Lindt Chocolate: Mardi Gras Treat

Valentine’s Day was a few weeks ago, which meant chocolate was on sale everywhere. With Swiss Lindt chocolate half-price at the grocery store, I couldn’t resist getting a selection. According to Mimi Sheraton on pages 331 – 332 in 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die, only the plain dark chocolate bars and those with sea salt are worth buying, as are the liquor-filled batons the company makes. Flavored bars and especially milk chocolate are not, apparently. But for the ultimate chocolate experience, the super-dark 90 or 95 percent cocoa bars are the most complex, if you can get past the bitterness.

Personally, I disagree. No matter how complex and interesting, barely-sweetened chocolate doesn’t taste good. The bitter flavor is unbalanced on its own. It needs enough sugar to counteract it. The idea isn’t to overwhelm the chocolate, but to create a sweet-bitter harmony. Milk chocolate adds another layer of complexity, being sweet, bitter, and creamy. It is no better or worse than dark chocolate, just different.

I also disagree about the flavored bars and confections. The Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt does taste good, but so does the dark chocolate orange and dark chocolate chili. The milk chocolate is delicious with chopped hazelnuts. And the chocolate truffles are spectacular, with a crunchy shell and smooth, creamy filling. My personal favorite are the dark chocolate ones (in the dark blue bags), but the milk chocolate and a few of the flavored varieties are also worth trying. A bowl full of Lindt truffles, color-coded in brightly-colored wrappers, would be great fun at a holiday party.

Adults might also enjoy the batons. As far as I can tell, current varieties are filled with kirsch, plum brandy, or orange liqueur. The fruit flavors sound like they would work with the chocolate, but I worry about the alcohol overwhelming the taste. Since they’re only available online in the US and are quite pricey, I didn’t bother. Not when Lindt truffles are easy-to-find.

During the 19^th Century, Swiss confectioners were among the first to produce solid chocolate, and they are still among the best. I would hold off on the chocolate sandwich, though. Supposedly, alpine skiers sometimes snack on a piece of chocolate between two pieces of sourdough bread. If it was a baguette or ciabatta, sure, but not sourdough. And between trips down the bunny hill, not world-class slopes.

Rating: 10/10 for the truffles, 9.5/10 for the various chocolate bars

Flaeskeaeggekage - Danish bacon and egg pancake

breakfast/brunch, danish cuisine, food history, recipes

Danish Bacon-Egg Pancake (Flaeskeaeggekage)

Flaeskeaeggekage - Danish bacon-egg pancake whole — *Just look at how pretty it is. And it tastes as good as it looks.*

Information found in 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die (pg. 347), recipe is my own

Bacon and eggs have been combined for centuries, probably because they both cook quickly on the stove. Most likely, this is why they are often considered breakfast food. I’m not going to get up early enough to make eggs and bacon for breakfast, but some morning people might. It will taste just as good for brunch, lunch, or dinner.

There are a number of recipes for this difficult-to-pronounce Danish recipe. Variations include the amount of milk to use and whether or not to dice the bacon. I went with Mimi Sheraton’s suggestion to leave the bacon strips whole and arrange them in a star pattern. Another unique touch is to use a bit of potato starch as a binder instead of the flour used in most of the online recipes. It gives the pancake a special, subtle flavor that makes it stand out from all the other recipes involving eggs and bacon.

According to the internet, most Danish bacon is leaner than American bacon and is sold in cans. When using American bacon, it’s a good idea to pour off about half of the fat from the skillet after cooking it. The egg mixture cooks in the bacon fat, but it doesn’t need the full amount. This is particularly true if you’re cooking the whole package and not just the six slices needed for the recipe. You may as well and have some extra to munch on, since everyone nearby will be drawn to the smell.

Flaeskeaeggekage - Danish bacon-egg pancake wedge — *Can’t you just smell the bacon through the screen?*

Traditionally, the pancake is flavored with white pepper, sprinkled with chives, and served with buttered rye bread. Depending on what you have, black pepper, green onions, and regular toast with butter and jam are other good options. Such an easy, comfort food dish like this shouldn’t require an extra trip to the store.

To make it, I simply combined six eggs, a quarter cup 2% milk, a tablespoon potato starch, and a bit of salt and pepper to taste. The omelet/pancake cooks in the still-hot bacon fat over low heat until the bottom starts to brown and the top is almost set. Then add the bacon strips in a star pattern, sprinkle with chives or scallions, and cover the pan to help it set completely. Slice into wedges and serve with toast or rye bread. As a main course, each “pancake” serves two people.

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food history, spring

Foods Not Eaten: Animal Welfare Concerns

Foie Gras, Truite au Bleu (blue trout)

Source: 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die (pgs. 89 – 90, 141 – 142)

Look how cute those goslings are. Adorable right? These are wild geese, but some domestic species are raised on farms. People still do eat goose and it’s something of a specialty item, but the real money in raising geese is for their livers. Specifically, the fatty livers that result from forcibly overfeeding the birds, which is called foie gras. Geese naturally store extra fat in their livers right before migration, but I’m not comfortable with the force-feeding done commercially. Besides, foie gras is expensive, hard to find, and, again, is liver. Do you recall what the liver does? (It cleans toxins from the blood, which is why most people don’t need cleansing tea/juice/supplements. Your liver has you covered.)

Pair of Canada geese and goslings — *Semi-wild, anyway. They’re definitely not domesticated, but can be found hanging out on golf courses, in corn fields after the harvest, on the football field just through the trees, etc.*

Trout aren’t as cute as fluffy goslings, but the process of preparing truite au bleu is even more horrifying. To get the distinctive blue color and make the whole fish curl into circles, the fish need to be quick-cleaned immediately before cooking, then placed in the boiling water while technically still alive. The curling up comes from automatic nerve impulses, and the blue color from a reaction between still-living skin cells and the boiling acidic water. No matter how much it improves the fish’s flavor, it isn’t worth it. Super-fresh fish is a remarkable ingredient in itself. There’s no reason not to dispatch it quickly and humanely. It will still be good. For a blue color, try food coloring.

food history, italian cuisine, pasta

Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 54 (Pgs. 170 – 171): Tagliatelle Baked with Two Cheeses

Region: Emilia-Romagna

As mentioned before, Emilia-Romagna is known for its fresh pasta and dairy products. Fettuccine-like tagliatelle is frequently served with Bolognese ragu, which is never served with spaghetti. Wider pasta strands hold the sauce better. Tagliatelle can also be baked with cheese, as it is here. In this case, the two cheeses are Emilia-Romagna’s native parmesan, as well as fontina. More dairy is supplied by butter and cream.

Parmesan and fontina are both cow’s milk cheeses, which predominate in northern Italy. Here, the cheese is front and center. The only contrast comes from breadcrumbs lining the baking dish and a mix of scallions and parsley minced together. Interestingly, instead of sprinkling the breadcrumbs over the top, the baking pan is buttered, coated in a layer of crumbs, then a layer of egg, then another layer of crumbs. After baking, the whole pan is inverted onto a serving platter.

I had an issue with the crumb layer sticking to the pan. It was easy to peel off, but the presentation wasn’t as pretty as it could be. And the texture wasn’t what I expected. It was more of an eggy film than the crisp crust I anticipated. Maybe it was supposed to be this way, maybe the extra egg I added because one didn’t fully coat the pan affected the texture. It was good, but in the future, I would just sprinkle the bread crumbs over the top. It’s easier and ensures that they stay crisp.

This dish reminded me of alfredo pasta, but lighter and with a stronger flavor. The scallions and parsley added a pleasant fresh contrast, and a salad would balance things out nicely. So would a cooked vegetable like green beans, and/or a bowl of fruit for dessert.

british cuisine, food history

Unplanned British Treat: Potted Shrimp

Recipe can be found in 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die on pages 18 – 19

Before refrigeration, preserving food was always a challenge, particularly for highly perishable things like shellfish. Besides salting, pickling, smoking, and controlled fermentation, cooked meat and fish could be covered in a layer of fat to keep out the oxygen. The French preserved pork in its own fat for rillettes, and duck or goose as confit. For leaner proteins like ham or shrimp, the British “potted” them in ceramic dishes. This process involved mixing the chopped shrimp with melted butter and covering everything with more butter.

Since shrimp were reduced price for quick sale at the store, I thought I would give this recipe a try. Interestingly, though British cuisine has a reputation for being dull and bland, potted shrimp is traditionally seasoned with cayenne pepper and mace. Once the mixture of shrimp and flavored butter is chilled and solidified, it is served on either salad greens or toast.

Mace and cayenne pepper might seem odd for a traditional British dish, but both became popular in the 18^th Century. Most likely, this has to do with Britain’s growing influence in India. Modified “curry” dishes began to appear in cookbooks, and the long-term Dutch monopoly on nutmeg (mace comes from the same plant) was broken, allowing the British East India Company to bring cargoes of both spices to Europe. A little spice goes a long way in a generally bland diet, especially when fresh food was unavailable for much of the year.

Note that mace isn’t widely available in grocery stores, but is easy to find in specialty spice stores and online. Because you’ll probably have to buy more than you need, it’s a good idea to buy whole mace and grind it yourself. Whole spices stay fresh for longer.

The potted shrimp was interesting, but not my favorite preparation. Overnight in the refrigerator, the butter became, for lack of better terms, crumbly and waxy. This may have been due to adding more than the recipe called for, which was not enough to cover the shrimp. Another issue was that the little flecks of ground mace darkened in the refrigerator overnight, which looked alarming since I wasn’t prepared for what looked like ground pepper to appear. Spreading the mixture on hot toast helped with the texture, and the flavor was a nice mix of shrimp, butter, and spice. Not bad at all, though I would prefer the shrimp hot with garlic butter.

british cuisine, recipes, soup, stew, welsh cuisine, winter

Medieval-Inspired Welsh Soup: Leek Broth

Idea comes from 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die, pg. 35, recipe is my own

For some reason, leeks are a Welsh symbol. They are particularly associated with St. David’s Day, dedicated to Wales’s patron saint. Exactly how this happened is unclear, and history doesn’t provide many clues. At some point after 500 BC, Celtic peoples came to dominate the British Isles, including Wales. Starting in 43 AD, the Roman Empire conquered England and Wales, staying until the 5^th Century.

During these centuries, the native population became somewhat Romanized, adopting many Roman customs and, from the 4^th Century onward, Christianity. These Romano-Britons spoke a Celtic language similar to Welsh. After the legions left to deal with everything else going on in the 5^th Century, Anglo-Saxons from modern Germany began invading the island. The Romano-British chieftains put up a spirited defense, but were gradually pushed west into Wales, which is why the land to the east came to be called “Angle-Land,” later England. Did the proto-Welsh use leeks, which were a favorite of the Romans, to distinguish themselves from the Saxons? It’s possible.

One of these proto-Welsh chieftains became the basis of the King Arthur legends. In other words, the man behind the myth was Welsh, not English. Perhaps because Wales is hillier and less fertile than England, or perhaps because they were busy fighting first each other and later the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons mostly left the Welsh alone. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, so did the descendants of William the Conqueror. They were busy fighting rebellious Saxons, building an empire in France larger than what was controlled by the French king, and fighting their relatives over shares in that empire. There were some incursions into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but the Anglo-Norman kings of England were mostly occupied elsewhere.

This changed in the 13^th Century, probably because the kings of England lost most of their land in France. With the French kings much stronger than before, reconquest was a difficult proposition. So the English kings turned their energy towards the rest of the British Isles. King Edward I conquered Wales in the 1280s, and from then on heirs to the English throne were called the Prince of Wales. One story goes that the Welsh asked King Edward for a prince that spoke neither English nor French, so he presented them with his infant son, the future Edward II, who did not yet speak any language.

Unlike Scotland and Ireland, Wales merged into the English monarchy with only a few early rebellions. It remained a culturally distinct backwater, but Welsh longbowmen played an essential role in the Hundred Years’ War. Without them, the English could not have won so many battles against much larger French forces.

In Wales’s cool, wet climate, raising livestock was more profitable than growing most crops. Oats, barley, rye, and root vegetables grow more easily than wheat. Traditional Welsh dishes tend to be homey and comforting, not spicy and exciting. Not many Welsh specialties are known outside the British Isles, but one of the more famous is leek broth, called cawl cennin in Welsh. It’s a simple mix of leeks, carrots, potatoes, and cabbage, flavored with bacon and thickened with oatmeal.

Except for the potatoes, this sounds a lot like the thick soups, called pottages, eaten by most medieval Europeans. The ingredients varied by social class and the occasion, but for the common people, vegetable-based soups and bread were the core of the diet. These were supplemented with butter and cheese, some meat and fish (usually salted), fruit in season, and beer, cider, or wine, depending on the region. Leeks and salted pork products like ham or bacon gave pottages more flavor, and vegetables like carrots and cabbages kept reasonably well over the winter. Grains, particularly those like oats and barley that were less useful for making bread, were often added as thickeners.

Once potatoes became common in the 17^th Century, they went into the pot too. Before soup bases and bouillon cubes, water would have been the liquid. Until the 20^th Century, chicken was more expensive than beef, mutton, or pork, so there would be no chicken broth in a common, everyday dish. Today, a bit of bouillon or soup base is typical in leek broth, adding extra flavor for just a few cents.

As far as affordable home cooking goes, leek broth is a great choice. The root vegetables are full of vitamins, and the oats make it taste sort of creamy and surprisingly filling. The soup/stew has a fair amount of starch, but carbohydrates are not the enemy, especially in the form of carrots and whole grains like oats. A chunk of whole grain bread would be a great accompaniment, maybe with a piece of cheese or glass of milk for extra protein. And don’t skip the bacon. Per serving, it does not add that much fat, and a little bit adds a ton of flavor. Which makes a popular New Year’s resolution a bit easier.

Ingredients:

About 8 ounces bacon, diced
2 large leeks, halved lengthwise, cleaned, and thinly sliced crosswise
8 ounces carrots, thinly sliced
6 medium-sized red potatoes, cut into roughly ½ inch cubes
Half of a small green cabbage, thinly sliced
About ½ cup to 1 cup rolled oats (not steel-cut or instant)
Chicken broth or water (broth from a soup base is perfectly good here)

Directions:

Place the bacon in a large soup pot over medium heat. Cook until starting to crisp, then add the leeks, carrots, and potatoes. Do not drain the fat. All the other ingredients are healthy, and it is essential for the best flavor.
Cook the root vegetables in the bacon fat with the bacon, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables start to cook down and release their moisture.
Add enough water to cover, about 12 cups. If desired, add 1 teaspoon soup base or bouillon per cup of water.
Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft.
Stir in the cabbage and oats. Cook on low heat, stirring frequently, until the cabbage softens and the soup begins to thicken.
Ladle the soup into bowls and serve hot. Don’t worry about presentation; leek broth tastes a lot better than it looks.

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