and for this, as well as many other reasons, it's harder to pair wines with chocolates than beers with chocolates.Makes sense when you think about it that way, no? Furthermore, there is a preoccupation with pairing wines with solid chocolates and pairing beers with filled chocolates, especially when you add the dimension of the cheese opens up a broad panorama of taste possibilities. However, as both Mary and Chris point out, while it's fairly easy to find pairings that work with any combination of two elements, finding ones that work with all three is a challenge that requires much eating of chocolate and cheese and drinking beer.Sounds tough - not.I hosted a chocolate, cheese, and beer tasting for a group I organize on Meetup (chocolate.meetup.com/44/) that was attended by about 25 people; a mix of chocolate fans and beer fans with only a small handful that were both. The beers were all chosen from the selection at Jimmy's, the cheeses were provided by Saxelby Cheese Mongers in the Essex Street Market, and the truffles were provided by Roni-Sue, also in the Essex Street Market).Perhaps the most interesting pairing of the evening was the combination of a seasonal Belgian beer - Winterkoninskske (Winter King) 8.3% alcohol by volume with a Mecox Bay Dairy (Long Island, New York) Sigit (made from raw cow's milk and aged a minimum of 18 months) with a dark chocolate truffle flavored with ginger.The tasting notes say that this aged cheese, "has a unique taste characteristic of alpine-type cheeses." I don't know what this means really, but the cheese did have a sort of piney freshness to it. The Winter King beer is made with seven different types of malt and two types of hops with, "a pure, sugary flavor and a long, bitter aftertaste." All the hops in the beer, however, created for me a sort of resin-y scented aroma and taste and when the cheese and the beer were in the mouth at the same time, this sensation of piney, almost minty, freshness was quite pronounced. Crystallized ginger not only has heat but it has a sharp clear taste that magnified the sensation even more while the depth of the dark chocolate and the fat in the chocolate and cheese counterbalanced the bitterness of the beer and its alcoholic bite.Other pairings included Rogue Brewery's Shakespeare Stout with a Pecan Pie truffle and a raw cow's milk blue cheese (Bayley Hazen) from Vermont's Jasper Hill Farm; Sam Smith's Taddy Porter with a Port and Fig truffle and a raw cow's milk cheese (Dorset) from Vermont's Consider Bardwell Farm; Original Sin Apple Cider with a Pistachio truffle and another Jasper Hill Farm raw cow's milk cheese (Constant Bliss).Finally we did pair beers with straight dark chocolates. The most interesting pairing here was two beers (Troubador Obscura and Chimay Triple (Cinq Cents)) with Amano's Madagascar 70%. What was remarkable here was how vastly different the chocolate tasted with each of the beers and how the chocolate influenced the taste of the beers - which is to be expected but was nonetheless surprising.Even thought most of the beers we tried were high-alcohol (over 8% by volume) this is still significantly less than most wines. So even though seven beers were poured during the tasting itself and we shared around of pale ale to start (to "calibrate our palates"), I was noticeably less affected than I would be if I was tasting with the same number of wines.A word to the wise, however. As a general rule, when you pair beers with chocolates and cheese, you will want to stick with the darker, higher-alcohol beers. The three-two (3.2%) beer you can get in Utah, plus light and n-a beers are ones you should probably steer clear of. Stick to beers with a good deal of body and lots of taste (and calories), and you'll find pairing easier.Salut!PS. IMO, the most versatile wine for pairing with chocolates I have found is the Italian sparkling wine, Prosecco. One of the reasons Prosecco works (and many Spanish Cavas, but not French Champagnes) is that it has a tendency to be less alcoholic and less sharp than Champagne and the texture of the bubbles tends to be very creamy. It is the creaminess of the texture of Prosecco, I am convinced, that is the key reason why it pairs so well with chocolate, which has a related textural quality in the mouth.

This is quite an involved recipe, time consuming but nothing too difficult. Learn to work with acetate and cocoa butter. here is the link: http://www.applecrumbles.com/2009/12/30/chocolate-with-francois-pine-nut-turron-cake/

All winter long I've been experimenting with different ways to candy orange peel, mandarin peel, lemon slices including air drying them, dehydrating, rolling in sugar without candying.It seems like there is a big need for candied peel as well as candied ginger, and that most of what people use or what you can buy in the store is imported.I'll be taking pictures of my experiments but I'm curious for any who read this - would you have interest in great candied peel or candied citrus where you know the origin/growers of the fruit?

Hello fellow chocolate heads... I'm looking for some cacao beans. Just small quantities (500g-1kg) of beans to buy - fermented and unfermented, all unshelled ('unpeeled'), to experiment with for making old-school drinking chocolate. And ideally all from Central America, eg Tabasco, Guatemala - because I'm trying to replicate pre-Colombian cacao-based drinks. I'm writing a book on it, and I'm doing a little talk in February at which I'd like to supply audience members with samples of said drinks, with ingredients all sourced (if poss) from the places of origin of the recipes. But I can't afford to fly to central America to buy ingredients right now, and I'm almost tearing my hair out trying to find suppliers on the web.. It's all 'raw, peeled' or from Africa... I'll settle for cacao from anywhere if I have to, but I wondered if any of you folks might know a supplier? Many thanks in advance - and happy 2010.