Well, in our kitchen, Thanksgiving means one thing: making chocolates! We have been very industrious this past week, mixing cream and butter, melting chocolate, grinding spices and teas..all to make our bites of deliciousness. Mmmhmmm good!

Stay tuned!

Pistachio

I have long wanted to do a pistachio ganache. Not something that looks green and tastes vaguely pistachio-ish. No. Something that actually starts with real pistachios. A lot of real pistachios. Something similar to the Indian sweets that I’ve known since childhood. But with chocolate.

Now, a ganache is an emulsion of chocolate, fat, and liquid. Very often cream plays the role of both fat and liquid. This provides a convenient means of imparting flavors to ganache: simply steep whatever spices, teas, etc, in heated cream before adding it to the melted chocolate. This is the way I make most of my confections.

But pistachios don’t impart much flavor when handled this way. So I’ve been grinding the pistachios in the food processor, adding cream to ensure that the resulting mixture stays liquid. It requires nursing the food processor for several minutes, and frequent scraping down, but it does extract the flavor of the pistachios pretty well.

However, making ganache directly after grinding would leave uneven bits of pistachio inside each finished confection, which I want to avoid. I prefer ganaches to be smooth and luscious, not grainy.  So I add the step of pushing the pistachio+cream mixture through a fine sieve to homogenize the texture. The danger, though, is that if the grind of the pistachios is not fine enough, too much of it will get hung up in the sieve and not make it into the ganache, resulting in a weaker-flavored ganache. The key then is the fineness of the grind.  And grinding pistachios fine is not an easy task.

To help, this past week I tried soaking the pistachios in the cream for 2 hours before dumping them in the food processor. The resulting nut paste was much smoother than I’d ever been able to get before from my trusty Cuisinart. And when I pushed it through the sieve, much less of the pistachio got left behind. The ganache that resulted after I emulsified this sieved mixture with some 31% Guittard white chocolate was extremely smooth, with only the tiniest flecks of pistachio embedded within. The flavor was much more distinct too.

These hand-cut ganache squares got enrobed in dark chocolate. The ganache was pretty deep in the pan I used, yielding some pretty tall confections – I’d prefer that the pieces be a bit shorter. But otherwise, I’m really digging these. One step closer to perfection…..

Caramelized White

Caramelized white chocolate?  What on earth?  That’s what I thought when I first read this blog post from David Lebovitz, former pastry chef at Chez Panisse.  It was sent by a friend of a friend, and at first it looked a little too crazy.  You’re supposed to BAKE the white chocolate?  In the oven? Seriously? Everything I know knew about chocolate, especially about white chocolate, says you don’t want to heat it up past about 115ºF. Bad things are supposed to happen. We’re talking cacao armageddon, folks. I once overheated some dark chocolate in the microwave, and I had to dump the whole lot AND air out the kitchen. But David’s rave review gave me fortitude, and I dove in….

It’s a slow process – an hour in the oven at 250ºF, with repeated stirring. Baking at relatively low heat like this allows the sugar and milk solids in the white chocolate to caramelize while leaving the cocoa butter intact. So what results is a decadent mixture of cocoa butter and caramel. Come on, what’s not to like? When incorporated into ganache, the result is divine: nutty, creamy, and distinctly caramelly – this is a new species of chocolate altogether! I added just a touch of fleur de sel to offset the sweetness and add crunch, and enrobed these in dark chocolate (61%). YUM!

Finished Malabars

So here is the first of the new flavors:  Malabar.  Inspired by our recent trip to India, especially the South where we spent a good chunk of time.  It’s 2 ganache layers: one a curry milk chocolate ganache, the other a coconut white chocolate ganache.  The two layers are then enrobed in dark chocolate (61%).

I tried a 41% milk chocolate from Guittard in the curry ganache, and it works really really well.   The flavor of the whole piece is rich and sultry…the faint peppery notes from the curry powder melding seamlessly with the sweetness of the coconut.  It’s something you just HAVE to try……

We’ll be at the Bi-Rite Market, Pizzaiolo and Gioia- come show your support to earthquake victims.

100% of proceeds of sales of anandconfections products will be donated to Partners in Health.

Saturday, January 23, 2010, 10am – 2pm

Bi-Rite market: 3639 18th Street at Guererro, San Francisco

Gioia Pizzeria: 1586 Hopkins St, Berkeley

Pizzaiolo: 5008 Telegraph Ave, Oakland