Friday, December 31, 2010

Julie and the Chocolate Factory


Happy Holidays to you all! I am going to share with you all of the hard work I put into Christmas gifts for family and friends this year.

I refuse to take it easy and do one thing at a time, so amongst all of the other holiday madness, designing two new menus for my place of work and doing multiple other design projects, I decided to open a temporary chocolate factory in my ant-sized kitchen. What fun!



I will admit that I started designing the labels back in November. So smart. I went to Calgary to Mona Lisa art store and got some pretty fun semi-transparent velum paper and some craft/postal parcel paper. Went to Nu-Roots in Canmore and got chocolate foils and all of my raw chocolate ingredients (cocoa butter, cocoa powder, cashews, essential oils, chocolate molds, etc.) and to a new artisan grocer across the road called Feast to get lovely vanilla beans.

I decided on the 4 flavours:
2 white - Lemon and Blueberry Rooibos
2 Dark - Cinnamon Chipotle and Orange Coffee

I love old movies (and some modern movies too) so I gave each bar a special movie theme name. I guess I started with the Lemon White Chocolate- I wanted to call it "Jack Lemon" (like the actor) and the other bars followed suit. I sent the wrapper files up to the printing company in town and got them to print on the special velum paper.

After writing down who was to get the chocolates and how many, I was suddenly seeing 60-80 bars in my future! Did I mention that my freezer is smaller than any normal freezer and can only fit two three-bar molds at a time? No big deal.

Happily making chocolate, I realized I would need more cocoa butter from Canmore. I drove in, only to find out that Nu-Roots was totally out, as was Nutters, and there would likely be some coming in AFTER Christmas! Oh crap! Chocolate factory halted.

The week before Christmas I happened to call my friend Brooke who was going to Nu-Roots and asked her to keep an eye out for cocoa butter. By some Christmas miracle they had just received a new order of cocoa butter and it wasn't even on the shelves yet! (insert that sound the heavens make when they part and the sun bursts through). Chocolate factory commence.
Part 1: Melt + mix ingredients, pour into molds, freeze, pop out of molds, put back in freezer with like-flavoured bars.
Part 2: Foil wrap each bar, craft paper wrap each bar, label each bar, seal each bar with wax. The only downfall of the process was that I had to use scotch tape to seal the craft paper - how amateur.




This is the final product, after many hours of hard work, blood, sweat and sealing wax. (No blood or sweat contaminated the chocolate, but the odd cat hair may have).

Jack Lemon


Some Like it Hot

Orange Mocha Frappuccino!


Blue Suede Brew

(upside down on foil)





Julie's Chocolate Factory is temporarily closed for a two week vacation in Costa Rica!

Monday, December 6, 2010

Caesar was a Jerk with Great Taste Buds


I've been watching a few movies over the last couple of months concerning the fall of Rome. My those Roman's were a passionate and brutal bunch! I have been inspired to make a raw vegan Caesar salad (the orgies and disemboweling really made me hungry).

At the place I work we have a fantastic pink peppercorn based Caesar dressing and I wanted to replicate that minus the eggs, anchovies and garlic. Sounds lame doesn't it? Well... it's not!

Pink Peppercorn Caesar

The Dressing:
1 cup cashews
1 tbsp dulse, packed (to replicate anchovy flavour)
1/6 onion
1/8 cup olive oil
juice from 2 lemons, more than ¼ cup, less than ½ cup (ghetto measurements)
3 teaspoons hemp seeds (to add creaminess and an egg-ish taste)
6 wild pepper peppercorns
½ cup water
1 teaspoon pink peppercorns
1 teaspoon mild brown rice miso

Blend all in vitamix until smooth and creamy. I'm not going to lie, I did add about 1/6th of a clove of garlic. The Roman's are a bad influence on me, but with such a small amount of garlic I didn't really have a reaction.

The Salad:
romaine hearts, torn into bite sizes pieces
capers
preserved lemon slices (if you preserve your own lemons - see earlier post somewhere on this blog - take about 1/3 of a preserved lemon, gut it and rinse the rind under water. Thinly slice the rind.
fresh pepper
pea shoots for garnish (optional)
pumpkin seed parmesan (if you have any)

Toss the romaine in a generous amount of dressing and place in bowl or on plate. Top with remaining ingredients. Indulge...

Would the Roman's be proud?


REVISION
I have made more sprouted lentil gnocchi and revised the recipe. I like this one better:
1.5 cups sprouted and dried lentils
6 teaspoons chia seeds
6 whole little wild peppercorns
½ teaspoon sea salt or more
-blend above in dry vita mix container to turn into flour
then transfer to mixing bowl
add approx 1 cup but start with half cup (add as needed) sun dried tomato soaking water (water, handful of sun dried toms, soak for an hour or more. Do something else with the tomatoes, you just want the flavoured water here)
¼ cup olive oil + a few tbsp maybe (not exact measurement, obviously)
fresh minced basil

Mix all together. This time, you want the dough to be wetter but still pretty easy to roll. It will be stickier but can be in the dehydrator for longer to warm up and not get dry. The sticky nature also means it won't hold those fun gnocchi fork tine marks but if you must have the marks, you can add them after they have been in the dehydrator for about 10 mins. Enjoy!