Life by Chocolate

Chocolate, white, milk, dark, in all its forms forms life. Chocolate truffles, caramels, and other confections are at the core of enjoyment. This is life by chocolate because death by chocolate is the wrong attitude.

Friday, August 8, 2008

InnSane Salmon



This was originally on InnSane, our other blog.

My most requested recipe:

3 maple syrup, use high quality fancy (light amber) syrup. Putnam Family has a great product at a great price, to 1 Soy Sauce

So, that's 3:1 maple to soy. 3/4 cup to 1/4 cup is a good amount for about 8 salmon.

Now, I like putting in a load of garlic. I usually use about 2 table spoons. But have at it. Then I grind up some fresh pepper and season to taste.

Next, for about 1 hour, marinate the salmon filets. Reserve some of the sauce for later. Bake in oven at 350 for 16-20 depending on filets, oven, your taste.

Take some of the reserved sauce and brush on fillet directly before serving. Remember, no extra salt is needed here. Soy is salting enough.

Not the best picture but here it is served with maki and my root veg trio.

Enjoy.

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Recipe: Butternut Squash Hash

Originally on InnSane.

I'm just going to throw up the bare bones outline. For a more detailed recipe, you'll have to buy the book when it comes out. One day.

1. take 2 butternut squash, peel, and then medium dice them.

2. take 1 sweet potato or yam and peel and dice, also medium.

Roast them together at 350 in a preheated oven for about 1/2 hour or until they start to brown on the edges. This is a light roast.

3. Buy Alan Benton's hams and dice them also medium dice. I use about 1/4 - 1/2 of a pound. Take the ham and saute it in a T of EVO. Then put in Kahlua and apple jack. About 1/4 - 1/3 cup combined. Flambe it. When the flames go out, set aside. Sometimes, I also use his bacon. It's fantastic. If you add his bacon use about 1/4 - 1/2 a pound. Play with it.

4. Sweat 1/2 diced, small, onion in some butter, and then add about 6-8 oz of mushrooms, sliced thin. You can add more if you like.

5. Combine the roasted veggies with the mushrooms and onion and heat lightly. Add the ham, drained, and then top with toasted sunflower seeds. I used about 1/2 a cup. Season with white pepper. No need for salt the ham has it.

For vegetarians, leave out the ham and add cranberries instead and season with the white pepper and some sea salt. I like to use smoke sea salt.

Enjoy.

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Making Nougat, the movie


Prepping to make the nougat.



Well, I decided that there are a couple of tricky aspects of making nougat that I can only explain with a video. So, I decided to make some nougat Montelimar. I'm not putting the recipe up, just videos. However, if you take the recipe for my Honey Nougat and you heat the honey up to 108C, get the whites whipping, take the honey up to 125C, start the sugar mixture heating on as high as you have, next add the honey slowly to the whites to keep from collapsing and keep whipping the honeyed whites. When the sugar reaches 155C, pour that in, again slowly, do not make the whites collapse.

At this point, you should have the inclusions ready. Almonds, toasted, Pistachio, toasted, Hazelnuts, toasted, cherries, quartered, pear and apricot, diced into 1/4" cubes. Mix the nougat into the inclusions. Make sure that the bowl of inclusions has been keep in a 120C oven. You will pretty much have this nougat recipe.

Anyway, this post isn't about making Montelimar nougat but rather what I wanted to do was to show you the whipping of the whites. Keep in mind that it's hard to video, make nougat and get all this right. You'll notice that I'm splattering the sugar. Try not to do that. It's hard. When I use my small 5 quart mixer, it's a lot easier. Doing small batches in my 20 quart mixer is fun and easy but you get the sugar splatters.

First we whip the eggs whites and keep it whipping the whole time. Then we pour in the honey, for this nougat, and next we pour in the sugar. Blogger is not allowing me to upload video right now. So, all I have is still pictures. I'll publish those and see what I can do about the video.

Let's see if this works.

Here are some more pictures.

I mixed in the inclusions.

Here is the result of putting this nougat on the wafer paper. This nougat was so thick by the time I was done, I had to kneed it into the inclusions like bread. Or as Nancy says, hot bread. Very hot. Wear food service gloves.

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Every Day with Rachel Ray

Every Day with Rachel Ray did an article on us. Very nice. They asked us a ton of questions about the food, the breakfasts, dinners, chocolates, the teacher etc., etc., etc. They had editors involved, proof readers, copywriters, the janitor, everyone. Then, they took everything off the website. These people are thorough. I haven't seen it but people have been talking about it.

So, go out and buy a copy. We are mentioned in three different parts of the magazine. Have fun reading the article. You know, we've been in USA Today. Time Out New York, Washington Post Travel section, Country Living, Country Magazine, Artist Magazine, Quilting Magazine, just to name a few. We just don't capitalize on all these articles written about us. We need to, one day. So, I figured I'd just throw up a post, as it were. Kim has read it and mentioned it to me. I'll go hunt down a copy. Rachel Ray is local, after all.

I gotta hand it to RR. We are getting information requests from the article already. Way to go, Rachel.