Two-for-One Thanksgiving: Divine Mango Coconut & Salazon Pumpkin Beer Sea Salt

Here's another out-of-season post that's been needing to be finished for a while. :-) 

There are many things that get more complicated when your family is scattered halfway across the world. It's more expensive and time-consuming to see the people you care about, it's harder to get everyone in one place, and the visits are usually short, few, and far between. However, when it happens, the results are pretty magical. The planning for the 2016 Thanksgiving was pretty crazy - we had to coordinate 11 people and travel from three states across four days at two different locations, and handle the logistics of two entire Thanksgiving menus.

The result was a gorgeous, soul-nourishing two-parter. Episode 1 was in beautiful Woodstock, NY, at my grandmother's cozy cottage. Mom and I flew up from Texas, and we got to meet Will's delightful girlfriend, Nina, and spent the whole day talking, laughing, and singing in the kitchen while cooking up copious amounts of traditional Thanksgiving fare.

The next day we took a long, goofy, lovely walk into town, stopping on the way to thoroughly enjoy an old-fashioned playground, and winding up at the local market to get some hot apple cider and browse the selection of charming local and artisanal foods. 

From there, Mom flew back to Texas, the four sibs and Nina piled into Will's van, and it was on to Philadelphia and Thanksgiving #2! Andrew met us there (having celebrated Thanksgiving proper with his family back in Texas), where Dad and his girlfriend, Nilmini, hosted us all at her gorgeous house, and I got to execute my first full-fledged Thanksgiving menu (GAAAAH!!) with an Indian fusion theme, including a jeweled rice pilaf, curried mashed potatoes, from-scratch garlic naan, habanero and goat cheese stuffed mushrooms, and Indian rice pudding with cherries and bourbon hard sauce for dessert. (Kudos to everyone for helping make it happen!) It was exhausting and beautiful.

I also got to catch up on snuggles with my girl, Ursula, who's starting to get rather grey around the muzzle, but is still every bit as sweet and energetic as the day she came home to us in Austin as a baby puppy all those years ago. The pumpkin pie samosas made a lovely breakfast, and our last day in Philly we took a delightful excursion into town to get drinks at a fancy-pants bar on a boat (Lonely Island would be so proud), and grabbed an amazing veggie Philly cheese steak at the Royal Tavern, before getting on the plane headed home. 

(And yes, in several pictures I am wearing a bright pink coat with pink corduroy pants. Somehow I didn't really make that connection when I was packing for the trip. As Andrew would say, I make decisions.)  

It was a lovely trip, and we enjoyed several bars of chocolate along the way but these were the most notable, which, although thematically a little disparate, made an interesting pairing for our Thanksgiving prep and travel.

Photo Credit: thechocolatewebsite.com

Item: Dark Chocolate with Mango & Coconut 
Percentage: 70% cacao 

Made By: Divine Chocolate
Made In: Cacao grown in Ghana, processed into chocolate in Europe
Purchased At: Whole Foods - Arlington, TX
Purchase Price: $3.59

Review: Divine delivers again! They maintain a particularly high concentration of cocoa butter in their chocolate, which means it melts deliciously, and they consistently get the sweet/dark balance juuuuuuust right. The mango is dominant here, while the coconut lurks in the background, which suits me just fine. There are actually distinct little dried (not freeze-dried!) mango bits, which stick in your teeth and make the process of munching a bit more... erm... lasting than chocolate usually is. However, it's a whimsical and successful combination, just so long as you've got a toothpick handy.     

Recommend, with some dental floss

        AND

 

Photo Credit: Salazonchoc.com

  
Item: Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt & Pumpkin IPA
Percentage: 72% cacao 

Made By: Salazon 
Made In: Maryland
Purchased At: Whole Foods - Arlington, TX
Purchase Price: $3.99

Review: Such a shame. I really wanted this one to work. If it had been what I wanted, it would have been basically tailor-made for my father, who loves every one of these things. Alas, it was a whiff. The chocolate itself comes across as oddly bitter, which is probably a result of the beer, which doesn't make much of an appearance at all except in the aftertaste. The pumpkin and beer both take a back seat to the sea salt, which dominates the whole party and just leaves you wondering why the chocolate tastes a little funny. I'd love to see this idea done properly, but I'll definitely need to keep looking. In the meantime, if you're looking for a Salazon bar that actually works, stick with the sea salt and almond, which is MUY NOM.   

A Note About the Company: As much as I didn't care for the bar, the company is pretty cool. Salazon is a 100% organic, vegan, fair-trade certified chocolate company built on the premise that simple, salted dark chocolate is one of the greatest energy bars there is. They single-source their beans from the Dominican Republic and (usually) keep their bars pretty simple and streamlined. True to their backpacking roots, their trail series donates at least 2% of their profits to the Pacific Crest, Appalachian Trail, and Continental Divide conservancy associations.

Avoid
  

With love, Kat

Christmas Cheer: Dark Chocolate Cinnamon, Chili & Nibs

Really excellent chocolate makes the perfect Christmas gift. There’s more or less infinite variety, so you can find something for everyone, it’s delicious, something people don’t typically buy for themselves, and it’s a consumable, so they won’t have to carry it around for the rest of their lives. It requires no storage, wrangling, organizing, maintenance, batteries, assembly, or remembering to take it to a store and use it up.

So, over the course of the year I’ll pick up various other presents for the people I love. A piece of art for so-and-so, a book that screams to belong to what’s-his-name… In December, though, my research starts in earnest. I look at best-of articles for the year, scour the lists from local directories and chocolate shows, and peruse the selections of chocolatiers, both local and in other parts of the country, trying to locate the perfect, most excellent, enjoyable, preferably local, creative selection. Last year it was the inimitable Dude, Sweet Chocolate in downtown Fort Worth.

This year, after much deliberation, I settled on Kate Weiser, who has her flagship store in the swanky Trinity Groves shopping center in Dallas. After all, who couldn’t use a little something beautiful under the tree after this crazy year?

Kate Weiser makes what can only be described as art chocolate. Her work is gorgeous, creative, and whimsical in a deeply satisfying way. I have never had this much fun wrapping presents, you guys. Carl the drinking chocolate snowman sits in a pot of hot milk, melting away and releasing gorgeous clouds of hot chocolate mix from his tummy and marshmallows from his head, finally furnishing drinking chocolate for 4-6 people. There have also been white chocolate, peppermint, and chipotle versions of Carl in the past. She creates beautiful, truffle-stuffed chocolate ornaments, decked with gold leaf and saturated with the most beautiful blues and pinks and light greens you’ve ever seen in a chocolate shop. Her truffles are incredibly distinctive, ranging from the tame but solid orange butterscotch to the more outrageous dark chocolate and Japanese lime or the daring mango habanero. And her candy bars (like the Passion Praline! Yummmmm...) make the most beautiful stocking stuffers you’ll ever find.

It was a thoroughly magical Christmas. After Andrew and I madly worked through the last few edits for the Isaacs-Bryant Family Cookbook (my other big Christmas gift - thank you for all your help, my dear!), my mother and I joined him and his delightful family for their celebration; we sang, we laughed, we drank lots of wine and made delicious food and danced in crazed circles around the kitchen to joyous Irish Christmas reels (that was mostly me and mom, tbh). Fortunately I wasn’t the only one with the terrific idea of giving chocolate for Christmas – I received no fewer than five different chocolate bars. The most interesting, though, was a Redstone’s bar that I received from Andrew’s brother, Alex. Andrew had given him the terrific advice of sticking to 70% or higher on the cacao content (a really good guideline!), and, in a fit of inspiration, one of the bars Alex picked up for me was laced with cinnamon and chili. I guess I’ve got a reputation for gravitating towards the spicy stuff.

Here’s hoping your 2016 Christmas was every bit as delightful and chocolatey as ours!

Photo Credit: Redstone Foods

Item: Dark Chocolate Cinnamon, Chili & Nibs
Percentage: 72%

Made By: Redstone's
Made In: Carrolton, TX 

Purchased At/Price: Christmas gift!

Review: They’re not trying for too much subtlety here, but the result is excellent execution and a thoroughly enjoyable bar. There’s plenty of heat, with a clear, unmuddy balance between the cinnamon and chili flavors. The cocoa nibs are another success story here – in many bars they’re just simply too big, too hard, or otherwise obnoxious, but here they’re perfect. Toasty, dark, crunchy bits that don’t shatter your teeth or taste burnt, don’t disrupt the experience of the bar, and overall add a nice complement to the smoky, dark heat of the bar. The chocolate flavor isn’t the star of the show here, but it’s good and clean enough to provide a nice backdrop for everything else going on. This one could even be a little (prepare yourselves) sweeter and it would be a lovely contrast to the heat, and could definitely stand a few flakes of sea salt, but it’s still very well done as it is, though. Overall, this is an elegant practice in things being exactly enough – exactly enough heat, enough cinnamon, enough nibs, enough sweetness, enough brute chocolate flavor – to be thoroughly enjoyable. One important caveat - the cinnamon and chili flavors are both super strong, so if you're not a fan then I'd steer clear.

Well done, Alex. Way to capture the Christmas spirit.

RECOMMEND
 
With love,
 - K 

Happy New Year!: Kate Weiser Passion Praline Candy Bar

Happy 2017!

I turned 29 on the 31^st. I’ve always loved having a birthday on New Year’s Eve – it’s a day that begs for celebration and has a delightful cyclicality to it. As the calendar ticks of another trip ‘round the sun, I can draw energy and inspiration from the delighted resolutions of so many people determined to get the very best out of the coming year. I can’t imagine a more invigorating day for a birthday.

My New Year’s was delightfully quiet. Andrew and I spent the evening with friends, eating the rest of the amazing Kate Weiser chocolates left from Christmas (another post on that coming soon) and an incredibly dense, chocolatey birthday cake concocted by my amazing mother, and watching Star Wars. We had our obligatory champagne at midnight, and then dispersed, enjoying the last of the Christmas light displays on our way home.

Now, by most objective measures 2016 was pretty rough. Suffice it to say that it was a hard year for water, refugees, heroes and celebrities, American politics, the UK, the EU, global politics in general, anyone who’s Muslim, and all residents of Syria and neighboring countries.

On the other hand, after a century of decline the tiger population increased in 2016, Tubman is set to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, the US has reached an all-time low in teen pregnancies and seen impressive gains in high-school graduations, the FARC rebels in Columbia signed a peace agreement with the government after decades of armed conflict bringing peace to the entire Western Hemisphere for the first time in at least 60 years, India planted 50 million trees in a single day, Costa Rica ran on 98% renewable energy for a whole year, giant pandas and manatees just got taken off of the endangered species list, the Americas were declared measles-free, Liberia was cleared of Malaria, we found the ALS gene, Africa has no active cases of Ebola, we finally detected gravitational waves, and pretty soon I might be able to go visit Cuba without selling my kidney. So that’s all pretty cool.

This year in particular seems to be marked with new beginnings and transitions. There’s a weird sort of impending finality associated with turning 29 – it’s the last year of my 20s, and it feels a little bit like I’m coming to the end of the first act (not to be overly dramatic, of course). My sweetie and I are both starting new jobs this month, I’ve got a brother with some exciting career news for this year, and a mom who’s also in transition. My dad and youngest brother are in for some big changes this year as well, and I’ll be helping one of my best friends get hitched in June.

As for me, I’m still trying to figure out what I want from 2017 beyond a big sunny field to lie in. I’d like to read more actual books (scaling back on the internet articles, news, and blogs that currently dominate my reading habits). I’d like to get better about staying in touch with all the wonderful people in my life and maybe figure out how to be less conservative about interacting with strangers. Maybe figure out how to make some new friends. I’d like to join the board of a non-profit and take at least one international trip to Asia or South America – maybe Ecuador or Thailand, but suggestions are most welcome. 

I'd also like to write more. And eat more chocolate. So, one pledge for 2017 is that I will write at least one review for this blog per week. They may not have lengthy stories attached to them, and they may not always get posted to Facebook promptly, but there will be at least one post per week for the duration of this year. 

Here's to a more chocolatey year for everyone!

Item: Passion Praline Candy Bar
Percentage: ?? (Pretty light - maybe 35-40%?)

Made By: Kate Weiser
Made In: Dallas, TX

Purchased At: Kate Weiser Trinity Groves Outlet Store

Review: Kate Weiser makes what can only be described as art chocolate. She describes this one “tart passion fruit combines with crunchy hazelnut gianduja for the perfect citrus treat. My personal fave!” This is not pure chocolate, but it’s definitely top-notch candy. A crunchy, beautiful art-milk-chocolate shell encases two gorgeous, creamy layers of creamy chocolate filling. The upper layer is a white-chocolate passion-fruit ganache, while the lower layer is a milk chocolate hazelnut gianduja (a chocolate spread or filling of at least 30% hazelnut), sandwiching whole toasted hazelnuts and some crunchy “cornflake praline.” That’s a complicated description for something that actually winds up coming across pretty wonderfully simple in the eating. 

There’s a delicate, lovely inter-play between the creamy, tart passion fruit and the earthy, crunchy hazelnut, and the chocolate ties it all together, providing a smooth medium for everything to play nicely together. I’ll say that the praline seemed to get just a tad soggy after a while, but the whole bar held up admirably in the car on a hot day (an important virtue in Texas). The milk chocolate is also stellar, which is something you won’t find me saying that much – It’s sweet, but not overwhelming, gentle, but not spineless, milky, but utterly free of that gross dried-milk aftertaste that hangs around after cheap milk chocolate, reminding you of every horrible decision you’ve ever made. *shudder.* This is some really wonderful (and beautiful!) stuff. 

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

With love,
 - K 

This Anxious Holiday Season: World Peace Cookies

This post is a little different. 

There are some days when a bar of chocolate is just too hands off to handle all the crap that life decides to throw at you. There are days when the world seems like it's reeling, drunk or blind, on the edge of some precipice, and the intersection of all this madness centers right over your apartment complex in the form of a soul-sucking, bleak, dreary, masterpiece of a day. When Mellville's damp, drizzly November leaps off the pages and into the December skies of DFW, extreme measures are called for.

And so, with my sister heading into the social crucible that is the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota, an increasingly uncertain political future for my country, a friend back in the hospital, concerns about my family, and facing down the prospect of starting at a new, much scarier job on January 1, on this particularly bleak and drizzly Saturday, I turned to the inimitable Dorie Greenspan to help set things right. 

It was time to set up Christmas at Andrew's parents' place, so we broke out the mulled wine and Christmas carols on Spotify, and as Andrew decked the halls with lights and garlands, I took to the kitchen. Furnished with a sparkly shirt, Christmas apron, and Santa hat, creating the deepest dark chocolate rounds, flecked with the most divine bittersweet, rolling and punching out butter-logged sugar cookies into Christmas trees, soldiers, and holly with the nostalgia-laden cookie cutters I grew up with, tending to the long-simmering stew on the stove.

It felt, miraculously, like everything was going to be ok.

These cookies have been on my "to bake" radar for a while, and they fulfilled all of my wildest expectations - as French sables, they are delightfully light, sandy shortbread cookies, but with a chocolate heart as deep as the fudgiest of brownies. Don't overbake these, and don't get too creative - they are perfect. Just be sure to have plenty of milk on hand - you will want it. (They are also well-complemented by a batch of these sugar cookies. Just in case you get inspired and want to make both like I did. They very much benefit by each others' company.)

I think we could all use a little peace right now, and sometimes, when everything else seems like it's falling apart, chocolate can at least serve to get you through the afternoon. 

Item: World Peace Cookies

A word on mixing, log rolling and patience: This dough can be different from batch to batch — it always seems to turn out well no matter what, but the inconsistency can be frustrating. I’ve found that it’s best to mix the dough for as long as it takes to get big, moist curds that hold together when pressed and then knead if necessary so it comes together. When you’re rolling it into logs, keep checking that the logs are solid. Again, the dough can be capricious and it may not always roll into a compact log on the first (or second or third) try. Be patient.

         Makes about 36 cookies

   1 1/4 cups (170 grams) all-purpose flour
   1/3 cup (28 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
   1/2 teaspoon baking soda
   1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons; 5 1/2 ounces; 155 grams) unsalted butter, cut into chunks, at room temperature
   2/3 cup (134 grams) packed light brown sugar
   1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
   1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
   1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
   5 ounces (142 grams) best-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped into irregular sized bits

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together. (I didn't sift. Still delicious.)

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars together on medium speed until soft, creamy and homogenous, about 3 minutes. Beat in the salt and vanilla. Turn off the mixer, add all the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to start the blending. When the risk of flying flour has passed, turn the mixer to low and beat until the dough forms big, moist curds. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix to incorporate. This is an unpredictable dough (see above). Sometimes it’s crumbly and sometimes it comes together and cleans the sides of the bowl. Happily, no matter what, the cookies are always great.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface and gather it together, kneading it if necessary to bring it together. Divide the dough in half. Shape the dough into logs that are 11/2 inches in diameter. Don’t worry about the length — get the diameter right, and the length will follow. (If you get a hollow in the logs, just start over.) Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and freeze them for at least 2 hours or refrigerate them for at least 3 hours.

When you’re ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Working with one log at a time and using a long, sharp knife, slice the dough into 1/2-inch-thick rounds. (The rounds might crack as you’re cutting them — don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between them. (If you’ve cut both logs, keep one baking sheet in the fridge while you bake the other.)

Bake the cookies for 12 minutes — don’t open the oven, just let them bake. When the timer rings, they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, and that’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can munch them, or let them reach room temperature (I think the texture’s more interesting at room temperature).

Bake the remaining dough.

Eat. Be at peace. 

The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months, although I can't imagine it'll last that long. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before baking — just bake the cookies 1 minute longer. 


With love, Kat