Turn To The Dark Side… Of Chocolate!

Today you get three recipes for the price of one! Dinner for our Day of Chocolate and Stockings turned out to be a very interesting affair. The snow had begun to fly again, so my parents went out to shovel to make sure our guests could still get home. They were outside. I was in the kitchen, working on dinner. I’m a nervous cook as it is, and when I have an audience of fairly good cooks, I tend to get even more nervous. Luckily, my audience decided to put me out of my misery and they helped. There really wasn’t too much they could do save set the table and prepare the salad. Most of the sauces and dressings had been prepared the day before. The reason I was nervous was because I was browning chicken and couldn’t do two or three things at once. Thank goodness I had help! The salad was quite good and very colorful. -11 oz. organic baby spinach -1 orange Serrano pepper, seeded, with rib removed and chopped finely -1.5 pints organic strawberries, washed and quartered -1 cup sliced almonds We actually chose a yellow pepper for more contrast in the colors of the salad. We left out the almonds as I’m not overly fond of any type of nut. The dressing is simple and quite tasty. -1/3 cup olive oil -1/3 cup walnut oil -1/3 cup red raspberry white balsamic vinegar -1/2 teaspoon pink Himalayan Salt -2 tablespoons chocolate extract Shake the dressing until well blended and creamy. Pour into the salad, toss, and serve. Having no pink Himalayan salt, I used sea salt instead. It still tasted fine. I’ve had issues with my grocery store’s selection of extracts. Every time I’ve gone hunting for an extract, I’ve had to dig behind the numerous vanillas and almonds to reach what I finally needed. I knew one of these days they would not have an extract I needed. Sure enough, there was no chocolate extract to be found. Keeping in family tradition, a substitute was found and that was dark chocolate liqueur. Yep! Alcohol. Not enough to make one tipsy, but still… It might be favorable to add just a smidgen more of the chocolate for taste. The dressing seemed to be slightly overpowered by the walnut oil and the red raspberry vinegar. The main course was unimaginatively called Chicken in Brown Sauce. The sauce was actually more like a Molé. This little recipe gives the taste buds quite a kick. Depending on your tastes, this can be made with more or less spice by adding or reducing the amount of ground cumin. -3 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts, split -2 tablespoons vegetable oil -15 oz. tomato sauce -1/2 cup Picante sauce -4 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder -1 teaspoon ground cumin -1 teaspoon oregano -1/2 teaspoon garlic salt -1 dash cloves -1 dash nutmeg -1 dash ground allspice Pound the chicken to 1/2” thick. Lightly brown in oil in a large skillet, about 2 minutes on each side. Drain off any fat. Combine remaining ingredients. Mix well. Pour over chicken in skillet. Bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Remove chicken to serving platter and keep warm. Cook and stir sauce until slightly thickened, about 3-5 minutes. Spoon sauce over chicken. Of course this recipe was changed slightly. My family and I are very partial to salsa and never buy Picante, so we used our salsa instead. Our first foray into making Chicken in Brown sauce (so we wouldn’t serve something icky to our guests) ended up slightly wrong. My mother was helping me make the sauce that day and had misread the amount of cocoa powder needed. She saw “tablespoon” instead of “teaspoon.” She was able to recover beautifully, but there was still extra chocolate in the sauce. I am never opposed to extra chocolate in anything, so the extra chocolate made it into the final batch. It tasted glorious! Also, the dashes of cloves, nutmeg and allspice. There was extra of each in the sauce. We added just a pinch more nutmeg, cloes and allspice which gave the sauce a little more taste. I did not remove the chicken from the sauce. Instead, I let the chicken stay in the pan with the sauce. It didn’t hurt the chicken any; it was still wonderfully juicy. The chicken was served over long grain and wild rice. My mother suggested that it might be good over noodles, too, but I have yet to try that. It’s a deceptively easy recipe and one that disappeared from the table quickly. There was also bread. I couldn’t help but keep with the chocolate theme was had going. A friend of mine gave me a lovely cookbook for Christmas: 1000 Chocolate Baking & Dessert Recipes. It’s really a wonderful cookbook, one I immediately sat down to read and began marking all the recipes I desperately wanted to try. One was Italian Chocolate Chip Bread. I was somewhat surprised when the bread turned out less like a soft bread and more like a soft biscotti. Still, it tasted really good! -1 teaspoon vegetable oil, for brushing -2 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting. -1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa -1 pinch of salt -1 tablespoon butter, sweet for preference, plus ½ teaspoon extra, melted, for brushing. -1 tablespoon superfine sugar -1/4 oz/7 grams active dry yeast -2/3 cup lukewarm water -1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips Brush a cookie sheet with half the oil. Sift the flour, unsweetened cocoa, and salt into a bowl. Add the butter and cut it into the flour mixture, then stir in the sugar and yeast. (The Kitchen Aid proved incredibly useful, yet again.) Gradually add the water, stirring well to mix. When the dough becomes too firm to stir with a spoon, gather it together with your hands Turn it out on to a lightly floured work counter and knead thoroughly until smooth and elastic. Knead the chocolate chips into the dough, distributing them throughout. (Of course I added a few more chocolate chips.) Form into a round loaf, then place on the cookie sheet, cover with oiled plastic wrap, and set aside in a warm place for 1½-2 hours until doubled in bulk. Preheat the oven to 425˚F. Discard the plastic wrap and bake the loaf in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 375˚F and bake for an additional 15 minutes. Transfer the loaf to a wire rack and brush with melted butter. Cover with a clean dishtowel until cooled. The day I baked the bread was a very cold day. Very cold. I was concerned the dough wouldn’t rise, so my mother and I agreed to turn the oven on to about 275˚F. We placed the dough on top of the stove, allowing the heat from the oven to rise past the dough. It seemed to work wonderfully!May The Chocolate Be With You!

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