Eat/Cook | Page 40 of 44 | The Rambling Epicure

On the Chocolate Trail: World’s Chocolate Supply Threatened

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, March 9, 2011 Permalink 0

Bad news for the chocolate world. The largest cocoa producing country in the world, the Ivory Coast, is on the verge of civil war and all of its cocoa has been seized by the state in a move that the US State Department yesterday said, “amounted to theft.”

Despite losing the election last year, Laurent Gbgabo, stated his government would take over paying the farmers and selling the beans on the open market in yet another move to resist handing over power to Alassane Ouattara the UN-sanctified winner. Ouattara countered with the statement that any exporter co-operating with Gbgabo will lose his license when Ouattara finally takes over.

EU sanctions and a ban on cocoa exports already put into place by Ouattara as a way of squeezing Gbgabo’s access to funds prompted this sudden move to nationalize cocoa production in the country that produces roughly 40% of the world’s output..

What does this mean for the chocolate making industry? According to Bloomberg’s Poppy Trowbridge, cocoa rose to record high of US$3,444/ton in the month of February driving prices up 20% since the November 28th election. And for the investor? In London yesterday, cocoa futures for May delivery rose to US$3, 858/metric ton. Meanwhile an estimated half million tons of the cacao beans are sitting in the ports of Abidjan and San Pedro as buyers are unsure which head of state to follow and do not want to violate existing sanctions agreed on by the international community. Smuggling, already in practice via neighboring countries, is expected to rise.

As consumers who already consider fine chocolate a luxury, get ready. Prices will only be going up, up, up. Time to stockpile.

Rosa’s Musings: 13 ways to eat on a budget and improve your health at the same time

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, March 3, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

Good food and good eating aren’t a class thing – anyone can eat good food on any budget as long as they know how to cook.— Jamie Oliver

Eating on a budget and improving your health at the same time

A tight budget but a broad mind: Eating humbly and responsibly without decreasing your pleasure and health

Unfortunately too many people have the preconceived idea that eating healthily and with indulgence is synonymous with expensive, and believe that spending less money on food implies that your dinners will be dreadfully bland and grimly boring. Well, today I am about to break with the big myth and set the records straight by showing you how being limited financially doesn’t mean you have to eat like an austere monk on a strict diet or a New Age prophet living on love and fresh air, nor restrain your kitchen activity and stop inventing dishes. Quite the contrary!

On the Chocolate Trail: The Iconic Chocolate Chip Cookie

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, March 3, 2011 Permalink 0

by Christina Daub

A Brief History of the Chocolate Chip Cookie

Did you know Massachusetts has a state cookie? It’s the chocolate chip cookie, an invention attributed to Ruth Graves Wakefield of the widely known Toll House Inn. Legend has it that having run out of her standard Baker’s chocolate, she broke up a bar of Nestlé semisweet and added it to her favorite recipe, Butter Drop Do cookies.

Kathleen King in family bakery, Tate’s Bake Shop, in Southampton, New York.

The reaction by travelers was instantaneous. Soon her recipe was published in the local newspaper, positively affecting sales of Nestlé semisweet bars. Then the fictitious Betty Crocker featured Wakefield’s Toll House chocolate chip cookie on the radio program, “Famous Foods from Famous Eating Places,” prompting Nestlé to invent the semisweet morsel in 1939. In exchange for using the recipe on the back of their semisweet bar and morsel bag, she was given a lifetime supply of chocolate chips.

The chocolate chip cookie’s nationwide fame can be attributed to home bakers in Massachusetts who sent scores of the addictive Toll House cookies to GIs abroad during World War II. The soldiers shared and pretty soon orders were coming in from across the country.

David Downie: Paris, Paris Delighting in Discovery

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, February 28, 2011 Permalink 0

by David Downie

Paris, Paris Delighting in Discovery

Unlikely Discoveries Department: the tearoom, restaurant and courtyard terrace of Bonpoint, the chic clothes emporium for kiddies with well-healed parents.

The official name is “Salon de Thé Bonpoint.” The address: 6 Rue de Tournon (Tel: 01 56 24 05 79). That’s in the 6th arrondissement in Paris, a 2-minute stroll or roll-by-baby carriage from the Luxembourg Gardens and the French Senate in the Luxembourg Palace.

David Downie: Brittle Delight

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, February 28, 2011 Permalink 0

by David Downie

Confession time: for the last 25+ years I’ve lived in Paris and traveled the byways of France and Italy, tasting and writing about delicious food and lickerish wines. I’ve rarely felt gastronomic nostalgia for my native land, though the food and wine of California admittedly aren’t bad (this is serious understatement as you all know). But I have an incurable passion for peanuts in all sizes, shapes, and clonal varieties. I also love other spicy nuts, and, the real shocker, brittle. Yes, brittle. Peanut brittle not only hits all the right pleasure buds. It also whisks me back to the happy days of my youth in San Francisco and Berkeley, when “wild” was the operative descriptor.

Bollywood Cooking: Chicken tikka masala: New Indian or fusion?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Permalink 0

by here

Chicken tikka masala, New Indian or fusion?

Chicken tikka masala is quite likely one of the most popular Indian dishes the world. The irony of chicken tikka masala, better known as “CTM,” is that what is often enjoyed in restaurants as a traditional Indian dish has very little to do with authentic Indian cuisine. It is closer to “Britain’s true national dish.”

It was former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who proclaimed chicken tikka masala as the new national dish of Great Britain, in an attempt to set an example of British multiculturalism. The chicken tikka masala Mr. Cook was referring to was in actual fact the gravy-based dish invented in Britain.

Hunter Gatherer: Waste not want not: Carli Ratcliff visits Sydney’s newest (and greenest) restaurant

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, February 15, 2011 Permalink 0

by Carli Ratcliff

A Pop-up restaurant: Greenhouse by Joost in Sydney, Australia

Our Australian correspondent Carli Ratcliff visits Sydney’s newest (and greenest) restaurant

Joost Bakker is a designer with abhorrence for waste. The son of Dutch flower growers he grew up surrounded by plants and nature and has long held the view that we must touch lightly on the earth. His own home is a straw bale construction, a technique he has also adopted in the construction of his pop-up restaurants.

The Dutch-born designer (his family migrated to Melbourne when he was nine years old) unveiled his first pop-up restaurant in Melbourne’s Federation Square in 2008 and he has another permanent greenhouse in Perth, Western Australia, which was named Perth’s ‘Restaurant of the Year’ in 2010.

His harbourside pop-up, which sits prominently on the point between The Sydney Opera House and The Sydney Harbour Bridge, opened to the public on Monday.

Constructed of shipping containers and the aforementioned straw bales, the interior walls are clad in magnesium oxide boards, impregnated with Bio-Char (a type of charcoal that captures and stores carbon). The exterior of the restaurant is covered in thousands of terracotta pots holding wild strawberry plants.

Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner the menu is based on local, seasonal ingredients, with an emphasis on wholefoods. Local oysters and sustainable fish, including grilled mackerel, are on offer, so too a grass-fed Waygu beef and papaya salad and handmade pappardelle with beef ragù and gremolata (the parsley comes from the roof). All arrive on slabs of plantation timber, which serve as plates, with compostable timber cutlery.

The wheat for pizzas is ground on site; the Perth restaurant currently grinds nearly a tonne of local wheat each week. Butter and yoghurt are made here, as is tonic water, the pasta, bread and pastries. Fresh juices are hand-squeezed to order and natural wines are poured straight from the barrel, both are served in jam jars.

Herbs and leaves are grown on the roof, fed regularly with compost made from the restaurant’s waste, while the oil from the deep fryer is converted into diesel which fuels the restaurant’s electricity.

In six short weeks the restaurant will be packed up. Next stop Milan.

For more information, contact Carli at carliratcliff@theramblingepicure.com

Destination Dessert: Chocolate Cherry Pound Cake with Mascarpone Whipped Cream

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, February 14, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jamie Schler

Jamie’s blog Blogger’s Choice Awards 2011 has been nominated for Best Food Blog 2011 on
. If you like her recipes, please vote for her!

I’ve got a crush on you, sweetie pie
All the day and night time, hear me sigh
I never had the least notion
That I could fall with such emotion

Could you coo, could you care
For the cottage, we two could share
The world will pardon my mush
Because I’ve got a crush on you
– George Gershwin, 1930

Continue Reading…

Mediterranean Food Connection: Grilled Peppers, a Classic Mediterranean Dish

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, February 11, 2011 Permalink 0

by Christophe Certain

Click here for French version.

Grilled Peppers, à la Grand-mère

This recipe is simple but absolutely delicious. It was passed down to me by my grandmother. When people who’ve never eaten it taste it for the first time, they always ask me what I put in it to give it that incredibly special taste. The answer is: nothing.

Grilled bell peppers have a totally different taste from raw bell peppers; they are sweet and fruity. A chemist might say this is due to the transformation of the starch into sugar during cooking, with undoubtedly a few Maillard reactions thrown in (a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar).

Harry Morgan: Best New York-style Deli in London?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, February 10, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Harry Morgan started out as a local butcher in London in 1948. He then opened a hole-in-the-wall deli, serving freshly made New York-style sandwiches, and went on to become a local institution as well as a sit-down restaurant.

The Sunday Times voted his chicken soup the best in London, and the Evening Standard Restaurant Awards nominated it twice for the top 5 best value restaurants in London.