use real butter

I enjoyed chilling out with folks last night. It was a small turnout, which means lots of leftovers, but also a more relaxed atmosphere to hang out and chat. Some of the goods…

I noticed while cleaning up last night that the mousse looks a lot like brown vomit. A good thing not to tell people you’re serving it to, but who on earth came up with this recipe, I wonder? I didn’t like the CIA mousse recipe that much, mostly because it required 4 separate bowls and 3 whippings. Jeremy and I had an interesting discussion about organic coffee and how the flavor quickly falls off with elapsed time since brewing. Regular coffee doesn’t have this problem (he tells me – I don’t drink coffee). I wonder what sort of junk goes into non-organic coffee? Cooking for engineers has a great list of additives to foods. It’s interesting, and gross, and scary.Making chocolate shells because no one in Pasadena carried them pre-made. I actually liked playing with the balloons more than making the shells.



I guess that chocolate mousse isn’t so bad once you get over the mental image of brown vomit. I tasted some tonight and it’s very smooth with a good buttery mouthfeel, but not the bad buttery where it coats your tongue and you feel like you’re eating wax paper.

I just spent an hour looking through 20+ recipes for chocolate mousse. I’m not going to make a molded mousse, but it will be presented more or less in plated fashion. I think the CIA’s tome (The New Professional Chef) has a good standard mousse. Classic mousse. None of this shortcut crap with gelatin (blegh!), or pudding (gasp!).

I haven’t done serious baking in a while. I guess mousse isn’t serious baking, it’s more like beating the hell out of eggs. But flan, baklava, soufflé, pastry cream puffs – that’s a good bit of hands on baking! Fun fun fun.

At last the weekend. I felt tired when I left work today, but productivity is up. I even brought the manual home for more “leisure” reading. Jeremy has a symposium all day tomorrow, so I think I’ll try to get a lot done during the day. Maybe take Kaweah for a hike in the rain. Run errands in town like getting some clothes, toys, and games for Ben and Emily. Marla said to bring wine to dinner. What do you pair with a middle eastern/subcontinental veggie dish? Okay, I’ve looked up Reisling and Pinot Noir… My general (and limited) experience with Pinot is that the good stuff costs an arm and a leg. So Reisling it is. I think I should consider investing in a wine and food pairing book. I tend to do more “pairing” than drinking wine for the sake of drinking wine. It’s all about the food for me anyway.

**Jump for more butter**