After a while, all you want is an apple (or a chocolate-covered tortilla chip).

No cameras allowed on the convention floor!!!

The NASFT Fancy Food Show takes place twice a year - in summer at the Jacob Javits Center in New York, and somewhere in California in the winter (usually at the Moscone Center in San Francisco; last week at the San Diego Convention Center, home to the Comic-Con). It is a giant marketplace for specialty food from all over the world and after a while takes on the quality and lightness of the Bataan Death March, only with a thousand types of jalapeno cheese straws. Mechanically extruded jalapeno cheese straws. Bleh.

Still, it is a place to see what's happening in food, and while it has totally lost its former indie cred (in the old days little cottage industry companies used to be able to rent booths and hawk their wares beside the big guns, but no more), it is above all a place to steal ideas. Let's be honest here.

These were the Best Concepts from the 2008 Fancy Food Show:

• Vosges's Chocolate Covered Tortilla Chips for the win! Really, I know this sounds awful, but they were fabulous, and when you think about it, entirely logical, given that chocolate was first prepared with ground corn in the ancient pre-Columbian world. Think of champurrado! Well, don't think of it because it's vile, but these triple-chocolate-dipped chips were wonderful - the chocolate was slightly spicy, the chip salty - in short, heaven. Their Bacon Crisp bar was also interesting, if only because it tasted like bacon bits enrobed in chocolate, which you have to admit is a ballsy concept.
  
• Better Bakes Sugar Cookies. I have no idea how they did this: it is a low sugar, low fat, healthy sugar cookie with all the crispness and flavor of my full-fat, horribly unhealthy homemade sugar cookies. They have to be lying about this, or using alien technology. These were way, way too delicious to be good for you.
• The Pistachio Berry Mix from Santa Barbara Pistachio Company. Not only did this company have the nicest people at their booth (kind to everyone, even if you were not wearing the Prom Queen-ish red band "RETAILER" badge), they had the best trail mix on the entire floor: a salty blend of roasted pistachios and dried cherries, dried cranberries and golden raisins. Snacky!
  
• Last but certainly not least, the cheddars (plain, smoked, pepper) from the cheese shrine that is Fiscalini Cheese Company in Modesto, CA. No longer just that place that spawned James Marsters and Timothy Olyphant, Modesto can lay claim to a company making the best cheese in America. No, really -- this stuff is as good as anything produced by the small farms of Britain or France, and they have the medals to prove it. Their smoked cheddar is an event.

The Worst Ideas can be summed up thusly: for the love of God, there are enough fancy chocolatiers and barbecue sauces in the world, thank you very much. I can just imagine some other trust-fund frat-boy wingnut thinking, "Hey, you know what would be a great business? Homemade barbecue sauce! SWEET." Please - stop the madness. And outside of the Vosges people (who are genuinely thoughtful about their chocolate products), most "new wave" chocolatiers seemed to think chocolate and curry and chocolate and chipotle combinations are so cutting-edge. NO - just, no.

The current trends in specialty foods are natural, organic, gluten-free, naturally sweetened, naturally flavored and locally sourced everything: cookies, crackers, sauces, charcuterie, cheeses, cocktail mixes (the huge new trend) etc. Very commendable, but sort of boring after a while. I like eating clean food and being healthy, yadda yadda, but after a while you just hanker after a chocolate covered tortilla chip.

Mercifully, past food trends like gelati, biscotti and cupcakes (except for the sad plastic-looking ones at the Barefoot Contessa cake mix booth) were absent this year. The only perennial food item I was glad to see was Badia e Coltibuono olive oil, which is just as sumptuous as ever and reminded me of my first years in the food business, when I regularly consumed it in restaurant kitchens (as well as Beluga caviar, mesquite-grilled Maine lobster, white peaches and Ridge Montebello zinfandel - the late 80s were a carefree, profligate time).

Unlike past FFSs, where every aisle brought some new and arcane food to try, this show cemented the ascendancy of Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, if only because I'd already seen (if not tried) at least 50% of the products on display. The thrill of the specialty food is pretty much gone, and I blame Food Network and the internets.

Oh well. The only other notable thing about this year's FFS were the hordes of beautifully dressed, very grand and snooty Europeans, mostly Italians and Spaniards, who all seemed to look down their noses at us as if to say "You Americans and your pesky small dollar - we could all buy you out in un minuto." For this reason I have left out some of the more spectacular items in the show: a bunch of amazing sweet dessert vinegars in pomegranate, apple and litchi flavors. The indeterminate Europeans manning their booth were just too rude.

Next year in San Francisco!

© 2008 Sandy Soto Teich

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced anywhere without the author's express permission.

My very favorite truffle in the whole wide world.

And I don't like Spam...er...truffles! And I'm sorry this picture is blurry.

Anyone can tell you that chocolate truffles are the most brainless of all confections to make. You take a cold flavored ganache, roll it into balls and then in some sort of coating, or, if you're really a lunatic, enrobe it tempered chocolate. I say "lunatic" because tempering chocolate is one of those activities which will take years off your life. But I digress.

I've gladly made truffles voluntarily for the weddings of people I love a lot, and at virtual gunpoint for those chefs for whom I worked. While truffle making is relatively easy, making more than two or three dozen at a time is the most deadening work imaginable, and invariably some chef would come to me with a jolly order for truffles for a party of six hundred - oh, and five different flavors, please. Augggh. Those were the days, my friend.

Horrible flashbacks aside, truffles can be quite delicious, as long as they're simple and made with excellent chocolate. A long time ago my decidedly brilliant and not-crazy executive chef Claude Koeberle taught me one of the guiding tenets of life regarding chocolate desserts (such as ice cream and truffles) and that is: always use a 70-75 per cent quantity of semi- or bittersweet chocolate and a 30-25 per cent quantity of excellent milk chocolate when making a chocolate dessert. For some reason the smaller amount of milk chocolate smooths out and inexplicably deepens the flavor of the bitterer chocolate. This really works, and I hate milk chocolate, and would normally would never have it anywhere on my turf. But Claude comes from a family of expert chocolatiers from Lyon and I have never contradicted his sage advice, something which has always been to my benefit.

So. The following recipe is ridiculously easy, even if you do have to roast the almonds yourself. Just make sure they are very salty and chop them by hand (which is a bitch, I know, but it looks a lot better). This is the only truffle I will eat after making them. The rest - ptui, especially the white chocolate ones.

Chocolate Truffles with Brown Butter Salted Almonds

Makes about 3 dozen 1 1/4" truffles

For the almonds:*

2 cups unblanched raw almonds

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1-2 teaspoons excellent sea salt (I always use Maldon)

In a large dry skillet, toast almonds over low heat until they start to puff up a little and start showing golden spots on the bits without skin. This will take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes -- watch carefully and stir them constantly. They will also start to smell toasty when ready. At this point, add the butter -- it will foam up and start to brown immediately. Keep stirring, letting the almonds sizzle in the brown butter, but don't let the butter get too dark. When it is a deep nut brown (this will only take a minute or two), pour the almonds on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels to drain. Immediately sprinkle with salt. You want these to be on the salty side. Let cool completely, then chop fairly finely. Place in bowl, cover and set aside.

*If this almond rigamarole is too much trouble, just buy the perfectly good roasted salted almonds at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods and chop 'em up. They are completely serviceable.

For the chocolate truffle ganache:

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped**

3.5 oz. excellent quality milk chocolate, roughly chopped**

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Place chopped chocolates in a medium stainless or glass bowl. In a small saucepan, heat cream until it just starts to boil -- watch carefully or it will rise up and overflow all over your burners.
Pour 1 cup hot cream over the chocolate and allow to rest for 30 seconds (yeah, this is Jacques Torres' method, and I'm sorry to say it works). Add remaining 1/2 cup hot cream and stir gently with whisk until all chocolate is melted. Now, if you want to make these relatively quickly, pour the ganache onto a clean jellyroll pan (a cookie sheet with a 1/2" rim), cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until completely cold, about 2 or 3 hours.

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper, and have the prepared almonds handy in a nearby bowl. Using a 1/2 ounce ice cream scoop or just a teaspoon, scoop up rounded portions of the ganache, roll them briefly in the palms of your hands if you want very round truffles (you don't have to do this because yes, it is very messy -- rounding the mixture with a spoon is enough) and then roll quickly in the prepared almonds. Place coated truffles on the cookie sheet. If truffle mixture gets too soft while you're working with it, return it to the refrigerator to firm up. When all truffles are coated, place them in one layer in an airtight plastic container, cover and refrigerate. When you serve these, they will keep at room temperature for about an hour, but after that will start to wilt, especially if the room is warm. Act accordingly.

Again -- if you give these away (and they make a fabulous present), tell the recipient that they must be refrigerated.

** For the purposes of this recipe I used two four ounce bars of Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate and one 3.5 ounce bar of Lindt Extra-Creamy milk chocolate, because they are easily available in most nationwide supermarkets. Not everyone has access to high end chocolate (or even Trader Joe's) so I thought I'd use these perfectly fine supermarket brands. They worked very well.

© 2007 Sandy Soto Teich

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced anywhere without the author's express permission.

"Pure, mind-spinning indulgence."*

*Well, that's what Chuck Taggart of the Gumbo Pages once called it.

There comes a time in the life of every professional pastry chef (well, at least the non-obsessive ones) when, after the executive chef has approved the dessert menu and has stopped hocking you already about it being "a true reflection of his/her culinary vision" or some such thing, said pastry chef is left casting about for a viable dessert special - ANY damn special, as long as it tastes good, can be made with whatever is at hand and won't be too taxing for the dinner shift pantry guys to serve (they can get really pissy if they're taxed too much). Oh - and is ridiculously easy to produce by an extremely tired person.

The following recipe is exactly that, and something upon which I relied more than I care to say. It's dead easy, as the Brits say, it requires a minimum of embellishment, and even the crankiest of waiters loved it, would sell it and then fight each other over the scraps. In other words, it was the perfect dessert special: 86'd every damn time!

I came up with this pudding because when I was a child I loved a similar recipe in Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians, and because I loved the bread pudding from the late, lamented Chez Helene in New Orleans. This dessert is their strange love child.

Note: the heavy cream and whipped cream are almost essential as garnishes, although this pudding isn't bad with excellent vanilla ice cream either. If you're going to die from heart failure or a stroke, might as well go all the way. It's also amazing eaten cold straight from the refrigerator. I mean it. It's better than hot from the oven and that's saying a lot.


Chocolate Brandy Bread Pudding

6 cups cubed sweet (not sourdough!) French bread, lightly packed, hard crusts removed (may also use brioche or challah)

9 large eggs

1 to 1-1/2 cups sugar (depending upon how sweet you want it)

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 pint (2 cups) half and half , plus possibly up to 1/2 cup more (this is single cream in the UK and Commonwealth)

1 tablespoon excellent quality vanilla extract

1/2 cup good brandy or cognac (I play pretty fast and loose with this)

3 cups plus 3/4 cup chopped excellent quality (Valrhona, Callebaut, Scharffenberger, etc.) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate OR, in a pinch, good-quality chocolate chips

3 tablespoons crystal or sanding sugar (or regular granulated)

Method:

Butter (or spray with non-stick cooking spray) a deep 2-quart metal, ceramic or glass baking dish. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat eggs, sugar and salt until combined; add half and half, vanilla and brandy. Add bread cubes and mix thoroughly. Add 3 cups chocolate (or chips). The bread should sort of float in the custard; if it not, add a bit more half-and-half. Cover with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator to soak for at least 3 hours or preferably overnight.

One half hour before you're ready to bake the pudding, preheat oven to 325°F. Pour mixture into buttered baking dish and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until starting to puff around the edges and browning a bit. Remove from oven, scatter remaining 3/4 cup chopped chocolate over top and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons sanding or crystal sugar. Return to oven and bake another 15 to 20 minutes or until barely set in the middle and golden brown. Serve warm with heavy pouring cream and/or whipped cream.

This may also be baked in individual ramekins -- just place them on a sheet pan and shorten the baking time accordingly. The baking dish version serves 10 to 12; individual servings will depend on the size of your ramekins.

© 2007 Sandy Soto Teich

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced anywhere without the author's express permission.