I went nuts last night: made spaghetti and meatballs (man, the meatball recipe from How To Cook Everything rocks mightily) with homemade spaghetti sauce (which the kids don’t eat, natch).
Then I went nuts and made candied orange peel. That didn’t turn out so well. Possibly I used the wrong kind of orange peel or didn’t scrap enough of the pith off. (Tried to get it all, didn’t always succeed.) But the result had a terrible orange taste. Tossed the whole thing. Will try again another time.
Then, denied candied orange peel, I made Stephanie Zonis’s recipe for hot chocolate. Oh baby. Oh yes, here it is, come to Mama. Nice, thick extremely chocolatey. I used a bar of Valrhona and half a bar of Green and Black’s Maya Gold (slightly orangey/spicey chocolate). Now, the recipe says it makes 2-3; don’t you believe it. This makes 4 easy, and I say this as someone who really, really likes chocolate. This isn’t so much “hot chocolate” as it is “drinkable pudding,” so be forewarned.
I didn’t use the food processor—I whipped out my chef’s knife and chopped the chocolate up. Seemed to work fine. I also didn’t use any sugar, because I like a darker, less sweet chocolate. I did add the vanilla though.
I took roughly half of this last night, pouring the other half into another cup (which I cooled down in a water bath, than stuck in the fridge with plastic wrap right against the surface of the chocolate, to avoid getting a skin). Half of this recipe was way too much; I would have been much better off taking a third or a fourth. Or, as I say to Darin at moments like this, “Get the syringe of adrenaline ready!”
It’s a shame I’m so tired – I totally want hot chocolate now but the place I want it from is a good 45 minutes by bus from here. They serve a hot chocolate with cardamom, chile, ginger, orange peel and vanilla that is out of this world. They serve it both thick (almost like hot chocolate syrup) or with steamed milk. Heaven!