Recently in Hot Chocolate Category

When I want a really quickie hot chocolate, I heat 1 percent milk in the microwave and squeeze in a very generous amount of Hershey's syrup. IMHO, better than the powdered packets or Ovaltine, which I've also tried.

They signal to the consumer that this is serious business by taking away all the choices that Starbucks is usually known (and mocked) for. It comes in one size (in a espresso-size cup) and there's no low-foam, decaf, no-fat or flavor shots (although that could have some potential, right?). The best thing about this was the texture, kind of chalky, like a high-cocoa-percentage chocolate. It fills your mouth in a really satisfying way. I like my cocoa less sweet, though, in most cases, and it was more milky than the two recipes I've tried at home.

I made the Cook's Illustrated version of hot cocoa, but I feel like I need to do it again, not because it didn't turn out well, but because I was missing a couple of ingredients so I made some substitutions. While some authors might approve of my tinkering, that's not really of the whole Cook's Illustrated spirit.

The Cook's Illustrated recipe called for Dutched cocoa and I used regular. After reading the Zingerman's description of the differences between the two (the dutching process smooths out the acidity of the cocoa and results in a less-strong flavor) I feel like maybe I'll like the natural cocoa powder better anyway. Only one way to find out.

I also omitted the shot of half-and-half the Cook's Illustrated takes at the end, only because I didn't have any. I liked what I ended up with, though. It's very similar in process to the recipe from Bittersweet and the results are about the same (maybe a bit less rich and a bit more bite), plus it's a little bit easier because there's no chocolate to chop.

Whisk together 3 tablespoons of natural cocoa, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt. Whisk in 1/2 cup water and simmer, whisking, for a couple of minutes (they say this cooks the cocoa and allows it to bloom, releasing the fruit, chocolate and coffee flavors and giving it a toasty undertone). Add 1 1/2 cups low-fat milk and heat until bubbles form around the edge (do not boil). Stir in a dash of vanilla extract.

Last winter I really wanted to get to City Bakery for their weekly hot chocolate flavors, but I was homebound with a newborn so I didn't get into town once. This winter I have a 1-year-old, so we are going to spend some time at City Bakery. I'm also going to experiment with different hot chocolate and hot cocoa recipes to see what I think.

This first recipe I tried, in honor of Lovescool's Sugar High Friday dark chocolate theme, was Alice Medrich's recipe from Bittersweet, which I made with a 73 percent dark chocolate that had chiles and cocoa nibs in it. I had made her recipe before and added a pinch of chile powder and I loved the two kinds of heat compounding one another: Is it the temperature heat or the spice heat that has me wanting to rip off my turtleneck?

I like this recipe because Medrich uses a combination of water and milk to let the chocolate flavor shine through without creating something too milky and rich. Chop 3 ounces of dark chocolate and put it in a small saucepan, then pour over it about half of a 3/4 cup of boiling water. Stir to melt the chocolate, then add the rest of the boiling water and 3/4 cup milk. Bring just under a boil; serves 2.

These lentils turned out good: firm and flavorful.

I cooked the lentils in a lot of water, the way you make pasta (although I put the lentils and water together in the pot, then brought it all to a boil). Tonight I cooked 1/2 cup lentils (with a crushed garlic clove and a sprig of rosemary for flavor) in perhaps 4 or 5 cups of water, for about 11 minutes (not the 30 minutes instructed on the package; I checked on them often and stopped boiling them while they were still firm). I used green lentils because that's what I had on hand. Drain and let cool. Meanwhile I made a mustard vinaigrette (heavy on the vinegar) and dressed the spinach and quartered grape tomatoes separately (the original recipe didn't have tomatoes). Added dressing to the lentils to taste, then assembled the salad.

The recipe for this was actually a peach-blackberry cobbler, but Todd brought such big, beautiful blackberries home that I had to use all of them (more than the recipe called for). I cheated, too, and used one of those refrigerated pie crusts. I will never perfect pie crusts from scratch as long as I can buy a pretty decent unbaked crust at the grocery store (to my eternal shame).

I mixed 2 cups sliced peaches (from a bag of frozen) with 1/3 cup sugar, 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch, a couple squeezes of lemon juice and some finely chopped ginger (not enough, though, because I couldn't really taste it in the finished product). Then I folded the blackberries in (2 cups), being careful not to crush them. Left that to get juicy while I prepared the lattice top.

I unfolded the crust and brushed it with egg white, then sprinkled it with sugar, cinnamon and a few grates of nutmeg. Cut it in strips, then poured the fruit into the gratin dish and wove the strips on top (I only used about 1/2 of one crust; I baked the rest as ice-cream garnishes). Baked in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes. Let it cool a bit, then serve over vanilla ice cream (it's especially good when it's still warm, and the juices run in with the melting ice cream).

Around lunchtime, people in my office start asking, "What's for lunch?" We'll coo over the ones who were good and packed something from home. There's even one guy in our office who recently started the South Beach Diet, so we'll congratulate him on how good he's managed to make his diet food look and smell. Then the rest of us will go out and come back with something sort of mediocre that cost at least $5 and often closer to $10.

So City Harvest's plea to New Yorkers to skip lunch tomorrow (Wednesday, May 12, Skip Lunch, Fight Hunger) and donate their lunch money to city kids who don't have enough to eat has the potential to really pay off. Can you imagine if all those expense-account lunches went to City Harvest for just one day? Then add to that all of us peons who spend a measly $7.

I love this organization. What they do makes so much sense: Turn what seems to be waste into something that's an absolute necessity by picking up leftover food from businesses throughout the city and giving it to organizations that feed people who don't have enough to eat. What could be more obvious than that?

David is my friend's husband, and the second-least-active member of my cooking club. Todd's the least active. (David, no offense. You're dabbling a lot more.) Inspired by all of us cooking all the time (I like to think, although I bet it's mostly Julie), David made Julie tacos for dinner the other night. I love this, because he used the box and the seasoning packet, just like my parents used to do when we were kids. It sounds like David's formative food experiences were a lot like mine. Anyway, here's what he says:

I’ve never cooked. Before meeting Julie (a friend of Kim), pre-packaged and/or fast foods were what I ate, punctuated by bowls of cereal for breakfasts and the occasional “dinner out” at nights. Sure, I’ve boiled water for pasta, scrambled eggs here & there, blended a few smoothies, made mashed-potato paste and even botched a stir-fry, but seriously I’ve never cooked. Growing up, our family foraged in a similar way – eating out, ordering in or grazing on pre-packaged foods. My step-mom made lasagna twice yearly or so, and my dad would roast chickens sporadically. He also made tacos when friends slept over, whereupon we’d engage in taco-eating contests. I loved tacos as a kid; it was fun to build them, to mix and match the various ingredients. Each ingredient would be so neatly compartmentalized – a bowl of grated cheese, of lettuce, of salsa – it all made sense. It may have been the empowerment I learned from such “taco-nstruction” that had me believing I could easily prepare tacos. So I got some ground meat and followed the directions on the seasoning packet. The store-bought shells weren’t crispy and the canned refried beans needed softening, so I heated the beans in a pan and crisped the shells in the oven. Surely this qualifies as cooking since both the oven and range were used simultaneously. The other ingredients, which included grated cheese, shredded lettuce, sliced olives, diced tomatoes and salsa were prepared and placed in bowls beforehand (mise-en-place, I’m told). Unfortunately, I used store-bought pre-grated cheese, which gave the tacos a junky edge. Additional ingredients could have included chopped onions, sour cream, guacamole and maybe tilapia instead of beef, but I kept it simple this first try. The bowls were arranged on the table, and we sat down to begin construction. Though they weren’t as tasty as dad's, they were just as fun.