No more Scharffen Berger factory tours.

Stupid Hershey's.



Robert Steinberg once came to Flour and gave a lecture/demo on tempering chocolate. It was very informative, but don't ask me to explain it to you. Still can't do it.



From the SF Chronicle:

Scharffen Berger, Schmidt plants to be closed

(01-27) 18:28 PST -- The Hershey Co. said Tuesday it plans to close Scharffen Berger's West Berkeley manufacturing plant as well as the San Francisco factory that makes Joseph Schmidt chocolates and consolidate production at other facilities.

Hershey, which in 2005 bought both Scharffen Berger, which specializes in premium dark chocolates, and trufflemaker Joseph Schmidt, will continue to produce those brands, but the chocolates will no longer be locally made.

Scharffen Berger was founded in 1996 by Robert Steinberg, a family-practice physician in San Francisco and Ukiah, along with a former patient, winemaker John Scharffenberger.

The pair experimented in Steinberg's kitchen, using everything from a mortar and pestle to a hair dryer to create their chocolate. Production started in a South San Francisco plant but was moved to the larger, 27,000-square-foot Berkeley factory in 2001.

"It was home grown. They really changed the way people regarded chocolate in this country," said Deborah Kwan, a public relations consultant for the company from the time it opened until 2003.

Steinberg died in September after a long battle with lymphoma. "I'm glad Robert is not alive to see this," Kwan said. "If the lymphoma hadn't taken him, this would have."

Clay Pot Pork with Sweet Potatoes

A pot luck favorite.


















Clay Pot Pork with Sweet Potatoes

Don't leave the pan while you're melting the sugar. It can go from perfect amber caramel to charcoal in about a minute. And doing that in a nonstick pan is dangerous, since the pan will be too dark for you to see the caramel changing color.

1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup chicken stock
1/3 cup Asian fish sauce
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tabelspoons freshly grated gingerroot
1 lb trimmed boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced


Cook sugar in a dry 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, without stirring, until it begins to melt. Continue to cook, swirling the pan if necessary, until sugar has melted into a deep amber caramel. Carefully add stock and fish sauce (Stand back! The caramel will harden and steam vigorously) and stir until caramel is dissolved.

Add onion, garlic, ginger, pork, and pepper. Bring to a simmer, then cover pan and reduce heat to low. Cook until very tender, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Add the sliced sweet potatoes during the last 15 minutes of cooking.

Serve with rice.

Snacks between Indiana & New Hampshire?

Loyal readers might be wondering when Roadsnacks will be on the road again, since she hasn't been posting anything terribly interesting lately.

We'll be going to Richmond, Indiana and Keene & Hanover, New Hampshire at the end of February. And yes, we will be going back here, if time allows.

If anyone out there knows of any good snacks between Indiana & NH, let me know!

Until then, watch this:

We were there a few years ago. I had the kolbassi sandwich, and yes, of course I finished mine.

Currently reading:

Anyone out there want to share their comments about this book?

Presidential Potatoes

From the Inauguration Luncheon menu:

Molasses Whipped Sweet Potatoes
3 lbs sweet potatoes, roasted & peeled
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup orange juice
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Mash all ingredients together.

Need more recipes? Check them out here.

Read all about Cristeta Comerford, the White House Exec Chef, here.

Yes, We Can.

I grew up near a small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania that didn't have a traffic light but had hitching posts for horses in the lone grocery store's parking lot (and this wasn't so long ago, people - it's not like I'm 80, you know).

The KKK once came through town and left copies of the Klansman (their newspaper) on people's lawns. We had one teacher in the school district who was African American. There were no other kids of color in my graduating class of 160.

A local minister once told me that I had a flat, funny-looking face, like I had run into a wall. And then he told me I should be proud of who I was. His daughter, whom I considered a friend, called me a chink on more than one occasion.

And then, today, we all got to experience this:












Does that make it all better? For me, for now, yes.

(Though if I ever run into Rev. Sollenberger again, I'm gonna give him a piece of my mind.)

Happy Inauguration!

And what makes this event even more exciting?

Ice cream!


















Oh, yes.

New Year Resolutions?

If one of your resolutions is to stop eating fast food, you might want to look at this blog.

I don't think its purpose is to turn you off of fast food (it's written quite well, actually), but some of the photos are naaarrr-sty.

So true

Courtesy of Cute Overload:

Hungry?

Here, have a snack.

Or make these.


Lemon Cheesecake Squares
(Click for recipe)

From Fine Cooking magazine, June 2007.








Loyal readers will recall an earlier mention of these particular lemon cheesecake bars back in '07, before I started posting recipes. These are super-simple. Give it a go!

On a totally unrelated note, my new favorite wasting-time website is this, which you will find amusing only if you have an Asian mother.

I miss Hawaii.

Sigh.

The return of recipe Wednesday

This isn't a recipe. More like assembly instructions. But you get the idea.

Loco Moco is a Japanese-style hamburger steak, covered in gravy, topped with eggs, and all served on top of rice. Wiki says it was first created in 1949 in Hilo. To make your very own loco moco, you will need:

hamburger - seasoned with pepper and more salt than you think is necessary, formed into a giant burger and fried

brown gravy - preferably made with sauteed onions, drippings, and thickened with roux

two eggs - fried to your specifications

steamed rice - usually white

Serve with a scoop of mac salad on the side.




















This is just what you need after a morning of surfing, especially if you are a very bad surfer and spent most of your time falling off of your board.

Well. Maybe that's just me.

Maui lessons learned

Lesson #1:
Don't trust online maps for directions. Roads aren't labeled, a lot of them have the same name, and directions will inevitably be wrong. We got completely lost going to Cafe 808 (4566 Lower Kula Rd., Kula), because there were at least four separate, unconnected roads that were all named Lower Kula Rd. I kid you not.

This is not really a problem, as long as you aren't in a hurry. All the roads are beautiful and probably lead to snacks. Or the beach. Or snacks at the beach.

















Lesson #2:
You never really have time to get hungry on Maui. If you hang out with us, that is.

I thought I was hungry, so I ordered the 808 Fried Rice plate (with 2 eggs and Portugese sausage).

Trish & I got the exact same thing. We should've split it. What were we thinking?




































Mike got a righteous mini veggie loco. Tofu burger and mushroom gravy, all salty and awesome.















Lesson #3:
I will always need more time at the beach, especially if it looks like this one.

The very last thing we did was snorkel in Wailea. There were two happy whales frolicking nearby.

And by "whales," I mean actual humpbacks, not our lardy selves after four days of binge eating.



















































Lesson #4:
I clearly need to spend more time in Hawaii.

Thank you, Maui! We'll miss you!

We are eating. And doing other things, too.

We are here!

One of our rental houses. Is large.

































Da Kitchen! Crazy good.


















































































Surfing in Kalama beach, near Kihei.































































Dinner at Val & Tony's. We were allegedly just eating leftovers from New Year's Eve, but there was an awful lot of food - and all of it reeeeeeaallly yummy. Hoh.







































Maui Specialty Chocolates. Many snacks were purchased.