A couple of weeks ago Michael, a good friend from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico called to tell me that he was planning a visit to Chicago. He was coming in as a consultant to help generate ideas revolving around food that conjures ‘delight’. We talked briefly about some of the things that I found delightful with my interaction with food and he asked me what was the most delightful meal that I’d ever eaten. Being a chef definitely made the answer to that question one of the most challenging that I’ve ever encountered.
That's because as a chef, you sometimes tend to overthink and over-analyze the entire notion of food. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to answer the question honestly, simply and true to myself, with no pretensions.
My most basic food delight is nothing more than having friends seated at my dinner table and cooking a memorable meal for them. Nothing gives me more pleasure or delights me more! But that’s not necessarily food, that’s more the delight of company and sharing food with friends.
So I had to dig deep! Was it the baby abalone appetizer or maybe the birds nest soup that I had in China a few years ago that completely blew my mind? Or was it the recreation of an Italian Renaissance meal that I was extremely lucky and grateful to experience at a castle in Bergamo, Italy? My favorite dish from that meal were these tiny, perfectly round, pillowy raviolis that were filled with braised oxtail, placed on a small pool of oxtail consommé. I could have also included the amazing meal I experienced at the restaurant El Ideas a few years ago, where every dish that was presented to the table was jaw dropping!
Just recently it was probably every dish that was served at The Chopping Blok's special 20th anniversary dinner prepared by Owner/Chef Shelley Young and Chef Mario Scordato. Now that was definitely a night of food “delight”, including this Chargrilled Lobster with Tomato. You can view images of all of the food from this special dinner on The Chopping Block's Facebook page.
So you see what I’m up against when confronted with that question of “delight”? And I haven’t even touched upon my grandmother’s chocolate ream pie, or her hand-cranked vanilla ice cream, her teacakes and even her caramel cake. There’s also my mother’s macaroni and cheese and buttermilk pie, as well as my Aunt Gloria’s pot roast. Whew, the list can honestly go on and on!
The thing that I love most about the memorable food delights that I've mentioned, is the fact that they’re the food memories that most of us experience. The food delights of our childhood are usually the ones that stand out most in our memories and those I cherish more than others.
As most of my friends, family and co-workers know, (probably even strangers I meet on the street), I have a huge love for the city of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. We travel there yearly and stay for a month or so at a time. I enjoy the most delicious, delightful meals whenever I visit and several of those meals have become a part of my blog about my travels as a chef in San Miguel. But even more than most of the outstanding meals I've had there, I must admit that what delights me over and over again are Twizzlers, Cheddar Cheese-flavored Pringles and Peanut M&M’s. Yep, I said Twizzlers, Pringles and Peanut M&M’s!
I’m a creature of habit when I travel to San Miguel. After arriving, we always drop off the luggage at the home we rent and then head out to the neighborhood store to buy a few staples, mainly coffee and half and half for the morning coffee ritual. Next it’s off to my favorite ‘panaderia’ for some Mexican breads and ‘pan dulce’ to go with the next morning’s coffee. Lastly for dinner that night it’s always dinner at the same restaurant for a meal of ‘Chiles en Nogada’.
But it’s what happens at the airport in Chicago before the flight takes off to San Miguel that admittedly makes me the happiest. I always stop at one of the kiosks at the airport and buy some magazines but in all honesty, it's the snacks that I’m zeroing in on! About a half hour into the flight, I open the bag of Twizzlers and M&M’s and pop open the can of Pringles. I eat one Twizzler, a couple of M&M’s and finish it all off with a couple of Pringles while trying to hide it from other passengers. Here I am this adult man, delighting in the sweet and salty of these snack foods and there isn’t a whole grain or a healthy ingredient in any of them. I never finish eating my secretive snacks on the flight and so for my entire stay in San Miguel, I end up treating myself to a single twizzler, two to three peanut M&M’s and a few Pringles everyday, usually under the cover and darkness of night. Sometimes I do run out of Pringles, but the ‘Farmacia’ down the street always carries the exact ones I’m looking for. They’re labeled “Sabor a Queso”, which makes them all the more delightful to eat.
It occurred to me when Michael was here visiting from San Miguel, why this snack food combo was such a huge delight for me. These snacks and the way I was eating them all tied into my childhood and the way I ate snacks back as a kid. Full disclosure: one of my greatest treats as a freshman in high school was going on my lunch break and bypassing the school cafeteria and going instead to the neighborhood corner grocery store. I would buy a bag of Ruffles BBQ potato chips, a package of Hostess snack cupcakes, preferably orange flavored, and a fruit punch soda. I've always loved mixing up super sweet, salty, crunchy and fizzy!
This flavor and texture combination plays out in my food today, especially my desserts. I recently discovered a recipe for chocolate panna cotta and I decided to tweak the recipe and make it my own. I came up with Mexican Chocolate Panna Cotta with a spicy pepita, (pumpkin seed) brittle. I prepared it for my friend Michael from Mexico in hope that he would find it as delightful to eat as delightful as it was for me to prepare it.
Ingredients For Panna Cotta
2 teaspoons unflavored powdered gelatin or two gelatin sheets
1 cup of half and half
1 ¾ cups whole milk
½ cup sugar
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate chopped
2 ounces Mexican Chocolate finely chopped (I prefer Ibarra brand)
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
Vegetable oil for lightly brushing the ramekins
Ingredients for Spiced Pepita Brittle
¾ cup salted and roasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon chili ancho powder
⅛ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
8 scrapings of fresh nutmeg or 1/8 of a teaspoon of ground
¾ cup sugar
1/3 cup water
½ tablespoon of butter
1. In a small bowl, sprinkle the powdered gelatin over ¼ cup of the milk and let stand for 5 minutes until the gelatin has softened. Meanwhile in a medium saucepan, combine the cup of Half and Half and the 1¾ cup of whole milk with the ½ cup of sugar and the salt stir to dissolve the sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Remove the milk off the heat and whisk in the chopped chocolate and vanilla extract until chocolate has melted completely. The chocolate mixture will look a bit grainy looking, because of the ingredients of the Mexican Chocolate, but most of that eventually will be strained out. Whisk in the softened gelatin mixture until completely dissolved. Strain the panna cotta mixture into a large measuring cup.
2. Lightly brush six ½ cup ramekins with vegetable oil and set them on a baking sheet.
3. Carefully fill the ramekins with the panna cotta mixture and refrigerate them for 2-3 hours, until the panna cottas are firm.
4. Meanwhile, line a baking sheet pan with a silicone mat or lightly oiled parchment paper, (I prefer a Silpat). In a small bowl, toss together the pepitas, cinnamon, chili powder, cayenne and nutmeg.
5. In a medium saucepan, combine the ¾ cup of sugar with the ⅓ cup of water and cook over high heat, swirling the pan gently, until a medium amber-colored caramel forms, which should take about 5-6 minutes. Remove from the heat and immediately swirl in the butter and spiced pepitas. Pour the brittle onto the prepared baking sheet and spread out into a very thin layer. The caramel sauce hardens very quickly and is very hot, so do not touch the caramel sauce with your fingers and work as quickly as possible to spread before it hardens. Let the caramel and pepita mixture harden completely about 30 minutes or longer, then crack into shards.
6. Once the panna cottas are set and you’re ready to serve them, run a knife around the panna cottas and invert onto plates. Garnish with the shards of brittle.
*As a note, I've made this recipe twice and one time during the process of spreading the caramel and pepitas, the mixture didn’t spread as thinly as I liked. My solution was to heat my oven to 400 degrees and place the sheet pan with the caramel and pepita mixture in the hot oven, checking it every 2-3 minutes to make sure it was spreading into a thin layer. If necessary, I would also remove the sheet pan and gently sway the pan around back and forth to help thin out the caramel and pepita mixture. Here's how it looked when I took it out of the oven.
Since the question was first posed to me, I've asked a few friends about their food “delights”. It’s astounding all the answers I got and how different and distinct their responses were. I thought their answers at times were so much more interesting than what my answers were. Their answers didn’t seem to need a lot of thought; they were at times very quick with the response, often times the answer was very nostalgic and the answers would often lead to a smile or a laugh, and honestly, that’s pretty delightful.
So “what is your food “delight”? Share them with me in the comments!
If you need helping finding your food "delight" explore the world of cooking with a hands-on cooking class at The Chopping Block. From pastries to grilling to butchery to pasta, we have something for everyone.