Hebert Gourmet Chocolate

I recently had the opportunity to try two of Hebert Gourmet Chocolates' "Fully Loaded" varieties of chocolate confections.

Hebert, located in Shewsbury MA, has been making fine chocolates since 1917. They've always been extremely high-quality products with chocolate rivaling Lindt and other European makers in rich, silky-smooth flavor.

The two varieties we tried were Blueberry Bites and Cookies & Creme MiniBars. Both were small, individually-wrapped bite-sized versions of products that Hebert also makes in full-sized chocolate bars. Fans of Hebert chocolate will not be surprised that theses bite-sized treats are every bit as delicious as the large bars. Of course, deliciousness and convenience have their price; Hebert chocolates are a premium brand that sell for a bit more than the standard Hershey bars, and these bite-sized morsels are more expensive than their full-sized cousins.

Cookies & Creme bars are part candy, part cookie, made by adding crumbled bits of chocolate sandwich cookies and chocolate chips to a milk chocolate base. The heavenly smooth Hebert milk chocolate offers a silky textural contrast to the crunchy cookie fragments, making the candy even more delightful. These were a particular favorite of my daughter.

The Blueberry Bites were equally mouthwatering. A traditional filled-chocolate candy, each 55% dark chocolate bite encapsulates a marvelous liquid center made from real blueberries.

---

Did you know that Hebert Candies gives tours of their Shrewsbury facilities? If you're day tripping in Southern New England, you might want to stop in. The tours are free and you get chocolate samples as you go through. No reservations are needed unless you have 10 or more people in your group. The tour takes about 45 minutes, and you might want to budget enough time to go to the candy store while you're there.

Hebert Candies
575 Hartford Turnpike
Shrewsbury MA 01545
(508) 845-8051

Directions: Take the Mass Pike (I-90) to Exit 11 (Millbury/Worcester) Turn left onto Grafton Road for half a mile until you reach US20. Take a right onto US20. Hebert's will be a little more than three miles ahead on your right.

Patum Peperium - The Gentleman's Relish

So, last week I was running down Helen's British One Hundred and tripped over No. 33, Patum Peperium or Gentleman's Relish. I'd never heard of it before, so I did a little research and found that it's a sort of anchovy paste rumored to be excellent on hot toast.

I can't even begin to tell you how delicious that sounded.

By the end of the day, I had located a large handful of online merchants who carried the stuff, including one who sold it not only in the widely-available plastic container but also in the classic glass container (elegant black, with gold lettering no less.) So I placed the order and had a jar of Patum Peperium in my hands in three days.

Ooooh, I was psyched. I put a slice of bread in the toaster and sat down at the kitchen table with my new treasure. Inside the gorgeous glass jar was a thick portion of nondescript brown paste which smelled slightly fishy, slightly fermenty, and a bit like very old milk. The smell was strong enough to summon my dog, Zim, who sat at my feet and gazed up at me with big, liquid eyes, begging for just the slightest taste of this new and stinky treat!

First, I tried a little dab of it straight out of the jar. Salty and fishy, though not quite as fishy as I expected, a bit herbal, and quite unlike anything I'd ever tried before. I spread some sparingly on a hot slice of toast, and it was truly delicious, just as the jar label promised. The dog agreed. Unfortunately, my wife and daughter do not agree. This is yet another food that no other human in the family will share with me.

Since that first taste, I've been trying it in different ways:

• Spread thinly on a lettuce and tomato sandwich - very good
• Blended with lobster tomalley and cream cheese as a spread - aces!
• Whisked as a seasoning into eggs before scrambling (suggested by the Wikipedia article) - good, but not exceptional.
• Stirred into the gravy of a beef stew - Excellent, really "woke up" the flavor in a way that salt alone wouldn't have done.

I'm reasonably sure that Gentleman's Relish could be used in any situation where one might use anchovy paste, but it's so much better tasting than plain anchovy paste. I plan to keep a supply on hand from now on.

Lapsang Souchong

Autumn's just about here. The nights are getting cooler and longer, and until I fire up the pellet stove for the season, the house gets a little chilly at night. Chilly enough for a good cup of tea, y'know?

So I brew a big mug of Lapsang Souchong. It's a unique variety of black tea: the leaves are dried over pine fires, which impart an unusual smoky taste to the tea. It's not a "culinary" smoke flavor, like hickory-smoked bacon or applewood-smoked pork. No...it's a"true" smoke. A "wild" smoke. The smoke of a lightning-kindled brush fire, or a latenight campfire.

When I was a kid and October came around, the whole family would work outside on cold clear Sunday afternoons, raking and piling leaves. The days were sunny and the skies were cloudless and bright blue, and we could see our breath as the wide bamboo rakes pulled oak leaves across the yard to the burn pile out by the toolshed. Late in the afternoon, we'd light the leaves and burn the piles down to ash. The fire was warm on our faces and the smoke stung our eyes when the wind shifted. We'd watch the fire and smell the smoke and we were tired from raking leaves and piling branches all day, but we knew there was beef stew with dumplings waiting in the kitchen and besides, the smoke smelled great.

October skies and leaf fires. That was where my very first mug of Lapsang Souchong took me. The aroma and taste of the tea is almost a perfect simulation of that long-ago autumn air.

And that's not the only memory that Lapsang nudges awake. Some of the best times of my life have been wrapped in fire and smoke. Clambakes on the beach cooked over driftwood fires. Half-drunken marathon Monopoly games in front of the fireplace at my best friend's house back in the '70s. Poking at a bright campfire while my three-year-old daughter sings herself to sleep in the tent behind me. Thawing out beside the fire, winter camping during hunting season in Vermont.

Yeah. That's one damn amazing cup of tea.

Lindt Cherry & Chili Chocolate

Swiss chocolatier Lindt has yet another winner in their line of high-quality chocolate bars: Creation 70% Cherry & Chili. Chile pepper-infused cherry filling is sandwiched into a bar of Lindt's gorgeous velvety dark chocolate, and the result is a confection with a surprisingly complex cascade of flavors.

The experience starts, of course, with the dark chocolate. Unlike some other 70% darks, Lindt's is as smooth as butter, without a hint of graniness. Subtle backnotes of coffee, cashew, and burnt toast gradually fade as the cherry flavor comes forward and blends with the intricacies of the chocolate.

Most chile peppers have some degree of "pepper flavor" that is completely separate from the element of heat. To me, it usually tastes like toasted paprika, a fruity and smoky essence that is almost experienced as an aroma rather than a flavor. This smokiness is also evident as the cherry flavor builds. Curiously, though, there is very little heat...

...until just at the end, when the chocolate has melted and the cherry has faded away, the chile's warmth builds up in a gentle and very subtle way to leave your palate with a faint glow.

Chile and chocolate is a winning combination, but chileheads shouldn't buy this Lindt bar looking for a firey burn. Lindt has taken a great deal of care to balance the flavors and "mouth effects" of this chocolate in a way that choreographs the chile, chocolate, and cherry notes almost perfectly. It's the ideal chocolate if you want to introduce the wonderful chile/chocolate combination to someone with little interest in peppers, but if you're the kind of person who turns to capsaicin strictly for your "endorphine rush" fire, skip it.

Links:

Lindt's website.

Lindt Creation 70% chili-cherry-chocolate on the Chocablog.

Stop & Shop Supermarket Giveaway

Stop and Shop is a supermarket chain that operates about 350 stores in the northeastern US (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey.) They're currently overhauling their "brand identity" with a new logo, store makeovers, and an expansion in their organic and natural foods line.

They're celebrating this new look with a 12-week sweepstakes. Each week, they'll be giving away "free groceries for a year" in the form of a $5200 Stop & Shop gift card. There are other, smaller giveaways in the sweepstakes, too ($25 and $50 gift cards.)

If you're already a Stop & Shop customer and have one of their "savings cards," you're all set and can enter once a week for the duration of the sweeps. If you're not a customer, you can register for a savings card online.

Link:
Stop & Shop's website (follow the links to the contest.)

Meme for a Monday Morning

So, there's this "twenty-questions" sort of meme floating around the blogosphere lately, and Michele at Life, Lightly Salted nudged it over in my direction. If you're squeamish, skip over the "What won't you eat?" question, in which I explain the reason why I will not eat eels.

Sweet or salty?
Both, but with a slight tip of the balance to the salty side. (Salt and sweet is a killer combination, though - off the top of my head I can think of Mo's Bacon Chocolate Bar, and some fantastic Salted Butter Ice Cream I had in Northampton MA.)

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?
Onions, thyme, pepper.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?
That hissing, splorshy sound that hot coffee makes when you pour it into a mug.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?
Wood smoke.

What are the qualities you most admire in a dish?
Fresh local ingredients, honest and uncomplicated preparation.

What is your most treasured possession in the kitchen?
My Zojirushi electric skillet.

What is a dirty word in your kitchen?
Rutabaga.

What are afraid to do in the kitchen?

Baking is the weakest of my culinary skills. I've never been able to successfully make a cake from scratch, so I just stopped trying. That being said, however, I'm not "afraid" to do anything in the kitchen.

What won’t you eat?

Eels. I once helped recover the body of a drowning victim from a local river. The body had been in the water for some time, and there were eels...in it. For a long time, I saw that corpse and the eels in my sleep. Sometimes I still do.

Have you ever lost your appetite for a food you once loved?
Offhand, I can't think of any.

Have you ever had a change of heart involving a food you once disliked?
Oh, absolutely - who hasn't? Green olives; raw shellfish; lobster tomalley - just to name a few - are all foods I hated as a kid, but love as an adult.

If you could choose one historical or living cook to make you a meal right now, who and what would it be?

Gordon Ramsay, and it would be "Chef's Choice" (i.e. the meal is up to him.) But I'd also like to reciprocate and invite Chef Ramsay to a genuine New England clambake, in late summer when the native sweet corn is at its peak and the new potatoes are being harvested in Maine.

Who are your favorite cookbook authors/food writers?
MFK Fisher has been my literary crush for years. But I also get a big kick out of the sarcastic, opinionated wiseassery of the late Richard Gehman (author of The Haphazard Gourmet.)

What is your favorite food-related word?
Macerate. Because it sounds rude. "Heh heh hehheh m heh heh yeah. He said, 'macerate.' "

What is your favorite food-related scene from literature or the movies?
James Cagney and Mae Clark in 1931's Public Enemy.

What’s your favorite food-shopping errand or journey?
Shopping at A. Dong Supermarket, my local full-service Asian market.

To which country would you move for the food?
I would love to visit more countries and experience their cuisine. But I'm perfectly happy to stay right here in New England for the food.

What’s your poison?
Single malt, neat.

What’s your standard outfit in the kitchen?
I usually wear a black T-shirt and jeans (my daughter once said that I was like a cartoon character because I always wore the same thing.) In the kitchen, I supplement this Real Life Uniform with a striped apron.

You wish to die with what in your stomach?
Steely resolve.

If heaven exists, what do you hope they have on the menu?
If heaven exists, anything I want will be on the menu. Otherwise it wouldn't be heaven.

If you came back as a fruit or a vegetable, which one would it be?
A carrot. Specifically, Flaming Carrot.

What are you craving right now?
A bowl of good New England clam chowder.

Would You Give Your Kids Mighty Milk?

It's always a blast to shop at places like Big Lots. Sometimes, I find discontinued items that were pretty good, and I get a last chance to stock up on them. Other times, I come across interesting but unknown items that might have been too expensive to buy in the regular store, but as a cut-rate job lot item they're not only affordable, but make a good lunch too. and sometimes, I just buy stuff for the lulz - bizarre or strange crap that I eat and write about just for laughs and because it's kind of a hobby.

Occasionally, though, I find something like Mighty Milk - it looks weird enough to be interesting, but turns out to be wretched.

Mighty Milk is sold in a brick-like four-pack of 8.5-ounce Tetra Pak containers. Each container includes a telescoping straw, but consumers may also peel off the foil seal and pour out the drink if they prefer.

I imagine what most people will prefer is to pour this swill out into the toilet.

For one thing, even though this stuff has almost nothing in common with any actual dairy product, there is nothing on the front label to indicate that Mighty Milk is anything other than some kind of flavored milk. The entire front label reads: Mighty Milk Nutritional Drink for Kids - Chocolate Shake. Sounds like some kind of fortified milk drink. The four-pack is designed so that the front label of the individual Tetra Paks face outward. Only after buying the product and reading the fine print is there any indication of the purely industrial nature of the fluid within:

Water, Caseinate, Milk Protein Isolate, Blend of Vegetable Oils (Sunflower and/or Safflower Oil, Canola Oil), Crystalline Fructose, Lecinthinated Cocoa, Maltodextrin, Vitamin Mineral Blend, MCT's, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Whey, Potassium Chloride, Soy Lecithin, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Monosodium Phosphate, Carrageenan, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Salt, Acesulphame Potassium, Sucralose.

Wow. That's like a shopping list for the Monsanto Factory Outlet.

At the bottom of the container is the allergen warning. If I had seen this first, I might not have bothered buying it. Check it out:

ALLERGEN STATEMENT: This product contains ingredients derived from milk and soy. However this product contains no milk.

"Contains no milk." That's kind of an important detail. Why isn't it on the front label?

The package instructions say that it's "Best Served Cold" and "Shake Well Before Using." So I put the four-pack in the fridge overnight before trying some the next day. When I got ready to try it, I gave it a good shake and popped the straw through the foil.

Holy shit, this stuff is nasty. It tasted like a mixture of chocolate water, oily liquid vitamins, and rusty steel. There was a strange sort of "tingling" sensation in my mouth when I drank it that I can't really pin down or accurately describe. As I drank more from the container, it became harder to draw anything through the straw though it was obvious that there was still something in there.

I tipped the container over a cup and gave it a squeeze...and thick, gooey blobs dropped out. Clearly, just giving this stuff a shake doesn't do any good. It was disgusting.

I tried again with a new container of Mighty Milk. I gave it a thorough shake and poured it into a different cup. Just like the first time, the "Nutritional Drink" came out in a chunky flow of thin brown liquid and thick gluey clumps. I tried to stir it with a spoon, but it didn't really matter how hard or how fast I stirred, the chunks were still there - and no amount of stirring made it taste any better.

According to the Mighty Milk website, it comes in several varieties, including Root Beer Float, Go Bananas, and a couple of others. If chocolate (notorious for it's ability to cover other flavors) can't make this medicinal concoction taste palatable, I can't imagine how bad the others are.

Link:
Mighty Foodz (Yes, they really do spell it like that.)

The video below is what Mighty Milk looks like when it's plopping from the container to the cup. There's no audio, but I bet with a little imagination you can provide the proper soundtrack.

Enhanced Meat

How closely do you read the labels in your supermarket? I read everything - especially the first time I buy something. I want to know what's in it, and whether there's something hidden in there that I refuse to buy (high fructose corn syrup, for example.)

I check the Country of Origin labels on seafood and produce, and I check cuts of meat carefully to be sure the store isn't getting deceptively clever when they put the label on the package. But now I find I have to look for fine print on nearly every branded piece of meat I buy.

Why? Because the major packing companies are all "enhancing" their meat - especially pork and turkey, but beef and chicken too - by injecting it full of specially-formulated saltwater. Sometimes, the meat you buy can be twelve percent added water - quite the profit engine for Hormel and Smithfield, when they can charge consumers upwards of $20.00 a gallon for water (which probably costs them less than half a buck per thousand gallons.)

The meat industry will tell you that they need to enhance their product because health-conscious shoppers demand leaner cuts. Without tasty saline solution pumped into the meat to replace the missing fat, they say that meat often comes out dry, tough, and flavorless. Water and salt is a cheap way for the meat packing companies to "help" people have juicier cuts of pork, beef, and chicken.

But if you believe that they're doing it for any other reason than profit, look at this:

I would love to hear Hormel's explanation for why ground pork - which is already tender thanks to the grinding process and "juicy" thanks to the fat content - needs to be pumped up with saltwater to "improve" the tenderness and juicyness. (Twelve percent is actually pretty low for a Hormel product. Some of their Jenny-O brand turkey cuts and other Hormel pork products have been pumped up with 30 percent water!)

Thanks, Whore-Mel, but I'll brine my own meat.

Every major packing company is doing this. Most of them have special brand names for their enhanced products:

• John Morrell Tender N Juicy
• Hormel Always Tender
• Farmland Extra Tender
• Smithfield Lean Generation
• Purdue Tender & Tasty

But regardless of whether or not these tampered-with meats have a special brand identity, Federal law requires that they be clearly labeled on the package with information such as the percentage of "enhancement" added and the ingredients.

The only way we, as consumers, have of fighting this trend is through our wallets. Read the labels and refuse to buy enhanced meat. And, because some supermarkets are buying enhanced meats and repackaging them without the labels, ask the butchers at your local markets if the meat they are selling is enhanced. And don't be afraid to report violations of the labeling law to the USDA.

Catamount Glass Co. Microwave Popcorn Popper

Every now and then, I run into something that is really kind of cool, even though I don't have much use for it. Like this thing, for example: It's a microwave popcorn popper made of borosilicate glass by the Catamount Glass Company of Burlington, VT.

I kind of hate run-of-the-mill microwave popcorn. It uses a lot of packaging materials, it's loaded with disgusting waxy grease, and it costs about ten times what plain old kernel popcorn does. And despite all of the artificial flavors ConAgra and the other industrial food megacorps load into them, they still taste like shit.

The Catamount popcorn popper, though, is just as easy to use as one of those pre-packed popcorn envelopes, with the advantages of lower cost and increased deliciousness: Just pour in half a cup of popcorn kernels, put the top on, and put it into the microwave for about 4 minutes on high. You don't need any oil to pop the corn, though you can put some in if you want.

It works great - the corn pops up light and fluffy, and there are only a few "old maids" at the bottom when you're done. Just like with any microwave popcorn, you'll need to keep an eye on it to figure out exactly how long it takes to pop the corn in your particular microwave so it doesn't burn.

The handle on the side of the popper doesn't heat up in the microwave, so when your popcorn is done, it's simple to just take the lid off and pour it out into a bowl. And it's really easy to clean. Most of the time, it will only take a good hot water rinse to clean it up, but if you ever have to scrub it, the wide mouth is easy to reach into with a sponge.

The thing is, I have the same complaint about this popper as I do about hot air poppers. The popcorn is a little dry and kind of flavorless since it isn't popped using oil, as it would be in a traditional popping kettle or a saucepan on the stove. But, just like with air poppers, it's trivially easy to just top the snack with melted butter and tasty salt before eating. So I guess that, even though I still prefer making popcorn in a pan on the stove, the Catamount popper is worthy.

Catamount Glass Co. Inc. doesn't have a directly-named corporate website. However, they seem to be the operators of vermontgift.com, a website where a huge variety of made-in-Vermont Catamount Glass cookware can be found and ordered.

Making Meatballs

Meatballs. Seems like I've been making them my entire life - they were one of the first things I ever learned to cook. I make them pretty much the same way my Italian grandmother used to - some of this, a little of that - but I recently went through the recipe slowly and somewhat carefully, measuring out what I used, so I could write down an actual recipe.

Start with one pound each of ground beef, ground veal, and ground pork. the pork and veal usually have enough fat that you can use 90% lean ground beef if you want. You may also substitute ground turkey for some of the meat, or even ground chicken if you prefer.

Add half a cup of grated Italian cheese (parmesan, romano, asiago, or similar - feel free to use a mix of them if you prefer) and a cup each of finely minced onion and green bell pepper. Mix this all well with your hands.

Add two eggs to the meat mixture. Break the yolks with a fork and then work the eggs into the meat by hand, just like you did with the cheese, onions, and pepper.

Fresh bread crumbs are the best for meatballs. Use a grater and make about four cups of crumbs by rubbing some day-old bread against the large cutting surface of your grater. I happened to have some leftover hot dog rolls in the breadbox, so that's what I used (it took four or five of them to make four cups of crumbs. )

When your crumbs are ready, dump them into the bowl with the meat mixture. Add seasonings: one or two teaspoons of salt, a quarter cup of dried "Italian Seasoning" (a pre-packaged blend of dried herbs that usually includes parsley, oregano, marjoram, basil, and rosemary) and the secret ingredient: a tablespoon of nutmeg!

Work the crumbs and seasonings into the meat mixture by kneading it with your hands until well-combined and smooth.

Pinch off portions of the meat mixture and roll between your palms to make meatballs. To ensure consistent size, I like to use a portion scoop to pick up the meat.

Tip: Scoops are available from kitchen and restaurant supply stores in various sizes ranging from a tablespoon to a cup or more. I use them for dropping dough of all kinds (cookies, dumplings, fritters, etc.) as well as portion control, making melon balls, and more. And nothing is easier for measuring out shortening.

Heat a small amount of olive oil in a skillet or frying pan and add the meatballs to the pan. Fry over medium heat , turning them frequently to brown on all sides. Then cover the pan and allow them to fry and steam about 15 minutes, or until done.

This recipe makes about 36 inch-and-a-half meatballs.