I spotted Flyer Gold Plane No. 2 (Swiss dark chocolate with caramel) at the checkout counter of the Whole Foods Market (in Providence) and was immediately drawn to the packaging. The combination of a lovely vintage plane image, reminiscent of Pan Am graphics, and the words rich dark chocolate with caramel was too much to pass up.

The chocolate exterior was smooth and creamy and the caramel was absolutely lush and thick. I could taste the butter and sugar in the caramel, as well as the rich, nutty flavor that comes from bringing the caramel just to the point before it burns. This really is more of a high-end bon bon, the type you might find in a French candy boutique, rather than a plain bar. That said, don’t let the 270 calories per bar scare you. It’s so rich a few bites will easily satisfy the sweetest of sweet tooths.

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I’ll be at BlogHer on Friday and Saturday. If you’re attending say hi or send me a note via twitter: offbeat_eating.

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Jamie Oliver gets his game on
The British chef teams with Atari for What’s Cooking? a new game for Nintendo DS to be released in time for Christmas 2008. The game walks players through cooking scenarios including, shopping, chopping and plating. Players can bring the game into the kitchen to try their hand at the 100 recipes included. And with features such as an interactive shopping list (it saves ingredients from recipes, organizes them by food type, and also allows you to add other items to the list using keypad or text recognition), even my non-cooking boyfriend says, “wow a game that’s actually useful and could potentially get Kristin out of the grocery store in under an hour!”

Starbucks renames the smoothie

Another difficult to pronounce word–Vivanno™–is nothing more than a fruit smoothy with protein and fiber powder added. And according to Serious Eats, they taste awful.

Even more cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs
There’s a new flavor out today: chocolate and vanilla combo. Hopefully this will satisfy all the kids in the house.

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My mind works in strange ways. After reading today’s Best Ice Cream in New England post on Serious Eats (and a user comment about frozen custard) I immediately thought about the frozen custard of my hometown, Rochester NY. Spending the first 18 years of my life in Rochester, I ate plenty chocolate frozen custard from Abbott’s .

Even now when I go home to visit there’s only one flavor for me–chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. But because of the softer consistency, I always eat it out of cup and not a cone. It just melts too fast, especially in the hot, humid summers of upstate New York. For those of you who have never tasted custard, it’s creamier and denser than ice cream with an almost velvet texture. Also, it’s not served straight from the machine in the manner of soft serve. Rather the custard continuously flows out of the machine and is deposited into a holding bowl, and is then scooped into your cone or dish. By the time it hits your tongue it’s slightly warmer than your average ice cream, meaning you taste more of the flavor.

Now that I’m even hungrier than when I started this post, my mind wanders to another Rochester tradition–Zweigle’s white hot dogs. Made with beef, pork and veal it has the flavor of a mild bratwurst combined with the fine texture of a hot dog. My favorite is the natural casing white hot dog. When cooked on the grill the skin splits slightly and you experience a crisp ‘snap’ when you bite into it.

There are other Rochester foods that I crave from time to time. But I’ll wait and blog about those next time I return for a visit.

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I had never heard of a quahog (KO-hog) until I moved to Providence in 2001, but quickly discovered that this large clam was on quite a few menus across the state.

(Read the article)

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Toaster pastry experiment #2, still not what I’m looking for. These turned out like mini fruit pies and not pop tarts. The crust is perfectly flaky and quite tasty, but too flaky and brittle for this purpose. Also, too much dough-to-filling ratio. And the dough puffed too high, much like in the baking of an apple pie.

I used a pate sucre dough recipe and strawberry jam–3″ biscuit cutter-too small.

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I spent last weekend dining out on Clement Street: curry eggplant from Burma Superstar, and the special of the night, pork spare ribs from Q.

We hit Burma Superstar as soon as it opened at 5pm to avoid the dreaded long line, but the strict time planning was soo worth it. The eggplant was spicy, but not too hot. I took home the extras, but nibbled on the leftovers all night long. Lance had the sesame chicken, which was slightly too sweet for me, but perfectly lightly battered and not oily or sticky.

I had planned to have the mac & cheese at Q, but when I saw pork spareribs as the special for the night, I couldn’t resist–I’ve been on a pork kick lately. While the ribs were good, they weren’t the very best I’ve ever had–they were tender, but not quite as soft as I’d like. But I did like the fact that the bbq sauce was tangy & smoky and not overly sweet.  The garlic fries are tasty too, and quite filling.

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The Broccoli Rabe was on sale and since I’ve been hitting the doughnuts pretty hard, figured it was time to add more greens into the diet.

- Half 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes.
- Boil 1 pound whole wheat pasta for 6-8 minutes in salted, boiling water. Remove when still al dente.
- Blanche greens for about 1 min in boiling water. Shock in cold water, drain, set aside.
- In frying pan sauté 2 cloves garlic and ½ white onion in about ¼ cup olive oil until translucent. Add 1 cup chicken or veggie stock to pan. Let cook about 1 minute until stock is heated. Then add pasta, 1 tsp butter and salt and pepper to taste.
- Toss in broccoli rabe and cook for another minute or two.
- Turn off heat, add tomatoes and about ¼ cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese.

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Playing around with a recipe for chocolate/Nutella toaster pastries, this one was too rich and too sweet. This is the recipe, mostly notes so I can change sugar/cocoa amounts.
1 1/4 c flour
1/2 c + 1 Tbl butter
1/3 c cocoa powder
1/3 c granulated sugar
2 - 3 Tbls ice water
Nutella
450 degrees  7-8 minutes

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