Corn and Ham Egg Drop Soup

My beautiful Bride loves hot soup, and also corn, when she saw this recipe in a Taiwanese cookbook, she knew she had to make it. We used mock ham, I am sure that you could use regular meat ham. It tasted quite delicious, something like Egg Drop soup (there's an art to making that soup, I would say, she just whisked the egg into the hot water) together with the sweetness of corn.

Corn and Ham Egg Drop Soup
1 can creamed corn (15 oz.)
1 quart vegetable stock
1 Tbsp rice wine
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup minced ham
1-1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
2-1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
3 Tbsp cold water

Add creamed corn, vegetable stock, rice wine and salt and pepper to a large pot, then bring to boil.

Add beaten egg to soup base, and whisk quickly, so that egg does not cook in one large lump.

Add ham and ginger and stir to combine.

Mix cornstarch with cold water, then stir into soup base to thicken.

Continue to cook until warmed through, one or two minutes.

Speciale Italia Caffe

One of my favourite chocolate bars is the Ecuador bar from the Italian Chocolatier Speciale Italia srl. This one, the fourth I have tried, a Spicy Chocolate with a cacao content of 68%, contains coffee as a flavouring (I have seen both ground coffee and espresso offered from Speciale Italia; no doubt they use their own brands in this chocolate bar). The ingredient listing is good, just cocoa paste, sugar, low fat cocoa powder, cocoa butter, coffee, instant coffee and soy lecithin (as an emulsifying agent).

How does it taste? Quite good, the underlying coffee is interesting and enhances the flavour of the chocolate. Notice, too, the plastic bag, very different than many chocolatiers, who normally use foil. I liked this almost as much as the Ecuador bar. I would definitely buy this again.

Manner Haselnuss-Mignon

The Vienna Austrian company Manner produces a number of baked goods, their line of wafers are seen in many European delicatessens. This one is a chocolate coated hazelnut wafer (though hazelnuts really are a small portion of the whole, there is only 4% in the cream between the wafers).

The chocolate coating accounts for 30% of the ingredient.

I liked the small individual wafers, though I thought that the chocolate flavour overwhelmed the faint hazelnut taste. These are fairly sweet, too. If I were to try this brand again, I would think twice before selecting this particular offering.

Kaoka Ecuador Organic Dark Chocolate

Given that the origin of the cocoa beans of this chocolate bar is Ecuador, you can see that I was looking forward to this, having liked most of the chocolate that is made from cacao from there. Kaoka is a small French chocolatier whose Bio Equitable promise means that they pursue a close partnership with cocoa producers, with the intention of working towards a sustainable relationship that includes economic and social benefits (similar to many Fair Trade chocolate companies). The cacao content is high, at 80%. The ingredient listing is fairly good, organic cocoa mass, organic raw cane sugar, sunflower lecithin and organic vanilla essence (good, but perhaps it would be better without the lecithin and vanilla - I've become convinced that you don't really need those, but at least they are better than artificial ingredients).

How does it taste? Not bad, a fairly good chocolate, though I think that it would have done better at 70-75% cacao content, something seemed either too strong or out of whack for me to really enjoy it.

Pringles Select Cinnamon Sweet Potato Chips

Pringles is more known for its uniform wavy shaped stack of flavoured and formed potato chips, this new line of theirs has lost the wavy shape, and taken on new flavours, and ingredients. I was intrigued by this one, enough to buy it, even though I don't really like cinnamon, and was not swayed by their attempt to market sweet potatoes as a dessert, as it contained sweet potatoes rather than the more ubiquitous cousin, the potato (albeit, it does contain potatoes, just not as the main ingredient). It also contains cornmeal, oat flour, rice flour, sugar, oil and spices.

How does it taste? Not bad, very cinnamony, and I could hardly taste that it is sweet potato rather than potato, so I doubt that I will try this again.

Korean Potato Pancakes

This recipe called to make eight in total, we managed only five, I guess we made them too big or something. They did taste really good, the sesame oil gave them a quite different flavour than other potato pancakes I've eaten. Serve them with soy sauce only, or with a sauce made from the pancake sauce below.

Korean Potato Pancakes
Adapted from a recipe from Korean Cuisine
2 potatoes
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup carrots, finely shredded

Peel and finely grate potatoes; squeeze out water. Place 1 cup grated potatoes in a bowl with sesame oil and salt. Mix well and divide into 8 portions. Soak 1/2 cup of carrots; drain, then divide into 16 portions.

Heat 1 Tbsp oil; sprinkle one portion of 16-portion carrots into frying pan. Place one portion of grated potatoes on top and then add another portion of 16-portion carrots on top to form a "sandwich". Fry until both sides are golden brown. Add a little oil as needed when frying.

Pancake Sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tsp onion, minced
1 tsp green onion, minced
1 tsp red bell pepper, minced
1 tsp carrot, minced
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp red pepper powder
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds

Mix all ingredients in blender thoroughly.

I never even thought about it - Waste Cacao as BioFuel

I guess I never even thought about it, but the Chocolate Industry creates a lot of food waste every year, that mostly goes into landfills, though I hope I'm wrong, but why not convert this waste into something that can be used. That is exactly what one company is doing in England. North-western English company Ecotech is taking waste from the chocolate manufacturing process and turning it into ethanol, which can be then combined with vegetable oil to make BioFuel (see here for the full article). This BioFuel can be used in replacement of gasoline to power vehicles (though don't try this at home, you'll need to convert your System first to accept this alternate fuel source). The resulting exhaust, and your car, will smell more like vegetable oil than chocolate, unfortunately, but it's a great idea.

Doing a little digging, I came up with some very rough numbers. It requires about 300-600 cacao seeds (from 10 cacao pods) to produce 1 kilogram of cocoa paste. Couple that with a consumption of more than 3.1 million metric tonnes of cocoa (so 3.1 billion kilograms) worldwide per year (figure as of year 2000). That's an awful lot of food waste produced each year, and something that won't go away soon, as that amount of cocoa produces over 11 billion dollars (again year 2000 figures) in export revenue worldwide. Makes you think when you're enjoying your daily chocolate.

Green & Black's Celebrates the Extra Hour of Darkness

To celebrate the change of time on the 4th of November in the US, as we shift from Daylight Savings to Eastern Standard Time, and the gain of an extra hour of Darkness (the clocks change in the middle of the night, usually around 2 am), Green & Blacks USA wanted everyone (or at least the first 5000 to register) to experience the dark, cocoa-rich flavours of their Organic chocolate free. This promotion (of two 1.2 oz chocolate bars) is over now, and, unfortunately for me, available only to US citizens (there also seems to be promotions available for UK citizens on the UK website, that still leaves us Canadians out). They set up a special website Appreciate The Darkness to provide some information about their chocolate, and allow you to register for this event (and further ones, if you should wish to).

Jacques Grand Cru Chocolat Noir

The Belgian chocolatier Jacques teamed itself with one of the premiere makers of chocolate for professionals, Callebaut to produce these Grand Cru (or highest quality) chocolate bars. This bar is their Dark Chocolate Bar, and features 72% cacao content, not of single origin, with no added vegetable fats (likely responding to the recent move in America to allow companies to replace cocoa butter with other fats and still call the product chocolate, of which practice I highly disapprove). The ingredient listing is good, just cocoa paste, sugar, cocoa butter, soya lecithin and vanillin (though the last two should really be either omitted or replaced with something better).

How does it taste? Pretty good, dark and chocolatey, it melts in your mouth well, smells fruity and cocoa-y, snaps cleanly and sharply, and looks very smooth and dark, overall a very good bar. I would eat this bar again.

Larabar Pistachio

Having tried, and liked, Humm Food's Cherry Pie version of its fruit and nut bar, I got another sample, this one of the Pistachio flavour.

This one again is flavourful, sweet and chewy, quite good for a raw food bar. The ingredients are dates, pistachios and cashews.