Noisy Balloonist Blog is the apprentice

I hope this fortnight-long crash diet of coffee, wine and carpet chocolate paid off. Here’s a few more temporary snaps of the finished product, as I’m sweet-talking (or sweet trading, more likely) my way into a professional photography session next week. Please enjoy.

The land of chocolate. That bin at the end is filled three layers deep.

Nut trio. Almond paste base, Nux Alpina walnut liqueur ganache, toasted pine nut.

Mint Julep—made with Black Maple Hill 16 year-old bourbon—and Espresso con Panna.

Buckwheat honey, cumin and clove. Tastes like vindication.

In high school English class I was introduced to a parochial definition of the sublime, described as the ideal mix of elation and terror. This is etymologically suspect, but a vivid idea: When pushed to the feral outer limits of sensation, pleasure and pain might feel alike, and exquisite. I’d write more about this if Clive Barker hadn’t been flogging the notion for the past quarter-century, but I’m not yielding to melodrama when I suggest that there is some of the sublime in making chocolate. Terror and elation arrive in alternating waves. Nearly every task generates abject despair, followed by a rain of joy when the results are marginally acceptable. When I work molded chocolates, for example, I agonize over the ragged edges, the uneven backs, the pits and the air bubbles. I pine for the wasted mass of $18-per-pound chocolate curdling on the marble, identical in all aspects to a Jackson Pollack canvas except for its value at auction. I’m sullen and angry. I’m convinced the chocolates will never release from the mold. When they inevitably do and some of them are even pristine, I’m giddy with relief and my confidence is renewed.

Chocolate making is about science, and something like grace, and painstakingly sweating the details. Supremely tolerant in liquid form, once it sets the stuff is unforgiving as concrete and any blemish, however minute, appears on the finished product in grotesque relief. The image below is a good lesson. Look at the piece I split open. The shell is in perfect temper. The upper portion is suitably thin and delicate and there is good definition between the layers of ganache. It looks good, but I assure you Jacques Torres would declare amateur hour. Well, he’s French; he probably wouldn’t declare anything. He’d retire somewhere to smoke and beam searing waves of disapproval into my heart. Now see what he sees. The bottom of the shell is extremely thick and meets the ganache along an inelegant, irregular joint. It accounts for far too much of the finished weight, overwhelms the flavors within and destroys textural balance on the palate. Of course, somewhere in the ranks are pieces worthy of Wybauw himself, containing a payload of joy that could only result from a technique mastered and a job well done. Just gamble and bite.

Espresso con Panna. A dualie. Espresso ganache made with fresh-ground dark roast coffee beneath a float of panna (whipped cream), a white chocolate ganache infused with vanilla and anise.

Maybe I’m romanticizing just a little, but I’ve never encountered this tidal oscillation between dread and triumph anywhere else (except possibly romance). Permit me to boost my spirits and self-name-check for a change. I created a tinted flower to decorate a Pod Chocolate as yet undisclosed. Suddenly I understand the genius of transfer sheets—chocolate flowercraft is absurdly labor intensive—but I did well for a first try.

The palette: pure cocoa butter chips, luster dust and powder color.

The cocoa butter is melted and blended with color. Each bowl contains multiple colors.

A glittering slurry of canary luster and yellow color.

The cocoa butter is painted on acetate and a pattern is applied with a brush. After it sets, the entire sheet is coated with a thin layer of tempered white chocolate.

The flower is clipped out with a pastry cutter, to be affixed to finished candy with a dot of molten chocolate. Chunk of El Rey for demonstration purposes only.

Now cough.

A brief peek at chocolate progress thus far. (Additional progress not pictured.) Apologies for hasty photography, but something’s tempering somewhere. Oh yes—Pod Chocolates. Is my name.

Crystallized ginger to be prepped for the gingermallows below.

Art of the pour. Thanks to Kumar for the photo.

Gingermallow and mint julep chocolates.

Now, as at so many other microfiber-polished dessert forks on the road to gastronomic destiny, thanks are due to Martha Stewart and her Talmudic The Martha Stewart Cookbook for insisting I sieve the sugar pumpkin. That is, after seeding, scraping, cubing, steaming, blurring in the processor and pressing the fresh squash through a fine sieve, the final purée acquires a vivid orange gloss and velvet consistency. It’s gorgeous. Still flushed and warm from the steam bath, you would not regret enriching it with butter and sea salt and slurping the sunny ambrosia straight down your throat like porridge. Instead I made tarts.

Pastry crust is always a delicate battle against the ambient environmental factors that would unmake it—remind me to purchase a temp and humidity monitor. Gratefully, fortune was with me and the crust became the signature of the dish: tender and airy, tasting richly of the Pt. Reyes cows who kindly sourced its butter. Something must be done about the filling within; it was savory and reliable like every pumpkin pie ever made, but not nearly charismatic enough to merit an appearance in a tart shell. Pumpkin purée freezes well, however; there is ample supply for version two.

This is pumpkin tart with vanilla bean-infused whipped cream, cacao nibs and a dark chocolate lattice. Click for the full image.

Prepping the crust.

Intact chocolate lattice.

Presentation complete.

Money. Fork placement critiques duly noted. I’m a cook, not a food stylist.

10.5 kilograms to be precise, in deference to Kat—when she’s not de-horning cattle she’s chastising me for neglecting the metric system. That’s over 23 pounds of premium chocolate, clad in warm weather packaging, whisked through the inferno in the belly of a FedEx jet and stockpiled in advance of the war on dessert I’ll be launching this holiday. Sooner even. You see the pumpkins.

There is El Rey Gran Saman dark chocolate, Caoba milk and a tablet of Icoa white. The slabs in mylar blue are Carenero Superior 75% dark couverture from the Italian cacao fetishists Domori. Finally there is a half-kilo taster of Puerto Cabello Grand Cru dark chocolate from the purist French Chocolat Bonnat. No lecithin, no vanilla. Just cocoa mass and cane… and cane, uh, sugar…

Nom nom nom nom.

Oh shit. Oh shit the Bonnat is superb. Profound chocolate flavor, mellow, warm and intense, almost oaky. Subtle pings of tobacco and honey. There is a pleasing bitterness throughout and the sort of delirium-inducing “long tail” one expects of a robust Bordeaux or Cab.

A tip of the toque to Chocosphere, the only online chocolate retailer I’ve encountered that offers free recycling of their warm-weather packaging, which includes a styrofoam cooler and a gel cold pack. I’ll be reusing mine; it’s ideal for toting finished chocolates around town, but I could return it to Chocosphere for free by using the UPS automated return label included in the box. Chocolatiering is a terribly consumptive process and I’m always seeking ways to reduce waste. It’s nice to see others doing the same.

More chocolate news to come.