My Weekend in Sacramento - Friday

After arriving in Sacramento, Candace picked me up from the airport and we went to Hot Italian (www.hotitalian.net) and got these lovely little concoctions of gelato drenched with hot espresso. The first sensation was that the espresso made it too hot to eat. But that quickly passed as I took a spoonful of the gelato with a puddle of the espresso. So good. The last few sips were a mixture of espresso and melted gelato. It was the perfect afternoon pick-me-up.

After some relaxing and catching up, we met C’s husband and family for dinner at Paragary’s (http://www.paragarys.com/go/prg/locations/paragarys-bar-oven/), a local fixture in Sac. Candace and I both started with a glass of Malbec, a nice full-bodied red wine. I don’t remember much else about this wine, as it was eclipsed by the next selection.

Before the next wine we all shared three appetizers:
--Warm herbed goat cheese with pistachios, roasted pears, red wine syrup, and crostini
--Scampi - gulf prawns, tomato, white wine, shallot, garlic, butter, virgin olive oil, and grilled bread
--Brushetta - grilled garlic rubbed bread, mashed chickpeas, pancetta, asparagus, and Parmesean

I didn’t try the brushetta, but the goat cheese was amazing. The combination of flavors was something I wasn’t expecting. The scampi was very good, with large shrimps and grilled bread. The scampi sauce was incredible! After the shrimp was gone, all the bread on the table went into that bowl. Yum!

C’s dad had brought a bottle of wine for the main course: a 2002 Harlan Matriarch. While the earlier Malbec was a nice glass of wine, the Matriarch was in an entirely different class. It was full and luscious and complex and so many other things that I should have written down at the time.

And it went perfectly with my entrée: Grilled Hanger steak with Potato-leek gratin, Bloomsdale spinach, Trumpet mushrooms, and red wine sauce. The steak was tender and flavorful, the gratin creamy and delicious, and the spinach, mushrooms, and sauce complimented all of the other flavors brilliantly.

Although we were all stuffed, no one could resist dessert. I chose the Warm Valrhona Chocolate Cake with Espresso ice cream and chocolate sauce. What can I say? It was incredible, delicious, intense, and all of the yummy adjectives currently floating through your mind.

A night cap after we returned home, and the evening was complete.

The rest of my weekend soon…

Filled Chocolates - the first experiment

This weekend I spent a wonderful weekend with my friend Candace in Sacramento. I wanted to bring something yummy for her and also to experiment with chocolates. So I made my first molded chocolates.

They’re dark chocolate ganache on the inside and covered with semi-sweet chocolate. They were a good first try, and they were pretty tasty, but the tempering didn’t work out perfectly. I’ll have to play around a bit on the next batch.

Welcome to my spot!

Come in, grab a seat, and hang awhile. Here, on my first blog, I will share my passion for my two favorite subjects: chocolate and motorcycles. I am a baker, amateur chocolatier, and relatively new motorcycle rider (3+ years). My baby is my 2006 Kawasaki Ninja 650. It's a good bike and loads of fun.

My favorite dessert? Anything with chocolate, of course! For baking I prefer Guittard, but it's generally hard to find locally (I usually have to buy it on-line), so I end up using Ghirardelli a lot (not a bad second choice). I've been baking and making candy since I was a kid and have been making a little money selling my baked goods for about 1.5 years. Recently I've been experimenting with chocolate candy, both truffles and molded chocolates. I still have lots more experimenting to do...

See you soon.