Ling

I'm still finishing Abra's cookies (she gave me a lovely tin of them!) and one of my students gave me a box of Girl Guide cookies today so I had a few of those too.

Thanks for that. As one of the EG members targeted in her review, all I can say is that I'm really upset at the way I was portrayed. "Aspiring pastry chef"? Hardly. I've been asked both in person and on EG whether I plan on working in the professional kitchen, and my answer is always that I'm honoured to help out, but that I do pastries for fun. "Alluring heartbreaker"? I date casually, yes. But unless Alex Gill has contacted the five or six guys I've dated in the past year and they all confess to having their hearts stomped on, I don't think I live up to that description. There are a lot of people who are similarly upset by her characterization of me, and letters are being sent to the editor.

At Fran's, I had the caramel ice-cream, the chocolate ice-cream, and the raspberry cassis sorbet. The caramel ice-cream was great with a bit of bitterness from the "burnt" flavour. I also had some of the dark chocolate grey salted caramels and the milk chocolate smoked salt caramels, which I'm sure you know they're famous for. I think your Chocolate Soiree spoiled me though...I thought they were a good candy, but definitely not great or excellent. I'm guessing my own relatively high standards when it comes to chocolate figures into that assessment too.

The reservations I posted above have been dropped. Thanks.

I had a great time in Seattle yesterday. One day in Seattle I hit up: -Boat Street Cafe -Fran's Chocolates -Salumi -Union -an EG cocktail party -Monsoon -Mistral ...and had more dessert at The Barking Frog. That was pretty much 12+ hours of constant eating. Tonight, I had dinner at Hu Nan. My date ordered, since his family is from that area of China and he's familiar with the cuisine. We had the special, which was a spicy chicken dish with a ton of Szechuan peppercorns, tilapia with a full blanket of diced chili (extremely spicy), and "la ro" which is a special type of bacon, cut into batons and stir-fried with leeks (although we got garlic chives in our dish). The fish was a bit too spicy for me, but I really loved the bacon dish and the chicken dish. Hu Nan gets the stamp of approval from my date too, but he was less impressed with the pork dish than I was (though he still enjoyed it.)

In my previous post, there's a shot of the unassembled Manjari chocolate bread pudding and apriocot coulis (along with some other chocolate treats) made by Pastry Chef Melissa Walpole from The Barking Frog in Seattle. I plated her dessert tonight. (I was supposed to use a ring mold, but I can't find my small one, so I used a snowflake cutter.) It was delicious--the bread pudding was very rich and not too sweet, and generously studded with cherries. The sauce was luscious. (She also made the chocolate cherry cups in the background, and I added some sour cherries I had hanging around and a few cocoa nibs.) Here are the cookies Abra made for me! She called them "Ling's Fling". They're ginger shortbread covered in black sesame ganache. DELICIOUS! And lastly, I got a twice-baked almond croissant today from the same guy who arranged that awesome dessert tasting for me yesterday. I'm a lucky girl.

I had the most incredible food-filled day in Seattle yesterday, thanks to the overwhelming hospitality of many Seattle EGs! I ate at Boat Street Cafe, Fran's, Union, littlemissfoodie's cocktail party (cutest hostess ever, btw!), Monsoon, Mistral, AND pastries from The Barking Frog! Here are the dessert pictures: First, Abra picked me up and she gave me a box of the most delicious candied ginger and black sesame ganache cookies! I will post a picture of those later. I shared this with Abra at Fran's. The burnt caramel ice-cream was my favourite of the three (that's a chocolate ice-cream and a raspberry cassis sorbet.) I also had a few of the dark chocolate caramels with grey salt and the milk chocolate caramels with smoked salt. (not pictured). My date arranged a special dessert flight for me at Mistral. I've never had anyone do that for me before. We drank some bubbly with the Chef, William, and the (incredibly talented) Pastry Chef, Stacy, as well. cannoli with Cara Cara orange sorbet this was incredible--it's a piece of frozen pineapple wrapped around pineapple sorbet. The pineapple was so thin and crisp when you bit into it, but then becomes chewy. Served with a tart rhubarb sorbet. banana fritters with maple ice-cream and caramel (incredibly light fritter, btw...wow!) hibiscus syrup, financier, and I'm blanking on the ice-cream....sorry Valrhona Manjari brownie, mousse, chocolate cremeux? (I drank so much last night and am not recalling the details as well as I should, but this was an amazing dessert) AND............. My date ALSO arranged for me to get this box of desserts from the pastry chef at The Barking Frog! There are tiny chocolate cherry cups, Nutella mousse cake (beautiful, thin shell on all the chocolate work, btw), and chocolate mousse cups. I ate one of everything in the box. SO GOOD! There's more...Valrhona bread pudding, chocolate sauce, and apricot coulis, I believe.

I want to know who Fresser's been sleeping with....

^Thanks for the info. I am such an inexperienced wine drinker that I don't think I'll be able to appreciate the pairings fully! (And $150US is a little steep for me). Also 10 glasses of wine, even at small tasting portions, would have me under the table midway through the meal! (My limit is usually 2 glasses with dinner.) What would you suggest me do--ask the sommelier to choose two glasses for me?

You could also partially oven-dry the pineapple if you're worried about it being too wet... I think the cake would look very nice if you decorated it with oven-dried pineapple rings!

I've seen that at Ikea too!

My friends like to eat here too. I've dropped by (ate dinner elsewhere) to meet up with them at Tomokasu and saw the food on the table--looked pretty decent for AYCE Japanese!

^That IS incredible, Aileen! I was wondering if anyone could tell me how much I can expect to pay for wine at FL. I am dining with three others, and I think we are all relatively inexperienced wine drinkers by EG standards. (Also, I'm on a budget and eating at Michael Mina the day before...I am guessing that FL does not have wines by the glass?)

Yes, we had Carr's water crackers, breadsticks, and fruit.

^Sorry, I haven't tried the dessert buffet. I've walked by it when I was heading into the lounge, and the offerings looked pretty standard, but not great. (It is a buffet after all.)

gfron1: That's a beautiful dessert! What are the orange lines? Megan: now I'm craving shortbread.... For dessert, I've been polishing off that plate of truffles Lord Balthazar sent me home with. I am rationing my favourites--the Amedei Porcelana and the dark chocolate squares from Pierre Marcolini.

I like Cacao Camino, but it's not in the same league as the chocolates you had at the party.

^No, it doesn't sound weird. I've had them before, but they were called "chicken knee" on the menu.

^I've never had chicken ankles before...I'm guessing they're the same as chicken knees?

I HAVE THREE DINNER RESERVATIONS FOR THE FRENCH LAUNDRY TO DROP ON OPEN TABLE. PM ME IF YOU'RE INTERESTED! The times are: -Friday, April 7th at 5:30 p.m. -Saturday, April 8th at 5:30 p.m. -Monday, April 10th at 5:30 p.m. All reservations are for 4 diners each. The first Egulleters to PM me with their email address will be given the reservation of their choice. I will then pass your email to my friend, who will make the time arrangements to drop the Open Table reservations so you can pick them up. (I'm going to check my PM box tomorrow.) btw--I'll be having dinner there on Sunday at 5:30p.m.

Black Pearl cake

Here I am going to show you how little I actually know about chocolate I heard someone say that the chocolate flower was Valrhona, and then I heard someone say that it was Porcelana...so I thought it must have been the Amedei Porcelana chocolate molded into the flower. So I didn't try it...I ate the squares of Amedei Porcelena and admired the beautiful flower from afar. *sigh*

They were fresh! Made from scratch! I would hurt my mom's feelings if I hadn't eaten them!

The Green & Blacks chocolate that I sampled was dark, I believe. Actually, I don't remember for certain if I liked it or not, now that I think about it...I could have confused it with something else, easily, given the sheer number of chocolates I ate! I agree about the Haas pastries. I've had stale/dry ones. I think you may have misread my original post though--the Sparkle cookies that they make NOW are very much like a chocolate-flavoured almond cookie, not the ones I make at home using their recipe. The one I bought from Sen5es a few years ago was AMAZING--soft texture, couldn't really taste the almond. The one I had 2 months ago was OK, nothing spectacular. I could taste the almond for sure. The ones at the party were very almond-y indeed! Vosges--I had 2 of their truffles. I think their packaging is beautiful, and the truffles are a cut above some of what we ate at the party, but they did not compare to the Marcolini and the GG ones from Montreal. The Black Pearl bar is great for a snacking chocolate. I haven't had the C. Elbows or Jacques Torres, but if someone will send me a box, I'll be glad to sample and tell you what I think!

^I dunno, CanadianBakin', you're going to have to let me EAT one of those lemon tarts before I tell you if I approve of them or not... j/k That tart looks great, as does everything else. The caramelized pecan biscotti looks perfect!