Apples and Chocolate
Apparently a company was able to build an entire business of preslicing apples, dipping them in a fixative that keeps them fresh for a month, and selling them to the public.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/magazine/12apples.html
Right. So it has come to this? We'll buy seven dollar chocolate bars with notes of bergamot and wood mushroom but we can't find the time to eat *an apple* without someone preslicing and preserving it?
I admit, I am a wierd girl with my apples. I'll eat a peach in a second, but apples I have a little problem with. I take them to class with me, thinking they will be the perfect snack. I take them out of my bag in class, hold them, admire their greenness, feel their roundness and the weight of them. Occasionally I'll rest my face on them for a minute. And then, nine times out of ten, back into my bag they go. B. always looks at me askance when I take the same apple out of my bag that I put in it that morning. This can go own for days.
It's just that once you bite into the darn thing, you have to finish it. It's not like a sandwich, which you can eat half of and throw back in the Ziploc. And if you don't have a napkin the juice gets all over you. Also, if you're eating it in class there are those wierd munching, crunching, and juice sucking sounds that elicit wierd stares from your older colleagues while you listen to them discuss Balzac.
But I won't make bread in the bread machine, I don't buy premixed salad, and I won't buy cut up apples, damnit. Hmp! Just going to have to eat them like a real grown up person. (She says, eyeing the apple sitting next to what remained of a nice fat piece of fresh baked foccacia drizzled with honey on her breakfast plate.....I'd get the bread again before naturally eating the fruit)
Now as for this chocolate business I've been reading so much about lately. It's a little pretentious, I think. I love good, dark, high quality chocolate as much as the next girl. But free trade chocolate? Single origin chocolate? "Tastings" of chocolate? The panel in Gourmet magazine that recommended seven dollar Valrhona chocolate bars as the best for brownies???
I think not. I tried the five dollar chocolate bars (Lindt, Gourmet said they were "good, but not overly complex") in brownies. Good brownies. MMMM. Better than mix. Expensive as hell. I then tried Hershey's baking squares, oh so conveniently seperated into ounce-each foil wrapped packets. Equally yummy. Bitches. The secret to fanatastic brownies isn't the uber expensive chocolate...it's melting real chocolate instead of cocoa powder or using mix. OK, you do want decent chocolate. I wouldn't use chocolate chips or milk chocolate, but Hershey's semisweet does the trick just fine. Point is, if you are mixing it with vanilla, eggs, and flour and then baking it, the fancy pants notes of flavor aren't coming through anyway.
Now I do admit that those same seven dollar bars are goooood when I want a bar to eat by itself at room temp. Yep. Worth the money. Although I still won't buy organic chocolate. There's no gaurantee it's organic, first of all. And as for single origin, what's the point? The best chocolates are blends. I have little interest in being able to tell an Africa coca bean from a South American one. My favorite chocolate company in the world (Recchiuti in SF if anyone has a sudden irredemable urge to send me a box...) doesn't make a big deal out of single origin chocolate. And I admit, their chocolate is good enough that I might actually stop to think about the secondary "notes."
OT note:
I also learned how to make truffles have that "snap" on the outside...I was at Reading and some fellow was demonstrating regular truffles and I asked him. So he grabbed a truffle, dunked it in the melted chocolate he was using to coat the strawberries, and said "there you go!" The reason why some of them dont "snap" as nicely as others has to do with how fresh that coating is and how many times they had to dip it to get it smooth. If anyone wants the recipie comment and I'll post it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/magazine/12apples.html
Right. So it has come to this? We'll buy seven dollar chocolate bars with notes of bergamot and wood mushroom but we can't find the time to eat *an apple* without someone preslicing and preserving it?
I admit, I am a wierd girl with my apples. I'll eat a peach in a second, but apples I have a little problem with. I take them to class with me, thinking they will be the perfect snack. I take them out of my bag in class, hold them, admire their greenness, feel their roundness and the weight of them. Occasionally I'll rest my face on them for a minute. And then, nine times out of ten, back into my bag they go. B. always looks at me askance when I take the same apple out of my bag that I put in it that morning. This can go own for days.
It's just that once you bite into the darn thing, you have to finish it. It's not like a sandwich, which you can eat half of and throw back in the Ziploc. And if you don't have a napkin the juice gets all over you. Also, if you're eating it in class there are those wierd munching, crunching, and juice sucking sounds that elicit wierd stares from your older colleagues while you listen to them discuss Balzac.
But I won't make bread in the bread machine, I don't buy premixed salad, and I won't buy cut up apples, damnit. Hmp! Just going to have to eat them like a real grown up person. (She says, eyeing the apple sitting next to what remained of a nice fat piece of fresh baked foccacia drizzled with honey on her breakfast plate.....I'd get the bread again before naturally eating the fruit)
Now as for this chocolate business I've been reading so much about lately. It's a little pretentious, I think. I love good, dark, high quality chocolate as much as the next girl. But free trade chocolate? Single origin chocolate? "Tastings" of chocolate? The panel in Gourmet magazine that recommended seven dollar Valrhona chocolate bars as the best for brownies???
I think not. I tried the five dollar chocolate bars (Lindt, Gourmet said they were "good, but not overly complex") in brownies. Good brownies. MMMM. Better than mix. Expensive as hell. I then tried Hershey's baking squares, oh so conveniently seperated into ounce-each foil wrapped packets. Equally yummy. Bitches. The secret to fanatastic brownies isn't the uber expensive chocolate...it's melting real chocolate instead of cocoa powder or using mix. OK, you do want decent chocolate. I wouldn't use chocolate chips or milk chocolate, but Hershey's semisweet does the trick just fine. Point is, if you are mixing it with vanilla, eggs, and flour and then baking it, the fancy pants notes of flavor aren't coming through anyway.
Now I do admit that those same seven dollar bars are goooood when I want a bar to eat by itself at room temp. Yep. Worth the money. Although I still won't buy organic chocolate. There's no gaurantee it's organic, first of all. And as for single origin, what's the point? The best chocolates are blends. I have little interest in being able to tell an Africa coca bean from a South American one. My favorite chocolate company in the world (Recchiuti in SF if anyone has a sudden irredemable urge to send me a box...) doesn't make a big deal out of single origin chocolate. And I admit, their chocolate is good enough that I might actually stop to think about the secondary "notes."
OT note:
I also learned how to make truffles have that "snap" on the outside...I was at Reading and some fellow was demonstrating regular truffles and I asked him. So he grabbed a truffle, dunked it in the melted chocolate he was using to coat the strawberries, and said "there you go!" The reason why some of them dont "snap" as nicely as others has to do with how fresh that coating is and how many times they had to dip it to get it smooth. If anyone wants the recipie comment and I'll post it.