Thursday, January 10, 2008
Not much time to cook last night. Diana decided to have a bowl of cereal with cold milk. I was not crazy about the idea. Instead I did a quick dinner of grilled cheese and a cup of hot chocolate.
The sandwich is of course very simple. I used home baked whole wheat potato bread. This bread is another fantastic recipe from “Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor“. It contains no white flour at all and like most recipes in the book, is made using a soaker (whole wheat flour and potato water mixed and allowed to sit overnight) and a starter (same like soaker, but with yeast and is refrigerated) to give it lots of flavor and lift. The potato water and mashed potato make this incredibly soft and tender almost like white bread. So, spread some Dijon mustard on the sliced bread, top it with sharp white cheddar and gently toast it in a little olive oil until the cheese melts.
The hot chocolate recipe I’ve been using, unless I’m in a real rush, is from “Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme” and he calls it Caramelized Cinnamon Hot Chocolate. Caramelize some sugar with a stick of cinnamon till it gets nice and mahogany colored. Add some boiling milk -be slow, gentle and CAREFUL from all the sizzling- and a little water, mix to melt the caramel. Lastly add some melted bittersweet chocolate, remove the cinnamon and I use a hand blender to thoroughly mix and foam up the beverage. Served piping hot, this is our favorite hot chocolate drink by far. It is so satisfying on it’s own or with a salty accompaniment like crackers or a grilled cheddar cheese sandwich.
Do you like this mug? I sure do. It’s my latest and one of my favorite mugs. Picked it up along with three other pots on our latest trip to Colombia in December. They are handmade from clay and only in one place, a small town called La Chamba. You can Google them and buy them online, but they are way cheaper to buy in their home country. Wanna see the rest of them? Sure you do. Here.
