Meiji 99% Cacao

So against the advice of 2 chocolate experts, I decided to lay may hands on the powerful meiji 99% cacao for the first time ever. Yeah I've tinkering to buy the bar for a long long time eventhough the chocolate experts said it's a big no no.

oohhh, yeah. Mmm, looks smooth and I think I'm up to challenge. From surface test, it passed the benchmark quite ok. Although not as smooth as lindt, Japanese chocolate does not famous for it's surface test.

So ceremoniously I broke a piece and let it melt in my mouth. But instead of mmmmm, what come out of me is a resounding ommmpphhhttt... what the...? It tastes awfully bitter and I can't even get a hint of neither flavor or aroma of chocolate from the bar. As curiousity goes, I take a look on the ingredient list and guess what...

Yupe. Something missing. There's not a single atom of sugar contained in this bar. I've known sugar free chocolate but this is simply nuts! I wonder what lunatics in Meiji would think about making such bar. D'uuuh, I'll be selling all my stocks in Meiji if I do have one.

But I already got one and I can't simply just throw it away or else my girlfriend will laugh at me with the "told you..." smug on her face. (Yes, you will sweetheart. Just admit it.)

So let's get creative. How would we get the aroma out of something? Simple. Heat it. the vapor will intensify the chocolate aroma out of the bar. And how would we get something nice from such bitterness? Remember, eventhough it's bitter, it's still chocolate. It has all the property of normal chocolate bar except sweetness.

Now what I did is simply put the bar in a cup of water. Microwave it and... make a chocolate drink! After I got the melted bar on hot water, I just scoop my Cadbury hot chocolate drink powder. And there you go. You'll get yourself an extra-"powderful" yummy frothy chocolate drink. It's intensely chocolate and you can still taste the bitterness, but it become an excellent additive to my usual chocolate drink. mmm.

So let me end up this posting with a modified adage: When life gives you bitter chocolate, just make chocolate drink!

Happy Chocolating

Cons

This week’s new item (42/2006)

This week’s new item

Well, it took me hours to get me back my creative juice but I’m thrilled to announce this week new item

This week’s new item: (2006 wk 42)

Banana Croquette

Croquette is a traditional food from Dutch (kroket) which is normally involving potato and meat (such as chicken or fish) or ragout. This influences the Japanese to develop their own corokke ( コロッケ ) which normally filled with potato, to fill with other thing of their own favorite. There are Salmon, Cheese and Salmon, Potato and chicken, Tuna, sweetcorn, Sweet potato, pumpkin and many others. (Aw, shucks. Just see the Wikipedia, will ya?)

So, all these ingredients have been used… Why not start it with fruit? Corokke style with mashed banana inside. Heck, you can even dip it in chocolate sauce or even have it with vanilla ice cream! Yummy

Enjoy!

Cons

PS: I'll follow up this posting on how menu creation works

Creative Cooking (1)

Well, just yesterday I've read about this prata goreng in the news paper. They make a crispy prata, shred it off and toissed it in the wok like mee goreng (Indian fried noodle.

It’s kinda crazy but again it’s an idea that actually works. And someone beat me to it. The fundamental of this menu is so simple. You see:

prata is basically flatbread made from flour.
A majority of noodles has flour as basic ingredient
Why don’t we just treat prata as a noodle? Shred it and fry it?

There you goes, a new food item for this year Festival of Light (Deepavali/Divali).

Don’t you just hate it when someone beat you to a new menu and makes you feels like bonking yourself in the head and muttering “Why oh, why didn’t I think of that?”

My friend the sushi chef invented the prawn and mango salad which was absolutely delicious. Well, I indeed improved it to my Seafood Fruits salad. (salade de fruits et fruits de mer) Heh, I’ll post the recipe tonight. But again it’s not something new.

I can whip up honey glazed chicken wing in 10 minutes with only honey, chicken wing and oven toaster. Throw me some cloves and I’ll make this extra-fast food as if it’s come out of 3-star hotel’s kitchen. I might improved the “how” but the concept of the honey glazed wasn’t even mine.

Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong if you try to imitate somebody else’s. Especially in cooking, there’s no such thing as copyright for recipe. That’s why instead of copyrighting it, KFC just put the papers in a vault! There’s no way they’ll even put that in digital storage. (Note: Original recipe for Coca-cola is also written in papers and locked in vault.)

But then, how are we going to find something new? Assuming you’re interested in cooking, you can start by putting attention. There are 3 main items in cooking which I will elaborate at later part. They are (1) ingredient, (2) technique, and (3) presentation.

After you collect and gather information about all three of this, all you need to do is mix and match it. There you go, a new menu of your own!

To be Continued

Cons

Creative Recipe

As part of my creative thinking exercise, I oblige myself to think one item, every week. A food item that totally revolutionary, which nobody ever thought of (or at least, I never heard of).

The food item need not be feasible nor even taste good. All I need to think is just something. And if I do hit a jackpot, (which is idea that is very close to realization) I'll develop a new and revolutionary recipe around it.

So if you wish to practice the same thing, you're welcome. My past food items is varied but mostly Japanese influenced as i worked in a Japanese restaurant. I'll post my new items every week between monday to wednesday (depends on how fast I can create)

My past items are most forgotten but the most recent one are:
1. Tempura durian, served with vanilla Ice cream
2. Cold miso soup

This week item is "Tempeh Miso"

(tempeh is a soya bean cake from Indonesia and Miso is fermented soya bean paste from Japan)