Introduction to Chocolate (Temper, Temper)

They say chocolate is addictive, I say it simply tempts the glutton in a person. The class started with a silly 5-question quiz (which I scrambled to study for 5 minutes before, as I was absent yesterday), then a lecture about chocolate. The cacao tree, cocoa beans and nibs, which produce cocoa solids (like cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. Chocolate as we know it is mixed with sugar to make anywhere from semisweet (61% cocoa solids and butter) to unsweetened (99%) Mix in milk powder and you got milk chocolate. Being that chocolate has so much fat in it, if you were to add liquid milk, it would never solidify. We tasted everything form baking chocolate to white chocolate, which isn't actually chocolate, but cocoa butter mixed with sugar. It doesn't taste so much like chocolate as it does like fat.

The main activity of the day was making chocolate truffles, so named because they kind of look like the rare fungi of the same name. First step is to make the ganache. Simmer 1 part heavy cream with a shot of light corn syrup. (Weird to cook with this ingredient that I find synonymous with crappy industrial food, but it works to prevent sugar in the chocolate from crystallizing.) Add 2 parts chocolate and melt. Once melted, throw in some solid butter and stir. Keep stirring, occasionally putting over ice till it gets thick but not lumpy.

Put into a plastic pastry bag with a metal tip, squeeze out onto a sheetpan in the shape of small balls. This was a little bit tricky, piping out with the right twist of the wrist to get an orb-shape that doesn't have too much of a nipple.

Those were put on the speed-rack to get solid, and then we prepared chocolate to cover the ganache. To melt chocolate that will resolidify when brought to room temperature, it must be tempered. Over a hot water bath, chocolate is melted and monitored with a chocolate thermometer (a thermometer with every number on it for finer measurement) till it hits 115. It is then poured on a cold marble slab and moved around with bench-scrapers till it measures 85 degrees. Once cooled, it is placed back un the metal bowl and placed over the hot water till it reaches 91. It is now ready to be used to cover the ganaches. As it cools, the chocolate becomes as solid as it was before melting. Chef G said that this is usually done by a machine, rarely by hand -- many variables, room temp, humidity, air movement, can all randomly affect tempering.

We dipped the truffles in assorted nuts and cocoa powder, and I ended up eating enough to get buzzy and nauseous, to the point where I forgot to take pictures of the final product. It didn't help that the ones that Norbert and I made were extremely lumpy and misshapen, due to our chocolate-induced ADD.

ADDENDA:
All the sugar in the morning made me feel weird, woozy in the stomach. No meat or heavy proteins appealed to me in this state.

BREAKFAST: 5:30am, smoothie, hunger 4/5

AM TASTINGS: 8-12noon, chocolate pieces, chocolate ganache, melted chocolate, madelines, biscotti, chocolate covered madelines, chocolate covered biscotti, 1 bowl of chocolate, hunger 4/5 to 2/5

LUNCH: 2:15pm, braised wheatgluten sandwich, spinach dumplings, stick rice, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 3/5

DINNER: 8:30pm, falafel platter with hummus, baba, couscous, seltzer, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Still feeling woozy from this morning's sugar bomb.