Chocolate Salami

The small, meaningful Christmas gift is certainly the most difficult of all gifts to give. Last year I successfully made and gave chocolate granola, and thus began my search for a similarly non-difficult, doesn't expire too quickly, chocolatey recipe. Eventually I remembered my past Christmas obsession with chocolate salami from the previous year.

So that's what I made. Saucisson au Chocolat from Olympic Provisions. The bits I snuck from the bottom of the bowl were delicious - Slightly sweet, a little boozy, with perfect crunch from the nuts, seeds and bits of potato chips. I also got a little 'Martha Stewart' with the packaging. You know, Christmas and all.

No pigs were harmed in the making of this salami!

Chocolate Granola. The Mast Brothers Cookbook.

I am loving the Mast Brothers Cookbook. On our last day in New York - also the day of the book release - I walked back to the factory to pick up a copy, and found they had all been signed! It wouldn't fit in my already overstuffed luggage, but it was well worth lugging it across the subway system to the airport. Also, have you seen the cookbook trailer? Adorable.

I made the chocolate date cake soon after arriving home - delicious - and marked the chocolate granola for later, soon realizing it would be a perfect give to give coworkers. No last minute baking for me!

A couple weeks ago I made three batches, scooped the granola into six jars and still had some left to keep around the apartment for breakfast. Win.

The recipe is pretty simple - Mix 1 cup each of almonds, pecans and rolled oats with a 1/2 cup of honey and 2 Tbsp brown sugar and place in a 350 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes and let cool. In the meantime, melt 3 Tbsp of butter* with 2 Tbsp cocoa powder and set aside. Combine a 1/2 cup each of cocoa nibs and dried cranberries (or cherries or figs or other suitable dried fruit) with the roasted nuts/oats and stir in the butter mixture. Once everything is cool, mix in 5 ounces of chopped chocolate (I chopped up chocolate from one of the Mast Brothers tablets).

*I used the canola oil from Mighty Trio Organics since I wasn't sure when people would be eating the granola. It worked out well since it's so nutty and light.

So there it is. Christmas gifts (well, some of them) done.

S'mores, a speakeasy, Rge Rd and sharp knives.

Whoo. Four items, one post.

I've been making quite a few s'mores lately. Funny, I never really considered them something easy to make in the oven, but Rachel made them one evening and I was hooked. Most recently I made Kim Boyce's graham wafers, picked up some marshmallows from work and utilized some smoky chocolate from Mast Brothers to create a pretty delicious version.

On Thursday, Richard and I stopped in at Three Boars for the third version of their 'speakeasy'. Each Thursday starting at 8PM, the new upstairs portion of the restaurant is turned into a lounge of sorts (just drinks, no food). There's a one off cocktail menu each Thursday. Richard enjoyed spiked eggnog, whilst I sipped tea with ginger and gin. Looking forward to more of these evenings throughout the winter. Drinks were priced from $7-10, with one $20 drink that served two. Keep an eye on their Facebook page for weekly details.

After a crazy day at the shop, and a couple hours at All is Bright, Charles and I headed over to Rge Rd (10643 123 St) and lucked out with a couple seats available at the bar. We enjoyed the 'Questionable Bits' (Tempura battered pig's heart and the best beef tartare ever; $15), Potato and Leek soup ($10), chicken breast with spicy Brussel sprouts ($29) and seared pickerel ($27). We finished the evening with their version of... a s'more ($10). Yeah. We're pretty predictable.

French 75 with Victoria Gin

Chicken breast with braised chicken galette and habanero Brussel sprouts

Seared pickerel with dill, ricotta and beet perogies, cabbage and white onion cream

Last night we stopped by the Knifewear pop up (10816 82 Ave) to buy our Christmas presents. Ta da!

I can't even find the post, but back in 2009/10 I posted about our new Mac santoku knife. Well, a couple weeks later someone tried to cut through a rabbit bone and needless to say, the knife didn't survive. Four years later, we now have two very sharp, beautiful knives, and can't wait to neatly cut many, many onions and vegetables... and no bones, or nuts or chocolate. Merry Christmas to us.

We are looking forward to the Hwkrs Mrkt this coming Saturday evening! I'm determined to pack the big camera and write a real post. See you there!

Some cookies. And a little ice cream.

Right after my January/February cake phase, I quickly moved on to cookies - Our little oven needed to be tested. First up were the Quinoa Cloud Cookies from 101 Cookbooks... Sadly they didn't turn out, though with nearly a kilo of quinoa flour left over, I'll be trying them again to fix whatever mistake I made (I suspect it was measurement of the flour; I should always use a scale is the weight measurements are there).

Moving on, I picked up a copy of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich early in March. With easy access to great ingredients (I settled into a lovely "off-festival-season" gig at Provisions by Duchess), the desserts in this book, featuring the flavours of a great chocolate, fresh cream or fruit, nuts and grains, are exactly what I want to make when I step into the kitchen.

I started with her recipe for Whole Wheat Sables, though I swapped out the whole wheat flour for spelt, as suggested, since that's what we had on hand. The dough comes together easily, with just a few ingredients, and is then shaped into a log before being refrigerated over night. I found I needed to cook them about four minutes longer than the suggested 12-14 minutes to get that perfect sandy texture, and to bring out the nutty flavour of the spelt flour (again, our oven...). I made Tartine's Lemon Cream to serve atop the cookies after a lamb dinner made my Rachel.

Next up were Nibby Buckwheat Cookies - Definitely the best of all the cookies I've baked this month. If I can get buckwheat flour into something, I will (these scones, for instance), and I was happy to see it featured prominently in this book. The pairing of buckwheat with cocoa nibs is genius. The flour has a wine like flavour, and cocoa nibs, depending on the brand and origin, often have a fruity flavour that compliments the flour well. She also notes that the buckwheat flour acts like cornstarch - but with better flavour - to give the cookies a fine, sandy texture. Alice Medrich knows her stuff. You can find the recipe here.

Now that things seem to be on the up weather wise, we've found a permanent spot in the freezer for the ice cream bowl. At Cally's Teas the other day, I found dried Lemon Verbena, and picked up a little to make a mint and lemon verbena ice cream also found in the book. This was my first attempt at "Philadelphia" style ice cream, without an egg based custard. The base is made with a fifty-fifty cream-milk mixture, along with a little sugar, and then your flavourings of choice.

I took my pint of ice cream into work on Monday, and I think everyone enjoyed its freshness, particularly since it happened to be the first real warm day since last week's storm.

Cookies and ice cream. Clearly the next step is ice cream sandwiches.

Chocolate and Pear Cake

I've been stocking up on pears. They're my favourite winter fruit by far, and they will sit in our fruit bowl throughout the week while I slowly consume them (this is key since we now have a tiny apartment refrigerator - whatever can stay at room temperature, does).

Yesterday, I peeked into the fruit bowl to find three pears, a little too soft for my liking. With that in mind I headed over to Smitten Kitchen, where there is a great recipe index searchable by fruit, vegetable, season, food type, etc., etc. Under 'pear' there were tempting recipes, like pear and almond tart or the more recent roasted pear and chocolate chunk scones; in the end I went with the bittersweet chocolate and pear cake, which would utilize all three of my Anjou pears.

For the chocolate portion, I used a 60% Hispaniola bar from The Jones Chocolate Company, along with a bar of 64% Maralumi from Michel Cluizel. While the flavours worked well (especially the earthiness of the former), increasing the percentage of the chocolate to tone down the sweetness would have been a better choice.

The cake batter itself came together easily, though as others noted in the comments, the pieces of pear and chocolate didn't really become enveloped in the cake as they were meant to. Maybe a little less would have given the batter the additional room necessary. These things aside, the egg-y base provides a lovely canvas for the pear and chocolate, and we will happily enjoy as the snow falls.

I thought I'd include a few shots from Deep Freeze yesterday. We made it over with our friend Claire and had an incredible time. We enjoyed the perfect weather (as Sharon notes here, 2011 was freezing and last year's warm temperatures weren't any better), taking advantage of fire pits scattered throughout the site, skating and Bailey's poured through ice. Thanks again to the Arts on the Ave crew for another great year!

We ran into Tanya and Tom and Willow

The Village Pig

Some state of chocolate

Nearly eight months after Kerstin's Chocolates closed its doors, I'm happy to see such great things going on chocolate wise around the city. Well known by now, Kerstin's sister, Angie, has picked up the Kerstin's house brand, Chocophilia, and you can find bars, Caviar and drinking chocolate and other treats at farmers' markets and events around the city. Locals and dates are shared here. And of course, Jacek Chocolate opened their first boutique in Sherwood Park a couple months ago.

That said, there are some other great things happening that I thought were worth mentioning too.

The Jones Chocolate Company

First off, we have our very first bean-to-bar manufacturer in Edmonton. Curtis Jones launched The Jones Chocolate Company in early October. He sources cocoa beans from farmers around the world, paying more than fair trade prices. The roasting, winnowing and conching of the beans happens right here in Edmonton, and beautiful bars of single origin chocolate are the result.

*Photo from their website

I ordered a couple bars from the first batch - a 70% dark chocolate made with beans from the Dominican Republic. The chocolate had a beautiful balance of smoky, tobacco like flavours, along with fruit notes to finish. Definitely impressive. At Make It, I picked up a 60% dark milk bar made from Dominican beans, along with a 70% bar made from Venezuela beans - I haven't cracked them yet but am certainly looking forward to it.

You can find the full collection of bars online here.

The Violet Chocolate Company

You might recognize Rebecca Grant from Kerstin's, where she made bars and confections for a little more than two years. She's now launched her own venture, The Violet Chocolate Company, which features her amazing hand made confections and flavoured bars. She changes up the confections each month, and will be doing a feature bar in addition to her regular line up (it's currently a salted caramel pecan... If you find it, grab it!).

Currently the bar line up includes flavours like Clover Honey and Rosemary in a 49% dark-milk chocolate, Caramel Toasted Coconut with Valrhona's decadent Carmelia chocolate and Toasted Sesame and Ginger. You can check out all her flavours here.

Rebecca (aka. Becca) can be found at events around the city, and you can currently find her line of bars at Evoolution on 104 Street. Make sure you keep an eye on her Facebook page for further details.

Provisions by Duchess

Hopefully you've had a chance to swing by Provisions, next door to Duchess Bake Shop. They carry amazing preserves, spices and other baking additions, flours and grains, butter and loads of books and baking gear.

You can also find shelves full of Theo Chocolate's bars (Phinney and otherwise) and salted caramels, as well as bars from François Pralus, Amedei, Bonnat (if you haven't had any of their dark-milk bars, you're missing out) and my favourite, Patric. These bars are perfect stocking stuffers, with shelf lives from 6 (milk chocolate) to 18 (dark chocolate) months, so make sure you get there early.

So there you have it. Lot's of exciting options chocolate wise this year.

Olive Oil Cake

I mentioned in my last post that I was devoting that bottle of blood orange infused olive oil picked up at Evoolution to this olive oil cake, and that's exactly what happened a couple weeks ago.

The timing turned out to be perfect; we had a few straight days of heavy, cool rain, and the citrusy cake was a lovely warm contrast. While the cup of olive oil keeps the cake moist, it still has a mealy crumb which makes it perfect alongside a cup of tea.

The kick of citrus is nice in this cake - and I think pretty classic for an olive oil cake - but as the recipe indicates it would be lovely with a nice fruity or peppery olive oil. I added Valrhona's Manjari 64% to compliment the citrus flavour of the oil, but any dark chocolate would do. And while I didn't put nearly as much rosemary as the recipe suggests in this version, I'm certainly upping it next time.

Noorish: Conscious Eatery and Superfood Elixir Bar

I was pretty skeptical of Noorish - "Really!? Superfood!?" - as we observed their sign going up a few blocks from our apartment earlier this fall. The health claims, marketing strategies and general use of the word "superfood" remain confusing on my end, but who am I to turn down an excellent veggie burger? Twyla over at "It's a Weird, Wild and Wonderful Life" visited the spot earlier in November, and we followed suit the very next week.

Although we were expecting casual, café style service a la DaCapo, when we arrived for a Tuesday evening meal we ran into a sign that said, "Please wait to be seated." A few minutes later we were greeted at the door and led to a table in the middle of the busy restaurant. Water was provided quickly, as was coffee for Charles and a chai tea for me. Food wise, the Bodhi Tree Burger ($17) was undoubtedly coming my way, and eventually Charles decided on the Laughing Buddha's Belly Bowl ($16).

Our food arrived at the table relatively quickly, though I had just enough time to browse their 'grocery' collection of bagged 'superfoods', spreads and gift totes from The Chocolate Doctors and raw-vegan books amongst other health food style items.

The portions at Noorish may appear small, but we struggled to finish our entrees. My burger was packed with chickpeas, walnut-basil pesto, cashew cream and avocado - an entire meal in itself. And it was one impressive veggie burger, with a soft interior and wonderfully crisp exterior. Combined with accompanying salad of kale, sprouts, seeds, beets and carrots, I was plenty full by the end (though not full enough to skip the dessert menu, of course). Charles ended up enjoying his bowl of quinoa and Thai green curry quite a bit, and now that I look at their menu again, it seems that it would be easy enough to re-create at home on a cool winter evening.

Charles had been eyeing the Walnut Brownie ($8) since we arrived, and we ended up sharing one prior to leaving. It was dense and certainly chocolate-y, and the cashew cream and cocoa nibs sprinkled on top provided nicely contrasting textures.

We also picked up four confections from The Chocolate Doctors ($10) to go. Since my current employment situation makes me slightly really biased, I'll just say that their confection style offerings are all available at Noorish.

While I remain skeptical about 'superfoods' and some of the general lifestyle prescriptions Noorish puts forward, their veggie burger is excellent, and if for nothing else, I would certainly return for another.

Noorish: Conscious Eatery and Superfood Elixir Bar
8440 109th Street
780.756.6880
Hours

The Portland chocolate breakdown

As you may have noticed a few posts back, a lot of chocolate made it to Edmonton via my suitcase. Well, I've finally managed to sample all the bars made by Portland chocolatiers (with the help of Charles, and some of the staff at the shop). Thoughts and a few more details can be found here.

Three days in Seattle

After such an excellent week in Oregon, we found it a little difficult to settle into Seattle. Thankfully, our Capitol Hill apartment rental was well located, with tons of shops, cafés and restaurants nearby, and it was just a short 30 minute walk downtown. We thought we were "food-ed" out, but the eating kept happening in Seattle. Here's what we enjoyed, in no particular order:

Quinn's Pub - This 'pub' was just a few blocks away from our apartment, which made it perfect for dinner on our first day in town. I wasn't as wowed by the beer list as I had hoped, BUT, they made the best burger either Charles or I had ever tasted. Simple toppings gave way to a perfectly cooked, medium rare patty, and we certainly would have returned for another if we had time.

Poppy - Another spot just minutes from our front door. We loved everything about this place - a great cocktail menu, a short, well chosen beer list featuring Washington brews, and the thalis... especially the dessert one. I can definitely see why Sugar put this on her packing list.

Baguette Box - Thanks to Andre who suggested the Baguette Box. It was directly on our way downtown, and their Drunken Chicken sandwich was fantastic - crispy chicken, caramelized onions, cilantro. Need I say more?

Brouwer's - I don't know what to say about this place - it was amazing. 64 brews on tap plus over 300 bottles. And, it was right across the street from Theo Chocolate.

Theo Chocolate - I'm happy we made it out to tour Theo. It was great to see the 'chocolate making' process up close. I posted about it here.

Molly Moon's Ice Cream - Another one from Sugar's Seattle packing list, we enjoyed scoops of maple walnut and earl grey tea on our last night in town.

The Walrus and the Carpenter - I'm glad Charles was willing to make the trek to this place, even though most of the items on the menu weren't really his thing. We happened to step in during their happy hour, which meant $1 oysters and $7 cocktails. I went with one of each of their six oysters and a 'porch swing' which featured gin and Pimm's - two of my favourites. Charles chose a glass of Hale's Kolsch and a dish of serrano ham, cantaloupe, lemon basil and ricotta.

Marie and Frères - It was fantastic meeting Marie. She's incredibly passionate about chocolate, and in particular, chocolate made with Forastero beans right where the beans are grown. We walked away with the most amazing macaron and a bar of her chocolate studded with candied orange.

Lark - This was our final meal in town. Though we were originally hoping for something a little more laid back (and with a beer list), the food at Lark was lovely, and we wouldn't hesitate to return... particularly for the pork belly and salmon...

Café Presse - An excellent magazine collection, well done coffee and a casual menu (baguettes with butter, olives, salads, charcuterie, etc.).

Salumi - This seemed like the perfect way to end out trip. We did start with a porchetta sandwich back at The Peoples' Pig after all. We happened to arrive just when the line shortened a bit, and were out the door with messy, delicious porchetta and meatball sandwiches.

One spot we particularly enjoyed in Seattle was the Olympic Sculpture Park. It was quiet and the views were beautiful.

So there you have it. Our 2011 vacation. That little corner of the NW is really a gem and we certainly recommend checking it out.