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Dear Friends,
This poor blog has been neglected for months, and I pledge to get back to it soon. So much has been going on with products and venues – including the new café SHOWPLACE. Do check in at brucesbest.com for updates. Happy fall!
Best,
Bruce
There is always a special excitement around a new product: all that thought, planning, research, testing, design. This time it is something a bit different for bruce’s best, a beverage instead of a bonbon. The idea has been on the back burner for over a year, but now with hot summer weather on the way (and sometimes here already), it seems a perfect time for a debut.
My goal in creating Mayan Thunder was to formulate a delicious chocolate energy drink that would be as close as possible to the chocolate beverages invented in ancient Mesoamerica. To that end, I knew from the start that chocolate and chile would be the main flavors. Then I began to add in other ingredients to achieve the texture and flavor profiles I wanted while at the same time preserving the Mexican theme. The original chocolate beverages—and some modern ones as well—contained a viscous tropical vine extract added to produce the coveted foam that was at the heart of the chocolate experience. That vine extract is unavailable here, as far as I know, but I do have a nifty substitute that is derived from maize, the quintessential American grain. Xanthan gum is my modern ingredient, and it helps me achieve not foam exactly, but a rich mouth-feel without added fat. Coconut was not known to the ancients, but it is of course a very popular modern ingredient, and it adds richness without milk products.
Dried hibiscus flower infusion—modern aqua de flor de jamaica—has just the fruitiness I wanted, and is famously refreshing and tonic. So while hibiscus was not available to the ancestors, their descendants took to it right away when it was introduced, making it very much their own soft drink. It is fun to imagine the first shipment of dried hibiscus arriving on the Manila Galleon in the port city of Manzanilla in 1556, only a few decades after the Conquest. But perhaps hibiscus arrived in the Islands first, since Mexicans call it Jamaica flower. And hibiscus tea is popular in the Middle East and North Africa as well, and therefore was inevitably introduced at some point into Spain. So hibiscus tea may have come to the New World first from Europe rather than from its native Asia. Hard to say. But flor de jamaica is so much a part of Mexico today, that I am proud to include it in Mayan Thunder.
My sweetener is among the most exciting ingredients for several reasons. First, agave nectar is produced from the sap collected from the heart of mature magueys, using millennia-old methods. To this day the locals harvest the sap, now called aquamiel, for production of the famous beer pulque. But only since the 1990s has some of this juice been minimally processed and evaporated to form a delicious syrup. I am delighted to have agave nectar available for Mayan Thunder because it is a quintessentially American product, and because its pure flavor makes it more desirable than honey. And it’s extraordinarily low glycemic index—a remarkable 32 to honey’s 58—means that agave nectar is considered an appropriate ingredient in a healthy diet, a secret to long-term health, reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes and aiding sustainable weight loss. Because of the favorable fructose ratio, agave nectar is generally rated at 1.4 times the sweetness of sugar. So I can introduce fewer calories and promise slow release without sugar spikes. Not bad!
We start test marketing Mayan Thunder next week, and I will keep you posted on its progress. I placed a page marker at www.mayanthunder.com. The web site will grow as the product does. Please watch this space and the web site for updates!
Creating a new flavor at bruce’s best is always an exciting process. It calls upon different skills and energies from those involved in production and marketing. Recently John Duffy, the owner of Avignone pharmacy (Avignone on Bleecker, Ltd, 281 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10014, phone: 212.242.3033) asked for an exclusive flavor, and I was delighted to be able to comply.
We spoke of many things, including medicinal herbs and elixirs, the foundations of the old pharmacy system. But what really made John light up like a Christmas tree was mention of his beloved villa in Tuscany, surrounded as it is by fields of lavender, rosemary hedges, bee hives, and, of course, vineyards.
From there it was a straight shot to a new flavor formula that could harmonize with the dark chocolate ganache that forms the base of all truffle flavors at bruce’s best. So now I am excited to announce Tuscan Sunshine, flavored with lavender, rosemary, wildflower honey, and Tuscan red wine. It debuts tomorrow (Monday, May 5) just in time for Mother’s Day, and it is available exclusively at Avignone.
I have to say that I am very pleased with Tuscan Sunshine, and, more to the point, John is too. And we are hoping that his customers will love it as well. So how do new flavors happen? Ideas are everywhere, but this one was pretty much handed to me. I knew from the start what the main flavors would be: two floral notes, one herbal, a complex blend of fruit with a little tannin tossed in. It sounds really nice to the mind’s palate. Would a touch of citrus be welcome? How about bitter almond? I ruled these two out in the interest of simplifying the flavor experience. Perhaps I will try them someday. One of the greatest pleasures of a foodie life is the anticipation of all the tastings to come.
With the main notes established, it became a matter of trial and error to find the right flavor balance, and the right texture, too. Whenever honey is included, texture shifts. So it starts with what you know, or think you know, and goes forward until that moment when everything falls into place. This one was a relatively easy birth. But whenever chocolate is involved, life is full of surprises.
“Isn’t the world full of wonderful things, Barnaby?” For those for whom I am hopelessly dating myself, that is a line from The Matchmaker/Hello Dolly. My “Day Well Spent” (the German play upon which Thornton Wilder based The Matchmaker) was actually a weekend, and spent in Portland, Maine, rather than New York City (where Cornelius and Barnaby get into such wonderful trouble, and where I normally spend my days in varying states of wonder). Early spring in southern Maine feels a lot like late winter, but last week, indoors at least, there was lots of new life bubbling up.
As I mentioned in my last post, I attended a Barry-Callebaut (www.callebaut.com) chocolate seminar weekend-before-last, and it was wonderfully informative and inspiring. The company chefs and teachers do a terrific job of understanding, exploring, and sharing the results of their experience. Now I am emulsifying my ganache in a different way, trying to be more patient, letting temperatures ease up and down gradually rather than shocking them, using refrigeration less, hoping to be a better teacher. It is exciting to learn the results of careful research. For example, there may actually be seven possible crystals that cocoa butter can form, not just six!
It occurred to me, with all this theory-and-practice going on, that it is not surprising that new discoveries are being made and new techniques perfected, considering that the science of chocolate is nearly in its infancy in the grand scheme of things. Though chocolate has ancient traditions as a beverage, as a fine confection it is barely more than a century old! With that in mind, I hoped readers would enjoy the following timeline that lays out the essential chocolate discoveries that bring us to modern couverture.
1828 The cocoa press is invented in Amsterdam by Casparus van Houten (Sr.). This simple hydraulic construction could squeeze out about half of the natural fat in the cocoa nibs, leaving behind a cake that could be ground into cocoa powder, much easier to dissolve in hot liquids than full-fat chocolate. So while the cocoa press was, on the surface, an advancement in chocolate the beverage, the isolation of cocoa butter was essential to the evolution of chocolate the confection. Plus, van Houten treated his cocoa powder with alkaline salts to make it more blendable, thereby adding a method (Dutch-process, alkalized, Dutched) that makes myriad cocoa – and chocolate – colors and flavors possible to this day.
1840 Belgian company Bervaerts produces arguably the first solid chocolate, in the form of pressed tablets, pastilles, and figures.
1846 The first chocolate bar is marketed by English chocolate manufacturer J. S. Fry & Sons. Pure chocolate liquor (the natural yield from the cocoa beans) and sugar will only produce a crumbly mass that, pressed into a bar, produces a very coarse product. In the years that followed the chocolate bar’s debut, producers learned that with the addition of some extra cocoa butter, as isolated by van Houten’s cocoa press, it is possible to create a relatively smooth cake.
1865 In Italy, chocolate is first blended with hazelnut praline paste to produce gianduja.
1875 Daniel Peter figures out how to combine his chocolate with Henri Nestlé’s condensed milk, and milk chocolate is born.
1879 Swiss chocolatier Rodolphe Lindt invents the conche. This mixing machine, originally conch-shaped, makes it possible to blend the basic chocolate bar ingredients over a period of days until the particles are tiny and smooth, with the added benefit that some undesirable acid compounds evaporate away during the process, improving the flavor as well. Chocolate as we know it is now possible for the first time in history.
1921 White chocolate comes on the market.
Once the basic materials existed, then it was a fairly straight shot to molded chocolate, molded filled chocolates, truffles, etc. The groundwork was set in the Nineteenth Century, so that the Twentieth could become the great chocolate century, with chocolate on every table, in every food shop and confectionary, in most market bags, and in lots of pockets, too. So where are we now? Still at the dawn of creation, as far as I am concerned. The whys of chocolate chemistry have been poorly understood until recent years, and there is still much to do and learn. With lots of thanks to Barry-Callebaut, I am hoping to help push the envelope and watch where we all go from here.
Part of the joy of chocolate is in learning about its complex chemistry. This is particularly strong in my mind today as I prepare for the Callebaut (www.callebaut.com) chocolate seminar this weekend in Portland, Maine. Normally I find myself too busy to consider attending a trade event out-of-town. But this time I just felt I owed it to myself and my business to attend, to see what I can learn about chocolate from this particular panel of experts.
Next week I will share with you anything exciting that happens this weekend. Even if there are no new chocolate discoveries in the hopper, there will doubtless be new discoveries for me. There is never a dull moment in the chocolate life.
Meanwhile, for those of you who have not read my “Public Service Announcement” about chocolate at www.brucesbest.com, I tried to gather together all the main points in chocolate’s nutritional/psychoactive chemistry profile. I reprint it below in the hope that you find this story as endlessly fascinating as I do.
Not only is chocolate the world’s favorite treat, it is perhaps the most beneficial as well. To start with nutrition, exciting evidence is mounting to show that the antioxidant polyphenols in chocolate, called flavonols, work to inhibit the formation of sticky ldl cholesterol oxidations that form blood clots and clumps on artery walls. So consuming chocolate may actually help to improve blood flow and reduce blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular accidents associated with clots. Do not expect your doctor to take you off your aspirin therapy in favor of chocolate therapy, yet the evidence is promising.
Chocolate does contain a good bit of saturated fat, which is of course implicated in raising serum cholesterol levels. However, eating chocolate has been proved to have a neutral effect on cholesterol levels (perhaps with the help of the soy lecithin that fine chocolates contain). And cholesterol starts to become irrelevant if it does not stick or clump. Also, naturally saturated fat like cocoa butter is highly resistant to rancidity, the oxidation process that releases free radicals implicated in a wide range of human ailments, from gout to cancer. So chocolate not only contributes no free radicals of its own but also fights the free radicals from other sources! Not bad for candy.
Keep in mind that high (natural) fat treats modulate blood sugar levels, discouraging the sugar spikes and resulting inflammation and mood swings associated with sugary snacks. So chocolate treats are less likely than high-carb, low-fat treats to lead to obesity and diabetes. And, finally, chocolate does not promote acne nor tooth decay, as has been claimed in the past. In fact, it is likely that cocoa butter prevents some of the damage done by dental plaque by leaving a protective film on the teeth.
All this healthy stuff would be of much less interest were it not for the feel-good side of chocolate chemistry. Among chocolate’s more than three hundred chemical components are mild doses of several psychoactive drugs. The stimulants include caffeine, theobromine (named for the cocoa tree itself, the food of the gods, theobroma cacao), tyramine, and phenylethylamine, an amphetamine-like substance that releases dopamine to the appropriate brain centers of lovers and chocolate-lovers alike.
The uppers are mellowed by downers. An ongoing marijuana study in San Diego, CA, has discovered that a substance in chocolate called anandamide enters the blood stream and bonds with the cannabis receptors in the human brain, producing a mild but measurable euphoria. No average adult will get stoned on chocolate – the required dose is about twenty-five pounds in one feeding frenzy – but the trace chemistry is real. This may be part of chocolate’s proven analgesic properties. Some of the most effective pain relief medications have been designed around a pain reliever coupled with caffeine to help speed the analgesic across the brain/blood barrier. Chocolate appears to be doing the same thing naturally.
The other important relaxant begins as the amino acid tryptophan. One of its chemical products is serotonin, famous for promoting feelings of calm, relaxation, confidence, and well-being. Tryptophan is also a precursor of melatonin, the circadian (waking/sleeping) rhythm regulator, and niacin, which has a host of functions (including cholesterol balance, leading us back to the nutrition side). So it is clear that there really is a chocolate high that both invigorates and relaxes. And it is legal. And remarkably healthy. Who could ask for more?
Keep in mind that all of these facts pertain to natural dark chocolate. Milk chocolate might contain as little as half as much natural chocolate as bittersweet, so the benefits decrease accordingly. And white chocolate is missing the bitter cocoa solids that contribute all of the drugs and most of the nutrients. That is one reason why at Bruce’s Best we use only high quality dark chocolates for our centers, with a bit of milk and white for finish and garnish as needed. Beware of imitations. The products called coating, summer coating, compound, or chocolate-flavored-something-or-other are loaded with trans fat and typically very high in sugar as well. And the cocoa powder they may contain is normally low in flavonols and other desirable components. These imitations are sweet, cheap, and easy to handle; but they are not chocolate.
The Cacao God, from a Classic Mayan bowl
Recently, while preparing to teach a private cooking class at Cooktique in Tenafly, New Jersey (www.cooktique.com), I was considering a number of possible desserts. For a menu built around grilled marinated flank steak with coffee chipotle glaze, my thoughts turned naturally to chocolate. Actually, my thoughts always turn naturally to chocolate, but especially when planning a menu with beefsteak.
The menu needed to be approachable for participants at all levels of culinary experience, so it was simple to put aside thoughts of cakes and other sweets that require real baking in favor of an easy sauce for ice cream that is also easy to love. In fact, I have never heard any American say no to the idea of a hot fudge sundae.
The recipe below was created only about two years ago for my chocolate week at the Culinary Center of New York (www.culinarycenterny.com). In looking over my sauce recipes – raspberry coulis, caramel sauce, white chocolate sauce, crème anglaise, etc. – I had noticed the lack of a really old-fashioned fudgy sauce for ice cream that could be as gooey or as creamy as desired. In fact, I hoped to reproduce the hot fudge from my childhood, the one they served at the Guilford Dairy Bar in Burlington, North Carolina.
While we can never go home again (and nor would I want to, thank you very much), it is often an exciting challenge to try to create a dish that will not only be delicious but also warm the cockles of the heart in a Proustian way. For this hot fudge, I reasoned that it would be simplicity itself to create a sauce even better than the one from a simpler place and time. With good Belgian chocolate around (my preference), anything chocolate is always better than anything could have been in the South in the ‘50s and ‘60s. So I knew the sauce would be really good, I just needed to figure out how to duplicate the wonderful texture.
Something in my experience made me think of sweetened condensed milk, that mainstay of the dessert kitchen in the South and also much of the Americas. Canned milk products caught on quickly in many climates where fresh dairy products were hard to find and hard to hold. And they still give just the right texture and flavor to traditional favorites. The combination of semisweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate below is just right for my taste. You might vary the proportions, or use 9 ounces bittersweet plus 1 ounce unsweetened, or 10 ounces extra-bittersweet (about 70% cocoa mass).
So next Monday night when we reach the end of our class and help ourselves to ice cream, toasted nuts, strawberries macerated in Grand Marnier (our bow to adulthood), vanilla-scented whipped cream, and a dark and luscious chocolate sauce, at least one of us will be transported to a time and place when hot summer days were impossibly long and hot fudge sundaes tasted impossibly good.
about 2 ½ cups
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 ounces butter
½ cup sweetened condensed milk
½ cup hot coffee, approximately
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Place chocolates and butter into a stainless steel bowl over a pan of hot water. Stir until smooth. Stir in remaining ingredients until smooth. Thin with more hot coffee if desired. Use warm.
As promised, here are further musings on caramel, milk caramel in particular. There is something so appealing about the golden look, the warm, toasty smell; so many foods are enhanced by careful, gentle burning. Some are even burned more violently, like the glossy bronzed sugar layer on top of crème brûlée, or the grill marks on a fine steak. Don’t forget Paul Prudhomme’s blackened redfish, which took ‘80s America by storm (and nearly wiped out redfish, too). But I digress.
Some rich custardy sweets depend upon burned sugar, particularly the crème brûlée already mentioned and crème (renversée au) caramel – flan. You might also pour a layer of caramel into the bottom of your mold for panna cotta. As the mixture chills and sets, even without baking, the hygroscopic (hydrophilic) properties of sugar creations in general and caramel in particular will pull moisture from the milk mixture just as with flan and create a translucent golden syrup. By the way, I make an extraordinary flan with a bit of cream cheese in it, a concept from the Yucatán called Flan Napolitano. Please let me know if you are interested and I will be happy to post the recipe.
Add cream to burned sugar, stir over heat until the caramel dissolves into the cream, and you have a caramel sauce. Brown sugar gives flavor to many milky creations – even butterscotch pudding – and the molasses and caramel color that turn white sugar into brown sugar are the flavoring agents.
Not so long before Kraft rolled out its 1933 creation and added a new word to the American vocabulary – carmel – Louis-Camille Maillard published (in 1912) a paper with some information about protein that the rest of the world might not have thought too much about. Everyone knew that when you throw a steak on a hot grill or turn a chicken on a spit over a healthy fire, they brown. And cooks knew that when you burn sugar over high heat it passes first through a series of ever-darker brown states that are delicious until the later stages become bitter tasting.
Maillard noticed that while sugar caramelizes at 338°F (170°C), and that the steak and the chicken are at high heat too, it is possible to boil milk and sugar together and get browning too, even if the temperature never passes 240°F, the soft ball! Dried and processed milk products also tend to brown when they are stored in a warm place, a serious consideration for infant formulas because of the nutritional changes that accompany the flavor and color change. So what is happening here? It is a complex reaction now called the Maillard Effect or Maillard browning, whereby a combination of protein and sugar in the right proportions and with comparatively little heat will go through the chemical and nutritional changes that produce, among other reactions, that wonderful toasty aroma and flavor.
Is it caramel? No, not really. Do we care? Dulce de leche (cajeta, manjar blanco, arquipe) is still darkly delicious however it got that way. I will just mention here that the Maillard Effect occurs more readily in alkaline mixtures, which seems to be why dulce de leche recipes generally include sodium bicarbonate. I had always thought that the added alkalinity would protect the milk from curdling as the pH shifts toward acidic with caramelization. Now I know that there is no true caramelization happening here, but Maillard browning has very much the same results.
Working with a slightly different formula and no bicarb this time, you can create your own soft “caramel”. Whatever it really is, it will be buttery and wonderful, and far more tempting than anything Kraft makes! I answered the caramel call this spring for my chocolate, pecan, caramel bunnies in the Easter line at bruce’s best. The caramel – and the bunnies – turned out even better than I had hoped, and I will be looking for other excuses to use this treat in future. There are three basic approaches – fresh cream, evaporated milk, and condensed milk. I find the condensed milk version very easy and irresistible. This basic formula originally came from a professional recipe book, and I have misplaced the attribution. I will post it later if I can dig it up.
1 cup water
18 ounces – about 2 1/3 cups – sugar
One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 ¼ cups – 10 fluid ounces, 15 ounces by weight – light corn syrup
7 ounces butter
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract Combine in a wide, heavy-bottomed saucepan the water, sugar, condensed milk, and corn syrup. Stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, then bring the mixture to 230
°F, stirring often. Stir in the butter and stir constantly until the mixture reaches 240°. This temperature will yield a nice, gooey caramel after it cools. You may also continue to 243°F for a slightly firmer result that might hold its shape better. Stir in the salt and vanilla.
Scrape the mixture onto a buttered pan to cool. While it is still warm you may pipe it with a pastry bag or squeeze bottle. When it has cooled to room temperature it will cut with a knife or wire. Wrap airtight and refrigerate, but return it to room temperature to work with it, and for eating, too.
When most of us hear the word mole we think “chocolate chicken” and then either salivate or curl the lip. In fact, the mole story is far more complex than the legendary creation probably first concocted in the kitchen of the (ex)-Convent of Santa Rosa in Puebla. Mole poblano may be best known here, but in Mexico everyone knows that moles are prepared all over, and actually Oaxaca is most famous for the sheer variety of its moles, as well as the savor. Any mention of la cocina oaxaqueña and someone will automatically say, “Oh yes, the seven moles of Oaxaca.”
The word mole comes from the Nahuatl, the language of the ancient Aztecs and their empire. It names a complex sauce, or the finished dish made with this complex sauce. To illustrate the difference between a mole and a salsa, let’s first prepare a simple (virtual) everyday salsa (not to be confused with a chunky salsa cruda [raw sauce] or table condiment).
To make a salsa de chile cascabel, for example, we first select a few dried cascabeles, round and hard, with a bright rattle from the seeds inside when shaken, which gives them their name. We toast the chiles lightly on a hot comal – griddle – until they are fragrant and pliable, but not smoky. Then we tear open the chiles, discarding cap, seeds (probably, although we could save the seeds for use as a spicing agent), and as much of the membranous ribs inside as possible. We cover the chile pieces with boiling water and let them soak for at least twenty minutes. An hour is better.
I should mention that somewhere along the way we need to place some meat into a kettle (chicken parts, chunks of pork shoulder, turkey, lamb, beef, armadillo, a cutup rabbit, whatever) with water to cover, salt, a piece of white onion, a garlic clove, and a bay leaf or two. With chicken, of course, a rib of celery and a carrot are always welcome, along with a pinch of dried leaf thyme. The meat is simmered gently until tender.
So, back to the salsa: We take a few red ripe tomatoes (the most exotic ingredient in this dish), roast them briefly over a flame to blister the skin, then slide off most of the skin and cut out the caps. We throw the tomatoes into a blender jar (or into a lava-stone mortar and pestle, a molcajete – mole box) along with a few pieces of white onion, a garlic clove, and some salt (the onion and garlic might be previously toasted a bit on the comal to add more flavor). To these few ingredients we add the soaked cascabel pieces and process this mixture to a coarse purée. Note that if we were making a simple Mexican tomato sauce instead of salsa de chile cascabel, we would use instead of the dried chile a piece of chile serrano or other similar fresh green chile.
Next we “fry” the sauce: a large skillet goes over a medium/high flame with a few tablespoons of vegetable oil or lard. When it is hot, we pour in the tomato mixture and stir vigorously. It will sizzle and spit. Then we might add about a half-cup of the chile soaking water, lower the heat, and let the sauce simmer gently, stirring now and then, for maybe 10 to 15 minutes. If the sauce gets too thick we will thin it with meat broth. We correct the seasoning, adding salt to taste and maybe a pinch or two of sugar to compensate for lackluster tomatoes.
So that is a salsa, and it is mixed with the (drained) pieces of meat at serving time, or used to sauce various tortilla dishes in the “corn kitchen.” Everyone has favorite chiles and favorite pairings of chile and meat. A green salsa is very much the same, only the green husk tomatoes (tomatillos in border lingo) are cooked in water before being puréed with white onion, garlic, serrano, and a little handful of fresh coriander (cilantro) or other fresh herb, then “fried” as usual.
A mole is a salsa taken to a higher plane with the addition of nuts, seeds, and spices, even dried fruits and, yes, chocolate. When we are in Mexico we have the option of shopping for a mole paste at the local market, where spice vendors display a dozen or more aromatic pastes in a variety of greens and earth tones, all the way to nearly black. Each has its own special combination of aromatics, enrichments, and chiles, and they may vary regionally.
Armed with one of these products, we can simply go home and make a red or green salsa (without the chile, probably) and stir in the paste. After a few minutes of cooking we have an almost-instant mole that should be delicious, provided the spice vendor has done a good job. Outside Mexico we will have to choose our own mole enrichments, toasting this and that, and creating another purée to add to our salsa after it is fried. After all, the finest cooks create their own mole anyway, so it is a pleasure to follow that tradition.
Below is my teaching recipe, and it is a modern take on the traditional mole from Puebla, using chicken, as it is usually served in restaurants and homes too, instead of the more original turkey.
Mole Poblano
about 8 servings
12 chicken quarters or 16 pieces—8 thighs and 8 breast halves
1 large white onion, sliced
1 large rib celery, sliced
1 large carrot, sliced
1 bay leaf
pinch thyme
2 tablespoons coarse salt
Rinse chicken pieces and place them in a stockpot with vegetables and seasoning and water to cover. Bring to the boil, then lower heat and simmer very gently, skimming during the first 15 minutes, until chicken is very tender but not falling from the bone, about 45 minutes. May be prepared well in advance. Put aside.
6 chile ancho
5 chile mulato
2 chile pasilla
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup blanched slivered almonds
1 stale tortilla, shredded
½ cup raisins
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground anise seed
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 large ripe tomatoes, roasted and peeled
1 cup cooked tomates verdes—tomatillos
½ large white onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablet Mexican chocolate, coarsely chopped
toasted sesame seeds
sliced white onion rings, optional
Toast the chiles in a large hot skillet, turning, just until they are fragrant and pliable, but not smoking. Remove and discard the seeds, caps, and membranes. Cover chiles with boiling water and soak about 20 minutes.
Toast the sesame seeds, almonds, and tortilla in the hot skillet until they begin to color, shaking and stirring constantly. Stir in the raisins, and then the herbs and spices. As soon as the mixture is fragrant, scrape it into a bowl and put aside.
In a blender, purée tomatoes, tomatillos, onion, and garlic with the salt. Place a large, deep skillet or rondo over high heat and add the oil. When it is hot, carefully pour in the tomato mixture—it will splatter—and “fry” it, stirring constantly for a few minutes. Lower heat and let mixture simmer.
Lift the soaked chile pieces out of their water and puree in the blender, adding a little of the water as needed. Add to the tomato sauce. Purée the seed and nut mixture, moistening it as necessary with some of the chicken broth. Blend it very smooth. Add to the sauce.
Cook the mixture very gently, stirring often, for about 20 minutes. Thin with broth as necessary to keep the texture that of a thick sauce. Be careful that it does not burn. May be prepared well in advance to this point.
Stir in the chocolate, and correct seasoning. It will probably need salt and a pinch of sugar too. Drain the chicken pieces. Add them to the sauce and warm it to let the flavors marry. Alternately, you may arrange the chicken pieces on platter or plates and mask with a generous amount of sauce. Present the dish sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and strewn with optional onion slices.
As soon as I began to think about producing chocolate truffles, I knew that dulce de leche would be one of the flavors. There is something so irresistible about caramel in general and milk caramel in particular, that I just knew it would work with chocolate.
I came to this fascination with dulce nearly twenty years ago when I began to learn about the traditional foods of Mexico. Josefina Howard – creator of Rosa Mexicano restaurant – was my mentor, and her infectious devotion to all things Mexican sparked something in me that grew into a passion. It was from Mrs. Howard I learned that Mexico has a rich colonial candy tradition. A few of these specialties may be an acquired taste, like the very tart balls of tamarind paste generously dusted with a beautiful hot red chile powder. But most are instantly inviting, including perhaps my most favorite, a whole lime that has been slit open, poached in a sugar syrup, then stuffed with shredded coconut.
In Mexico, dulce de leche is a brown sugar fudge, which is molded and extruded into a variety of appealing shapes – buttons, crowns, logs, whole walnuts – often garnished with pecans or Mexico’s glorious little pink pine nuts, and sometimes dusted with cinnamon. In all its forms it is irresistible. But then there is the other kind of dulce, which is another matter altogether. The milk caramel that other Latinos call dulce de leche (or manjar blanco or even arquipe in some parts of the Americas) in Mexico is called cajeta, or more specifically, cajeta de leche de cabra, for it is indeed traditionally made from goat’s milk. The word cajeta comes from caja – box – because this confection was sold in charming wooden boxes, like miniature hatboxes crafted from thin shavings of soft wood. Through the 1990s it was still possible to find cajeta in boxes, at least at the famous, elegant old candy store Dulceria Celaya, in Mexico City right in the heart of the Centro Historico.
Now, sadly, the boxes seem to have disappeared, though cajeta is still very much available, and just as irresistible. Mexicans have their choice of cajeta in the jar at the supermarket or local bodega – for home deserts and quick snacks – and various cajeta creations including some wonderful sandwiches. The commercial one is cajeta spread between two wafer paper rounds – obleas, like the host in Catholic communion. These are called Sevillanas, and are available wherever snacks are sold, in the familiar wrapper with the painting of the flirty (though chaste, of course) girls from Seville. In public markets and street fairs, and all the other places that Mexicans hawk their wares, expect to find at least one vendor selling rather large round obleas in pastel colors that are folded in half with a cajeta center and often a crenellation of green pumpkin seeds peeking out all along the half-round edge. There is an exquisite beauty to these creations that moves me deeply, but that is a story I will explore another time.
When I first set out to create a dulce de leche chocolate truffle for bruce’s best, I settled for a cow’s milk dulce made in Florida. It is delicious, but it lacks the slight goaty tang of fine cajeta (and it contains potassium sorbate, an additive that nearly everyone considers harmless, though an artificial preservative none the less). After searching in vain for a Mexican product even remotely affordable in the quantities I need (Coronado brand is perfect, but pricey by the gallon), I suddenly realized there was no good reason why I could not make it myself.
The process is simplicity itself. You merely simmer together milk and sugar and little else, stirring often, until you have produced a thick, rich brown caramel. Patience is a prerequisite. The results are sublime. There is an elemental satisfaction to be derived from crafting such a simple, legendary substance. I will write again about caramel, probably often. I never mentioned the Maillard Effect. I will get to it in future, for those who are interested. For now, I will post these thoughts and hope that I have stirred up caramel dreams along with my cajeta.
Since going live with this blog last night I have realized that the process of leaving a comment on a posting is not as clear as I had hoped. The date line below the title line for each post ends with the words No comments for virgin posts, or X comments, where X is the number of comments that have been left. This is the hotlink that opens any existing comments for that post and the comment box for adding a new one (or the You must be logged in to post a comment message). Hope this makes sense to everyone. Please let me know if it does not.
It is with much excitement that I launch this new interactive blog as a complement to www.brucesbest.com. I chose the WordPress blog engine for this forum because it seems intuitive and easy to use. It also offers some nice features for users that I hope you will explore, including the option of receiving an email notification whenever another reader writes a comment to a discussion that you are following.
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