little miss cocoa

“Oh,” you thought. “While Little Miss Cocoa is in Korea, there will surely not be any more posts to her blog devoted to all things crafty and cocoa.”

Au contraire, mon frere!

There are still crafty and cocoa-y things in Seoul, too! Though I have yet to find all of the most delicious things, I am devoted, as ever, to discovering them. And though the crafting will probably go on hiatus while I’m here, I’ve got a few entries from before I left that I still want to post.

For now, though, it’s time to concentrate on the tasty side of Seoul.

Fact: Seoulites like pastries, and the pastry shops here are numerous and magnificent. Well, kind of. The weird thing about them is that they are so clean. Lots of beautiful pastries of all sorts on pretty countertops with easy to read labels, cute chefs working behind the counters wearing chef hats, lots of intensely packaged pastries ready to be given as gifts. It almost doesn’t look like food. The stores also have funny names, like Paris Baguette, and Paris Croissant.

I went to a Paris Croissant on my way home from class yesterday and bought a very flat, very tiny pizza and the dessert that’s evidently their centerpiece, the Silky Pudding. There were lots of silky puddings in adorable little jars in the refrigerated case, but the price was surprising to me: 3500 won, which is about $3. I guess that’s actually not that much, considering how much food can cost in Philadelphia and New York, but Seoul’s often low prices have made me stingy. Still, I was curious enough to try it.

Staying cool in its insulated sleeve.

One of the unfortunate (or fortunate) things about being completely blank on the Korean language is that I often have to just do whatever people want me to do. And since I had no way of letting the woman behind the counter know that I wanted to eat in, I had no way to stop her once she started packaging up my food for take out. First she put my pizza in a clear plastic bag which she carefully folded and taped shut. Then she put my jar of silky pudding into an insulated foil bag along with a long spoon and a tiny ice packet to keep it cool.

So that’s why it cost so much! And have I mentioned how cute the jar is? I found a quiet bench to sit on and untaped the foil bag.

The silky pudding is a lot like a light creme brulee without the crackly top. There’s a thin seal of cream, lots of silky (truly!) vanilla pudding, and then a layer of liquid brown sugar at the bottom. I mixed it all up and ate it with the tiny, skinny spoon. It was delicious and very adorable.

And now that I have the insulated bag, I have the perfect way to keep my daily yogurt cool!

Score: 1 for Seoul’s desserts. Now if I can just find a delicious chocolate truffle…

Mmmm.... silky.

A few weeks ago, S made ratatouille. I could smell it coming up the stairs, warm tomatoes and garlic. He looked rushed when he opened the door, but it was the good kind of rushed, when you’ve been working hard at something you like. I ate brie and bread while he finished, and then we ate together, all those good summer vegetables. We talked about why it was so nice to cook, how it engaged all your senses, how it was something you created that nourished you and the people you love.

Food in America has become incredibly weird, favoring the cheap, quick, and long-lasting. And it’s TASTY as all heck. I love powdered doughnuts, and Doritos, and fries. But it’s getting harder and harder to eat them; when I think about what’s in them, my stomach does a small leaden flip and I usually end up walking away. It’s a little like being Hugh Grant in Notting Hill: Julia Roberts’ face is everywhere and as much as I love her, we can’t ever be happy together (okay, this metaphor ignores the end of the movie and the point of the film, but bear with me here). Doritos are everywhere I turn, in their fresh little blue foil packet, but I have to ignore his fancy charm, I KNOW he’s bad for me, I know he can’t ever make me happy, and I walk away. And the more I walk away, the more I’m able to say, when I next look at his little triangular face, ‘you’re a jerk, Dorito’ and mean it.

These days, I try to listen when my body tells me what it wants. The more I listen, and the more healthfully I eat, the more it asks for things like carrots, milk, and grapefruit. It’s a little like dealing with a four year old. Sometimes I have to steer it towards healthier foods, like when it asks for french fries and I tell it that what it REALLY wants is something starchy, like oatmeal. And it grumpily eats the oatmeal and ends up being quite happy. And the next time it asks for french fries it does so in a very small voice, and is more happy to just eat the oatmeal. I think I’m getting carried away here, but the point is that I’m listening more carefully to what my body needs.

This also means that I’m cooking more healthfully, and I think, more deliciously than before. I eat a lot of fruits and veggies, and flavor them with fresh herbs as much as possible. It takes a more time than heating up something I bought at the store, but the trade-off is that I get to enjoy what S and I were talking about: the sensuous experience of cooking, the joy of sharing what I’ve made with the people I care about. And when things get busy, it’s easier and less expensive to just make a huge pot of something and freeze individual portions for later, and know that what I’m eating is still nourishing and healthy.

I also try never to think of recipes as lists of strict rules, but general suggestions on what to do. If I don’t have an ingredient, I try to think of what would taste and act similarly, and substitute that instead. Or I just leave it out. If I think there’s too much fat in a recipe, I just cut it down and watch the food to make sure it doesn’t get dry. The nice thing about cooking is that it IS so flexible, and that the more you cook the more you trust your intuition and tongue. Unfortunately, this philosophy doesn’t work so well with baking. I’m continually baffled by what comes out of the oven. But the point, and the REAL reason I’m writing this entry, is that I put recipes up here of things that I love to make and eat, but none of them are very strict. It’s hard for me to remember how much of an ingredient that I added, and a lot of the time it doesn’t matter. If you like more chicken in your soup, add more chicken! If you don’t have time to cut up your vegetables really small, make ‘em bigger and just make sure they cook all the way through. The fun of cooking is experimenting, and figuring out what works for you. I’m certainly no authority, having never taken a single cooking class, I just like it a whole lot. And hopefully you’ll find a recipe in here that works great for you, too!

On a chocolate note, it’s difficult to find chocolate that hasn’t been processed up the wazoo. I eat a whole lot of chocolate chips, and try very hard not to think about what’s in them. I guess that my next big hunt will be for the unprocessed, cheap chocolate chip. Wish me luck, fellow foodies and friends.

It’s high time that I posted something other than funny videos. Unfortunately, I have little time for cooking or baking or even going out for chocolatey things.

Last night, though, S and I did go to Tria, where he got wine and I looked at the extensive snack menu (the reason I’m drawn to Tria). It seemed like everyone in the bar was on a date, including the very awkwardly chatting couple beside us. The conversation mostly revolved around her failed tennis career. It didn’t seem like the date was going much better.

It took much deliberation, but finally I chose their Rogue Chocolate Stout Bread Pudding with Allagash Cherry Sauce. I was a little befuddled by all the stuff mentioned in its name (rogue? stout? allagash? what was it going to do, waddle off the table with my wallet?) However, it ended up being a melty, squidgy bread pudding with chocolate sauce and dried cherries throughout. S had olives. Olives and bread pudding do not a match make. The bread pudding alone was quite warm and delicious, just the sort of thing for a cold winter’s night.

I can’t resist. This made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe and was reduced to barking and squeaking noises. How do the Japanese come up with such amazing shows? Somehow they’ve tapped into the truth of bad comedy, that splatting never gets old, especially if you add costumes.

Planet Earth! The place where beautiful vistas alternate with baby killings. My sister gave a copy of the series to my father for Christmas, despite my protestations that in spite of the gorgeous high definition panoramas, mostly, life is about hard times for the cutest among us. And that is hard to see.

But, as all comedians can tell you after this fall’s rousing election, the most depressing news can often be made palatable when you insert a laugh:

I want to be put to music, too!

Perfect picnic food. Great in any season. Hearty (chickpeas), refreshing (tomato and mint), spicy (onion, garlic, and pepper), with great texture (smooth and crunchy). I loooove balela.

Trader Joe’s sells balela in little eight ounce containers. Unfortunately, my appetite for balela is exponentially greater than the servings they offer! Also, it’s a little expensive. I looked for a recipe online, but couldn’t find one. Desperate, out of options, with a hungry belly only 1/4 full of the balela I wished to eat, I looked at the ingredients list on the side of the container, and made it myself.

Ingredients:
Two 15 ounce cans chickpeas
3/4 cup tomatoes chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (I use cherry tomatoes for a firmer bite)
1/2 cup Vidalia onion chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
1/4 cup minced fresh mint, parsley, or mint and parsley
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar (regular white vinegar is fine, but I like balsamic better)
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/4 teaspoon powdered hot pepper
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:
Drain the liquid from the chickpeas and pour into a bowl. After that, pour everything in the bowl and gently mix together. Eat. Eat a lot. Share with your boyfriend so he also has onion and garlic breath. Later, after dessert, while watching TV, eat some more. Sustain boyfriend’s garlic breath by sneaking a few extra chickpeas into his mouth. Spear the last wayward bits and consume. Sigh happily.

Lemon curd! Is delicious!

I did not know this until I had fresh lemon curd for the first time last Christmas Eve, on a warm scone. Unlike store-bought versions, which are too starchy, fresh lemon curd is kept semi-solid thanks to some gently cooked (very, very, very gently, like newborn baby gently) eggs. I made some for my boyfriend’s sister-in-law’s birthday. It almost didn’t make it out the door. There was a lot of licking of spoons.

So here is my lemon curd recipe:

1/2 cup freshly squeezed organic lemon juice
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
3/4 stick (6 tblsp) unsalted butter, cut into chunks

In a saucepan, whisk together the lemon juice, zest, sugar, and eggs. Turn on the heat on the stove to a little higher than low, and continue whisking with the pan on the heat while stirring in the butter (I like this part, when the butter swirls around to its eventual demise, like a wicked witch). At some point, like magic, the curd will firm up. S had just walked into the kitchen and I was just saying to him ‘this is taking forever’ when it firmed up and became more gel-like as if giving me as much of the finger as a gel-like substance can! Unfortunately, because my kitchen is not particularly well-stocked and my pan was quite thin, some of the egg also began to curdle. I whisked madly, but to no avail. Which takes me to the final step.

With a spatula, ease the curd into a fine-mesh strainer, and help the curd through the mesh with the back of a spoon. The strainer will catch any bits of curdled egg and lemon zest, so that the final product is deliciously smooth.

Pour into a jar and serve! Or, if you’re keeping it longer, stick in the refrigerator. Fresh lemon curd will last about a week refrigerated.

Consensus? Well, S and I thought it was great stuff. We carried the warm jar of curd to his sister-in-law’s apartment and, like bandits, knocked furtively on the door, left it on the doormat, and ran. Some days later, her verdict (we left a card, so she figured out pretty quick who’d come and gone) came in: most delicious on a scone.

When I was in Paris a few years back (aw, who doesn’t like to say that?) a friend tossed up some salad with the best dressing I’d ever tasted.

“Guillaume! What’s in this?”

“It is so easy…’

Here is where Guillaume usually begins discussing a very difficult recipe involving ingredients I have never heard of, many complicated steps, and probably cream. But this time he meant it:

“…It is just olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, and some mustard.”

It is true! So here’s my friend’s magical French recipe for delicious salad dressing:

Equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and a squirt or two of really good quality, course ground or dijon mustard (insert Grey Poupon joke here). Whip madly until the oil doesn’t separate from the vinegar, and pour over greens.

Today I have to go to the dentist. I have not been to the dentist in one year and four months. I am not excitedly anticipating: when he pokes at my fillings to determine whether they’re watertight and the pick sticks just a little bit to the filling, when they do the whirly brush with the paste and it tickles my gums and makes me feel nauseous, when he scrapes at my teeth with the pokey thing and the assistant asks my bleeding gums if I floss my teeth regularly, which I do, even if the evidence begs otherwise.
Any chocolate lover should have a favorite toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, and toothbrush, for proper tooth decay deceleration. Here are mine:

Preserve toothbrushes: recycled, recyclable, no-nonsense brushes in a variety of non-sporty colors, like plain ol’ black (my favorite). Most toothbrushes look like high-tech bicycle shorts or running sneakers. This is unnecessary, and bad for decor. Also, when you’re done, you can send the brush back to the company to be turned into picnic tables and boardwalks.

Listerine mouthwash: Mitch Hedberg said: ‘When you put Listerine in your mouth, it hurts. Germs do not go quietly.’ It is true. And then your smile is a little blue.

Sensodyne toothpaste: My chocolate habits are catching up to me, and my teeth are starting to hurt when I eat a little too much sugar. Even commercials of people eating ice cream is starting to put little shivers down my spine. Sensodyne is like very, very minor novocaine. Eat all the sugar you want.

Reach CleanPaste Floss: I’m starting to embarrass myself by promoting tooth products, but this one is really my favorite: plushy floss that really gets between your teeth and scrubs out whatever’s in there.

Coda: Both the dental hygienist and dentist praised me on my fine teeth. Huzzah!

Once I started finding famous singers singing cutified versions of their hit songs on Sesame Street, I couldn’t stop. It was just too funny. S and I have been ‘playing and counting to twenty’ Bocelli style for the past week.

So I present:

1, 2, 3, 4 Chickens Just Back From the Shore, Feist

Don’t Know Why Y Didn’t Come, Norah Jones

Time To Say Goodnight, Andrea Bocelli