Impressive Cooking Project: Figs

So, I have a pretty picture of chocolate-covered figs, and not a ton to talk about. Hence "impressive cooking projects". I always feel like there are certain cooking things that are extremely easy, but freak out a lot of people. Maybe I'll start a series about this?

Pretty figs:

It was sort of an outgrowth of that Valentine's Day chocolate-covered strawberry nonsense. And I always see ridiculously pricey chocolate-covered figs at Whole Foods, so I was curious to make my own.

How easy is this?

1. You melt chocolate. Well, first find chocolate. I happened to use Whole Foods' house brand of semi-sweet chocolate chips, but fancier chocolate, or milk chocolate, or whatever, works fine. Please don't use that weird "chocolate candy coating" crap. That is not chocolate. Melt it in a double boiler, if you're being proper, but going slowly and stirring a lot works fine in the microwave, too.

2. Take it off the heat, if you're not microwaving. Dip figs (or strawberries, or whatever) into the chocolate by hand, or using a fondue fork. Whatever is practical. Melt it a little more if it starts to solidify.

3. Place the dipped fruit on a sheet of waxed paper to cool at room temperature. If you're feeling a bit pretentious, melt a contrasting shade of chocolate and drizzle it over the top. Or add sea salt, chopped nuts, caramel, or whatever. Have fun.

If it's fresh fruit, ideally eat it the same day. Strawberries can start to weep. I think dried fruit will keep for a few days or longer, but they didn't last long enough for me to truly attest to that.

Costa Rican Rice-A-Roni and the Return of the Brownie Cookies

For dinner, I had glorified DIY Rice-A-Roni (I had to google how to spell that), with a Yuengling to drink. And a brownie cookie.

That mess is a take on our usual quasi-Costa Rican rice+beans+egg dish. I had an odd desire to clean out the fridge this week, as well as clear the pantry of Jon's repulsive canned baked beans. So I cooked some sad frozen peas with the rice, added some seasonings, and topped the mess with an egg and the now-ubiquitous Aleppo pepper. Jon ate his toxic-smelling, slightly neon-hued beans instead of the peas, which he dislikes. The dish was somewhere between serviceable and decent, and far better than Rice-A-Roni, but I was too busy baking cookies for five hours to really care.

So, the cookies.

They're good, but I can think of a dozen other cookie recipes I can make with less mess, and in less time. They taste like brownie edges, crispy, with a chewy middle, and maybe a bit of macaron shatter when you bite into them.

Unfortunately, I might have to make them again out of curiosity- I "mixed" rather than "folded" at a critical step, and I'm now wondering if the texture would be significantly better had I folded. Maybe not. Also, they're so devastatingly chocolaty you'll come away from baking hating chocolate (yet covered in it...) At least they make the whole house smell great, until you succumb to the fumes.

The Chocolate Pudding Caper, part I

This week, I've been reading Ideas in Food. Finally, I've found people as crazy as me.

I've roasted pasta...I've pre-soaked it in tomato water...The book is gloriously experimental, with a ton of interesting ideas. This morning, I decided to make their Crispy Chocolate Mousse.

My mother has a recipe from the 1960s built on the idea of a meringue/cookie hybrid, and it makes the most fabulous cookies ever. However, she hates to cook, and periodically loses said recipe. I haven't seen it in fifteen years, so I decided to try baking these in the hopes they'd be similar. They actually take five hours to bake, so I'm not sure how they are yet. (And in the process of writing this, I've realized I forgot to add the vanilla) But if noshing the leftover pudding-like batter directly out of the bowl is any indication, they're kind of awesome.

That said, it's the first recipe I've made in months that makes me remember why people hate to cook. It's a meringue and not a meringue at the same time, so lots of finicky egg pampering is required. Because egg whites require an absolutely clean bowl for proper whipping, and because the yolks are mixed with something hot, a minimum of three large bowls are required. And that's all before you have to scoop the whole mess into a pastry bag/ziploc for piping. The process of transferring between bowls has left me with a variety of delicious leftover chocolate goos to surreptitiously sample, but there's a lot of waste. And I'm covered in chocolate byproducts and feel about five.

Breakfast: Chocolate and Bacon

For breakfast, I ate chocolate. And bacon. Together. Along with some Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

I'd heard great things about Mo's Bacon Bar, a chocolate bar from Vosges featuring uncured bacon and smoked salt chunks, so I finally broke down and tried it. It wasn't bad- chocolate and bacon really can't be bad- but I could do better. The bacon was not crispy, and the flavors just weren't quite blended enough. The smoked salt chunks were a little disruptive and strange.

The other big problem is the price point. I paid about $2/oz, which is still cheaper than I found it online (and also cheaper than the jamon iberico de bellota I've been lusting after at Central Market, and will never purchase, at $99/pound), but seriously. Considering I can find three or four other really excellent chocolate bars at Whole Foods for far less than $2/oz, the bacon bar had better be perfect. And it's not, at least not for me.


I appreciate the trailer-trash cachet of bacon and chocolate, but I'd rather snack on something else at that price, or make some at home and adjust the recipe for my own preferences. I prefer very crispy bacon, and I like to dip my bacon in maple syrup. I think I'd like homemade crispy bacon maple chocolate much better.

Fromage a Quatre?

For dinner, I had beef and spinach ravioli with some leftover puttanesca sauce and bread with olive oil. And an intriguing dessert.

The ravioli was organic frozen ravioli from Whole Foods. Not too bad, especially since it was cooked correctly for once. I like my pasta on the chewy side of al dente, and Jon likes his on the smushy side of al dente, so pasta is a often a point of contention. It was beefy without being greasy; my only complaint was the relative paucity of filling, and the fact I couldn't taste the spinach much at all.

The puttanesca was left over from last week's orecchiete. It's Target's Archer Farms brand, which is generally good, and it's made in Italy, so I assumed it was a safe bet. But no. The sauce is atrocious. The first time we opened it, there was a good 1/2" of olive oil suspended on top of the sauce. Puttanesca (translation: whore sauce)does contain many oily, salty ingredients- olives, olive oil, anchovies- but that's no excuse. It contained enough salt to kill a large mammal, and it lacked the spiciness of a good puttanesca. It's incredibly easy to make at home, so next time I'll just do that.

For dessert, I had some cheese and wine. Neither is what you would expect.
The cheese was a leftover Valentine's Day splurge, something so weird I couldn't pass it up- chocolate, pecan, bourbon, and raisin flavored goat cheese. Called Fromage a Trois (the name is even more absurd when you count the flavors- but then, I am a humorless literalist), the cheese left me a little confused. It tastes good, it just doesn't taste anything like cheese. It tastes like very nice velvety-dark chocolate mousse, with mostly ineffectual chunks of pecan and raisin. I hate raisins, but I wouldn't have known what the mushy black things in my cheese were without checking the ingredient list. The bourbon flavor is basically non-existent. It's an interesting gimmick, but not one I expect to crave (particularly since I thought it was a splurge at $11, and then found this price list)

I had a glass of fino sherry with the cheese. A pretty sad pairing, considering the sweet "cheese", but it was still good. Fino sherry is the lightest and driest type of sherry- the drier the better in my book- and tastes like crisp apples, vanilla, and oak. It's great on a hot day after a huge meal, especially paella.

Gnocchi at Home

Tonight, I was on my own for dinner. I still don't have a handle on Houston restaurants that are cheap, close, and do takeout, so on nights like this I head to the grocery store with sybaritic abandon. I ended up with about five pounds of grapefruit (sale!), blackberries, gnocchi, sauce, potato chips, wine, and chocolate.

For dinner, I cooked the gnocchi and topped it with Cento's arrabiata sauce, then had a glass of wine, some blackberries and chocolate, and some potato chips. The gnocchi was ok. I bought a different brand than I usually do, and it was a little gluey. Good pasta sauce makes anything better (although I've been known to eat good pasta sauce as a meal in itself); the Cento is hard to find, but really good and spicy. I can taste each ingredient, but it's still integrated into a cohesive sauce rather than tasting like a bunch of chopped veggies. The wine was "Notorious" Nero d'Avola. I suppose the name is a takeoff on the Mafia's strong presence in Sicily, where Nero comes from. I LOVE the grape. This particular wine is dark and tannic, with really full berry and pepper flavors, and is a good, but not amazing, example of what I like in Nero d'Avola.

I also had some pre-dinner potato chips, in which I was pretty disappointed. I usually completely avoid the snack food aisle, but I wanted something to munch on tonight. I really like Boulder Canyon Potato Chip Co's garlic parm chips, so I was intrigued by their crinkle-cut sour cream and onion chips, which I'd never seen before. Ick. I like their other chip varieties for their minimal ingredients and lack of weird fake seasonings, but apparently sour cream flavor is hard to execute without them. They taste papery and flat; I'm not sure I could distinguish them from something Frito Lay made in a blind taste test. Dessert was much better- very ripe blackberries and some chocolate.