I usually leave making the sweet stuff to my girlfriend over at
MyFrostingAffair. Due to a recent complex chain of events (Figure 85.a), however, the attending I'm on service with this month ended up moving to an apartment down the hall. Of course, I invited her and her wife over for dinner. I was given an epic list of Cannot's: Ovolacto-vegetarians, but one doesn't like the taste of eggs (although as an ingredient, they're okay) and the other is pregnant, which nixed a
whole litany of foods. I ended up making a warm lentil salad and hand cut saffron papardelle (post coming soon) with oyster mushrooms, portabellos and asparagus. In a fit of Top Chef-esque culinary frenzy I decided that in the 1.5 hours I had left myself to cook everything, I would make a dessert.
I make a great, very rich, girlfriend-impressing, chocolate mousse. It's old school, with the only ingredients being good chocolate and eggs (making it lactose free):
Old-School Chocolate Mousse [note: tastes better out of the two]
(recipe adapted from GQ, of all places)
- 8 oz. high quality dark chocolate, somewhere between 55-75% works best.
- 6 eggs. Since these are kinda-sorta-raw, use the highest quality, freshest local organic eggs you can find (to minimize the risk of food-bourne illness).
- A pinch of kosher salt.
Start melting the chocolate in a double boiler. Avoid getting any water what-so-ever into the chocolate, at all costs. This will ruin it. Completely. While it's melting, seperate the egg whites from the yolks. Whip the whites and the salt into stiff peaks with a hand mixer. Once all the chocolate is melted, take a couple of spoonfuls of the chocolate and mix it into the yolk, then take the mixture and fold it back into the melted chocolate. This little extra step is called "
tempering" and it will prevent you from having chocolate scrambled eggs for dessert. Fold the chocolate & yolks into the fluffy whites. Spoon into bowls (or ramekins, if you have them) and chill for a few hours or overnight to let them set. Serve with homemade whipped cream and a sprinkle of salt on top.
The eggs in this recipe aren't technically 100% all the way cooked, so it was back to the drawing board for a killer dessert to impress my attending/neighbor. When my mom was diagnosed with Crohn's disease about 10 or 15 years ago, I had made her a dairy-free mousse, the recipe for which I had found in some PETA propaganda I received as part of a project for a highschool class called Problems in American Democracy. Yes, I know. I was taking a course called Problems in American Democracy in highschool. No, I did not wear a pocket protector, or tape in the middle of my glasses. I lost the recipe a long time ago, but it was easy enough to remember.
New-School Vegan Chocolate Mousse [the technically easier of the two: no tempering]
- 8 oz. high quality dark chocolate, 55-75% cocao
- One package of silken tofu
- (optional) 2 tbsp confectioner's sugar
- (optional) 1 1/2 tbsp garam masala, or to taste.
Melt the chocolate as directed above, again being extrordinarily careful not to get any water into the chocolate from the double boiler. In the meantime, blend the tofu into a smooth consistency. I found an immersion blender works really well, and gets a ton of air bubbles into the mousse (this makes it a little more comparable to the old-school version). If you're sweeting it with sugar, or elevating it with garam masala like I did, now is the time: Blend them into the tofu before mixing in the chocolate. When the chocolate is fully melted, mix it into the tofu. Pour into serving dishes and refrigerate. Serve with homemade whipcream to undo the vegan-ness, with a sprinkle of coarse salt on top.
There you go. Two great, straightforward recipes that will make you look like a kitchen champion. Make one, make the other, make both and have a taste test! My attending/neighbor loved the dinner, and I'm actually pretty excited to hang out again soon.... but maybe MyFrostingAffair and I will go to their house next time.
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