Monday, June 07, 2010

Let's Start with Dessert

I did not learn how to turn on a stove until I was 22.

There, I said it.

It's not that I had something against cooking, in particular. I didn't know what to do with an iron, vacuum cleaner, washer or dryer either for the longest time. It took banishing myself to Stuttgart, Germany for 6 months for me to learn how to fend for myself. This lengthy period of ignorance (and ok, I'll be honest, bliss) is clearly not something to be proud of. What I am proud of is the fact that I learned and learned quickly. These days, I'm more than capable of providing myself with edible food, laundered clothes, and reasonably dust bunny-free digs. But I am still a far cry from Bree Van De Kamp.

What exactly am I getting at here? That ticking off #6: Master cooking up a gourmet 5-course meal is gonna be ... an interesting process. I can cook to a reasonable extent but you'd only call my cooking gourmet if you'd been hiking through the Appalachian Trail and subsisting on trail mix for 2 weeks.

Given my humble beginnings in the culinary world, I'm starting off this project with something I might actually pull off: dessert. I did actually learn to bake at a respectable age, and I've been known to put out a mean chocolate chocolate chip cookie (yes, I meant to type chocolate twice). And since chocolate has been such a cooperative baking buddy all these years, I've decided that the dessert for my 5-course gourmet meal should be ... *drumroll please*

Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Molten Chocolate Magic.

Oh yes, I did. I just threw JGV at you. Impressed? The truth is, the real reason I picked this dessert is because  The New York Times' Suzanne Lenzer had this to say about it, "All I can say is that even when the lamb has been a bit rare or the chicken a tad overcooked, if I serve this dessert, no one remembers dinner. All they remember are these outwardly humble, internally voluptuous, utterly delicious chocolate cakes."

Yes, I'm a sneaky one. It's also supposed to be unbelievably easy to make. Check out the recipe here, if you want proof.

I've enlisted my friend Mitch, who is a talented pastry chef, to help me make utterly delicious chocolate cakes this Sunday at our lovely friend Bads' apartment. It's my first time to join one of their baking sessions, so I'm pretty excited! They've done macaroons and Momofuku's crack pie in the past, so I'm sure my dessert of choice will be a piece of cake for Mitch (pun intended).

Now to hunt down some Valrhona ...

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