Chocolate Body Paint

This is a reprint from another of my blogs....but I think that everyone should be reminded to make it at least once every other month. It's that delicious and best enjoyed with someone special......

Hah! I knew the title would get your attention! However, I must say that this is a thoroughly good use for this recipe which is really more of a vegan ganache. But because the primary ingredients are coconut oil, cocoa powder and carob, it melts down to the loveliest consistency and would be wonderful drawn all over your sweetie! Come on, don't be shy! All of the ingredients are very nourishing for your skin and the taste is divine!

I created this recipe one evening about a month ago in San Diego when an old friend of mine from high school and his wife were coming over for dinner. My sons girlfriend and I had been at Whole Foods that afternoon and decided to create a wonderful vegan meal starting with watermelon and jalapeno soup and ending with rolls of rice paper that we stuffed with plum and basil and strawberries, banana and mint. Of course they wouldn't have been complete without a sauce but we couldn't use the traditional butter and heavy cream to make one. What I did use was carob, coconut oil, cocoa powder, coconut milk and some agave nectar all blended in my VitaMix. The result was a delightful accident, a byproduct of experimentation plus a certain amount of crazy creativity. It was absolutely delicious and a perfect foil for the luscious fruit wraps that we had prepared.

I have since taken this recipe and modified it a bit adding toasted hazelnuts to make a vegan nutella and at Cassie's suggestion , silken tofu to make a filling for a tart that we poured into a raw nut crust. It is really a wonderful base for so many things. For the record, if you don't already own a VitaMix, this recipe is a very good excuse to buy one and it will pay for itself time and time again. The VitaMix is a very high powered blender and it can take cubes of ice and whole fruits , skin seeds and all and pulverize them into the most amazing smoothies in no time flat! I have created soups in mine that were wonderful and in about 1/4 of the time that I would normally spend. Fresh nut butters and homemade nut milks are easy to make and only take about 5 minutes of preparation! I knew that I could probably make this ganache in my regular blender , but I would have had to waste too much time pulverizing the ingredients first. It can be done and the results should be excellent, but the VitaMix is so strong that it melted everything for me in no time flat, creating a sauce that was as velvety as any ganache that I've enjoyed and without any of the dairy to mask the pure flavors!

To make about 2 cups of delectable "Body Paint" you will need:

I bag of sweetened organic carob chips

3 tablespoons of good cocoa powder- I love the Green and Black brand

A liberal dash of cinnamon

1 cup of coconut oil - The Whole Foods 365 brand is very good

Agave nectar to taste

Coconut milk to thin as needed -about 1/2 cup

The formula is simple! Just put all of the ingredients into your blender or VitaMix and move it through the settings until you are rewarded with a melting and creamy sauce! If I were doing this in the blender I would probably warm the ingredients first over a double boiler and then put them into the pitcher. You really do need the emulsifying effect of the blender though because as the mixture whips it will thicken a bit like mayonnaise. Add the agave to taste and coconut milk to create a smoother consistency and then pour into a sauce boat to serve! Because of the coconut oil and carob chips the sauce with begin to solidify but it will still be silky and wonderful. At room temperature it's definitely a sauce but once you put it into the refrigerator it will solidify a bit and turn into a creamy ganache. Either way it's wonderful! I hope that you'll enjoy experimenting with this recipe, I haven't tried it yet but I'm pretty sure that a bit of espresso powder would be a lively addition! Heat it up a bit and you have a fondue to be served with bananas and pound cake! How about marshmallows! The possibilities are endless, but I think that I like it best served up with a silken sable paint brush!

I do hope that you will light some candles, make some of this delectable finger paint and spend some quality time with the one that you love......

image from www.festivacancun.com

The smell of love.........

I'll never forget when I first became intrigued by truffles. My husband and I were enjoying  a gorgeous meal at Cafe' Boulud in NYC and I ordered the roasted chicken with truffle sauce. As I ordered, the darling french waiter looked at my husband with a knowing eye and a wink..... When he brought my order he placed it in front of me with grand aplomb and handed my husband an extra sauce spoon. A sauce spoon is one of those strange and in my mind totally essential accoutrements for eating well. It is basically a completely flattened tablespoon fitted with a notch and used to recover every delicious bit of a sauce!

I stopped for a moment and surveyed my plate.....Gorgeous slices of lemony roasted chicken lay before me and the herbs that had been used, some thyme and a bit of sage were still clinging to the crispy , buttery skin. There were beautifully roasted potatoes and a simple haricots vert with a julienne of fennel and feathery dill,  proving to me once again that the French truly know what to do with a vegetable. All incredibly beautiful and lush, but  it was the sauce that brought me to my knees........

It was a simple sauce, made from pan juices, butter and a bit of  white burgundy. That alone would have been wonderful, but there were generous bits of black truffle laced all though the silkiness  and it was impossible to miss the unmistakable scent of lustiness that permeated the dish. I was completely captivated and so was my husband. Eating it became an  act of foreplay, slow and savoring sauce spoons clicking. Bread was used to sop up what the sauce spoons couldn't quite reach and at that moment I became  totally enslaved, it was impossible to resist.

The truffle is legendary for it's supposed ability to excite the appetites. There's  quite a simple reason reason for that...it smells just like the best kind of sex.  French black or Italian white , say what you will of their rarity and of the exoticness of having an ingredient that is hunted by pigs and dogs alike.  Yes , the concept is so very romantic...the image of a truffle hunter out in the woods searching for this fairly common looking bit of culinary treasure. We are simple creatures  and the truffle Goddess as well as the men and women that beg for the fruits of her loins understand our passions well. That is one of the reason that a truffle can and will cost you a small fortune. They're seasonal foods and for that reason alone  please avoid the cans of truffle juice and truffle peelings that you can find. I've never found any that lived up to my expectations and I truly believe that infusing them in  fine oil is the best method for extracting the purest, sexiest flavor.

Give in for it's completely worth it.  Fresh truffles  can be infused into oil and if you place one in a jar of arborio rice for a few days you will have a risotto fit for the Gods...... Get  a glass topped canister and a few fresh eggs and put the truffle in with eggs. Believe it or not the sensual aroma will permeate the shells and the scrambled eggs that you make will be divine. Just remember to cook them slowly, with lots of butter in a double boiler. This way the fine aroma will not be lost, the eggs will be creamy yet fully cooked and the little bits of the truffle that you've chopped and put into the eggs will be nothing short of ambrosial.

Since that first roasted chicken, I've spent a lot of time searching for truffle products, because I love them and my husband has an appetite for them that is never satisfied. You can get a wonderful truffled salt, truffle butters and many different kinds of pate's and infused oils. In the absence of a fresh truffle you can do what Isabel Allende suggests in  her fabulous book Aprodite. She was taught by her grocer to chop up several black olives very fine and rinse them to remove any traces of brine. Placed in bowl that you've added some very good truffle oil to the olives will begin to completely smell of truffles and you can use them in the same way.  Truffled mash potatoes are simply sublime..the ultimate in comfort food.

Which leaves me to one last thought.....a little bit of   truffle oil mixed with a bit of rich dark chocolate dabbed in all of the right places tends to leave my husband just a little bit breathless......

To learn more about the fabulous fungi:

http://www.trufflesinternational.com/

http://www.earthy.com/Fresh_Imported__Domestic_Truffles_C32.cfm