Carolyn Tillie

Raclette. Cold and in your fridge, you will SWEAR something died in there. Slightly melted on a slice of baguette toast, fresh from the oven, served with chilled Caymus Conundrum and a few cornichons, heaven.

Odd eating utensils and whatnots from bygone days... I have numerous Absinthe spoons and glasses, oyster spoons and oyster plates, and marrow spoons. I am also proud of an antique foie-gras funnel (yes, that machine they force feed the ducks and geese with) which hangs on my kitchen wall. The Victorians did such lovely work in silver for their various eatings... strawberry forks, bon-bon servers, bread tongs, asparagus and sliced-cucumber servers, et al. I love all those old things and buy most of them from eBay. I just adore serving a dish that requires a special implement, especially osso-buco! I would love to own a duck press, but the CHEAPEST one I could find was $999.00 (excluding shipping!).

Completely agree with most of the other posters -- a mediocre product made "fun" by the mere fact that you, Mr. or Ms. Consumer, get control over how your consumable is created and you get the *satisfaction* of having watched your sludge mushed about beforehand. Yuck. BTW, my sisters love it -- it think they are nuts.

For a ruby port, try a combination of dark chocolate with pears. I stumbled on this several years ago when I was preparing a cheese plate (soft, semi-sweet cheeses like Brie can work well with port). I assembled the cheese plate and decided to also cut up a Bosc pear. As the evening wore on, the pear was left and I brought out some dense, dark chocolate (Valhrona). The combination of dark, bittersweet chocolate, Bosc pear, and port was amazing. I have since gone on to experiment with the pairing by making miniature flourless chocolate cakes with a pear compote and a port-wine reduction glaze. Astonishing!

Hey, both of you guys! Great help... I'll be experimenting this weekend because what I ultimately want to end up with (and I know how bizarre this sounds...) is that the molten dark chocolate center will have an essence of truffle to it -- I'll try it with a bit of oil and powder to see if either work. I wanted the contrast of a white-chocolate cake to encase it. I'll provide recipes if I think they are successful!

Here's the quandry... I saw on one of those Discovery Channel cooking shows, some pastry chef made ice cubes of one flavor and then pushed them into the batter of another flavor. When baked, the outer batter firmed up but the inner "ice cube" became molten. I have perused every cookbook and website to no avail. I HAVE found those recipes where the batter is slightly baked and the center is left liquid. Since I want a different flavor in the middle, this won't work. What I am envisioning is a White Chocolate exterior that will ooze Dark Chocolate when pierced.. Any help most graciously appreciated!