Moments and Epiphany in my culinary adventure

2006-06-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

As I'm reading Anthony Boudain's Kitchen Confidential, it got me to thinking about my own adventures and discoveries in food.
For Anthony, his moment was his first taste of "Vichyssoise" for me I would say the Barn Door. I know what you are thinking some barnyard mis-adventure but that's not the case. When I was young and growing up we rarely went out to "fancy places" to eat. My brother and I had our birthdays in the same month, so every year when September would roll around we went to have our "steak and cake" at a fancy restaurant called the Barn Door. The steaks were always impeccable, smothered in garlic butter, ahhh that was my first taste of "the good life".
The second moment came later in life when I was about 20. I had taken a job as a traveling photographer for Wal-mart stores all over the southwest, this was before wally world had the 24 hr. behemoths they are now. The first couple of weeks I was to have a trainer to show me the ropes. So Larry takes me to this little mom and pop cafe in a little town and we sit down to eat. We discuss the issues of photography, what we had done, etc. The hamburger finally comes and I start to pour the ketchup out, He says wait a minute the ketchup is spoiled. I thought how could he possibly know that, it was the "bubbles". At the time I wasn't aware that ketchup could go bad, but I guess it can. He also gave me far warning on menu items not to order outside the state of Texas. Those items were: Chicken Fried Steak, chili and Tex-Mex food. Being the foolish young man I was sometimes I didn't follow his advice, thus I had the most horrible meal of MY LIFE!
It was a Truckstop America restaurant in Gallup, NM on a Monday afternoon sometime in the latter part of the year of 1989. I thought I would be "safe" in ordering the chicken fried steak and I WAS WRONG. This horrid overdone slab of over calcified shoeleather arrived at my table with brown gravy. Now being that I was young and starving I thought I could just live with it and eat. That was before I tasted the pillar of salt that lay before me on the plate. The "flavor" of the dish was salt, that not even a coke could wash the flavor of salt from your mouth. I got up, paid for the uneateble monstrosity and learned my lesson.

(more to come)

Tasting Success

2006-06-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

I made a small batch of dark coins topped with crushed pink pepper corns, espresso beans, caramelized cocoa nibs and petals from eatable flowers. The chocolate I used was sourced from a company called Coco-Vic in Spain, I have been impressed with its consistant quality in the final products. The most popular flavor was the pink peppercorn, some were unsure about eating the flower pedal ones (unaware that you can actually eat some flowers).

New Blog to throw ideas out in the world and see what happens.

2006-05-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

I dunno what Im going to do with this thing, sometimes I find it hard to write things out. I plan on using the blog for ideas for a Chocolate/Coffee/Cocoa shop I want to open. Will secrets be revealed? We shall see.

Bleu Chocolate

Moments and Epiphany in my culinary adventure

Tasting Success

New Blog to throw ideas out in the world and see what happens.