Wednesday, January 18th 2012

Today we did our daily chocolate tasting, cheese tasting, and talked about  

We started off class talking about what we cooked yesterday. Dr. Nawatka had high praises for us. Once again we have set the bar very high for team B to try to meet.

Our daily chocolate tasting was of South American Pralus Chocolate. All of them are 75% chocolate

Columbie: smells kinda flowery and chocolate. Very brittle snap. Good full chocolate taste and mouth fill. Pleasant after taste.

Chuao: smells just like the Columbie. Brittle snap. Lighter initial chocolate flavor than the. Columbie. More bitter than the Columbie but same mouth feel. 

Fortissima: smells just like the Columbie. Brittle snap. Very chunky mouth feel. Just as bitter as the Fortissma. Ok after taste.

Bresil: smells just like the Columbie. Brittle snap. Mellow chocolate taste. Choppy mouth feel. No real after taste.

Based off of our tastings, I'm starting to realize I'm more of a milk chocolate fan than a chocolate fan. I love the initial chocolate taste but I really don't like the bitter taste that comes with them. All of the favors had a very long finish. When we looked up the prices and details, we saw that these chocolate are very expensive. $80 a pound or more.

Some of the descriptors on the website were as follows:

Columbie: from colombia, coffee taste, astringent.

Chuao: from venezuela, earth tones.

Fortissima: from Ecuador, woody.

Bresil: from brazil, strong nose, good aromatic balance.


next we tasted a mystery chocolate

It has a very strong smell, like spice and earth. Good snap. I can taste the black pepper taste, sweet taste kinda like ginger, good mouth feel.

We were told it has pink pepper corn which is much milder than black peppercorn. I believe this pepper with chocolate is very cultural. 

Team B got their menu today. I'm not to impressed with the level of difficulty or variety. I know their theme is "cooking with cheese" but there is no meat in sight. I'm an omnivore and I expect to get veggies and meats at every meal! Once again, we're dong eggplant. I'm not excited about the menu to say the least. One problem with Team B's desert choices is that they require 6 hours of refrigeration but they only have 3 hours in the kitchen. I suggested that one or two of the team members get the ingredients from the instructor and cook it tonight. 

Dr. Sloan showed us a really interesting website called fine cooking.com. This web site has a feature called "create your own" where you can hand choose what tastes you would like and it tells you how to make it.

We also did a salt taste test

Of course we didn't want to put a mouthful of salt in our mouth to taste, so we used cucumber and bread to indirectly sates them. I learned thatit's not really where the salt is from that gives it a characteristic taste, but the dissolve minerals that give it the taste. All salt is NaCl. 

Maldon on cucumber: looks like regular table salt, kinda clumped together. It tastes like every day salt. I'm not really sure what it does for the taste. I think there are more favors than just salt and cucumber.

Kavai Guava Smoked on cucumber: looks like light brown seeds. This tastes very different than the previous salt. I definitely taste other "mine rally" flavors.

Black diamond on cucumber: looks like black flakes. Tastes a lot like the first salts. 

Fleur de sel on bread with butter: looks like very chunky white table salt. Very pungent salty taste. It my be very salty because of the amount of salt I got in the bite. 

Moleka Red on bread with butter looks like red seeds. I liked the way this salt brought out the butter and bread tastes much better than the previous salt.

Sel Gris on bread with butter: looks like very large chucks of table salt. I really like the way this salt brought out the flavors in the bread. It's not too salty.

We're going to use these salts tomorrow to flavor our meals to see if we can taste the difference. I don't think it's that big of a deal, so I don't think I will invest in more exotic/expensive salts in the future.

Cheese tasting- simi-hard cheese tasting

 Asiago: sharp cheese smell, wonderful cheese taste, milky after taste. Kinda hard. This is my favorite of the three.

Raclette: smells like it has gone bad, very sharp taste but it reminds me of American processed cheese. Very creamy.

Cheddar: very hard, bitter and sharp cheese taste. Weird after taste. Smell is subtle.