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Posts Tagged ‘Chocolate’

Profiteroles

“One nice thing eez, the game of love eez never called on account of darkness.” – Pepe Le Pew

Pepe Le Pew: now there’s a true romantic. He never gives up on love. He approaches it with a single-mindedness that could almost be enviable. And yes, you may have noticed that he is as French as une baguette. The last bit makes sense, given that Parisians, indeed all French, have had a reputation for romance grafted onto their identities like a tattoo. (That Pepe Le Pew happens to be a cartoon skunk is irrelevant to my thesis.)

I have been trying to find out why Paris is considered the most romantic city in the world. No matter who I ask or where I look on the internet, the closest answer I can get is that “it just is.” Songs have been written about it, movies have been made, and books have been published. So who am I to argue?

Perhaps you are familiar with the famous “French Paradox.” This is the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats.

Pepe Le Pew

But herein lies my French paradox: how can it be that a place and a people so famous for being romantic can also be famous for rudeness? (Not like New Yorkers, who are sooooo nice.) It reminds me somehow of what Socrates said about love, “The hottest love has the coldest end.” So perhaps my paradox is explained by twisting Socratic reason: French passion burns white hot, but is icy cold when you ask for your vin ordinaire to be refilled. They may be rude, but they’re rude with style.

(Quoting Pepe Le Pew and Socrates in the same story must be some kind of journalistic breakthrough.)

The following bit of news is unlikely to come as a surprise: for me all roads lead to food, and any place where your visit isn’t considered complete unless you’ve partaken of an éclair or two (or three) gets a gold star on my map. So if the people are rude, I figure I can always drown my sorrows at les patisseries, non?

Valentine’s Day is this weekend. Last week I described baking Valentine Heart cookies. They are a sweet and wonderful thing to make for your special someone, but if something more transcendent is called for then may I suggest a really cheap trip to romantic Paris?

No, I am not saying that you should fly to Paris for a day in the middle of winter (although if you want to that’s good too.) But the Butter Flour Eggs Travel Bureau would like you to know that Paris can be as close as your kitchen, and just as romantic as the real thing. All that is needed is a touch of atmosphere, and, yes, some butter, flour, and a few eggs. Oh, and a big hunk of chocolate. Okay, two big hunks of chocolate.

Here’s the bottom line: if Paris is the most romantic city in the world, then why not toss out the flowers and the candy, and instead serve something typically Parisian? Life may be a box of chocolates, but for me, Valentine’s Day is all about Profiteroles.

Profiteroles are a staple of Parisian patisseries. In simplest terms, they are small cream puffs filled with ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Such an underwhelming description, yes, but like Paris, it’s more about the experience and the sum of the parts than about the mere bricks and mortar.

I don’t remember the first time I had Profiteroles, but it wasn’t in Paris. I’ve had them through the years here in New York at the venerable Café Un Deux Trois. While I was preparing to write this article I Googled, “Who serves the best Profiteroles in Paris?” Number one on someone’s list was a patisserie named Carette. (Warning to office dwellers, their website site plays music.) If you’ve been to Paris it is likely you are familiar with Carette as it is hardly an undiscovered secret. For several days I have been fixated on their website, specifically the pictures. Looks like a place I could spend an afternoon, eating.

You may be thinking, “Are you crazy? You want me to make cream puffs?” I’m not crazy (at least not measurably), the effort is all in the name of romance, and cream puffs – Pâte à Choux – are ridiculously easy to make. Really. Meatloaf is harder, I swear.

There’s also a dirty little secret about Profiteroles: they can be made a day or two ahead and stashed in the freezer until you need them. Just thaw them for a fleeting twenty minutes or so – long enough to unwrap jewelry (hint hint) – glaze with the intense, oozing gloss of a special chocolate sauce and l’amour is alive in your kitchen. Feel free to eat them with a spoon, but they’re small, so why not pull a “Mickey Rourke” and feed each other with your hands? Messy? Ah, you’ll figure it out.

If your kitchen isn’t especially atmospheric, light a few candles and fire up some classic French love songs on your iPod; anything by Charles Aznavour, Edit Piaf, or Yves Montand will do the job, and they’re all available on iTunes.

As one of those songs says, “C’est si bon / Lovers say that in France / To the tune of romance / It means it’s oh so good.” I think that is as true for romance as it is for Profiteroles.

Of course on Valentine’s Day, I know a few folks who may prefer a little ditty sung by Beyoncé that beseeches the listener to, “put a ring on it.”

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Click here for my recipe for Profiteroles.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Valentine's Day Cookies

A couple of classmates from elementary school “friended” me recently on Facebook. To protect the innocent I won’t say how many years have gone by since I’ve seen them. As happy as I was to hear from them after all these years, I also found that it raised some strange emotions for me. I think the passage of time has always had an ineffable quality for me; I can count the time passed in numbers but I can’t quite wrap my head around what it means.

One of these long lost school mates reminded me that when we were kids I always gave everyone in our classroom a Valentine’s Day card. I admit I found this a bit disconcerting:  you mean everyone DIDN’T give everyone in class a Valentine’s Day card?? What was going on there? Were they raised by wolves?

I remember vividly that every year there was the ceremonial carving of the shoe box: everyone decorated a shoe box with a slot cut in the top. Everyone placed them on their desks to serve as a Valentine’s Day mailbox. I remember a flurry of activity as everyone ran around the classroom delivering their cards. I do not remember why I was so generous with my little paper hearts and cupids. Was I sentimental or romantic? Was my Mom teaching me some early lesson about etiquette and letter writing? Maybe it was the simple math of me observing that there were twenty-something cards in the pack, and assuming that I was supposed to use them all?

Whatever the reason, it is a relief to know that for once, I had it covered. Phew.

Living here in New York, I am a witness every year to the adult version of this ritual. I always get a laugh out of seeing the long line of quietly panicked men at the florist and at the Godiva store much too late on Valentine’s Day. I never see women in those lines. I’m not sure why, but I got a hint the other day when my Baby Niece (or “B.N.”) called me – more than two weeks before Valentine’s Day – and asked if I would help her make a special treat for her boyfriend (lower case.) I think she’s trying to make him her Boyfriend (upper case.)

She wants to surprise him with cookies (he doesn’t read this blog so this won’t ruin the surprise.) I think this is a great idea. Anyone can go out and buy chocolate, but the extra step of making something or planning something is what makes a gift romantic on Valentine’s Day. It says, “I was thinking of you, and you mean enough to me that I took the time and planned something special.” I am not advocating stalking, rather, I am merely suggesting consensual obsession.

Nor am I advocating that you should forego including jewelry as part of your Valentine’s Day gift. If I did that I would likely be disinherited by my Mother and have to endure the scorn of the other women in my family, as well as countless others. Jewelers everywhere can now breathe a sigh of relief.

I was more than willing to bake the cookies for her and let boyfriend (lower case) operate under the delusion that she baked them – the sugary equivalent of Cyrano de Bergerac. (How’s that for romantic?)

But no, B.N., an intrepid young woman, insisted that she needed to do it herself under my supervision. My only concern was that my kitchen is a bit snug for two adults to comfortably work. Also, we were planning on dipping the cookies in chocolate; to bake them, wait for them to cool, and then dip ‘n decorate (can I trademark that term?) would mean perhaps a longer day than either of us was willing to give to the project.

In the past I have described my usual division of labor for projects of this type. To be brief, I prefer to break the work into pieces. For these Valentine cookies I decided that the pieces should be: A) I’ll make the cookie dough B) I’ll bake the cookie dough C) B.N. will decorate the cookies.

That weighty decision done, I unearthed a very simple, not too sweet, shortbread recipe I had cobbled together. This is one of those “double duty” recipes I always like. You can use it for cookies, but if you omit the egg it makes a great crust for lemon bars, or pecan bars. As B.N.’s boyfriend (lower case) prefers milk chocolate (I approve!), I thought this humble cookie would be the best delivery system for the milk chocolate.

We had a bit of time between “cookie day” and Valentine’s Day, so I knew I needed to be extra careful with the chocolate. During that time the chocolate could become streaky or discolored – especially if refrigerated. Tempering chocolate is a process that allows you to melt it and let it set again without streaking or discoloring. Tempering chocolate requires raising it to a particular temperature, then cooling it slowly by folding it over on itself on a cool marble slab. It requires a bit of skill, patience, and space. I’m one for three. Barely.

Instead, I found a shortcut technique in a really beautiful book titled, “Baking At Home with The Culinary Institute of America.” Their shortcut involves simply melting two thirds of the chocolate on top of a double boiler, then adding the remaining un-melted chocolate and allowing it to melt while stirring until the chocolate reaches 84˚F to 87˚F. Sounds convoluted? The fault is in my description, it is really very simple.

B.N. and I had a blast. This is a really low stress project. One of the reasons for the lower stress is the sheer scale of the project: at Christmas you feel compelled to bake enough cookies to feed a small country. On Valentine’s Day you can get away with as few as three or four and as many as a dozen. Unless you’re baking enough for the whole class.

You can see samples of our collaboration in the picture above. The question remains: will boyfriend (lower case) be promoted to Boyfriend (uppercase)?

We’ll see. But for now I’ve got another Valentine’s Day covered. Phew.

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Click here for my recipe for chocolate dipped shortbread cookies.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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All that glitters...

To fry or not to fry? That was the question. Allusions to William Shakespeare aside, I’ve been tossing around that question for a week or so. It’s not as profound as Hamlet’s version, is it?

Here’s why the question has been on my mind: The first night of Hanukkah is this Friday and in a cloud of creative confusion I find I am resistant to the idea of writing about latkes. You don’t need me to tell you how to make potato pancakes, do you? Step one: Shred potato. Step two: fry. Step three: top with sour cream or applesauce and eat. Thanks for reading, see you next week.

Oh sure, I know there are a zillion variations. Shred some carrot or parsnip into the potato mixture. Add various spices. Add an egg. All are really delicious, but truly it would be like me telling you how to boil a pot of pasta.

My other choice is to write about Sufganiyot. For the uninitiated, these are the jelly doughnuts that seem to have overtaken latkes as the Hanukkah food of choice in Israel.

How, you wonder, did they make the leap from potato pancakes to jelly doughnuts? It’s all in the story of Hanukkah.

After winning a battle against a supposedly unbeatable foe, the Jews went to re-light the eternal flame in their decimated temple. They found enough oil to keep the flame burning for only one day. Retrieving more lamp oil required an eight day round-trip ride. Miraculously, the oil lasted for eight days, keeping the eternal flame lit until the refill arrived. This is the miracle that is commemorated on the dreidel, the little top that kids spin during the festival. The letters on the four sides of the dreidel are the initials of the Hebrew words that translate as, “A Great Miracle Happened.”

It is the oil in this legend that Hanukkah foods all have in common: both the latkes and the jelly doughnuts are fried. Sephardic Jews fry fritters, and the Italians eat fried chicken. (Leave it to the Italians to really get it right.)

Which brings me back to my initial issues about frying: I really didn’t want to. One session of frying will smell up my apartment for days. Besides I operate under the shaky assumption that food fried at home will be bad for me; I only eat fried food in better restaurants. I trust them more. I am deluded.

I kept thinking, “I wonder if there is such a thing as a baked Sufganiyot?”; “Why don’t I just try to bake a doughnut recipe?”; “Google Baked Doughnuts.”

In the midst of all this I went to the dentist. Sitting in her chair, waiting for the Novocain-induced haze to wash over me, I opened her copy of “Good Housekeeping” magazine, and, boom! flash! a holiday miracle: a recipe for baked Sufganiyot. That was my divine signal, my rainbow, my tap on the shoulder.

Setting to work on their recipe (triple tested in their kitchens!) I found myself giddy with anticipation. I could practically taste the fluffy little puffs of sugar-dusted, jelly-filled Hanukkah happiness. My thoughts went to a long-ago trip to Nantucket and the legendary subtle doughnuts from the Downyflake Restaurant. My Kitchen Aid did its work, the yeast then applied its airy lift to the sticky dough, and my oven baked them to a pale toasty brown. I eagerly cut little pockets into them and filled them with strawberry jam. After dusting them with powdered sugar, I stepped back to survey the finished result which looked so simple and beautiful. Finally I lifted one to my mouth and took that magical first bite.

How can I best describe this decisive moment in my baking experience?

My sufganiyot. Yech...

Easily: these Sufganiyot tasted awful. I’ll add a “Yech” to erase any lingering doubt. The cinnamon in the recipe was overpowering and the hoped for lightness was a missing. In its place was a heavy, bready, overly sweet lump. Yes, doughnuts are supposed to be sweet, but this was sweetness without balance. Sugar usually boosts the other flavors in things, but here it was all dressed up with no place to go.

So where’s my Hanukkah miracle? I think this year it came in the form of the realization that if you want a jelly doughnut, then have a real jelly doughnut. One fried doughnut once a year isn’t going to kill me. I’ve never been a doughnut guy; they don’t temp me at other times of the year. And if you don’t want to fry doughnuts, seek out the pros who do (I’ll be getting mine at Silver Moon Bakery, a wonderful place in my neighborhood.)

It was with a heavy heart (probably caused by the awful Sufganiyot) that I also discovered a “truth” about myself, a moment of self revelation, as it were. At the checkout counter of my local Duane Reade I spied their yearly stock of Hanukkah gelt, the little web bags of chocolate coins. I bought a couple of bags—mostly with the purpose of photographing them for this blog posting (I swear!)—and realized as I snapped open the coins and ate the chocolate inside, that I can live without jelly doughnuts, I can forego latkes, but I can’t imagine being without chocolate. The Israelis can have their Sufganiyot, the Sephardim their fritters, the Italians their fried chicken; henceforth my Hanukkah commemorative food will be chocolate.  

You don’t have to fry chocolate.

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A Cookie Triptych

This past weekend I made cookies for my friend, the artist Laura Loving’s Holiday Open Gallery. I could not help but to be inspired by her iconic art.

The cookies I made blended a little Christmas sensibility with her well known riffs on the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. I added my own riff on an icon with little chocolate wreaths that were inspired by Wedgewood Jasper china.

More about Christmas cookies in an upcoming blog posting, in the meantime here are the cookies from Laura’s Open Gallery.

Take a bow...

There’s a Broadway theater named the Lunt-Fontanne—maybe you’ve seen it if you’ve walked through Times Square? Lunt-Fontanne was actually two people: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, husband and wife, perhaps the biggest stars of the early to mid twentieth century. I could claim they were the Brangelina of their time, but that’s not quite accurate. They may actually have been bigger; their Broadway plays were invariably hits, they dutifully took them out on the road playing cities of every size (a/k/a, “the provinces,”) and they were pioneers of a natural, realistic acting style. One night while channel surfing I happened to catch a kinescope of a play they had performed live on TV in the late fifties. Even then, in their late sixties, they had timing, humor, and chemistry that would be considered contemporary today.

What in the world does this have to do with food?

It’s a stretch, but bear with me.

Anyway, during their down time, “The Lunts” lived on a farm (now a museum) called “Ten Chimneys” in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin (Lunt was a Wisconsin native.) While there, Alfred channeled his artistic talent into the kitchen, becoming quite skilled in that venue too.

Blatz showed Lunt in his kitchen (left)

I found this out a few years ago, and was amused enough by it that I decided to name one of my recipes in his honor, giving it an imaginary “back story,” and the aura of mystery that goes along with it. (Food geek? Me? Hi! Have we met?)

The question was: which recipe? Then Thanksgiving rolled around. After a quick tour through my recipe file, the answer became obvious. For many years I have been making a pumpkin pie with a chocolate cookie crumb crust. The original idea came from seeing the pre-made chocolate cookie crumb crusts stacked near the canned pumpkin in the supermarket. It was as easy as asking, “What if I tried those two together?”

One year, I couldn’t find the pre-made chocolate cookie crumb crusts, and realized I would have to make my own. That’s when I found Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers. You may have seen those: they are packaged in a cellophane wrapped yellow box. A plain, simple, dark chocolate cookie, they are more than just a bit addictive, and, after a spin in the food processor, perfect in a crumb crust.

(If you doubt me that the cookies are addictive, I’ll admit that more than once I have had to run out and get another box because I no longer had enough to make a full crust. Oink.)

Although I have never been able to find out why the cookies are called famous, pairing the most famous stage actor / cook of the twentieth century with a cookie named “famous” just seemed natural to me. Could there be a better match? That’s how “Alfred Lunt’s Famous Pumpkin Pie” was born. The recipe is all mine, but its cachet is borrowed.

So, now, to the pie itself. I have written in this venue about a tendency I used to have to over spice pumpkin pie, a nasty habit swiftly broken by my mother’s insistence that she wanted to taste the pumpkin in the pumpkin pie. So I tempered my recipe, putting the pumpkin center stage, and relegating the spices to supporting roles. The spices are all still there; in fact I used a kitchen sink approach, just in smaller quantities, sometimes as small as a pinch. A restrained twist of orange zest adds a spring to the pumpkin’s step.

To give the pumpkin custard a bit of complexity I used three different sweeteners: white sugar, and smaller doses of maple syrup and molasses. The maple syrup adds a bit of smoke, and the molasses makes the sugar less cloying, effectively keeping the whole thing with two feet planted firmly on the ground. If you’re a fan of using sweet potato instead of pumpkin (and why wouldn’t you be?) I suggest using a bit less of each sweetener, and give some thought to employing them in different ratios than you would with pumpkin. Perhaps a bit less of the sugar and maple, and a bit more of the molasses?

I use a light version of the classic pumpkin custard, omitting the egg yolks, and using fat free evaporated milk. The remaining egg whites are whipped to soft peaks, breathing a bit of lift into what is usually a very dense pie. Pumpkin is rich enough on its own, so the resulting pie retains its heft, but you’ll have room for all the other goodies that are sure to find themselves under your nose on turkey day.

Because the pumpkin mixture is so liquid when poured into the pan, it soaks the chocolate cookie crumbs slightly, but the result seems like providence rather than poor baking skills. You get a dark, dense, mildly chocolate crust that sets off the rusty pumpkin better than a predictable pie crust ever could. Contrary to the expectation that the chocolate might upstage the pumpkin, they actually work together in a well rehearsed banter.

This all reminds me that the holidays are a perfect time to bring some theater to the table. I bake this pie in a Springform pan. This serves two purposes: first, you pop open the pan and the pie is freed, easier to slice, and ready to do its job; second, the perfectly upright sides of the pan give each slice a pleasingly symmetrical discipline. Why not take the slices out of the pan and line them up on a rectangular platter, like a line of whipped cream-topped Rockettes ready to kick their way across your table. Ta da!

And the cachet? I’ll be telling folks that Alfred Lunt used to bake this pie every Thanksgiving at Ten Chimneys. So when I offer seconds, it is in the tradition of the man himself exhorting Noel Coward to, “…have another piece of pie, old boy.” You can make up your own story if it pleases you. That’s “thee-a-tah.”

Hmmm: I wonder what I did with that recipe for Kathie Lee’s Crab Cakes?

Click here for the recipe for “Alfred Lunt’s Famous Pumpkin Pie.”

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Three martini lunch?

Here at Butter Flour Eggs, my mother is Executive Vice President of Food Nostalgia. Full disclosure: before she could be lured out of retirement to take the job, I was forced to sign a contract approximately the thickness of the Manhattan phonebook that contained a waiver forbidding me from referring to her age in any way. (So read on, and you do the math.)

Mom reminded me recently of a happy food memory she has carried with her for many years. Before my parents got married she worked for one of the high mucky mucks at the State House in Boston. On the days when she felt she could slip away without any risk that the wheels of state government would grind to a halt in her absence, she’d pop over to Schrafft’s for lunch.

Schrafft’s was before my time, but a couple of years ago I read a fun little book called When Everybody Ate at Schrafft’s by Joan Kanel Slomanson. More a reminiscence than a deep dive into the sociology behind the famous chain restaurant, I learned that in spite of Schrafft’s fame as a New York chain (they were almost as ubiquitous as Starbucks are now,) the company actually had deep New England roots. In fact, the Schrafft’s sign still hangs prominently on the Charlestown, Mass. landmark building that once served as the company’s candy factory.

My mom uses the same reverent tones when mentioning Schrafft’s Cottage Pudding that she uses when talking about some of the far-flung trips she and my Dad took.

I had no idea what Cottage Pudding was, and assumed it must have been something amazing. I grilled my mom: was it like bread pudding? No. Was it like those molten chocolate cakes that I just read have been declared old hat? No. Well, what was it then?

As she explained it, Cottage Pudding was a piece of plain white loaf cake served on a plate with warm chocolate sauce.

A piece of plain cake with chocolate sauce inspires a lifetime of reverent memories in a woman who is intelligent, cultured, and well travelled? Go figure, right? But that’s food: you never know what will grab you. And who knows what kind of emotions are tied up in the food we eat. With the weight of running the Commonwealth of Massachusetts practically resting on my Mom’s shoulders, maybe Cottage Pudding was some kind of soothing comfort food. Food is a primal urge. We can’t explain it.

Actually, a nice piece of cake with some warm chocolate sauce doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

But why is it called “pudding?”

I started with a little detective work. Cottage Pudding seems to have been around for a long time before my mother found it. There is a recipe for Cottage Pudding in the early Fannie Farmer cookbooks. A lot of people remember the name Fannie (or Fanny) Farmer from the chain of candy shops that disappeared a few years back, but actually she was a prominent New England cook and teacher, and wrote one of the first cookbooks that used standard measures (i.e., cups and teaspoons) in the recipes. The recipe for Cottage Pudding in the 1918 edition of her The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (now available on line here) is clearly for a cake.

The umbrella word that the British use for most desserts is “pudding.” If you take this somewhat wider definition of the word “pudding” into consideration, and keep in mind that Farmer was a product of the late 19^th century when there was still a British colonial influence on American food you’ll see that it isn’t much of a stretch for this dessert to be called “pudding.”

I hear you: you don’t want a history lesson, you want cake and you want it NOW! Fine: class dismissed. I’m off to the kitchen. The Schrafft’s chain is long gone but Cottage Pudding lives. I’m performing CPR on it.

I have two tasks at hand. The first is to create a modern version of a “homely” old dessert. The second is to try to provide my mom with a little reunion with a consoling old friend.

The Schrafft’s book I mentioned above was a good source for the Hot Fudge Sauce recipe. It is a basic cream, butter, sugar, chocolate sauce. True to its Schrafft’s roots, the sugary sauce is very “candy-shoppe” in its influence and easy to prepare. But the book doesn’t mention Cottage Pudding, so for the cake I first considered Fannie Farmer’s recipe. It is also very basic, and is likely very simple to make. But it also seems plain to the point of being austere. I think a better challenge would be to bring a little vitality to this party while still staying within the confines of Schrafft’s reputation for plain, home-style cooking.

So I went to my old fallback recipe: Ina Garten’s Lemon Yogurt Pound Cake, which I mentioned in this space a few weeks ago. With a few changes, and perhaps a bit of cosmetic surgery, this would give me a foundation on which to build, and a chance to bring Cottage Pudding into the 21^st century.

I started by scrubbing all of the lemon out of the recipe (Lemon and chocolate never seem to go well together.) But I thought the cake needed some kind of quiet counterpoint to the sticky ooze of the chocolate sauce. Vanilla seemed like the obvious choice, but not just the perfume of vanilla extract: I thought adding vanilla bean would give the cake its own vibrant personality to stand up to its overbearing saucy sister.

But how much vanilla bean? The normal rule in cooking is to start with less, because you can always add more of something but you can’t remove it. But this seemed like one time when breaking that rule was appropriate. I wanted to see what too much vanilla would taste like, so I added the contents of a whole vanilla bean.  This gave the dough an intense vanilla scent and a picturesque speckle of the little black dots from the bean.

In a nod to the current obsession with cupcakes I thought it would be fun to leave the loaf pan on its shelf for now, and try baking the dough in a muffin tin. That would accomplish portion control, yes, but also awaken the primal childhood instinct of having your very own cake (and yes, eating it too.)

My first hint that I was on the right track was the heady vanilla cloud that enveloped me and my kitchen when I opened the oven door to remove the cakes. Don’t be afraid to serve this dessert warm from the oven! The combination of warm sauce and warm cake throwing off its breathy vanilla-ness is intense. The combination of warm sauce and cool cake is equally gratifying—when the warm sauce hits the cool cake you get a slightly less aggressive vanilla hit, more like a poke on the shoulder reminding you, “I’m here too!”

By the way, Fannie Farmer recommended that the cake be served with Vanilla or Hard Sauce. Somehow it ended up at Schrafft’s served with their famous chocolate sauce. I wonder if that was Schrafft’s twist or my Mom’s? She’s been known to ask for a dollop of hot fudge sauce on everything but french fries.

Either way, my first thought on my first bite was, “Ohhhh! Ice Cream Shop!” Eat this and you are taken back in time to the cool air of a marble-lined neighborhood confectionary. I get it now, Mom. You just earned your cushy corner office.

By the way: if you’re into fondue, bake the cake in a loaf pan, cut it into cubes and serve with the hot sauce. I know fondue normally has some alcohol added: might I recommend the merest tipple of Cointreau?

And Mom? Please get back to work. That reminds me: I asked Mom what she had for lunch besides the Cottage Pudding. The famous Schrafft’s Chicken Sandwich? No. Their celebrated Lobster Newburgh? No.

Just the Cottage Pudding. That’s my Mom.

Click here for the Cottage Pudding recipe.

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Welcome to the USA!

A couple of years ago I noticed a disturbing trend: they tried to take my chocolate away from me.

No, there was no one riding up behind me on a Vespa trying to snatch the Hershey Bar with Almonds out of my hands as I walked along the sidewalk.

I’m talking about a subversive movement that seemed to be afoot to change us chocoholics into chocophiles. I think that sounds vaguely dirty, I resent it, and will not have any part of it.

They wanted us to have parties, and taste chocolate, like they do with wine! Can you imagine it? Melt a little square of chocolate in your mouth, trip the light fantastic with a few adjectives to describe it, spit it out, and then move on to the next. The whole affair just reeks of blue blazers and self control.

Thankfully, this trend has not taken hold. (Yet!) But the aftermath has not been pretty either: it seems that now there is a residual feeling that the only real chocolate is dark chocolate.

Oh, I so beg to differ.

I have a dirty little secret to reveal here: I think I have come to the conclusion that I prefer—dare I say it—milk chocolate.

Don’t misunderstand me: I love dark chocolate. I repeat: I love dark chocolate. 

The problem is that dark chocolate can be so intense. It requires a little bit of work, kind of like a friend who needs constant attention. But good milk chocolate is my friend who can sit with me in silence and neither of us feels conspicuous. We can sit and just “be.”

Before we proceed, you should know this about me: I am a sucker for a foreign wrapper. I once spent an entire afternoon in London roaming the aisles of the local Sainsbury’s (one of London’s grocery store chains.) Leave the famous Harrods’ food halls to the riff-raff; I had to see what Frosted Flakes looked like in London. Where others may bring back tchotchkes stamped, “London” on the side, I’ll bring back a bottle of dish detergent stamped, “By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen.”

Anyway, a few months ago I noticed a small pile of foreign-looking, block-shaped chocolate bars sitting by the checkout counter of Westside Market. The name, “Damak”, was indecipherable to me, which as you can guess only added to the allure, as did the fact that the only recognizable word amongst the Turkish on the wrapper was “Nestle.”

But ever since I got stung with a surprise $7.50 price tag for a chocolate bar at Whole Foods I have been reticent to experiment unless I know the price going in. The cashier told me they were only $2.49—a surprise nowadays when chocolate bars usually grab at least $3.50 from your pocket—but one that lowered my expectations. What the heck. I took a chance.

Is it great chocolate? How do you answer that question? Nowadays chocolate has become a numbers game, albeit a misleading one. Dark chocolate bars run anywhere from 50% to 70% or more cocoa. The fancy-schmancy Scharffen-Berger Milk Chocolate bar is 41% cocoa; the Damak, as far as I can gather, is 29% cocoa (the percentage is buried in the ingredients listing.)

But the numbers here lie, because the Damak bar also has 14% Antep pistachios. Buttery, slightly sweet Turkish pistachios. As you can see from the photo they aren’t ground up, but, true to the picture on the wrapper, left big and chunky. And this is where the magic starts.

It is smooth, lacking the graininess that seems to have afflicted Hershey Bars of late, and seemingly waiting to melt if you smile at it too broadly; to borrow an old advertising phrase, it melts in your mouth and in your hands. I pop a square or two on my tongue, let it melt a bit, then crunch down on the pistachios and let the whole jumble just kind of linger there for a while. I know this sounds like something that requires concentration, but trust me, I can multitask while melting, and that’s perhaps the advantage of the low melting point.

The chocolate has a friendly caramel tang that may remind some of Nutella, but without the suffocating, fatty, frosting heft.

I have no idea what country or genus of cocoa trees the pods came from. I can’t speak to the type of fermentation they use on the beans or the conching process or how the chocolate is tempered. I’m not even positive what “Damak” means. Google it yourself and take your pick.

Do you care about any of that stuff? Or once and for all do you just want me to answer the question, “Is it great chocolate?”

Yes, because I enjoy it. Period.