little miss cocoa

I want to be put to music, too!

Perfect picnic food. Great in any season. Hearty (chickpeas), refreshing (tomato and mint), spicy (onion, garlic, and pepper), with great texture (smooth and crunchy). I loooove balela.

Trader Joe’s sells balela in little eight ounce containers. Unfortunately, my appetite for balela is exponentially greater than the servings they offer! Also, it’s a little expensive. I looked for a recipe online, but couldn’t find one. Desperate, out of options, with a hungry belly only 1/4 full of the balela I wished to eat, I looked at the ingredients list on the side of the container, and made it myself.

Ingredients:
Two 15 ounce cans chickpeas
3/4 cup tomatoes chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (I use cherry tomatoes for a firmer bite)
1/2 cup Vidalia onion chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
1/2 cup minced fresh mint, parsley, or mint and parsley
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar (regular white vinegar is fine, but I like balsamic better)
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/4 teaspoon powdered hot pepper
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:
Drain the liquid from the chickpeas and pour into a bowl. After that, pour everything in the bowl and gently mix together. Eat. Eat a lot. Share with your boyfriend so he also has onion and garlic breath. Later, after dessert, while watching TV, eat some more. Sustain boyfriend’s garlic breath by sneaking a few extra chickpeas into his mouth. Spear the last wayward bits and consume. Sigh happily.

Lemon curd! Is delicious!

I did not know this until I had fresh lemon curd for the first time last Christmas Eve, on a warm scone. Unlike store-bought versions, which are too starchy, fresh lemon curd is kept semi-solid thanks to some gently cooked (very, very, very gently, like newborn baby gently) eggs. I made some for my boyfriend’s sister-in-law’s birthday. It almost didn’t make it out the door. There was a lot of licking of spoons.

So here is my lemon curd recipe:

1/2 cup freshly squeezed organic lemon juice
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
3/4 stick (6 tblsp) unsalted butter, cut into chunks

In a saucepan, whisk together the lemon juice, zest, sugar, and eggs. Turn on the heat on the stove to a little higher than low, and continue whisking with the pan on the heat while stirring in the butter (I like this part, when the butter swirls around to its eventual demise, like a wicked witch). At some point, like magic, the curd will firm up. S had just walked into the kitchen and I was just saying to him ‘this is taking forever’ when it firmed up and became more gel-like as if giving me as much of the finger as a gel-like substance can! Unfortunately, because my kitchen is not particularly well-stocked and my pan was quite thin, some of the egg also began to curdle. I whisked madly, but to no avail. Which takes me to the final step.

With a spatula, ease the curd into a fine-mesh strainer, and help the curd through the mesh with the back of a spoon. The strainer will catch any bits of curdled egg and lemon zest, so that the final product is deliciously smooth.

Pour into a jar and serve! Or, if you’re keeping it longer, stick in the refrigerator. Fresh lemon curd will last about a week refrigerated.

Consensus? Well, S and I thought it was great stuff. We carried the warm jar of curd to his sister-in-law’s apartment and, like bandits, knocked furtively on the door, left it on the doormat, and ran. Some days later, her verdict (we left a card, so she figured out pretty quick who’d come and gone) came in: most delicious on a scone.

When I was in Paris a few years back (aw, who doesn’t like to say that?) a friend tossed up some salad with the best dressing I’d ever tasted.

“Guillaume! What’s in this?”

“It is so easy…’

Here is where Guillaume usually begins discussing a very difficult recipe involving ingredients I have never heard of, many complicated steps, and probably cream. But this time he meant it:

“…It is just olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, and some mustard.”

It is true! So here’s my friend’s magical French recipe for delicious salad dressing:

Equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and a squirt or two of really good quality, course ground or dijon mustard (insert Grey Poupon joke here). Whip madly until the oil doesn’t separate from the vinegar, and pour over greens.

Today I have to go to the dentist. I have not been to the dentist in one year and four months. I am not excitedly anticipating: when he pokes at my fillings to determine whether they’re watertight and the pick sticks just a little bit to the filling, when they do the whirly brush with the paste and it tickles my gums and makes me feel nauseous, when he scrapes at my teeth with the pokey thing and the assistant asks my bleeding gums if I floss my teeth regularly, which I do, even if the evidence begs otherwise.
Any chocolate lover should have a favorite toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, and toothbrush, for proper tooth decay deceleration. Here are mine:

Preserve toothbrushes: recycled, recyclable, no-nonsense brushes in a variety of non-sporty colors, like plain ol’ black (my favorite). Most toothbrushes look like high-tech bicycle shorts or running sneakers. This is unnecessary, and bad for decor. Also, when you’re done, you can send the brush back to the company to be turned into picnic tables and boardwalks.

Listerine mouthwash: Mitch Hedberg said: ‘When you put Listerine in your mouth, it hurts. Germs do not go quietly.’ It is true. And then your smile is a little blue.

Sensodyne toothpaste: My chocolate habits are catching up to me, and my teeth are starting to hurt when I eat a little too much sugar. Even commercials of people eating ice cream is starting to put little shivers down my spine. Sensodyne is like very, very minor novocaine. Eat all the sugar you want.

Reach CleanPaste Floss: I’m starting to embarrass myself by promoting tooth products, but this one is really my favorite: plushy floss that really gets between your teeth and scrubs out whatever’s in there.

Coda: Both the dental hygienist and dentist praised me on my fine teeth. Huzzah!

Once I started finding famous singers singing cutified versions of their hit songs on Sesame Street, I couldn’t stop. It was just too funny. S and I have been ‘playing and counting to twenty’ Bocelli style for the past week.

So I present:

1, 2, 3, 4 Chickens Just Back From the Shore, Feist

Don’t Know Why Y Didn’t Come, Norah Jones

Time To Say Goodnight, Andrea Bocelli

So far, my baseball team allegiance has mostly been dependent on what shlock has fallen into my lap: a foam finger from the New York Yankees, and a worn down Red Sox cap my sister handed down to me. However, after this video, I may actually have a favorite team which, fortunately, happens to be my home team:

A good friend of mine is the Washington DC correspondent for France 24, which I believe is the newest news source in France. The newest news! Anyway, when the station launched, so did the Daily Show comedy, and the balloons:

People are disproportionately impressed by chocolate truffles. They think they are really special. These are not. They’re mindlessly easy to make, on par with brownies-from-a-box. And this makes them the perfect party food. You bring them, people crow, you bask, everyone loves you and asks you to make them always. It’s also a great way to use up some leftover wine. Or you could always just crack a new bottle, and swig as you go.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup plus 1 tbs. red wine
1 tbs. chocolate liqueur
cocoa powder

Directions:
Pour the chopped chocolate into a medium-sized bowl, and make a nice divot in the center. Bring the cream to a soft boil (lightly rolling bubbles) in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, and pour the hot cream into the chocolate. With a spatula, immediately stir together until smooth. Then stir in the red wine and liqueur until smooth. Extravagantly lick spatula. Refrigerate chocolate for about one hour, until firm.

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper, and fill a small bowl with cocoa powder. One by one, with a spoon or melon baller, scoop out some chocolate and form into one inch balls. This should make about three dozen truffles. One by one, drop into the cocoa powder and roll around until covered, then drop onto the sheet. Refrigerate again for at least a half hour, or up to three days.

Since this recipe calls for fresh cream, it doesn’t keep particularly well. But I’ve never been able to keep the truffles around for more than a day, anyway.

It is a lazy, lovely hot in Philadelphia, the sort where you wander around in a humid daze, eating ice cream and drinking lots of cold water and generally feeling cheerfully careless. It is also perfect weather for gazpacho! Cool, a little spicy, and excellent after a long walk. I made a huge potful last week, and am still enjoying it. Serves 6-8, or 1 over a week’s time of lazy summer dinners.

Ingredients:
5-6 large beefsteak tomatoes
1 red onion, chopped
4 smashed garlic cloves
6 tbs. white balsamic vinegar (can be found at Trader Joe’s)
2 cucumbers, diced
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 yellow, red, or orange bell pepper, diced (I hate green peppers)
1-2 tbs. of cilantro, coarsely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Directions:
This is the hardest part: Cut out the stem and core of each tomato with a paring knife. Bring a large pot about 3/4ths full of water to a rolling boil. Prepare a bowl full of ice water. One at a time, ease the tomatoes into the water and let sit for about 30 seconds. Then fish out the tomato and stick in the bowl of ice water to cool. Immediately peel off the skin. After this, you’ll have six naked tomatoes.

Now the easy part! Cut three tomatoes into smaller pieces and stick in the blender. Puree into a nice soup, then pour into a large bowl. Set aside.

Now stick the onions, garlic, and white balsamic vinegar into the blender. Puree. Pour into the large bowl with the pureed tomatoes. Whisk in the 1/3 cup of olive oil.

Coarsely chop the remaining tomatoes, and stick in the bowl with the pureed tomatoes and onions. Stir in the diced cucumber, pepper, and cilantro. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately or stick in the refrigerator to chill.

This is a really easy recipe to mess with, too. Add different veggies if you like, adjust the amount of onions and garlic according to your tolerance for spice, or add an accompaniment of croutons, toasted Italian bread, or even some mozzarella cheese. It’s cold, it’s tasty, it’s refreshing, it’s like a drinkable salad without the hiss pop of V8 cans. All in all, great for summer, and picnics, too.