You will notice some changes are coming ...

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When that’s taken care of we’ll go live. In the meantime, become a member of TheChocolateLife to be notified – and we’ll automatically use the same email for your account and profile here.

:: Clay

Here I am with Roberto Granja of Transmar, one of the larger cacao companies in Ecuador. Roberto was at last year's Salon as well and they buy production from San Martin and Huanuco in Peru as well as other places.

Above: I am wearing a real Panama hat. Although they are called Panama hats they were originally created in Ecuador. Mine is also made in Ecuador. Below: A "nativo" pod from a cooperative near Cusco. Bottom: Another pod from the same co-op. The genetic diversity of cacao in Peru is astonishing.

On Saturday, the second full day of the Salon, the International visitor spent most of the day participating in business roundtables. You can think of these as business speed-dating. Every half-hour from 10am to 6pm with a two-hour break mid-day, we sat down with representatives from different co-ops. They explained a little bit about the history of the organization and presented samples of what they were doing. Each of us then presented what we were looking for - in terms of beans and/or semi-finished products - at the Salon.

If any ChocolateLife members are interested in getting samples of some very interesting beans from some very interesting sources let me know. Serious inquiries for at least a pallet, please.

There is a lot of confusion in Peru about the word criollo. Well, they're not really confused, we are. They use the term meaning "native" or "from here" as opposed to forastero, or foreign. When we hear criollo we want to believe that we are getting genetic criollos. While there may be some criollo in Peru (and there is a lot of white cacao, though criollo white beans) what is meant when the locals say criollo is "nativo" or native varieties.

While Peru likes to claim that 90% of their cacao is cacao fino - in truth the bulk of the cacao being grown is CCN-51. This is because USAID has focused on productivity for most of the past 20 years, believing, correctly, that it needed focus on providing farmers a viable economic alternative to coca. Low-yielding strains did not fit that model.

Now, a lot of effort is focused on providing alternatives to CCN-51. Varieties that can yield as much as CCN-51 but that offer much better flavor.

Above: Here I am with representatives of one of the co-ops I met with - Kemito Ene - which is near the Rio Ene in the south. They are doing impressive work, had one of the best presentations, and provided samples of some very excellent beans.

For an equipment geek the show was also very interesting. There were two companies exhibiting machines to process cocoa beans into chocolate. While none of the local companies is really ready for prime time export, they are not far off, and I will be working to improve the quality and see what I can do to make them available to purchase. One company is offering an 80kg per hour cracking/winnower that delivers really quite remarkable performance - at a cost of under US$5000 ex-works. I also saw a small roaster and a number of pin mills that were very attractively priced for the throughput.

It is difficult for foreigners to really appreciate what the Salon means to Pervians in general and to the cocoa and chocolate markets domestically an internationally. It is important to grown both the national and international markets at the same time. Bringing in international visitors shows the average Pervian the respect the international market has for Pervian cacao and chocolate ... and great strides are being made in the quality of production that is being done in-market, noticeable even from one year ago. Pervieans are fiercely proud of their culture and their food traditions, rightfully so. (Lima is host to the world's largest food festival - Mistura - and hosts a dynamic foodie culture that rivals anything in South America (and many large cities in the US. But it's not yet possible to get good pizza, I hear. Peru is an incredibly inventive fusion of cultures with access to foods from the Amazon that most of us have never heard of before and they are not afraid to use them.)

The 5th annual Salon del Cacao y Chocolate was held in Lima, Per July 4-6. This was followed up by La Ruta del Cacao, a trip into la selva (the jungle) in and around Tarapoto in San Martin province July 7-9. I was one of a group of more than 20 invited international guests who attended both the Salon and La Ruta.

As with last year, the two events were organized and enjoyed the support of a broad range of organizations and government ministries including the Pervian federal government Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Economic Development, DEVIDA (National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs), PromPer (the Ministry of Foreign Commerce and Tourism), Technoserve (a US-based NGO), APPCACAO (the Pervian cacao growers association), and USAID, among others.

The Salon del Cacao y Chocolate and La Ruta del Cacao serve a number of purposes:

1. To promote Pervian cacao and chocolate internationally.
2. To promote Pervian cacao and chocolate on the national market.
3. To showcase the work that has been done in the cocoa sector of the Pervian economy in terms of the improvements in yield and quality, but also as a means to combat the narcotics trade by providing farmers with an alternative to growing coca.

This year, the Salon was held near the Parque des Aguas in the Parque de la Reserva instead of in a hotel conference center. 5 tents were erected for the Salon - one for general business activities, one for a series of kitchen demos, two for art exhibits, and the main tent which held all of the stands for the exhibitors.

Above: A view of one of the fountains in the Parque des Aguas. This is the typical winter weather in Lima. Below: A panorama of the tents making up the Salon del Cacao in the Parque de las Reserva.

As a venue, the Parque was a much better choice than a hotel ballroom because it offered more or less unlimited outside space to relieve crowding and congestion - and this year the organizers were expecting as many as 30,000 (!!!) visitors to attend. Sadly, attendance did not meet expectation as there were two quarter-final World Cup matches on both of the first two days. Much as people love chocolate, their love of and for the World Cup runs deeper.

I arrived in Lima on the 2nd in order to attend the opening session on the morning of the 3rd. This included talks by the head of DEVIDA, the president of APPCACAO, a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, and the #2 person from USAID in Per. These presentations were to be as expected. What was unexpected was the attendance - especially the number of media outlets that were represented including national newspapers, radio, and television. We don't have any event in chocolate here in the US that can match the attention that gets paid to the Salon in Per. We certainly don't have the head of the USDA showing up to any chocolate festivals telling us how important cocoa and chocolate are to the US economy - because they're not that important.

After the opening ceremonies and before we headed out to a lunch for the international contingent hosted by ChocoPer - a group of chocolate makers and confectioners in Per, the exhibits were open so we (actually, the government ministers and the press) could take an advance look.

Above: A shot of the attendance and media at the opening session. Below: VIP guests in the booth of the Mishky cooperative. which is located in Chasuta in San Martin province. Bottom: A view of the Pacific Ocean from the Larco Mar - where we had lunch - an upscale shopping mall built into a cliff in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. I did not see the sun break through the clouds the entire time I was in Lima.

The international group for the Salon this year was entirely different from last year - except for me. A number of ChocolateLife members were in attendance, from the US, Australia, Chile, Mexico, and Belgium. (The entire list of countries represented also included Holland, France, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia.) Several members I'd never met before, and some were old friends - though we were all fast friends by the end of the trip. Although we were there to be be observers, we were also there to be active participants. Every single one of us had the option of giving a presentation or to give a kitchen demonstration. I chose to give a presentation (my topic was marketing Pervian finished chocolates internationally), but the projection screen was broken so all of us had to improvise and give our presentations without our support materials.

Tomorrow is the first day of the CHOCOA conference on sustainability in cacao and chocolate in Holland and this is the first time I have been to Amsterdam - this is my third visit - where I have had a free day. I am going to be slamming busy from tomorrow (Thursday) through Monday, so I have decided to enjoy the day: get a late start and be a tourist and enjoy the city by walking around.Amsterdam is often called the most bicycle-friendly city in the world. The same cannot be said for many of the bicyclists themselves, unfortunately. Bicycle-friendly also means Pedestrians Beware as many cyclists ply the roadways with a ruthless casualness.It's not as if the bicycles themselves are anything special. The vast majority are single-speed antiques with coaster brakes that look to be built neither for comfort nor speed but for durability. Bikes with ten or more gears are so rare that they call attention to themselves, as is a bike painted anything other than black.Despite the wheeled menace, Amsterdam is a lovely city to walk in, and one that is surprisingly hard to get lost in. Looking a lot like a spider web with spokes radiating from the center (the Oude Kerk, or old church) and concentric rings. Sometimes the spokes and rings are canals and sometimes they are streets.The scale of Amsterdam is very manageable and there are about a thousand ways to get from where you are to where you want to go - no matter where that might be. So even if you do get lost and take the long way 'round, you actually haven't gone all that far out of your way -- and if you pay attention you're likely to see some very interesting architectural details dating back 300 years or more.This morning I walked from the apartment where I am staying (on the Amstel River not far from the Magere Brug (the tiny bridge) and the infamous Amstel Hotel) to a neighborhood called the Jordaan. There, on Hazenstraat, is Chocolatl, a store that rivals the best chocolate bar stores back home in New York City. There you'll find dozens and dozens of bars from around the world. Yes, many of the expected American brands are there (including the Mast Bros - which phenomenon I do not understand), but, for an American, what's fun is looking at European brands I can get back in the US. And, unlike New York State, it's possible to mix the sales of alcohol and food, so I picked up a couple of bottles from a local craft brewery - Oedipus - and I will carry them back home to share with friends. They also serve excellent coffee and there's some nice seating that makes it a pleasant place to relax and step out of the weather. (It started raining hard and I did not have either a hat, raincoat, or umbrella.)From Hazenstraat I traced a meandering path to the flower market. Yes, there were thousands if not tens of thousands of tulips, amaryllis, and more - both blooms and bulbs. But I can't bring the bulbs back with me through US customs and while there are tons of flowers, it's a toss-up as to which there are more of; flower shops or souvenir shops. The market is also book-ended with a Starbucks at one end and a McDonalds on the other. Sigh. There's just no escaping them, I guess.From there it's a matter of just a few minutes to Dam Square, which means you are in shouting distance of the Red Light District. But if you are in Dam Square you are also close to the other great chocolate shop in Amsterdam as well as a very decent wood-fired oven pizza restaurant (da Portare Via; I managed to spend three days in Italy without having pizza once).If you stand in the square directly in front of the Grand Hotel Krasnopolsky on your left hand is Warmoesstraat and about 100 meters from the Dam is Kees Raat's Metropolitan Deli. While the selection of chocolate bars is not nearly as broad as Chocolatl's there's not a lot of overlap. PLUS you can get bonbons, gelato (and house-made frozen yogurt), hot chocolate, baked items, panned items, cacao beer (!), and more. And coffee drinks. Good coffee drinks. I don't think I've had a bad anything made by Kees and if you look closely in the back of the store you'll see a CocoaTown grinder ... Kees makes his own chocolate from the bean as well as his own nut pastes for his gelatos. It's an eclectic place that mirrors Kees's eclectic creative energy. But - what may be best of all - it's open until midnight, so after a night of drinking (ahem - you are in Amsterdam) you can head over to the Metropolitan Deli for a chocolatey delight before heading to bed.

As I hinted to many, my March trip to Europe was going to start with a special visit. I did not want to jinx the visit by mentioning it and then not being able to make it. But it happened!Following the path of my Chocolate Life has led me to interesting places and to make interesting decisions. For some reason, many of those decisions seem to involve travel. For example, on my first trip to Bolivia I flew to La Paz then scrambled to catch a flight to Santa Cruz to be met by Volker Lehmann. After freshening up and a short nap we drove downtown to run some important errands before dinner in advance of catching the overnight bus to Trinidad. Where we got a taxi from the bus station to the commercial airfield to catch a small plane (a six-seat Cessna) to Baures to hop a jeep that forded a river on a small boat to reach Tranquilidad, the cacao operation that Volker operates.Although not in the same league as the trip to Bolivia my visit to Monsummano Terme to see Andrea Slitti had some of the same air: walk to a train to catch a bus to a plane to fly to Milan (7 hours) to get picked up in a car to go to the hotel to drop off my bags, take a quick shower, and then get back in the car to be driven 4 hours for a one-hour appointment with Andrea before getting back in the car to make the return drive of four hours. In the rain.By the time Giuseppe and I left Monsummano Terme we'd spent three hours with Andrea visiting the factory, the retail shop, and having an impromptu tasting of some chocolate and Solbeso (a distilled spirit that is made from fresh cacao fruit juice that is one of the projects I am working on) I brought with me to share.I've known of Andrea Slitti since maybe 2001. And when I say known of I mean that I've tasted the work of the man who may be the most highly-awarded chocolate maker in Italy; the man who is probably the inventor of dark-milk chocolate - what he calls lattenero.My companion on the drive from Milan was Giuseppe di Chiano, the sales director for FBM. (Slitti has a lot of FBM equipment, much of it custom-designed for him.) We were going to drive for eight hours to have one hour to talk chocolate with Andrea and to take a tour of his workshop -- something that relatively few outsiders, especially in the chocolate industry -- are allowed to do.Picture taking inside the factory is not encouraged, so words will have to do.The workshop building is deceptively small because not all of it is above ground. What is also not immediately obvious is that it might be the greenest chocolate factory anywhere in the world - and the vast majority of the design and specification was done by Mr Slitti himself. There is a rainwater diversion and collection system that takes care of all of the gray water needs of the factory. There is a significant solar power installation. Heat from the HVAC system is captured and used to meet all of the hot water needs of the factory. The building is oriented so that the temperature-sensitive parts of production are on the north side of the building. The exterior of the building is all double-wall construction. All of the interior walls are SIPs (structural insulated panels).And if all that is not enough, all of the corner, edge, and cove molding between the walls and the floor and the ceiling is steel. And all the joins are welded. No insects or rodents are making their way into this building. Air curtains are installed in production areas with doors to the outside to keep flying insects outside.There is an entirely separate room for making and working with ganaches. And a separate room for panning. Every production work space has its own independent HVAC system to enable the temperature and humidity of each room to be controlled precisely. And independently.All of this makes it the coolest (in all senses of the word) chocolate factory I have ever been in - and it might just be the coolest chocolate factory anywhere.And that's before we start talking about equipment.Separate roasters (at least 250kg each) for cocoa and coffee. The primary piece of chocolate production equipment is a Netzsch ChocoEasy. There are tempering machines everywhere ranging from 18kg up to 45kg (135kg/hr). I lost count of how many tempering machines there were. At least two enrobing lines - one with a 17-meter-long cooling tunnel! There is a custom bar depositing line that FBM made for Andrea that can do over 1250 100gr bars per hour that does not have a cooling tunnel attached to it. (Technically, this might have been one of the most surprising things I saw. The exit section of the bar molding line ends up inside a huge cool storage room and there are special racks to hold the molds while they cool.)And to top it all off, amazingly, a lot of wrapping is still done by hand. While machinery could obviously be employed here (and bars are flow-wrapped and boxed), Andrea insists on doing as much as possible by hand because it means that there is a final visual inspection before pieces tha leaves the workshop.While all of the above is impressive, what may be even more impressive was just how clean everything was. Nothing was out of place. The floors and walls were spotless. All of them. There was no dripped chocolate on the outside of any of the tempering machines. The belts on the enrobers were as clean as any I have ever seen. The work tables in the wrapping room are all attached directly to the floor so no dust collects underneath them making the floors easier to clean.And all this attention to detail shows up in the finished product. I don't think I have ever seen the chocolate surfaces of a piece with a transfer on it shine they way Slitti's do.The Slitti family made their name as excellent coffee roasters and it is Andrea who expanded the business into chocolate. The expertise in roasting is the first thing you notice in tasting Slitti chocolates. I have a large selection of bars from 100% to 35%, including one milk, one lattenero, and one origin bar (Pru). Plus two jars of chocolate spread. I have to wait to take photos of the bars before I start opening them, but a marathon comprehensive tasting session is in the offing and I will share my thoughts on these when I get done.The Slitti factory and retail shop in Monsummano Terme is in what locals call the chocolate valley. Paul DeBondt's workshop is not far, neither are Amedei and others. While you may not get the chance to tour the Slitti factory, the shop is well worth a visit. The coffee is excellent and there is a large selection of confections that don't make it to the United States. Monsummano Terme is not far from Pisa (hello, leaning tower) and, as the name suggests, the area is home to many thermal hot springs. You are also not far from Parma, home to ... well, too many good things to eat to even begin trying to list them here. The only disappointment I have for the day is not being able to stop at at least one local market to browse the bounty that the region offers. Not that I would be able to bring most of it back through US Customs -- assuming any of it lasted that long!

It's Thursday morning here on London, barely 48 hours after I arrived at Heathrow for the start of my Euro2013 Road Trip.

This year's trip will see me traveling to Amsterdam, Milan, and Paris after I leave London. It's chocolate festival season here in Europe. It is true, however, that I am missing some events in the US - the festivals in Chicago for example, as well as Dallas. While I would enjoy being able to attend either or both those events, the lure of being back here in Europe was just too great to ignore.

It's Chocolate Week in the UK which means that there are all sorts of activities going on and people in town from all over.

Shortly after arriving in London on Tuesday morning I made my way to the judging room for the 2013 World Finals judging of the International Chocolate Awards. 6 sessions over the course of two days judging the winners of the various regional competitions in order to arrive at the top picks, which will be announced during the inaugural London Salon du Chocolat (formerly Chocolate Unwrapped) over the weekend.

I arrived in time for the second judging session of the day and to lots of familiar faces and new.

Also at table 1: Maricel Presilla.

The judging process at the ICA is will thought out and quite detailed. The process and all of the forms and instructions used are posted online for anyone to see, and, more importantly, they are subject to regular review based on the feedback of entrants and judges. The judging process is designed to tackle managing subjectivity - the fact that every judge has different tasting abilities, experiences, and biases.

This turns out to be a very good thing because during the first judging session I took part it, something went haywire with my mouth and everything (we were judging plain dark/origin bars) and I mean everything, tasted over-roasted and astringent. I mentioned this to the organizer of the judging (Martin Christy) because I know that there are statistical checks that can be done to identify consistent outliers (like my giving everything a 3 or 4 when the average scores of all the other judges was much higher) that will enable them to take that into account when doing the final tallies.

Over the course of two days I participated in four judging sessions. On Wednesday, that amounted to 8 flights (plates) of between 3 and 6 pieces. Judges are never asked to taste more than 6 entries before returning to a "palate check" chocolate that helps judges know when their palates start to get fatigued.

The overall judging process is very different from the one I encountered at the Good Food Awards, which makes sense as the Good Food Awards is looking to award different things and has only one general chocolate category (not separate ones for dark, milk, white, and flavored/filled) and one general confectionery category.

While one may quibble with the results, given the huge number of entries, the process is better managed than any other I have encountered and been involved with. I've organized and managed judging and it's tough to do well. What's very cool is that I have no idea who the winners are going to be, I just have my impressions of what I tasted.

After finishing the judging what did I do? Go to a chocolate tasting, of course. This was a presentation I was asked to do for the Guild of Food Writers, co-organized with the Academy of Chocolate. The title of the presentation was What Is Fine Flavor Cocoa? This is a topic that's getting a lot of interest these days with organizations as diverse as ICCO and FCIA trying to figure it out. I am giving the presentation again at the Salon du Chocolat over the weekend, as well as another presentation, How Chocolate Gets Its Taste . After the presentation last night I sampled five different chocolate, four of which were award winners either in previous ICA competitions or Good Food Awards, and/or were entrants in this year's competitions. Three were from Fruition Chocolate (Hudson Valley, NY) - 66% Peruvian Dark, Peruvian Dark Milk, and Toasted White Chocolate. The fourth was from Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate ; not the fig bar which was an ICA winner, but the Dominican (Elvesia) bar. That's because the fifth bar, Chuao Chocolatier 's Salty Crunch bar, had inclusions and I didn't want two of the five bars in the tasting having inclusions. Both Dick Taylor and Chuao are represented in this year's ICA world finals judging, as is Fruition.

Today is an "off" day to relax and enjoy. There is a reception to attend in the evening, but nothing planned until then. Time to wander, sightsee, and enjoy London. (Because it's not raining.) And no, I did not see Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Rhys Ifans, or anyone. I am staying near Earl's Court tube station at a flat I found through AirBnB and it's turning out to be an incredibly convenient location. I had to connect through Notting Hill Gate station to get to the ICA judging location.

The next update will probably be on Saturday morning, after my first full day at the Salon du Chocolat. On Sunday I leave London for Harwich en route to Amsterdam via the overnight ferry. Next Wednesday is the Origin Chocolate conference where I am co-presenting with chef-chocolatier Kees Raat.

I am often asked ... about how I approach my pairings, where I get my inspirations, and what my thought processes are. I recently had the opportunity to conceive and prepare a fivecourse prix fixe tasting dinner at Jimmy's #43, a craft beer bar and restaurant in New York's East Village. The occasion was April, which at Jimmy's is the inspiration for April Sours month - a celebration of sours, Lambics, and wild ferments. As I was working on the menu I made it a part of the process to be mindful in order to write this blog.

Preamble (With A Focus on The Amble)

Apart from having to incorporate sour beers, the only other limitations I faced were practical ones: everything needed to be prepared in Jimmy's (small) kitchen and even though the menu would be limited, dinner service was still going to be happening as we were preparing and plating the special menu.

There is also the consideration of ingredients costs, which I needed to keep in line with the number of people I was asked to prepare for - 30 - and the price being charged. Then there is always the fun of cooking in a foreign kitchen and plating for upwards of 30 people in the middle of regular dinner service. Plus, there is the basic desire to serve dishes that fit the oeuvre of Jimmy's and that could (and might) show up on the regular menu.

Finally, there is the logistics of preparation itself. I would be cooking in a working kitchen during service and couldn't command all of the space and all of the cooking surfaces. Therefore, on top of everything else, I would have to consider the timing of prep and what I could get done in advance. Techniques would need to be simple and accommodate the limitations of the kitchen - a small flattop, four electric burners, a full-sized, three-pan convection oven, and a buffet warmer. Thankfully, I would be able to call on the services of two of the chefs - David and Michael - who worked in the kitchen daily and who could take care of some of the more routine tasks while I concentrated on the non-standard items.

On To The Food!

With all the above in mind, my approach - in general - is to look for an anchoring dish that would act as the point of departure for the rest of the menu. Being a chocolate guy, I naturally wanted cocoa or chocolate to be in every, or almost every, dish. Working from the concept that, "Life is short, eat dessert first," that's where I started thinking about the menu.

At the Chicago Fine Chocolate Festival last November, I was introduced to a Lambic from Lindeman's. Most people know their raspberry Lambic but this one was called Faro and is made with Belgian candy sugar (which is caramelized). The flavor profile starts off with the caramel, quickly changes to green apple/unripe pear, and ends up on a distinctly sour note. I paired the beer with a Callebaut milk chocolate, and the combination reminded everyone of a chocolate-covered, caramel apple - a Granny Smith apple specifically.

Using that pairing as inspiration, and thinking that the dessert would be paired with the Faro, I was in familiar territory because I had a clear taste memory of the Faro with milk chocolate. Musing on this pairing I came up with the idea of roasting apple cubes tossed in cinnamon sugar (punning on confetti I referred to these apple cubes on the menu as "confitti") and serving them with vanilla bean ice cream and a salted milk chocolate burned butter caramel. My presentation concept was to put a ring mold in the center of a plate, put down a layer of the apple confitti, put the vanilla ice cream on top of that, remove the ring mold, scatter some confitti on the plate, and drizzle caramel all over the top.

First course done - dessert. Yay!

Now it was time to think about the menu overall and see how dessert would influence the rest of the courses, which were:

Amuse
Salad
Small plate
Mains
(Dessert)

Bookend The Meal - The Amuse

If I am going to be ending with fruit, why not start out with fruit? But which one? Raspberries and orange are pretty cliche when it comes to pairing with chocolate and not obvious for starting a dinner. Reaching into my Eastern European ancestry on my father's side of my family I was thinking of a cold soup as a starter. Not beets but cherries. Cherries go with chocolate. Sour cherries. Sour cherry soup. (Okay, so we're going to be all over the map on this dinner; no cuisine theming.) Right. Cherry soup is easy to make, and the base can be made in advance, and there are dry cherry Lambics - so the pairing is obvious and easy.

But, how to incorporate chocolate into cherry soup? The recipes I found all call for sour cream as an ingredient and also for garnishing with more sour cream. Sprinkle nibs over the top. Might look nice, the contrast of the nibs over the sour cream. But I think that sprinkling nibs is lazy. Been there, done that. Do I need to go there again? Hmmmm.

What if I do some dairy swapping and replace the sour cream in the soup with non-fat "Greek" yogurt to lighten it up a little and then use creme fraiche for the garnish? Sounds good. But what about the chocolate? Thin the creme fraiche with some cherry Lambic, add cocoa powder, then put it into an ISI whipper, pressurize with N2O, and use that as the garnish.

That's the ideal. When shopping I couldn't find fresh or frozen sour cherries so I ended up using unsweetened organic cherry juice rather than making my own (saved me the time of pitting the cherries, too). For fun, and for presentation, I got some frozen cranberries and macerated them in the cherry juice for a while. Service was in beer glasses. I put three cranberries in each glass, garnished with the chocolate/cherry whipped creme fraiche, and then ladled the soup into the glass through a funnel to float the berries and whip garnish. Although not exactly as imagined, in the end the cranberries were a good choice because they popped when bitten adding a surprising textural element (much better than nib). Macerating the cranberries in the cherry juice mingled the flavors and made their introduction less jarring. But it was the chocolate/cherry whipped creme fraiche that added just the right touch as the opening course - setting expectations that this was not going to be dinner as usual.

The beer served with the amuse was Green Flash Rayon Vert , a Belgian-style ale at 7% ABV made with brettanomyces yeast. The slightly-sour fruity dry beer complemented the cherry and the sometimes lactic funk of brett yeasted beers was an inspired combination with the dairy in the soup.

Salad Course

One of the things I like to do in my menus is take one ingredient, flavor, color, or other element and use it as a bridge from one course into the next course. One of the things that's always on Jimmy's menu is beets in one form or another, often pickled, so there are always beets in the kitchen. The cherry soup is almost the same color as beet borscht and what about incorporating beer into the salad dressing by creating a mock champagne vinaigrette using a dry raspberry Lambic instead of champagne? I did something like this once before using a fizzy kombucha. Good olive oil, red wine vinegar, raspberry Lambic, and a small amount of whole grain mustard as the emulsifier. A salad with roasted beets and mixed baby greens. Solid, and an unusual use for beer and I had two elements - the color of the beets and the fruit in the Lambic - to bridge from the amuse.

And for the chocolate element? I like chopped roasted nuts or toasted seeds in salad -- something to add a crunchy textural element was a given as a counterpart to the roasted beets. Looking through my cupboard I found a bag of undeodorized cocoa butter. Toast the hazelnuts and remove the skins. Rough chop. Just before service pan fry the hazelnuts in a bit of the undeodorized cocoa butter and salt them lightly. The nuts in the salad provided just the right texture I was looking for and the aroma of cocoa was faint but unmistakeable when lifting a forkful of salad past the nose.

In this salad I incorporated chocolate by using the undeodorized cocoa butter. The twin elements of the beets (color) and raspberry Lambic (fruit) provided strong bridges between the amuse and the salad.

The beer served with the salad (and used in the dressing) was the Cantillon Ros de Gambrinus raspberry Lambic at 5% ABV. The red fruit and wild yeast funk in the beer added all the sweetness necessary to overcome the earth-ness of the roasted beets. Several of the diners remarked that they didn't really like beets but found that the combination of flavors - including the beer - and textures overcame their antipathy towards beets. And for those that did like beets they were all happy that I did not go clich and use either goat cheese or walnuts.

The Small Plate: Big Challenge

The small plate presented a real challenge in the menu and was actually the last dish I conceived. I wanted to do an unusual vegetable with a simple preparation with some kind of starch. Green(s) would be the bridge from the salad course. Jimmy's always has kale on the menu and so this led me to starting thinking about cooked greens other than kale and spinach - collards and the like. I remembered back to a dish I made a couple of years ago where I used some of the adobo in chipotles in adobo to provide a little smoke and some heat in a dish of collards in a menu where I needed a vegetarian item - the adobo replaced smoked ham.

I do like the texture of smoked ham in collards and thinking about how to get that texture without using ham led me to the idea of using bacalao - salt cod. The texture of salt cod is interesting and my favorite way to use it is in brandade, where it is mixed with mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes were in my plans for the main course, so cod was making sense.

One of my favorite places to shop for food is down on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. I've been shopping there for over 15 years and I have my fish guy (Frank Randazzo) and they always have really good salt cod. Knowing that it would take at least two days to prep the fish (changing soak water at least 2x daily), I saw Frank Saturday morning and got myself a lovely piece of extremely salty dried fish. The cooked cod would be flaked and mixed into the cooked greens making a vegetarian-ish dish of southern greens with the smoked goodness and texture of smoked ham, but without the ham. To preserve the texture of the cod I decided to poach it in olive oil.

Seeing as how the greens I was going to use are firmly rooted in southern cooking, the obvious (to me, anyway) accompaniment would be a hearty cornbread using coarse corn meal. I used a slightly sweet/sour recipe (adapted from one published by Alexandra Guarnaschelli) that called for buttermilk and cooking in a cast iron pan. That baking dish Jimmy's kitchen didn't have, just a full-sized hotel pan, but I did fry me up some bacon and use the fat to grease the baking pan. I didn't want pork in the greens but wasn't above putting it in the cornbread. After letting the corn bread cool I used a ring mold to cut the breads into rounds. Plating would be a simple matter of putting the cornbread round in the center of the plate and piling the greens on top so that the bread would absorb the liquid from the greens.

For the chocolate component of the dish I used the ISI whipper to perform a feat of out of the molecular gastronomy canon called nitrogen cavitation to infuse some white rum with cocoa with toasted cocoa nib. A small amount of this cacao rum was spooned over the top of the greens providing a slight kick to the heat from the adobo with the heat of the greens - evaporating the rum and scenting the first forkfuls of greens with the aroma of cocoa.

The beer served with the small plate was Jolly Pumpkin Weizen Bam , a farmhouse-style Saison made in Michigan that weighs in at 4.5% ABV. The Weizen Bam is known for some soft spice notes, particularly nutmeg and clove, that enhanced the nuttiness of the cornbread and complemented the cocoa aromatics of the rum.

The Main Course: Meat and Potatoes

For the main course, one of the primary considerations was service: how to do something substantial and elegant that could be prepped entirely in advance and cooked off fairly quickly while people were enjoying the small plate? Simple and sophisticated, elegant and substantial, is not the easiest thing to pull off in a kitchen kitted out like Jimmy's, but I used the limitations for inspiration not seeing them as limitations. Nonetheless, I fell back on a dish I've made a couple of times in the past for groups large and small with good success. I knew the dish, knew what it took to prep, and knew what it took to cook. The bonus was that it uses an inexpensive cut of meat so I was not going to blow the budget with it.

This dish is not something I would do if I didn't have a good butcher and fortunately mine, Sal (Biancardi, also down on Arthur Avenue) and his crew never disappoint. I went down to the Ave on Monday morning early and had Alfredo trim, butterfly, and pound flank steak. This gets salted and set aside for a couple of hours before the rest of the prep gets done. One of my kitchen "secrets" is to avoid using a plain salt. There's an herbed sea salt from Bologna I found about eight years ago that includes garlic, black pepper, sage, and rosemary, and this is what I used to salt the flank steak. I find that I end up using a lot less salt and adding more flavor. (And, for bridging purposes, it was the salt I used on the hazelnuts for the salad.)

After the salted flank steak had a couple of hours in the walk-in, I created roulades, stuffing them with goat cheese (tip: do not skimp on the quality or quantity of the goat cheese) and a mixture of baby arugula and chopped radicchio and then tying them and putting them back in the walk-in.

The roulades get seared on the flattop to add color and then put into a warm-ish oven to finish and hold. It's important not to overcook the beef: It wants to be definitely on the rare side. The goat cheese needs to be runny and oozing. For service, it's simply a matter of taking the roulades out of the oven, remove the twine, and slicing diagonally into rounds roughly one-half inch thick. It's the combination of textures of the rare beef and oozing unctuousness of the goat cheese coupled with the crispy bitterness of the greens that makes this dish work. They are beautifully colorful, too.

The flank steak roulades were arranged over quenelles of roasted garlic smashed potatoes and then garnished with parsley. The potatoes were made with the olive oil used to pan roast the garlic, finely chopped bacon I rendered down for its fat (the fat was also used in the potatoes), creme fraiche, and a small amount of the seasoned salt used on the steak. The bridging elements here were the creme fraiche, the salt, and the bacon. In the end, I decided not to complicate things by adding in the planned chocolate element - cocoa nibs sprinkled on the goat cheese (which combination I like on its own merits) in the roulade.

Were I to do this again, I would use the olive oil and bacon fat with the fond on the pan used to cook the bacon to make a gravy and use it as a drizzled garnish. The dish did not need moisture, but I felt the presentation was a little lacking is all. I would probably also use the nib. The bitterness and crunch would have been a nice added touch.

The beer served was another Cantillon , their Lou Pepe Cuvee (2009) Gueze (5% ABV). Guezes are a traditional Belgian blend of young and old Lambics, which are then bottle after blending, and aged for 2-3 years to produce a dryer, fruitier and more intense style of Lambic without any hop character. The second of the two Cantillons served, this one is generally considered to be one of the finest beers of its type and was very eagerly anticipated by the guests. The tartness cut the richness of the dish while the beer's barnyard earthy/hay funk highlighted that aspect of the goat cheese spectacularly well.

Dessert: The First Goes Last

Dessert came off exactly as envisaged, not really. The dessert itself was I imagined but the Lindeman's Faro Lambic did not get delivered. The replacement the Cuvee d'Erpigny from Picobrouwerij Alvinne , a quadrupel at 15% ABV that is aged in wine barrels. Quads tend towards moderate levels of phenols with a sweetness that is not masked by bitterness and that are perceivably alcoholic. The d'Erpigny was an almost syrupy mouthfeel with pronounced caramel/burnt sugar/toffee and vanilla that made it a perfect foil for the burnt caramel and vanilla ice cream in the dessert. The sweetness can be overwhelming in large amounts, but when served as one might an after-dinner port as an accompaniment, the sweetness is held in check - and the salt in the caramel that tames the sweetness there carries over to the beer.

A very special ending to a memorable meal.

Postscript

In the end, the number of people that showed up was smaller than the number of RSVPs. While that plays havoc with the budget, it does make service easier. I ended up trusting the plating to Michael after putting together a "model" plate for each course and did all the food running myself, explaining each dish as I served each table.

This made for a very informal evening which turned out to be quite nice - it sort of unfolded unpredictably and the focus on personal interaction rather than addressing the group turned out to be the right approach. Fortunately I had a mole among the guests, my muse during menu creation and in many other areas of my life, my friend Diana (whom I met at a craft beer festival where I was cooking about a year ago). She's fearless in these situations and just jumped right in engaging everyone at the table where she was seated. It's also nice to have someone "on your side" at the table - seeing a smiling face of encouragement made a huge difference.

As for the budget. I was asked to shop for, cook for, and serve 30 people. The two most expensive items were the flank steak (which ended up costing me a very reasonable $6.99/lb plus a nice tip) and the ice cream, which we purchased from Van Leeuwen's just down the street from Jimmy's on Monday afternoon. I ended up spending about $8 per person (for 30 people) on ingredients, not bad when you consider I purchased everything at retail . My shopping list did not include the beets, potatoes, apples, creme fraiche, cream, and butter that are kitchen staples at Jimmy's, or the beers. Other ingredients not in my $8 p/p spend were two-dozen very excellent eggs (for the corn bread) and smoked bacon ends that were supplied by Flying Pig Farms.

It's also important to recognize that events like these are quintessential team events. The kitchen staff, servers, bar staff - everyone at Jimmy's played an important role in pulling the dinner off. There was no way I could have done this myself in the time available to me walking in cold into a kitchen I'd never worked in before.And, of course, many, many thanks to Jimmy for giving me the opportunity to plan the menu and cook as well as for sharing his knowledge and opening up his cellar and serving some awesome and very special beers.

This weekend (November 9-11) saw The Chocolate Show in New York City. The show is organized by Event International, the company that organizes the Salon du Chocolat in Paris and more than 15 other cities around the world. New York is the only location that does that does not incorporate the Salon du Chocolat brand into the name.

I like The Chocolate Show for a number of reasons, including the fact that it brings out the core of the NY chocolate community every year while bringing people to the city that I only get to see once or twice a year.

The New York show comes on the heels of the Salon du Chocolat in Paris (Oct 31 - Nov 4) and at the same time as the Salon du Chocolat in Lyon. I mention this as a preface to the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Three major shows in a two-week period is a lot of work and to some extent this was reflected in the organization and depth of offerings here at the New York show. For example, there was no opening fashion show and the show was shortened from its conventional four days to three. The show site suggests that visitors could expect 150 participants. The official show program lists about 55 exhibitors, a number that might be increased 50% if all of the speakers and presenters over the three days are also counted, so 150 participants was a stretch.

The conflict of timing also meant that some prior Chocolate Show participants from France did not make it this year, notably Franois Pralus (who was represented by his US distributor, though not with the variety of product that ended up being shown in Lyon, which is only an hour from Pralus' headquarters in Roanne).

But the big wrench in the works was undoubtedly Hurricane Sandy. The number of exhibitors - local, national, and international - was reduced by more than a dozen. Some of the exhibitors' businesses - notably NYC's Fika Choklad - were inundated by the hurricane. Other companies had trouble changing travel plans in the wake of the hurricane and the Nor'easter that dumped up to four inches of snow on Wednesday, less than 48 hours before the start of the show. Mott Green, of the Grenada Chocolate Company, mentioned that his flight to NY from Grenada was canceled. He was able to get a flight to Trinidad and catch a red-eye to NYC from there, otherwise he would have been late or missed the show entirely. Sorely missed were Guittard, probably the most consistent exhibitor at The Chocolate Show over its history.

On the flip side, Maricel Presilla (author of the must-owns The New Taste of Chocolate and Gran Cocina Latina ) whose Hoboken, NJ-based restaurant Cucharamama and Latin grocery store Ultramarinos suffered significant storm damage, was able to staff a booth at the last minute. I saw her on Saturday morning when she told me that she left the show on Friday to return to Hoboken to reopen Cucharamama for service Friday evening. No small feats. Maricel was also serving grand chicken mol tamales on Saturday - a real treat. Maricel is a hugely valuable asset to the NY chocolate community, and if you have never been to Cucharamama, now is the time to go in support. (It's okay to go to New Jersey if you have any prejudices about it. It's not difficult to get to Hoboken on the PATH, and it's less than a 15-minute walk from the PATH to the restaurant. I've been there on several occasions and the food, drinks, and hospitality are never less than first rate.)

In addition to the weather having a visible impact on the exhibitor presence, the storm also had a huge effect on attendance. Friday was a very slow day compared with recent years, and Saturday, which started out with a rush, was noticeably beginning to slow down by the time I left, around 1:30. When I arrived at 10:30 there was no line when last year the line was hundreds of people deep. I did not go today, so I won't know how attendance stacked up until someone checks in with me. It's not clear if this year's weather problems will have an impact on next year's show. Certainly the organizers can't bear any blame for the weather, but the reduced number of exhibitors may be remembered by show regulars (who were heard to balk at the ticket prices), and exhibitors may remember the comparatively poor attendee turnout. Only time - and a 2103 show - will tell.

Pacari - the surprise runaway winner at the recent International Chocolate Awards - was in the Ecuador booth and featured founder Santiago Peralta whose travel schedule included returning to Ecuador after the Amsterdam Origin Chocolate conference then returning to Paris for the Salon du Chocolat before coming to NYC. Also in the Ecuador booth were Kallari with their new line of Sacha chocolate bars:

The other major bar introduction came from West Chester, PA-based Eclat. Their Good & Evil bar - which retails for $18 - is made using beans sourced in the Maraon River valley of Peru. These are not exactly the same beans used to make Fortunato #4, but they are sourced in the same general area. (The chocolate itself is manufactured in Switzerland, as is Fortunato #4, not in West Chester.)

The percentage is 4% higher than Fortunato #4, and the bar contains nibs, so it's not possible to compare the chocolate in the Good&Evil bar with the Fortunato, which is something I would like to do. The other feature of Good&Evil is the collaboration of two very well-known chefs, Eric Ripert (of Le Bernardin) and Tony Bourdain (author of Kitchen Confidential, and TV host) - Christopher Curtin (the third name on the bar) is the founder of Eclat. Neither Bourdain nor Ripert are known for their skills with chocolate, but there is no doubt that this celebrity co-branding will increase sales and make the $18 price tag more palatable to more people.

And that's it for today. I am catching a train to Stamford, CT shortly to attend the grand opening celebration for Fritz Knipschildt's Chocopologie.