Okay, let me start off by saying that I am aware that my pictures are terrible. No, no one has complained, but I know it to be true. Being a waitress, and having been trained that it is never professional to shift blame no matter who is at fault, I feel slightly guilty in what I am about to say: It is not entirely my fault. My camera is circa 1999. Think of the improvements that have been made in digital photography since then. My camera has 1 mega pixel. ONE. I told a few friends this last night and they immediately laughed directly in my face. Oh, the pain. I think that should explain why my pictures are less than perfect. However, I am saving $10 from every shift until I can afford a new camera. My mother would be so proud of my fiscal responsibility and patient planning . . .
Now, let's get on with the post, shall we? A few months back, Chef ordered, for $250 or something, the El Bulli #4 cookbook (El Bulli is a restaurant near Barcelona that is opened only a few months a year; the chef, Farran Adria, takes avant garde cuisine to a whole new universe. I will probably never eat there. You will probably never eat there. If you do, please take lots of pictures, and stuff some puffed rice popcorn in your purse to bring back to me.) The cookbook weighs about 50 pounds and contains no recipes; the recipes are on a separate CD ROM. The dishes pictured are a true work of art. My friend Scot the Art Professor would argue here that food cannot be art, only craftsmanship, but I think we all know that is just silliness. The truth is, you really want to see the recipe, because just reading that an item pictured, which may look like a stained glass window suspended on a string and surrounded by ruby slippers, is a chicken "lollipop" with rhubarb puffs and rice candy flavored "air" might not really tell you anything about what you are seeing. Okay, I made all of that up, but it's really not that far from the truth. Chef won't let me borrow the cookbook, even for research purposes, so I am unable to site many specific examples. Let's just say that Adria's recipes frequently include a lot of dehydrating, foaming and puffing. He makes parmesan-flavored air.
Well, in the February issue of Food & Wine, Ferran Adria is featured because he has a new cookbook designed for home cooks, Cocinar en Casa. Notice there's no link. Alas, it is available only in Spain, and as I am only fluent in restaurant Spanish, I couldn't begin to tell you where to purchase it, but I do know that it won't be from Amazon.com. At any rate, there are a few recipes included in the Food & Wine article, and one was something that I had heard about before and kept meaning to try.
Toasted Bread and Bittersweet Chocolate.
1. Slice a baguette into thin rounds
2. Put rounds into oven for a few minutes to toast (400 degrees sounds good)
3. Place good quality bitter or semisweet chocolate (I used ChocoVic Unique Origin Guaranda, Forastero Arriba 71% Cocoa from Ecuador, available at Trader Joe's.) on bread and put back in oven
4. When chocolate is melted (5 minutes or so) remove from oven and place bread on plate
5. Drizzle with a really good, highly-flavored extra virgin olive oil (I used Cepo Antico - I don't know where it is available, because I got it from Chef and couldn't find an online source)
6. Sprinkle with good salt (the opportunity I had been waiting for, to break out my Murray River Salt Flakes - pink salt on Chocolate, what could be better!!!??)
We tried this at work a few days ago and it received mixed reactions. I thought it was wonderful. It was probably dangerous for me to learn this super-easy snack. It isn't completely sweet; it satisfies the need for both a sweet and savory snack. Watch out - you may become addicted.
