2011 Chocolate Salon: Conversations With Chocolatiers

By Susie, 20 April, 2011,

For me, walking through Taste TV’s International Chocolate Salon in San Francisco was culinary carnage and social bliss. First the carnage: As I diligently sampled chocolate after chocolate, I flashed back to a family-owned chocolate shop I called “my after school job” in high school. The day I started, I asked if I could taste. The owner said, tongue in cheek, it was mandatory. “You’ll get sick of it,” he added.

While others filled cups and napkins with samples, my chocolate chunks and passion fruit-filled bon bons disappeared like a snowman in global warming.

However despite my theobroma high, the bliss came from great conversations with old candy-making friends and interesting new food entrepreneurs I met at the show.

10 Things I Gleaned While Not Eating

The world wants more chocolate! Every year new companies pop up, and the crowd loves them. The thing is, companies go too. It’s exciting to feel the passion, and exhaustion, of a new candy company as I sample a peanut butter cup from Snake and Butterfly (who incidentally makes maple bacon caramels).
When accounting for costs, every minute counts. “It’s easy to calculate the time involved with making my chocolate but where I might lose sense of time – and money – is the packaging. Every ribbon tie, every piece of tape takes a few seconds and thus costs me. When making a large number of packages like for an event, my costs can skyrocket.” So when you rip open your box of chocolates, enjoy the full experience like you will the gooey centers.
Kitchen collaboration rules. I’d heard of at least 3 chocolatiers on the hunt for a large kitchen. It turns out one is working on starting a kitchen and has the line on others who may share. Collaboration is so much better than competition.
If at first a group dies out, start again. The desire to commune among local chocolatiers is strong and wonderful. Peer groups rock – for sharing resources, general support in victory and commiseration, and trading advice. For a couple of years a group of women – “The Sweet Mafia” – would meet periodically. A new chocolatier is reinvigorating the tradition, which led to various business collaborations in cooperatively buying bulk chocolate and production.
Fame can’t hurt. No one knew why William Dean‘s line was so long, about a 15 minute wait. Tasting the chocolates answered three questions: They’re good. He’s famous. Their tasting was a veritable flight with a highly personal touch. OK four: They were selling a lot. Was it his feature on the Home Shopping Network? Do tell.
Inspiration comes from the darndest places. The delightful I-li of Vice Chocolates debuted a chocolate inspired by “The Ring,” decorated with a ring and named after her favorite character.
Twists are fun especially where danger is involved. It’s fun when you can tell a story like Amano Chocolates with their bon bon made with “the most expensive honey in the world” from Yemen. I pictured kids in the middle of nowhere sticking their arms in buzzing hives to enable me to taste that chocolate in San Francisco coupled with the thought that the honey is probably unavailable at this time.
Wine and chocolate go together almost as well as vodka and chocolate. Two different vendors had twists on the ol’ Godiva chocolate liqueur. I had to go with the “local” one – made in Petaluma, despite the Motley umlaut in VÄD.
It’s hard to tell big companies from small. There is much contention in the world as to “artisan” being bandied about. I had no clue (except for a post-chocolate-coma-flashback) that Pure Dark was a Mars company. Yes that Mars. It is now tempting to say “not that there’s anything wrong with it” ala Seinfeld, because I’m an admitted fan of another Mars company, Ethel M. A few months ago the editor of Specialty Food Magazine posed the question of large companies using “artisan.” It’s a toughie.
Toffee and caramel are all the rage. Which is good, with sugar and butter being my two basic food groups. Cristina of Kika’s Treats is making caramels using palm sugar. Toffee Talk, a San Francisco company, uses red walnuts which lend an extra soft crunch to their English style toffee. Nicole Lee, ex-high techie of San Jose, sampled mini chocolate hearts filled with drippy passion fruit caramel as did Anni from Gateau et Ganache in Palo Alto.

Can Bakers Make Cookies for Medical Marijuana Dispensaries?

By Susie, 14 April, 2011,

A burning question that seems to come up among many baker friends: Is it legal to take possession of THC butter or some other product from a medical marijuana dispensary to make food products as a contract manufacturer?

Word on the street is this market can be very lucrative for small food businesses.

According to a fellow at Norml: “No.” Although a workaround might be joining a “co-operative” as part of the business. While he suggested the baker must have a medical marijuana card, it doesn’t seem like you’d be able to sell products using the product that you’d gotten under your own card.

For now perhaps making vanilla mixes and other food products, under a regular old food license, are the best bet, for the dispensaries to sell or blend together themselves. (My mind is reeling with ideas.)

He noted that Norml is working on getting legislation passed for all sorts of service providers related to the dispensaries.

Do you have ideas, experience, or information about this topic? Please comment or email me, confidentially if you like, to share your thoughts!

Spring Diet Secret: Splurge on Good Food

By Susie, 13 April, 2011,

Life has been overwhelmingly busy with fabulous food things, much news to come. However as I put together a quick salad, with each ingredient I added, the idea of writing about it overtook me. Why? Because I realized how having incredible ingredients in the kitchen which are low calorie, very flavorful, and provide an experience in using them makes it easier to eat well. If you’re dieting logically you should be consuming less (logically anyway) so you have more to spend on what might otherwise seem attainable.

Here’s what made this salad so exciting:

12 year Saporoso Aged Balsamic Vinegar from House of Balsamic – Not the kind you get at TJs. This is that syrupy, condensed vinegar you can drizzle on your finger to lick.
Extra Virgin California Olive Oil from Owen’s Creek, rich and accessible with great olive flavor, the kind you can drizzle on a piece of bread with salt and go to heaven.
Truffle Salt from Susan Rice Truffles, shake and taste.
An organic apple from the farmer’s market
Organic spring greens
Nearly moldy parmesan (Have you read this far? I am of the waste not want not school.

In 5 minutes I had a $10 salad at a fraction of the cost, full of flavor, without a lot of heavy or artificial dressing.

May this inspire you to eat well and stock your cupboard with the best artisan ingredients! And may this inspire food companies to make more simple good ingredients for us simple gourmands.

yummy salad

Italian Onion Soup ala Barilla Tortellini

By Susie, 5 April, 2011,

How do you develop a food product? The same way you develop a recipe – by winging, testing, and perfecting!

I’m thrilled with the result of my Italian Onion Soup ala Barilla Tortellini, created for a Foodbuzz Italy trip contest. I was already a fan of caramelizing red onions – and in fact think caramelized onions could be a food business in itself – when the idea of “Italian Onion Soup” (“French” onion soup with an Italian twist) using Barilla Three Cheese Tortellini came to mind.

The tortellini makes this onion soup more substantial as a meal than the bread and cheese-topped style of onion soup. Using the one pot fits with Barilla’s goal to help families cook quickly. It’s a bit longer than the simple boiled pasta but a fun twist for a party or any dinner.

I love everything Italian, and it was fun to marry the Barilla pasta with California’s bounty, using rosemary from down the street (I’m sure my neighbor won’t miss it!), Napa red wine, and California olive oil. When I’m in Italy it will be fun to re-create this using all Italian ingredients!

Servings: About 4 primi sized; or 2 full meal size

Time: 30 minutes total

Equipment: You’ll need a broiler-proof saucepan.

Ingredients

1 cup Barilla Three Cheese Tortellini
1 medium red onion, cut in half and sliced thin
2 cups warm water
1 c grated or shredded parmesan cheese (parmigiano !)
2 T extra virgin olive oil
2 T red wine, of any quality – it still does the trick!
1 T sea salt
1 T ground black pepper
1 T chopped fresh or dried rosemary
Rosemary for garnish (optional)

italian onion soup ingredients

Cook chopped onion with wine and oil over medium heat
Pour olive oil and wine in a broiler-proof sauce pan (generally non-stick pans will not work). Add onions and cook over medium heat.

Caramelize the onions stirring frequently until they are translucent, dark, with some crispy brown on the edges. The darker the onions, the sweeter and more flavorful they will be. Remove from the heat.

Slowly add 2 cups of water to the onions. (It will smoke for a second as the water hits the pan.)

Pour the 1 cup of tortellini plus salt, pepper, and rosemary into the onion soup mixture.

Cook for about 10 minutes. Add a little more water if you’d like a more soup-like dish. (Most of the water will be absorbed by the tortellini – which gives it a mellow onion flavor.)

Cook over medium heat until tortellini is done, about 10 minutes. In the meantime, pre-heat your broiler. See how it's nice and brown from absorbing the caramelized onion heaven?

Pour or spoon 1 cup of shredded or grated parmesan cheese evenly over the tortellini.

broil the tortellini soup until browned on top

Broil for several minutes checking frequently, until the top is browned.

Serve it straight from the pan.

Even better than I expected, with rich onion flavor soaked into the tortellini shell. My friends and neighbors loved it!

Sunflower Seed Butter : Make or Buy ?

By Susie, 27 March, 2011,

For the last few months I’ve been playing around with recipes and ideas for possible foods to sell. It’s amazing how recipes that seemingly cost a miniscule amount can quickly add up to where it might be difficult to make a profit.

When I set out to re-make the famous Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies recipe, adapted from Jennifer Cinquepalmi, using sunflower seed butter, I headed to Trader Joe’s. At $3.99 for 16oz and containing sugar, their new sunflower seed butter product gave me pause. Roasting and grinding sunflower seeds myself would more accurately echo the recipe, which called for plain peanut butter. And $3.99 seemed a bit pricey to this peanut butter buyer….and one pound of sunflower seed kernels costs $1.49. Then again, I’d never made “nut” butter before. What’s a dabbler to do?

The country of origin is not marked on either product, but I’m 83.7% sure, based on the price, that the kernels are from China and 91.7% sure that the butter is from U.S.-grown kernels…perhaps Sun Butter. (Do you know?)

The Results

I coated the kernels with a salt water solution then dry roasting them over a flame. Crunchy, toasty deliciousness.

Using a food processor, I whirled the kernels until they became a smooth and gooey butter.

Interestingly, it took 2x as many kernels to make the equivalent amount in butter. 1/2 cup of kernels makes 1/4 cup of butter, not that shocking though when you think of how much more compressed butter or paste is than the raw ingredient.

The Verdict

Buy!

Given that the kernel price comes to $3 for 16 oz of sunflower seed butter, getting the pre-made butter is a much better investment, if the sugar is not an issue. I’ll definitely try the recipe and reduce the sugar a bit but it should be fine.
gluten free sunflower butter cookies

Flourless Sunflower Seed Butter Cookies (Nutless Wonder Cookies)

1 cup sunflower seed butter
1 cup brown sugar (if using store bought butter that includes sugar, slightly reduce sugar)
1 large egg
1 tsp baking soda
sea salt
flax seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix ingredients together. Place 1/2 tsp size balls on parchment or a stick-free mat on a baking sheet. Bake 8-9 minutes. For chewier cookies remove when they are still soft and seem undone. A true nut free, gluten free crowd pleaser!