A tough night here at PTMYB, as my darling boy has picked up a cold all his very own, as well as a high fever. I am filling him full of soup, veggie-tibbles and twenty-hour apples, but every time I feel his forehead, he feels even hotter. He hasn’t caught a cold in at least five years, so it is kind of unsettling to see him feeling so poorly. Sigh.
How could I call myself a Terry Gilliam fan and still let almost 13 years go by having never seen The Fisher King? Thanks to Lloyd, we have our own copy now on DVD. My heart officially melted watching Robin Williams follow Amanda Plummer around the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal as commuters waltz around them and sunlight streams through those enormous windows. Beautiful, so beautiful.
As our lovely Alicia pointed out last week, tonight marks the start of Chocolate Obsession Week on the Food Network. I look forward to hearing what my boy Alton has to say about chocolate, but in the meantime I will start my own chocolate obsession week in two ways:
1. I will emulate one of my food history heroes, Anne Mendelson, by excising from all spoken and written conversation any reference to chocolate as “wicked,” “sinful” or “decadent.” About three years ago, back when Gourmet experimented with publishing food essays and opinion pieces on their back page, Anne Mendelson wrote an impassioned essay arguing that referring to food in such morally loaded terms did a disservice to both the food and the force of language. Back in the 1960’s, she argued, sexually explicit books and movies were described, simperingly, as “wicked” and “naughty” and “sinful,” but such name-calling did not make sex sexier; on the contrary, it made it more banal, and redolent of adolescent sniggering. By the same token, referring to chocolate as “decadent” or a rich multi-course dinner as “sinful” does not make the food more enjoyable, or compelling; all it does is blunt the force of the adjectives, until we forget that once upon a time “decadent” meant “corrupted, decaying or suppurating” and not “fattening.” Mendelson encouraged the reader to eschew the overloaded adjectives and replace them with honest appreciation: “This tastes really good, and I love it.” Thus let it be said. Chocolate tastes really good, and I love it.
2. I will indulge in shameless huckstering by encouraging you to go directly to the bookseller of your choice and pick up a copy of Trish Deseine’s I Want Chocolate!, originally published in French as Je veux de chocolat! I have a lot of chocolate books, and they’re all pretty wonderful, but Trish’s stands head and shoulders over the rest. Trish Deseine is the author of several French cookbooks. She is Irish by birth, married to a Frenchman and living in Paris. Her husband’s company supplies equipment to restaurants, patisseries and hotel kitchens. Believing that home bakers should have access to the same high-quality equipment available to their professional counterparts, she started her own business. She is a beauty, a wit, a pixie, and as far as her chocolate palate is concerned, she is a genius. I Want Chocolate! has recipes for grand, large party cakes and little nibbles like mendiants. The names of the dishes are not only descriptive, but they will make you want to dive right into them: Rice Pudding with a Melted Chocolate Heart. Little Chocolate Creams Like My Mother Used to Make. Chocolate, Lime and Passion Fruit Pavlova. (My three favorite flavors, all in one dessert! Oh, oh, oh.) There is a gorgeous flourless chocolate cake in here, one I’ve made over and over, with milk chocolate, almonds, brown sugar and medjool dates. I can smell it just thinking about it, and I can feel it wrapped up tightly in foil, getting softer and deeper and more chocolaty with a good night’s rest. But please don’t take my word for it. Pick up this book, and look at the picture on page 35 of those shiny chocolate tuiles, or the one on page 31 of the chocolate tart shell filled with pureed raspberries so bright and luscious that you could almost stick your finger into the page and lick those raspberries off, and then see if you can fight the urge to bake your way through this book.
Snowball, for out-of-box snarfing, your instincts are spot on for avoiding Hershey’s, as it’s nasty stuff. But (she said sheepishly) I’m not really a big fan of Godiva, either. Maybe the Godiva you can get in Europe is better, but Godiva U.S. is owned by Campbell’s Soup, and I think they tend to overdo it on the sugar.
My own favorite box-nosh choccies are Wilbur Buds, made by the Wilbur Chocolate Co. in Lititz, PA. (Sadly, there are very few independent chocolate producers left in the U.S. Wilbur is owned by Cargill, but based on my last visit to the Wilbur factory, it looks like Cargill is a fairly hands-off parent; they are content to let Wilbur do what it does best.) Let me tell you, babe, Wilbur Buds are what Hershey Kisses wish they could be. You can buy milk or dark Wilbur Buds. Both are magnificent. The dark ones are deeply chocolate, with vanilla notes; the milk ones have that caramelly, malty edge that the best milk chocolate aspires to.
Also, I’m not sure how widely distributed it is, but if you ever see Cote d’Or chocolate anywhere, snap it up. Cote d’Or is the Hershey’s of Belgium. It makes me wish I were Belgian, so I could just buy one of these lovely, lovely bars at the same time I buy the morning paper. Since I am not Belgian, I am forced to going down to Economy Candy on Rivington Street and buying a dozen bars at a time. It’s a great sacrifice, but I try to be brave.
If I were going for prestige chocolate, I would recommend an assortment from Maison du Chocolat, who I believe sells by mail. Cheap they’re not. Wonderful they are.
Now I have a serious squishy going for Wilbur Buds right now, and there are none in the house. Feh.