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Well, after finding rather good gift boxes the other day I think I may have just found something even better. Pooooooooopoooopaper! I can’t even remember how I managed to find the site in the first place, but all I can definitely remember is that I did’t type “handmade paper” and click the “I feel lucky” button on google. I don’t think randomly adding “elephant turds” to everything you wanted to search for would make anyone feel lucky ever.
Anyway, initial hangups aside, the idea of making awesome beautiful paper from crap is just such a great idea! What was the last good thing you made from your logs? A notebook? A hankerchief? A lifesized replica of Michaelangelo’s David? Yet somehow here is a company that makes all its products from littel more than elephant doo doo and imagination. It’s not just any old paper either, it’s really lovely quality, fantastically luxurious, richly textured paper…. made from dung!
After reading about the process on their site I was really quite intrigued and had a little trawl through the internet for the same sort of thing, but based in the UK. The Exotic Paper Company do a range of paper made from elephant poo as well as a whole load of other really lovely papers. However, Creative Paper Wales wins hands down in the creativity stakes by making paper from sheep poo and other interesting recycled materials and more importantly by offering a bespoke paper making service where you can ask them to make a paper for you from pretty much anything you want (except trees) ranging from specific sheep or grasses to sending in your old clothes or even your own pet’s droppings. I could strike a deal with a farmer down the road trading chocolate for manure, how cool would that be!
I sent off an email to Poopoopaper right away to see if they do boxes and they’ve sent one back saying that they don’t do packaging materials as standard or anything, but so long as I spend more than $1000 then they can make something up specially for me. I’m really sorely tempted, but actually, after the initial amazement wore off, I’m not sure if it is such a good idea to package everything I’ll be selling in recycled poo. Now of course it’s just as clean and everything as normal paper, but if I used it, I’d want to tell everyone about it and I think most people would find it a little bit off-putting. If I kept quiet about it then it wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun and I’d be paying a fair bit more for it than I would for other boxes since I’d have to have these ones made specially for me so sadly it looks like I won’t be only using packaging materials made from elephant dung. It was nice while the idea lasted.
“Naturally Indulgent: chocolate that looks like rocks and packaged in poo.”
I could print gift vouchers or something like that on the stuff instead, that would still be cool.
I’ve got a new flavour of ice-cream today, it’s not quite as unusual as the freaky savoury one with lemon, olives and salmon, but it’s still pretty rocking! I’ve got new flavours jumping out of my brain faster than I can make them.
Yesterday, when I was rolling out the raspberry truffles, I thought how nice raspberry would go with tea. Then I remembered that apparently tea with raspberry (and I thought I’d learned nothing from Tchaikovsky Discovers America) is a Russian thing and mighty tasty too by all accounts. So this evening after eating far far too much steak I got to work creating an ice cream out of the leftovers of the raspberry puree and the some earl grey cream that was hanging around. It’s just setting in the freezer now and if it’s half as good as the unfrozen mix then I think we’ve got something very special here.
How I just happen to have earl grey cream in the fridge? In most fridges I will admit it would be extrodinary, but my fridge is a lot like my shopping and so really it’s just what you’d expect. I think at the moment we’ve got 3 different types of butter, 4 different types of cream, 3 different sorts of milk, a trifle, some eggs, an assload of condiments and lots of oranges, but much more steak. There’s probably some vegetables and stuff too, but they’re all tucked away down in the drawers, so what greets you when you open the door late at night looking for something to stave off hunger is an unending wall of beautiful dairy.
Very few things in the world make me more happy.
Yay, time to create new chocolate flavours, it’s quite possibly the best thing ever ever! One of the May Balls asked me to do chocolates based on the seasons for them and emailed a couple of days ago to see if they could have another set of flavours to choose from. The time I can actually make chocolate and send it without horrible gastronomic Chernobyl happening in the mail so I had to get to it pretty quickly. Today was my first day off from my new job so it was down to the kitchen for a session of good hard chocolateering (not chocolatiering… that wouldn’t be anywhere near Xtreme enough of course). I’ve only really got one brand new flavour here, but it’s a really good one so I’ll leave it to last and go through the seasons starting from Winter and moving back.
Winter: pure Valrhona Arguani couverture, double cream and Glen Moray single malt: rich, creamy and unbelievably aromatic. Tastes like… curling up with a blanket and watching the sleet pour down outside.
Since it was my first time using Arguani (my favourite Valrhona chocolate) for making truffles I wanted to do something simple and well tested to see what the difference would be. What a difference there is! Arguani has the most amazing aroma and quite a fruity flavour with a startlingly small amount of bitterness for a chocolate so flavourful and it makes the most amazingly smooth and delicate truffle. I find the Glen Moray Classic pretty caramelly or toffeeey – I really like to use it because of that – and it really pairs perfectly with the chocolate. I think my throat’s still a little bit warm from it too.
Autumn: maple syrup and milk chocolate with a coating of flaked almonds. Tastes like…. richness and smoothness embodied in chocolate form, eh?
I LOVE maple syrup. I really miss living in the States and visiting Canada and being able to go to any place and get a huge breakfast complete with a mind bogglingly large amount of options but always with a core of pancakes and bacon which you could smother in maple syrup, man that stuff is good! It’s so smooth and so sweet and delicious, mixing it into chocolate that already has all that added richness from the milk is just a mind blowingly good combination. Maybe it just tastes like Autumn to me, but it’s so good that I don’t think anyone’s going to complain.
Summer: raspberry puree blended with white chocolate and coated with 85% cocoa flakes. Tastes like… the best damn fruit filling you’ve ever had.
Again, it was my first time using the Valrhona chocolate that I got in the last delivery so I wanted to make something simple and tested to see how the stuff would go. Seems like Valrhona use either a little less lecithin or sugar in their white chocolate since this one set a fair bit less firm than normal, but anyway this is a fantastic combination. Tart raspberries, buttery sweet white chocolate and seriously bitter coating just overwhelm your mouth with “pay attention to the god-damn best fruit flavoured thing you’ve ever eaten goddammit!” waves. The three different flavours are a wonderful combination and balance each other out in such a beautiful way it makes me stop and almost cry every time I eat one.
Spring: white chocolate ganache infused with basil, lemon zest and chunky sea salt. Tastes like… peeling a banana and finding the most delicious pastry in the world inside.
If there was some sort of contest for seriously strange combinations of the world I would have to enter this thing in for it. Normally I love the mix and eat every last little bit of bowl mess as soon as I’ve poured off the rest to cool, but with this one I just sat around with the bowl and my finger with the most confused look on my face for about two hours.
“Wow this is soooo tas…..
no wait, now I really think it tastes this should go over fish and man is that stran…
oooh it’s so sweet and creamy and tangy and sour and salty and herby and….
hang on this is just really really good, I wonder if we’ve got any olives in the fri…
oh my god we have got olives and smoked salmon too I should really see what the…
No! That is just really really silly!”
*involuntarily takes an olive, wraps it in salmon and uses it mop up chocolate from the bowl*
“Oh my god that tastes so gooooooooood! Aaaaaaargh my mind!”
I just got started on thinking about this one last week when I got an email from Patrick saying he’d had a basil chocolate cocktail and it went buzzing around my head until I went around Waitrose looking for inspiration and then this golden piece of loveliness came out. It doesn’t deserve to be this good, it should so taste horrible, but it’s just plain gorgeous! It really is good with smoked salmon and olives too… I think there’s a possibility for a savoury ice cream in there.
Stay tuned for an update on that ice-cream flavour, you know I’ll do it, you can’t stop me…. no one can!!!! MWHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!
