Wine, chocolate, and a caramel recipe

It's not surprising that I've gotten excited about wine while living in France. It's everywhere. Anytime. Anywhere. The best part is that you can get a very decent bottle without breaking the bank. In fact, in France a mineral water or fruit juice can cost you more than a decent Cote du Rhone. 


One of my new favorite things to learn about is food and wine pairing. I plan to tell you more about a fantastic pairing session I attended recently, as well as the course on French wines I took at Le Cordon Bleu, but first I'd like to tell you about pairing wine with chocolate.

Chocolate and Maury wine. Maury wine (from the Languedoc region of France) resembles Port wine, except it's a bit less sweet. Therefore, making it the perfect match for a fine chocolate of the dark variety (at least 70%). It's as though the bittersweet cocoa is asking to be finished off with the sweet tartness of the Maury. 


You know how sometimes you have a sip of red wine left after you finish your main course, and when you take a sip of the wine with your dessert, it creates a disgusting bitterness in your mouth? Well, Maury allows for the opposite; a delectable sweetness without the possible cloying sugar fest of a Port. Try this Maury - MA Amiel (the 15-year is best, but this 2008 vintage was very nice).

fantastic Valrhona chocolate - 70% or 85%. my pastry chef says it's the best, and i agree

As long as we're on the subject of chocolate, this week I tempered dark chocolate and filled it with my own caramel. It was a total success! Not a streak in sight, nor a fingerprint to speak of. 


The caramel is made by making syrup from glucose and sugar, waiting until the perfect color and pouring butter on it to stop the cooking process. In a second sauce pan, bring whipping cream, vanilla, and sugar to a boil and add to the caramel/butter. Let the caramel rest in a cool area or the refrigerator, and bingo - the best caramel you'll ever have. 


The chocolate tempering is another matter all together, and it's a long, painful process that I've told you about before, and will be sure to tell you more about since I'm about to embark on a chocolate-tempering extravaganza. We have two exams in superior pastry at LCB - one is tempering chocolate  and making a chocolate sculpture, and the other is sugar-pulling for six hours. More on this later...if the burns on my fingers are not bad enough to prevent me from typing on this keyboard, that is.

my chocolates filled with caramel 

this took me 2.5 hours, so i have a new-found respect for chocolatiers

Superior rocks

chef deguignet's selection of verrines

Foaming creams in siphons, chocolate caviar, gold sugar, pig's trotters, zucchini blossoms, brik pastry, and much, much more...all in the first four weeks of the superior level of cuisine and pastry at Le Cordon Bleu Paris. 

pig's trotters and foie gras with dandelion leaf bouquet

Chef Lesourd is in charge of superior cuisine. The list of Michelin-starred restaurants where he's worked is longer than my arm, but the most special thing about him is his expertise in presentation. The man is a master of detail, and can make even a pig trotter appetizer look elegant. Here is some of his work:

gazpacho version 1 

gazpacho version 2

Chef Deguignet is an artist. He's in charge of superior pastry, and is a genius chocolatier...and sugar sculptor. Here are some of his masterpieces:

red chocolate sphere with gold sugar 

golden egg filled with chocolate caviar

It's all fine and dandy to talk about how pretty it all is, but it's tough. The standards have been raised and we are expected to do good work, very good work. In superior cuisine, we will have a series of "ateliers", or workshops. We are given a list of ingredients and have to create an appetizer and main course. This saturday is our first atelier, and I've begun to sketch and plan my dishes and presentation. We have six hours and I'm guessing the kitchen will resemble kitchen stadium, except we are all just figuring out what we're doing! Wish me luck! I'll let you know how it goes.

Tempering chocolate...

...is difficult. Our past few pastry demonstrations have been about tempering chocolate. Even though the chefs make it look easy in class (I guess it's not difficult when you've been doing it for 30 years), when we got into the kitchens and had to temper our own chocolate, we failed miserably...at first.


The first time we tried to temper milk chocolate, only one of the fourteen of us succeeded. As for the rest of us, this is what happened:

Can you see how the surface of the chocolate has rings and waves on it? Well, it's not supposed to be that way. Chocolate that has been properly tempered has a perfectly smooth surface that doesn't melt as soon as you touch it. The half-moons pictured above melted on my fingers.


They looked pretty and tasted delicious (filled with praline), but didn't meet the cut. I also made these little guys, also filled with praline and rolled in powdered sugar. Yummy.

I've told you before that I'm not that into sweets. Well, this does NOT apply to chocolate. Even though I can easily pass up milk chocolate (too sweet and sugary for my taste), I find it almost impossible to say no to dark chocolate. In fact, the darker, the better. See my entry about it from months ago.


Yesterday, we tempered dark chocolate. This time, BINGO! I was one of three in the class to get it right! Woohooo!

my tempered dark chocolate - no waves or streaks! 

my dark chocolate truffles

Le Cordon Bleu's way of tempering chocolate (by hand - there are machines that can do it) is copyrighted, but I think I can get away with saying that it involves a temperature curve. You need to melt the chocolate to 50 degrees C, then cool it to around 27 degrees, then raise the temperature again to its proper "working" temperature", which differs for white, milk, and dark chocolate, which are all around the 30 degree mark. This temperature curve allows the chocolate to crystalize, makes it look shiny, and is able to snap when it dries.


These are the chef's beautifully tempered chocolates:

chef's artists' palette of milk chocolates

orange zest covered in dark chocolate - delicious and beautiful treats

box of dark chocolates

Many factors can affect the ability to temper chocolate correctly, including humidity. So wish me luck when I return to the heat and humidity of Trinidad and try this at home!

What does it mean to live in a city?

It means that if you run out of milk while making a bechamel sauce, you can run to the shop that's 70 steps from your apartment, and buy the milk - mid sauce! If you run out of shampoo, you can run to the pharmacy that's 85 steps from your apartment, and then go ahead and have your nice shower. If your son asks for juice at 7:30am, and open the refrigerator to find that there's no more left, have no fear - the shop is there. If you have no scanner and have to send a document ASAP, walk two tiny Parisian blocks, and the internet cafe, equipped with super-duper scanner, is there for you my friend.


No cars, no pollution, no parking, no traffic, just you and the city. I may never go back to suburbia again.


If you have a craving for the best chocolate-covered almonds in the world, walk three Parisian blocks to non other than Meilleur Ouvrier de France Patrick Roger. This is no exaggeration, dear friends, this guy is a chocolate genius, an artist, the creator of cacao perfection.

patrick roger

chocolate elephant

the most exquisite chocolate-covered almonds in the world

A cuter version of the Easter bunny

Given that Paris is at its most beautiful this Easter - there's not a cloud in the sky, and the tulips are showing off their pastel colors in pristine elegance - I thought I'd show you a cuter, more appetizing version of the Easter bunny than the butchery I delighted you with a few days ago.


Here is a taste of how some of the city's best patisseries are displaying this springtime holiday of eggs, flowers, and of course, bunnies.

la duree

la duree

the line was too long in pierre herme to take a photo of the displays inside. this is such a special place, that i'll dedicate an entire entry to it soon.

la maison du chocolat

la maison du chocolat

eggs in gerard mulot 

gerard mulot

gerard mulot

Mexican raw cacao beans...

Anti-oxidant super stars.


A friend recently brought back some raw cacao beans from Mexico. He stored them is a plastic container, and when I popped the top, the decadent scent of pure cocoa enveloped me. Each bean has a thin shell (like that of an egg), and inside is a small, dark brown bean. They are quite bitter, (at this stage haven't yet been transformed into chocolate) and crunchy. If you are a dark chocolate lover like my husband and I, you will probably be able to deal with the bitterness. If you're used to milk chocolate, you may find it almost impossible to eat. 

I added my son's crayon for dimension purposes.

If you do manage to get past the strong taste, you'll be giving your body a magnificent anti-oxidant and vitamin C boost. Check out this article about how these little cacao beans can serve as the best vitamin pills. 


I love Mexico. I had the pleasure of living there about ten years ago, and as an anthropologist, was fascinated by its past, present, and future. I studied the Aztec and Maya cultures at length, so I appreciate what these indigenous traditions have done for modern day Mexico...and the world. One of the Aztec's most fantabulous contributions to the world...you guessed it...CHOCOLATE! They made a drink from it, and called it xocolatl, in their Nahuatl language. They used cacao beans as currency, and it was not until the Spanish conquest that chocolate was exported to Europe. 


I vote for chocolate to be used as currency once again - can you imagine?


*Try Ghirardelli's Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree - to die for.