Sonoma Chocolate: Locals do it best
Local chocolate makers make Sonoma County an even sweeter place
Local chocolate makers make Sonoma County an even sweeter place
Affordable chocolates for Valentines day range from awesome to awful. We rank the best to worst valentine chocolate for 2016.
Diminutive chocolate bonbons that pack a flavorful punch.
Quetzacoatl, the Aztec god of cacao, wants to smash your Hershey bar with his mighty fist.
I don't know about you, but I'm not above whetting my wife's more carnal appetites with enough wine and chocolate to impair her better judgment. I'm sure that's all very un-PC and certainly, as the father of young daughters, I live in mortal fear of the effects of alcohol on sensibility; but my wife's a big girl, and above all, she knows how I think, so I'm pretty sure our pending Valentine's Date - a savory symphony of handcrafted chocolate and wine at J Winery - will be consensual.
Sometimes, despite all the planning, the wearing-thin of cookbook pages, the carpal-tunnel-clicking through epicurious, I'll find out the hard way that it's what I didn't plan for that determines whether my food ultimately succeeds, or merely sucks. Typically, I'm undone by good, old fashioned pilot error; typically, but not always, because sometimes it's the black swan crapping on my mise, and it's just such an exception to the rule that inspired this edition of Meat, Braise, Love: A slow braise of shoulder of local lamb with bitter chocolate, rosemary, and bad-ass Syrah.
Producing a braise in your own kitchen is a bit like making porn in your own bed: It rewards practice, because when you get it just right, it's the best you'll ever see, and all the times you don't, it's still a very long way from sucking. Similarly, there is just so much to love about the braise: Purely from a gastronomic perspective, no other cooking technique so easily employed by the home cook comes close to creating the depth and concentration of flavor than does the properly executed braise.
A touch of salt adds flavor to these Wine Country truffles
Romantic treats for Valentine's Day from the bounty of the county