Dark Chocolate Cures Cancer!

Well, not really, but recent studies find that eating a little bit of dark chocolate each day slows the hardening of arteries in smokers, increases arterial blood flow, and even lowers blood pressure.

This is not to say that binging on dark chocolate is a good idea. While just a little bit supposedly contains more antioxidants per gram than red wine, green tea or berries, just a little bit definitely also contains an unhealthy amount of fat.

Milk chocolate and white chocolate don't seem to have any mention of health benefits, as expected, because you know, they're the devil, and they don't even taste that good.

Chocolate Grahams: Stupidly Simple, Sinfully Delicious

Dark chocolate. No wussy, faux-creamy milk chocolate. Call it dark, ebony, sassy- with more than 50% cacao, you've got a winner. If you're not into dark chocolate, convert. Everyone's doing it.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. A double boiler is essentially a medium size bowl sitting on a small pot of boiling water. Make sure the bowl isn't the cheap kind that will get destroyed at high temperatures- you probably don't want to use a really expensive one either. Using a double boiler allows you some more control over the heat that makes direct contact with the melting/melted chocolate, ie it should be dummy proof such that the chocolate doesn't burn.

Prepare some parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Dip whatever size graham crackers you want into the melted chocolate, remove, and place on the parchment paper. Repeat with remaining crackers.

Let the cookies stand for about an hour or place in a refrigerator for a few minutes to solidify the chocolate. You're done!

It's so stupidly easy. The key is to use a really high quality chocolate. Why skimp out on the good stuff for the holidays? Ghirardelli is a high quality safe bet for cooking and baking chocolate, but you can always experiment with those big hunks of chocolate at specialty food stores like Whole Foods and Fairway.

Improvisation: Raw Milk Cheddar Pasta With Fresh Lemon Pepper Chicken

So dinner tonight was interesting. We didn't feel like getting take out or going to the supermarket to plan a meal. It's way too cold outside. Skimming through Tyler Florence's Eat This Book, I found nothing that would work with what we have in the fridge or the pantry.

That meant one thing: I had to improvise. But I'm used to that! So what do we got? Half a block of raw milk cheddar, chicken breast cutlets, a variety of vegetables, and lots of leftovers. There's always garlic, ginger, cilantro, scallions, and onions on hand, so that helps. We had leftovers last night, so I figured I'd go nuts with the cheddar, the chicken and some other random stuff.

The meal I formulated in my head was something like a chicken alfredo- a creamy cheese sauce with pasta and some sort of sliced chicken on top. I've never made a cheese sauce before and lazy me, I didn't feel like going through recipes online or in our library to find one, so here goes...



I marinated the chicken cutlets with some salt, olive oil, a LOT of chopped garlic (practically a whole head), fresh squeezed lemon, and a lot of coarse crushed pepper. Essentially a lemon pepper marinade.



I heated a large pan on high heat with some olive oil, added the cutlets and seared both sides. Keeping the heat on, I put the cutlets aside on a plate and deglazed the pan with an American viognier that I'd been meaning to use for the past two weeks. I let that reduce for about five minutes, added some flour to thicken the sauce, and then added pieces of the raw milk cheddar. I also added roughly a cup of 2% milk (what we had in the fridge), and let it simmer and reduce some more.


Once I thought it tasted about right, I added the cooked fettucine I'd been preparing on the side, and topped that with some chopped red pepper and chopped parsley.



I was also preparing an easy side- a brothy soup. I just took a carton of low sodium chicken stock, added roughly the same amount of water, added some thinly sliced onion, kale, and sliced broccoli stems. To serve, I garnished it with some thinly sliced radishes.



Voila! The sauce didn't turn out to be as creamy as I was expecting, but it was still tasty. The chicken was also a little overdone. Oops! But all in all, it was very good. The raw milk cheddar combined with the viognier gave it a really bold flavor that I haven't ever experienced in a cheese sauce. And the lemon pepper flavor on the chicken wasn't too lemony, nor too peppery- just right. Pardon the glass, I didn't have proper wine glasses on hand.



The wine was absolutely amazing. I really have to credit my friend Phi with telling me about viogniers. I don't know too much about wine, but I think that going with this 2004 Maryhill Viognier was a great choice. The flavor wasn't so strong on the alcohol, a little fruity (pears?), and simply enjoyable. I wish I hadn't added so much to the sauce because I found myself wanting more when I finished the bottle. Gotta get me some more of that!

When Supermodels Should Have Permission to Eat

Heidi's lookin a little too good to be pregnant. Season 2 of Project Runway premieres Wednesday. It may seem totally unrelated to Cleaverfever.com but don't babies need like, food? An involuntary abortion might be a bad thing.