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2a8710e
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"I know you're a chocolate lover. I can always tell. I'm about to temper the chocolate. I have my own method; want to watch?" "Could I?" Inside my head, a little voice was reminding me that I had to get back to the office, but it was drowned out by the scent of chocolate, which flooded all my senses with a heady froth of cocoa and coffee, passion fruit, cinnamon and clove. I closed my eyes, and for one moment I was back in Aunt Melba's kitchen with Genie. I opened them to find Kim dancing with a molten river of chocolate. I stood hypnotized by the scent and the grace of her motions, which were more beautiful than any ballet. Moving constantly, she caressed the chocolate like a lover, folding it over and over on a slab of white marble, working it to get the texture right. She stopped to feed me a chocolate sprinkled with salt, which had the fierce flavor of the ocean, and another with the resonant intensity of toasted saffron. One chocolate tasted like rain, another of the desert. I tried tracking the flavors, pulling them apart to see how she had done it, but, like a magician, she had hidden her tricks. Each time I followed the trail, it vanished, and after a while I just gave up and allowed the flavors to seduce me. Now the scent changed as Kim began to dip fruit into the chocolate: raspberries, blackberries, tiny strawberries that smelled like violets. She put a chocolate-and-caramel-covered slice of peach into my mouth, and the taste of summer was so intense that I felt the room grow warmer. I lost all sense of time."
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chocolate-lovers
kim-wong
chocolate
flavors
spices
fruits
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Ruth Reichl |
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dc816fe
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"He showed me how each wheel was stamped with the month and year, and then he cracked the first one open to reveal its pale cream-colored interior. He chipped off a hefty shard and handed it to me. I took a bite, and my mouth filled with the hopeful taste of fresh green grass and young field flowers welcoming the sun. "That's the spring cheese." Sal was cracking the next wheel, which was stamped with an autumn date; he chipped off a little piece. The color was deeper, almost golden, the texture heavier and nubbier. When I put the cheese in my mouth it was richer, and if I let it linger on my tongue I could taste the lush fields of late summer, just as the light begins to die. Sal sliced off a slab of winter cheese and put that into my mouth. It felt different on my tongue, smoother somehow, the flavor sharper. "It's like a different cheese." I was savoring it. I tasted again; there was a familiar flavor. "It tastes like hay!" "Yes!" Sal was openly delighted. "I knew you were going to be able to taste how different this cheese is! Most Americans don't even notice, but that cheese is so different that, back in the old days, it was sold under a different name. The Parmesan made from December to March, when the cows were in the barn, was called 'invernengo'- winter cheese- because the flavor is so distinct."
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parmesan
seasonal
italian
flavors
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Ruth Reichl |
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94e7cc6
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"She designed the cakes and I worked out the recipes. The first year we each created a signature cake. Genie's was called the Goddess: really tall, all white on the outside, wrapped in mountains of coconut and whipped cream, with a passion-fruit heart." "And yours was called the Shrinking Violet. Unassuming on the outside but pretty special once you worked your way in." She reached over and squeezed my wrist. "Wish I'd thought of that. You'd understand if you knew my sister." By now I was a little drunk. "One year Genie came up with Melting Cakes. You know, like flourless chocolate, the kind that are melted in the middle? They were gorgeous neon colors, and I made the flavors intense- blood orange, blueberry, lime, hibiscus, and caramel."
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billie-breslin
genie-breslin
cake
flavors
sisters
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Ruth Reichl |
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d5deb04
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I've long been a fan of Hi-Chew, the Japanese fruit chews, for their resilient texture and uncannily accurate fruit flavors: sour cherry, apple, grape, pickled plum, and especially mango, which is closer to the flavor of an actual tropical mango than most imported mangoes.
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mango
flavors
japan
fruit
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Matthew Amster-Burton |
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abd5500
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We came on the wind of the carnival. Eight and a half long years ago, on a wind that seemed to promise so much; a mad wind, full of confetti and scented with smoke and pancakes cooked by the side of the road. The pancake stall is still there, and the crowds that line the side of the street, and the flower-decked cart with its motley crew of fairies, wolves and witches. I bought a from that very stall. I bought one now, to remember. Still as good, just the right side of burnt, and the flavors- butter and salt and rye- help reawaken the memory.
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reminiscing
pancakes
flavors
wind
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Joanne Harris |
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ce825b4
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"You just happen to be our ten thousandth customer," I lied, "and this is our special thank-you." I slid the bakery box across the counter to him. "Hmmmmm. Usually, I prefer to be number one, but I guess I can make an exception this time." He grinned. "What's in here?" He snapped the red-and-white -striped string on the white bakery box and opened the lid. A little greedy, too, I thought. Wanted to enjoy life now. He downed the cupcake in two bites- all moist devil's food with a dark truffle center, spread with a white-chocolate-and-coffee frosting I made with confectioner's sugar, the easy kind of buttercream. He grabbed a napkin to wipe the crumbs from his lips. "That was some cupcake, Cupcake." And I knew I had gotten him right. Strong, dark, and handsome chocolate truffle- that masculine "shoulder to lean on" fix that women loved. Risk-taking devil's food. Gregarious white chocolate, because it's boring alone, but good with almost any other ingredient. And take-charge coffee."
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luke-davis
self-centered-man
flavors
personality-traits
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Judith Fertig |
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21cff2f
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The German chocolate cake was easy. So was the vanilla buttercream. But the strawberry shortcake gave me fits. Turns out, the final fix came when I baked a fresh strawberry in the middle of a vanilla sour-cream batter instead of strawberry batter with chunks of strawberries.
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flavors
strawberries
portia-cuthcart
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Linda Francis Lee |