Sometimes the rules don’t apply.

Like that rule that I should eat wholesome foods, and eschew items with ingredients I can not pronounce. Most of the time, I wholeheartedly agree with Michael Pollan’s edict.

Occasionally, some demon from within takes over my motor functions and puts products with “chocolate flavor” in my basket, like this “Chocolate Flavor Spread with Caramel Candy Pieces”. In my defense, it seems much more wholesome in Swedish: “Chokladkrokant Bredbar“. And IKEA sells it in other English speaking countries as “Chocolate Butterscotch Spread” which, if I use my imagination, is something that Nigel Slater would recommend that I spoon on some warm snacking cake on a lazy Sunday morning. And then there is the usage suggestion: “Use when baking, in home-made ice cream, in a glass of warm milk for breakfast or enjoy as it is directly from the jar.” Directly from the jar, you say, IKEA? I do believe I will. 

If you find yourself near an IKEA with a similar demon inside of you, I encourage you to let it be in control when you walk past this item. Happy Sunday!

Alice Medrich, Cookie Queen.

There are some cookbooks I read at the shop and fall madly in love with, but refuse to take home until I can no longer resist them because I know that I’m doomed when I do. Doomed! [Don’t worry, they win out at the end, I assure you.] Alice Medrich’s ‘Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies‘ is one of those books.

This is because if there is any problem worse than my “cook-book problem”, it is my “cook-ie problem”. I am the type of person who will eat an entire batch of cookies if proper safeguarding precautions are not taken. And, as I’ve been giving in a little too often to my cookie problem, the one pair of jeans that I can still fit into are threatening to burst. I’m holding out as long as I can, damn it.

Alice came to Omnivore to talk about the book, and after spending a whole hour with the Goddess of Chocolate, it has taken every effort of mine not to bring it home and immediately start baking. My resolve was even further weakened by actually eating cookies made from the book:

For the talk, Celia made her Alfajores, a sweet and slightly crispy Latin American cookie filled generously with dulce de leche. Crispy and Gooey? Yes, please! She tweaked the recipe slightly to add some nuts and a little bit of extra salt. I had four, and would have had more had my mother not ingrained the principle of sharing. This was difficult. Had I been only a *slightly more selfish* and greedy person, there would have been none left in minutes.

A few reasons why you need this book:

1. It’s by Alice Medrich. **(see below)

2. The broad organization. The book is a play on textures and flavors. You get to choose from Crispy, Crunchy, Chunky, Chewy, Gooey, Flaky, and Melt in your mouth. Alice Medrich is a “crispy” girl. I’m a “chunky” girl myself. Yes, I said that. The more chocolate hunks or nuts, the better.

3. It’s all in the details. “Cookies seem deceptively simple. But success with cookies is success in the details,” Alice noted. When you give the same recipe to ten cookie bakers, even experienced ones, you might just come out with ten completely different versions.

This book seeks to streamline your baking. If you can conquer at least some of the variables, you will make better cookies. A user’s guide, quick start, FAQ’s, ingredients, equipment, are all there to make cooking baking more precise and successful.

The quick start gives the five most important details about successful cooking baking: amounts of flour, types of flour, oven temperatures, preheating the oven, and types of baking sheets. The FAQ’s go into even more detail about basic ideas: how to toast nuts, why you would chill cookie dough, what the best way to flatten dough, etc.

And yes, Alice Medrich wants you to get a scale. (And so do I. I got mine at Ikea for 12 dollars. What are you waiting for?) The measurements in the book are also in cups, but using a scale will give you great, consistent results.

4. The “Smart Search”. Even better than just an index, there is a brilliant section called the “smart search”. Need Wheat-free cookies? She lists the 40 or so options for you. Whole-Grains? Dairy-free? Ditto. Ridiculously Quick and Easy? Same.  Don’t have time to bake during the holiday season? Well, there’s a whole list of ‘Doughs that Freeze Well’ and ‘Cookies that Keep At Least 2 Weeks’. Yes, there are even low-fat. Although, I’ve become wise to understand that low-fat doesn’t in any way mean that you should eat the whole batch.

5. Simplicity. After 8 cookbooks, things are getting more do-able for the home-cook. That doesn’t mean that she skimped on the fun stuff. “Anything I do, I need to learn something, and I need to teach something,” Medrich says. There are classics, and new twists on old favorites. “I didn’t want it to be something that an ordinary home baker with kids wouldn’t want to pick up and bake from”.

6. Well tested recipes. If you are familiar with any of her older cookbooks, including her IACP winning book ‘BitterSweet‘ you know first hand that her recipes work. When she wrote her first cookbook, she did a huge series of ‘Side-by-Side’ testing in a kitchen with a friend to compare how they interpreted the written recipes, and tweak to get more consistent results. (A fairly genius idea.)

Medrich also teaches cooking classes. “The teaching helps, because I do the recipes and get to see what questions come up.” Teaching is also useful to help a recipe writer guide the reader in the recipes. Learning how people interpret words on the page teaches her to be a better writer and learn to use more specific explanations. And the difficult part of testing? “First, too much tasting, and second, knowing when to stop.”

7. Well written recipes. Often, recipes take for granted things that are intuitive if you’ve had a lot of practice in the kitchen, and the author forgets to write down steps that the novice might not yet know. When you read through any of Alice Medrich’s recipes, it’s like you have a perceptive friend guiding you through things, so you don’t forget the basics while under fire.

It was rumored that Julia Child once said to Flo Braker “Write what works for you, Dearie”, and Medrich re-emphasizes that. “The good writers are the ones who ignore how it’s always been done and explain it in a way that makes sense to them.”

8. The personal touch. Alice has been on the set since book one cooking and styling her own dishes for the photo shoots. (For those less familiar with cookbook production, this is rarely the case). “It’s the thrilling part of the process in this book!” she said.

** While it’s important to focus on the merits of the cookbook itself, I take great pleasure in knowing the history of cookbook authors. It sweetens the deal when you get to use a book written by an inspirational (and smiling!) woman like Alice Medrich.

The Backstory:

When Alice Medrich was twenty, she went to Paris. It was there that Mme. Estelle, her land-lady, taught her about the Truffle, “that smooth, bittersweet statement about chocolate” that unbeknownst to her, would lead her to great things.

Upon coming back to Berkeley, her future still unclear, she opted for the rational lifestyle choice of putting off the real world… and heading to business school. Given that I almost went to business school right after graduating college, I can understand the impulse. (Though I’m glad I didn’t.)

At business school, she spent her free time making cocoa dusted chocolate truffles for the new Pig-By-The-Tail, Victoria Wise’s charcuterie shop. It didn’t take long to realize that she was becoming more interested in creating a dessert repertoire than dealing with case studies, and soon dropped out of b-school.

Before opening a pastry shop, Medrich did her due diligence. She headed back to Paris to take classes at Lenôtre, the famed pastry school, where she was often the only woman in her pastry classes.

She learned timing, temperature, and the physicality of multiplying recipes by trial-by-fire: at Pig-By-The-Tail, she would come up with a weekly special at the beginning of the week, an elaborate pastry that could be pre-ordered by six lucky customers. Without actually knowing if it would work, Medrich set about learning the recipes as she went – theoretically she would get enough practice by the end of the week to make at least six!

In 1976, she opened her shop, ‘Cocolat’.

I’ve heard more than one Bay Area native wax poetic about Cocolat and moan desperately about Alice’s legendary truffles. Celia (@omnivorebooks) used to head to the shop with cash from her co-workers in each pocket to pick up a bounty on her breaks. Mary (@mcs3000) recalled saving money to buy Alice’s first cookbook and making her Strawberry Carrousel Cake.

As a newcomer to San Francisco, it’s stories about shops like Cocolat that make me regret having not grown up here. By the time I moved here, Cocolat was no longer. (Pig-By-The-Tail, and Fran Gage’s Pâtisserie Française are others that I tragically missed out on.) I can’t live my life dwelling upon the fact that I’ve lived in the wrong era, but stories about the truffles and Cocolat’s ‘Reine de Saba’ make it hard not to. Another good reason for cookbooks like ‘Chewy Gooey” to help keep a legacy alive!

Alice’s Quick Bites:

That’s a lot of chocolate! In the early days, it wasn’t so easy to find quality ingredients. She used to send friends and family to purchase all the Ghiradelli Semisweet chocolate from the supermarkets (the best you could find at the time), until she realized that she used enough to get wholesale. Soon, Fifty pounds of chocolate wasn’t enough, and by the time she opened Cocolat, she was getting 300, even 500 pounds a month of chocolate delivered to her door!

Her favorite baking chocolates? “The most important thing is to use what you like the taste of. I still use Scharfenberger, because I like the taste a lot,” Alice says. (While I love using Valrhona myself, for chocolate chips I use Ghiradelli 60% cacao, which are flatter discs because of a higher fat content.)

Who eats all the recipes she tests? Her neighbors have been next door from her for more than thirty years, and they don’t accept treats anymore. (She fondly remembers the day that they sat down and ate an entire cake together.) Nowadays she gives them to whoever will take them – the new neighbors on the block, the synagogue down the street, a friend’s softball team.

On Inspiration: Inspiration comes from everywhere. Sometimes easily: “A lot of new recipes come from a recipe that is good already rather than a recipe you want to fix.” Other times, more abstractly:  “I once developed a recipe from a salad from one of Paula Wolfert’s cookbooks.”

Her next project: Already in the works, a baking book for people more comfortable with cooking than with baking. Recipes that work the way cooks work, with a little bit more flexibility.

Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies
by Alice Medrich
384 pages
Artisan Books

http://alicemedrich.blogspot.com/

San Francisco International Chocolate Salon 2010

fort mason(Photo: Historic Fort Mason)

This weekend I headed out to Fort Mason to attend the San Francisco International Chocolate Salon. Located at the top of San Francisco right near the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Mason is a former army post that is a great example of repurposing historic buildings for modern use . The old dock warehouses have been taken over by the Fort Mason Center, an organization devoted to the culture of San Francisco. Each year the center puts on thousands of events in the spaces, and the area also houses a variety of arts organizations, and the long standing Greens Restaurant: the upscale vegetarian dining establishment where one of my favorite cookbook authors Deborah Madison once reigned in the kitchen.

Having never been to Fort Mason before (shame on me!), all I knew from my peers was that this was an old army warehouse sized room devoted to chocolate… chocolate everywhere… samples of chocolate… everywhere. And I missed this last year? So this time I made sure to register early.

What I found out after walking through the fair: International Salon is more like… “International” in the baseball “world” series type of connotation. Most of the chocolates that I tried were west coast confections, with a few national companies. Overall I was a little disappointed at the lack of creativity – sure there was salt and chocolate everywhere, and bacon also made it’s appearance, but a lot of the chocolate was over sugary, and the flavorings overpowering.  Nevertheless, there were some redeeming standouts.

celia and elizabeth

My first responsibility at the fair was a work errand – I had to run back to see Celia at the Omnivore Books table, and hand her off some more bookmarks and calendars from the bookstore, as she had run out (Always a good thing!) Celia was in charge of author signings from some of the choco-celebs doing talks at the fair. When I got back to the booth, there was Elizabeth Falkner, of Citizen Cake, Orson, and Top Chef fame, just hanging out. I made sure to get a requisite silly picture of her and Celia.

Highlights of the salon:

Clarine’s Florentines: The florentine is an italian cookie made of nuts and caramel, which can be dipped into chocolate. These are one of my favorite cookies, but I hesitate to bake them because I have no restraint- once I make a batch, they find themselves quickly down the hatch. My hatch, only mine, because I’m greedy. (Like that? I rhyme and I’m ridiculous…)

Clarine makes her florentines out of Berkeley with almonds mixed in a caramel of butter, sugar, honey and cream, and are dipped in Guittard bittersweet chocolate. They were the first product I sampled at the fair, and the last (I went for a second go.)

Clarines Florentines

Lavender Chocolate Gelato: Ali’i Kula Lavender, a lavender farm on the island of Maui. I didn’t actually know that Hawaii grew lavender, but apparently the do all year round. Their delicious gelato is unfortunately only available in Hawaii, but I’m looking forward to recreating this combination at home this summer.

lavendar chocolate ice cream

Marti Chocolates: I headed over to the Marti booth on the recommendation of Elizabeth Falkner, and was impressed with the chocolates they had to offer. Marti, based in LA had some of the more creative flavors showcased at the salon, including Goat CheeseZesty Philipine Lime in Dark Chocolate, and Durian, which I dutifully sampled and actually enjoyed. I thought that the flavors of the fillings and the chocolate both came through clearly. They were quite delicious.

marti durian

Poco Dolce Chocolate – it’s not a secret, I’m in love with these chocolate squares ever since I had my first one last year conveyed in this moment: “Deep, dark chocolate. Spicy chile pepper with hints of cinnamon. Crunchy little toasted pumpkin seeds nestled in between. And flecks of salt that make the chocolate sing! You experience each individual layer and then they mix together and… I can’t come close to giving them justice, you really have to just try one.”

image

I also liked the caramels dipped in chocolate with salt from Posh Chocolates – I’m love the combination of chocolate and salt, and this company had some particularly creative salts that they were using, including White Truffle Oil Caramel with Cyprus Flaked Sea Salt, Coconut-Pineapple Caramel with Hawaiian Pink Sea Salt, and Bacon Caramel with Apple wood Smoked Sea Salt. I thought the flavors were good, but in some cases the salt seemed to overwhelm the chocolate.

image

After gorging myself with chocolate, my camera became lazy- so not pictured, but enjoyed:

Fentiman’s Botanically Brewed beverages: After tasting these at both the Green Fest, at Il Cane Rosso, and now at the chocolate salon, I’m hooked. My particular favorite is the Shandy soda – a mixture of beer and lemonade (their version has less than .5% alcohol). Fentiman’s soda is also the center of food scandal, after the state of Maine decided to outlaw their products to minors (even though it has less alcohol than…bread…yes, bread.) Sometimes I’m just so befuddled by people that I want to leave and start my own country somewhere.

Marin French Cheese Company (also known as the Cheese Factory and Rouge et Noir): I recently learned from reading Gordon Edgar’s ‘Cheesemonger – A Life on the Wedge’ that this is the oldest cheese manufacturer in the country. I haven’t yet gone to visit, but I think it’s on my to-do list for this spring. Cheese tour anyone?

And finally, what would a chocolate salon be without makeovers??? (Yeah, I was a little perplexed about that too.) But, I do admit that I waited an absurdly long time in line to get my girly beauty fix at Bare Escentuals, maker of the Bare Minerals line of cosmetics. While my date sat patiently for 40 minutes playing scrabble on my ipod, (*he was very, very patient), I sat getting dolled up and left with a handful of free samples.

The lipgloss they put on was the final touch, and as I was already completely full from chocolate samples, it was the natural conclusion to our time at the fair. Will I go next year? Perhaps. The $25 price tag for the chocolate salon is a little steep, but for those willing to be gluttonous, this isn’t too bad of a deal.

If anything, I should set up a booth selling milk and water. I think I’d make a killing.

Poco Dolce Chocolates

Poco Dolce Chocolate

There is an empty canister of Poco Dolce Espresso Toffee chocolates sitting behind my desk at work. I’ve opened it every few days over the past couple of weeks hoping that it would miraculously be full again of chocolate. (You think I’m kidding – sadly I’m not.) I really should replace it before I go crazy for good.

I remember vividly the day that I had my first Poco Dolce chocolate square (they call them tiles). I had just completed a long walk, over two very big hills, and ended up at Chocolate Covered in Noe Valley – the fine purveyors of just about any chocolate you can think of eating. The interaction went something like this: Me: “JACK! I need a most delicious chocolate that I can eat immediately! I need something exciting! I need your best!”  Jack: Knowingly hands me a Poco Dolce Aztec Dark Chocolate Tile flecked with Sea Salt.

Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! – it was a like a multiple layer explosion.

Deep, dark chocolate. Spicy chile pepper with hints of cinnamon. Crunchy little toasted pumpkin seeds nestled in between. And flecks of salt that make the chocolate sing! You experience each individual layer and then they mix together and… I can’t come close to giving them justice, you really have to just try one.

And, the company is run by a smart and entrepreneurial woman, Kathy Wiley, here in San Francisco. I’ve been tempted to scream out “YOU GO GIRL” on the times that I’ve met her in the flesh, but that is embarrassing and a little ridiculous, and I really just think that aside from the fantastic chocolate, it’s just really inspiring to see women as leaders in the food industry.

Poco Dolce 2

Poco Dolce chocolate is a perfect stocking stuffer. Poco Dolce chocolate is a perfect afternoon snack, perfect breakfast, perfect gift for someone you really care about, perfect stress reducer, you name it. Poco Dolce chocolate is really just perfect. Do yourself a favor and buy some of these. You can thank me later. (Preferably with a shipment of Tile Trio).

Prices run from about $2.50 a square to $16 for an 8 oz canister of toffee squares, $18 for a box of 8 tiles, $22 for a sampler of toffee squares, to $50 for the Trifecta box of Tiles, sure to make you an instant hero to the special recipient.  For chocolate of this quality and deliciousness a pretty good deal.

pocodolce.com
415.255.1443
info@pocodolce.com

Chocolate Covered
4069 24th St
(between Castro St & Noe St)
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 641-8123