Every once and a while I have a moment (sometimes a whole year) when I cannot come up with a topic for this blog – at least one that really has some oomph. Well, this week it finally came to me as I sat in my living room with my Christmas tree sitting to my right, my littlest children to my left, and boxes and bins filled to the brim with disarray. This very same day was the day that Maggie and I decided to get almost all of our Christmas shopping done. That means finding a quick bite to eat while on our mission. Since Maggie and I are both using Weight Watchers (successfully) we are keeping a close count of what we are eating. This is much easier to do when we are at home and have our carefully selected arsenal of health choices. The problem arises when we are out and about like during our shopping excursion. There are so many choices for food while running around but nearly all of them are empty calories. They are high in calories and offer very little in the way of health benefits. It is easy for many of us to fall into the fast food trap with all of the smells and truer-than-life pictures of Colossus-like burgers, and Bourbon chicken (try a sample). So, the answer to our dilemma was to treat our shopping excursion as if it was a kind of date. You know the kind; one of those dates with 1000 other strangers. We decided to make it a sit down diner instead of fast food. We decided on pho and banh mi.
I detailed my emotional connection for pho a few weeks ago but let me describe banh mi. This is the ultimate in sandwiches and this is coming from a Cuban sandwich aficionado. Banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich that has barbequed pork, cucumbers, pickled daikon and carrot slaw, peanuts and hot peppers on a nice, crusty, airy, loaf of bread. It is fast and it is heaven. The combination of the soul-massaging pho and the taste bud kicking of the banh mi was exactly what the doctor ordered. In addition to being a dream meal it was light and, save for a little fat in the pork and the soup stock, it was incredibly healthy.
We all have to deal with eating on the go at one time or another. What is your killer sandwich of choice? What is your on-the-go healthy choice? Or, do you just go for the great looking fast food?
I got the opportunity to work with chocolate this weekend. The entire family does something we call chocolate dipping. We all choose another food to dip and coat in chocolate. We do not get too weird but that does not mean that we don’t experiment. This year we chose nuts, raspberries, marshmallows, Oreos, and spicy trail mix. My choice for chocolate dipping was to make chocolate cups filled with Godiva liqueur. This is not as easy as just filling some poured chocolate with a little booze. There is a lot of chemistry and physics working against you when you try to combine the two treats with out getting them mixed together. The only request that we didn’t grant was my three-year-old’s request to dip pizza. The only reason we did not do it was, strictly, due to a lack of time. I think I will actually try this over the Christmas break. It might be the perfect combination of savory and sweet. Consider it added to the challenge.
This year during chocolate dipping I had the opportunity to use a fantastic automated chocolate tempering machine. This made what is usually a somewhat tedious task a really fun time and very easy. If you are not aware of what temering chocolate does here it is in a nutshell; Chocolate (real chocolate) consists of a blend of cocoa particles, cocoa butter, sugar (and milk powder or liquid milk in the case of milk chocolate. The fat portion – the cocoa butter consists of a bunch of molecules that form orderly structures. In order to form the chocolate into another shape you need to melt the chocolate. This makes the fat become a liquid, which means that the fat molecules are in disarray and all over the place. If you just heat chocolate up to any random temperature there is a very good chance that when it cools off the molecules will form in a very disorderly fashion and that will allow for some of the fat to seep out from between the molecules. This gives the chocolate the appearance of being dull, greasy and soft. If the chocolate is melted under controlled heat and to a precise temperature then raised to another controlled precise heat those molecules will line up neater than a military drill. When the chocolate cools the outcome will be a fantastically shiny, crisp and solid piece of chocolate.
To me, this is an amazing bit of culinary science and the kind of thing that keeps me yearning to learn more and more. The next thing I will try for the holidays (and report back on) is candy making – sugar work. Maybe I will try the impossible – making Christmas ribbon candy that actually tastes good.
Until next week,
Keep it tasty my foodie friends and happiest of holiday wishes,
FoodSciGuy
