When people order large quantities of truffles, they get to pick from a long list of flavors not usually offered. Recently a sweet woman ordered 2-truffle boxes as wedding favors, and I’m so blown away the combination she created that I have to share: one fennel-apple truffle and one pumpkin seed oil truffle, snuggled up next to each other in a tiny box.

(My sweetheart took his fancy camera on tour, so I am stranded in a sea of photogenic fall scenes with only my camera phone,* thus the dreamy blurry quality of these. Maybe I should add a decent camera to my wishlist!)

How perfect for a fall wedding, right? Even a wedding-hater like me has to admit that. The apple ones are dipped in pulverized pink lady apple bits and dusted with fennel pollen,** and the pumpkin seed ones are made with deep green beautiful roasted Styrian pumpkin seed oil and garnished with slow-roasted caramelized pumpkin seeds.

Oh, the beauty.

(lest you question my packing chops [horrors], please know that these boxes were packed inside a heavily fortified bigger box.)

———–

*Speaking of: Dustin, though I have so far been too lazy to really use the others, I really really adore that Genius camera app you recommended–I use the timer function pretty much every day for outfit photos! Man, what would I do without such lovely blog reader friends?

*Hey local farmers–you could make a mint selling local fennel pollen to insane chefs like me! Yes, I know, it’s ridiculous to harvest, but the kind I buy is $30 for one ounce!

The cuteness is really just ridiculous:

I got my package, thanks! Also: if you’ve never been to Horizons in Philadelphia (horizonsphiladelphia.com) you should check it out. I went there this weekend and in terms of vegan fine dining of no specific ethnic origin, I have never been to a better restaurant anywhere! Just be sure to make reservations, they fill up. bonus: its right around the corner from a nice little vintage clothing shop. Don’t miss the portabella carpaccio or the salted beet appetizer. Thanks again for the chocolate, and the good timing- i only have to stare at it and not eat it for a couple of days :) [it was a gift]

Actually, I have been there, and loved it! I’ve also been to that vintage shop!!!

Happy fall, darlings!

I happen to hate fall, but I take it that apart from me (and blogreader Brittany—to me she is BFF Brittany, but you probably know her as blogreader Brittany) fall is universally beloved, so have at it. It’s pretty, I’ll give you that. And it seems that some people actually like dead things littering every inch of the earth that you have to painstakingly capture and discard, so I hope those weirdos are really living it up (and when you’re done living it up at your place, please feel free to come over to mine and do some raking, for I am already behind).

I’ve been busy cooking and chocolatizing and preparing to have a few friends over this weekend for fried green tomatoes (East Coast peeps: go to any farmer tomorrow and I guarantee they will give you all the green tomatoes you can haul away—go!)  then the Last Supper art show thingie on Saturday–busy week! If you’re in the Brooklyn area be sure to come check it out. I am totally tickled that I am officially an “artist” (because everyone knows that what makes you an artist is being called one online).

I had a bunch of tryouts for the poem I’d be writing in chocolate for the Last Supper event, and finally settled on a Susan Griffin number called “Bread.” It’s pretty, and it fits on a large sheet pan that will fit in the back of my car, which is apparently what I look for in poetry these days. You might remember Susan Griffin as the author of the seminal ecofeminist text Woman and Nature—I had no idea she was a poet until I stumbled across a book of her collected poetry at my friendly local bookshop (discounted to $6 because of a stain on the spine I am resolutely telling myself has to be coffee).

One of the runners-up for the choco poem was pretty much anything by Matthew Dickman, my current poet crush. In the end I had to rule anything of his out because I couldn’t find a suitable poem that was the requisite sheet-tray length, but I’ve been mightily enjoying his one and only book, All-American Poem.

My god, what a giantly sweet mass of cotton candy of a treat this little collection is. You can read it like a novel and it’s just as tasty as if you read each poem slow like an English major, coaxing out all the allusions and flourishes. And it’s magnificently, generously sexy too—as sexy as the author photo on the back, which is saying a lot.

I’ve been walking around for about a week now whispering Matthew Dickman wonderfulness, feeling the special deep-down happiness that only taut lines strung together in surprising and ultra-clever ways can create. My sweetheart, a dude who bore witness to me spending the last two years of college only reading women poets and who didn’t bat an eye when I literally segregated our books by gender and put all the feminist books and poetry in a separate room so they could “breathe,” has been amused by the whole thing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say you liked a poem by a guy before,” he said, all bemusedly and shit, the other day. He’s probably right. No one says they like Shakespeare (verily though, I do, and I have the iPhone app that proves it) or T.S. Eliot (do I dare disturb the universe? In truth, though I very much like Eliot, my thoughts about him are mostly in the “I wonder what Virgina Woolf really thought of him?” vein. In truth, I very much wonder what Virginia would think or did think about a great many things in a week…is this weird? To wonder what Woolf would make of Facebook? I would so like to know.) When Jacob’s not home and I can’t sleep I read Rimbaud in French out loud to my cats…and that’s about it. A little Donald Hall here, a dash of Mark Strand there (you know: ‘Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.’)  that one W. S. Merwin book about Hawai’i—done with dudes.

Dudes are usually such fantastically boring poets, you know? But the ladies: my Adrienne Rich first and foremost, then that sad old Plath who will never get out of my head because she does not do you do not do any more black shoe & I’ll probably be mumbling about eating men like air on my deathbed, and Denise Levertov and Joy Harjo, Haunani-Kay Trask and of course the doomed Sexton, my BFFFF Dorothy Parker and her polar opposite,  Emily Dickinson. Audre Lorde Audre Lorde Audre Lorde. Marge Piercy and Grace Paley and yeah, now and then, maybe just a little Katha Pollitt too. Katherine Mansfield and Anais Nin. Be still my heart, Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, Christina Rosetti and Nikki Giovanni and Phyllis Wheatley and even good old Sappho, sure. Gwendolyn Brooks and Lucille Clifton and Carolyn Forche and Louise Gluck–even Erica Jong, in high school, under the covers, secretly.

Once you start only reading novels and poetry by women, it’s so easy never to stop, to just forget that whole fucked-up boy world exists. I heard this fucking doucher James Ellroy on NPR the other day, and it reminded me all over again why dudes like him have ruined novels by men for me–seriously!

But, as my 73-year-old BFF Selma is fond of pointing out: men these days are different. Softer. Matthew Dickman is one of them, and, rightfully, his poetry reminds me of that great lesson we’ve been letting poetry teach us forever: how amazing it is to be alive, right now, here.

This book in my hands, these words in my head.

Lovelies!

First of all, I’m so loving our conversation below about vegans eating at vegan restaurants (or not)!

Second!! Please mark your calendars and come see yours truly at this super awesome-looking salon/art show/festival in Brooklyn on September 26.

I’m going to be recreating my little chocolate poetry/bird’s nest thingie. I have no idea why I was asked to be in this show as I don’t see or market myself as a “real” artist at all (an artisan, though, sure), but I’m really honored and excited and, best of all—unlike horrible private cooking jobs and guest chef thingies I’ve suffered through—it’s going to be easy (writing words on paper! I can do that!) and fun—viewers will get to eat the words!

In a classic English-majors-can-assign-meaning-to-anything move, I wrote up the following artist statement about the piece, and along the way I realized that it actually has some awesome deep implications:

As a food activist who earns a living through chocolate-making, I see my chocolate business as a way to express my political values. I use sustainable chocolate that is made by a small company that is committed to environmental responsibility and works directly with farmers to ensure that their cacao beans are harvested without child slavery (which is, horribly, common practice in the mainstream chocolate industry). My chocolates are all vegan, so they do not participate in the system of institutionalized cruelty that is the dairy industry.

A core value of my business is that ethical and sustainable foods are more deeply nourishing than their mainstream counterparts. Poetry is a similarly transformative and nourishing art form, thus combining the two doubles their power.

Manipulating the chocolate words into a nest and inviting viewers to take (and eat) words from the piece serves several purposes. Primarily it is a statement about the global home we share, and the ways ethically-produced chocolate improves it. As well, it is a comment on the flexible nature of language and poetry, and how the act of interacting with words changes our relationship to them as well as each other.

Oh, lovelies!

You already know of my deep hardcore love for Tcho chocolate. I have switched to it from the behemoth Callebaut, and I couldn’t be happier. Not only have all my bitchyass procurement problems been solved, but in general Tcho just 100%  lives up to my wildest expectations of what a chocolate company could be.

One little thing had been niggling at me, however, and last week it finally got resolved. Their policy on slavery, as I’ve mentioned trillions of times, is sterling (not Roger Sterling though, thank god! Hey, I made a Mad Men joke!). But it took me a little time to get some info from them on their environmental practices—how are their beans grown, are they sprayed, etc etc.* The fact that it took time wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just a long, long game of phone tag with John Kehoe, their Director of Sourcing & Farmer Relations.

We finally found time to talk, all my concerns were addressed, and I’m just floating on a cloud.

OK. Let me say first of all that John Kehoe is basically my new BFF and I am basically madly in love with him. This dude is a Resistance is Fertile sort of guy, for sure.

Do you think he likes me too?

When our mutually hectic schedules finally allowed a sliver of time to talk, he was driving up from San Francisco toward Oregon for the weekend and we talked for an hour or so, calling each other back maybe 20 times because he kept losing service as he drove up the coast. We made it work, because we are BFFs and cool like that.

I wanted to have the talk with him that I have with all my farmer suppliers for my business: I so understand that you’re not certified organic. I have tons of qualms with the USDA-run crap organic certification program (do a search on “organic” on this here blog to read all about my qualms) and completely get that farming practices are just more complicated these days than one little word can explain. So let’s talk about how you farm—do you farm organically but are not certified, do you do Integrated Pest Management, are you Certified Naturally Grown, biodynamic, veganic, permaculturey? Do you use cold frames, solar-powered greenhouses, biodiesel tractors? Do you keep and kill animals? Are your workers paid well? Where do they live and where are they from and what are their opportunities for advancement on your farm?

Let’s get into it.

So we talked about where Tcho chocolate beans are grown and how they are grown and who grows them and how they farm and why and the craziness of certification processes and poverty and idealism and how to make things better while also making a good product and I told him my little secret: Most organic chocolate stinks. And he agreed. And I mentioned Dagoba and all the rest and he talked about how hard Tcho was working to change the perception of truly ethical chocolate through really high standards.

I learned a lot. Though their chocolate isn’t organic, they take many steps to ensure that it is grown in as eco-friendly ways as possible. As well, they are committed to working with smaller farmers as a way to support growing businesses in developing countries** and John gave me several examples of awesome programs they are involved in that I very unfortunately didn’t take good notes on that work to assist small farmers in Africa and other places where their chocolate is grown.

In general, John was insanely knowledgeable about the politics involved in the chocolate industry and reassured me completely that Tcho is the company I want to be with. I said that I was so honored that he was taking so much time to talk to me when I am the tiniest chocolate maker in the universe, and he said that Tcho loves small businesses and that Lagusta’s Luscious is totally the sort of company they want to work with.

A love fest, that’s what it was, I tell ya.

And! In an earlier phone message when I was outlining what I wanted to chat about once we finally made it work, I mentioned this weird little thing: their TchoPro, the chocolate I use, is labeled “conventional.” I understand that this is to distinguish it from their other types of chocolate (“fruity,” “floral,” “citrus,” etc. These designations don’t mean that the chocolate contains fruit, flowers, or citrus, but that the beans themselves contribute those flavors. Neat, huh?) and to show that the Pro line is an all-purpose chocolate, but to me the word “conventional” means “not organic” and, trying so hard as I do to buy as much organic as I can, it always jars me. When John and I talked, he said that he took this offhand remark to a meeting and after a good discussion they decided to rename the chocolate! How rad is that?

Then! When I got home form a whirlwind trip to Chicago, a package was waiting for me from my new boyfriend John with a very exciting new treat he had mentioned on the phone: beta test samples of the brand new Tcho certified organic chocolate! I knew a certified organic Tcho was coming, but I didn’t think it was this close. I’m waiting for my supertaster sweetheart to come home before we taste, but I’m obviously anticipating making it my house chocolate.

(Also, said sweetheart sometimes beta tests various sound engineery and tour managery programs [right now he is swooning over this thing called Master Tour Database and though this is a major digression, I have to say that I'm sort of in awe of it too. It even has sections for important notes like "this venue has a great runner who will bring you good vegan pizza for the after show meal" and my systems-loving self thrills to see it every time I look over his shoulder] and I’m excited to be a beta tester for something as awesome as chocolate).

Oh, Tcho. I see us going steady for a long long time.

(Know what else is cool about Tcho? They don’t make any weak-ass cow tit chocolate! Hooray for 100% dark chocolate companies!)

*Just a warning: there aren’t great specifics here, dearest blogreaders, and I’m sorry for that. While I love this here blog, I really resist the idea that I need to put all this extra stress on myself to be some sort of journalist and take detailed notes on my life so I can report everything interesting here in the most accurate way. The conversation I’m lazily reporting reassured me about their growing practices and I want to report my excitement about said reassurance here, that’s all.

**I know “developing countries” isn’t the most p.c. term (because it implies that development is always the goal), but I can’t think of what else to say. “Third-world” isn’t right either. It’s like how I hate saying that I only want to go to “ethnic” restaurants, but I don’t have a better way to get across my point that if my mother drags me to another bland vegan restaurant run by white people I will scream (I just spent a few days with my [vegan] mom, who believes that—wait! This is a great topic for another post I will get to soon).

OK, so maybe it’s not always best to try to do cute little projects very late at night when your mind isn’t as sharp as it could be.

I know that now.

]]> http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/reistance-indeed/feed/ 0 lagusta IMG_1500 IMG_1485 http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/workin-it/ http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/workin-it/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:19:26 +0000 lagusta http://lagusta.wordpress.com/?p=2800 ]]>

Just a housekeeping note:

YO!!! You there! You can now become a fan of Lagusta’s Luscious Bluestocking Bonbons on, you know, Facebook! And you can go there & chat all about how rad they are & all that.

I sorta loathe the idea of mixing my foul-mouthed Facebook grumpy self with my sweet sweet business, but it had to be done. See you there!

At some point during this neverending spring, I decided to practice my chocolate handwriting.

I stayed late at the kitchen one night with a copy of Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker and found a short poem about springtime and gave it a go.

The chocolate got out of temper, which you can see by the white streaks, but it didn’t matter, I was just messing around.

Late at night, all alone in my little kitchen with my pastry bag and book of poetry, I got obsessed with the idea that writing a poem in chocolate means that you can manipulate the words a little after they dry.

If you hold onto them, they melt in your hand, getting all soft and bendy.

Carefully and gently, you can rearrange them and stack them and shape them,

and before you know it,

you’ve made a little home out of poetry.

]]> http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/chocolate-words-on-parchment-paper/feed/ 9 lagusta _IGP8771 _IGP8774 _IGP8767 _IGP8779 _IGP8777 _IGP8780 _IGP8783 _IGP8789 _IGP8797 _IGP8801 _IGP8803 http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/pisces-love-cancers-everyone-should-be-loving-agar/ http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/pisces-love-cancers-everyone-should-be-loving-agar/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:08:07 +0000 lagusta http://lagusta.wordpress.com/?p=2733 ]]>

For someone who says she doesn’t believe in astrology, I seem to have a ridiculously large amount of Cancer friends. I’m pretty in love with all of them, and was super psyched that I rounded so many up to have dinner and managed to fit all their names on one cake! I was planning on decorating it with tiny peanut butter cups, but in the end it was just going to be too busy, so chocolate shavings won.

At any rate, I’m pretty happy with this cake. It’s a basic chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and filling that I frosted with my favorite easy easy easy chocolate frosting: ganache (yeah, it’s got a double frosting: ganache, then the pb just on the top.). Ganache frosting really is the shit. Have you ever made it? You pour it on the cake and it hardens to a shiny, smooth gloss. It’s incredibly rich and, unless you always have a lot of untempered chocolate to use up like I do (you don’t need tempered chocolate for ganache, and I’ve always got chocolate hanging around that’s been in the tempering machine for 2 hours or something and is tired of being tempered. [Yes, chocolate gets tired and needs a rest sometimes too!]), it’s pretty expensive. Basically you’re covering your entire cake in a chocolate bar.

I usually use about half a pound of chocolate on a standard cake. To make it, just bring 3/4 of a cup coconut milk and 1 tablespoon coconut oil to a strong boil. While it’s coming to a boil, finely chop 8 oz. of chocolate and put it in a medium bowl. When the liquids boil, pour them over the chocolate, stir for a few seconds, then cover it and let it sit for a few minutes. You can also add 1 tablespoon or more of any alcohol that will go well with your cake, or 1/2 teaspoon or so of any extract that will go with the cake. I usually add a little brandy. After the chocolate has sat for a few minutes, stir it until it’s completely smooth. If some chocolate pieces won’t melt, cover it for another few minutes then try again, and remember to chop the chocolate more finely next time.

Spread whatever filling you’re using for your cake on the middle layer (you can use ganache for that too, or raspberry jam, or anything else you can think of), top it with the top layer, and make sure it’s nice and cool before frosting. Set it on a rack on top of a parchment-lined sheet pan—all three of these (rack, parchment, sheet pan) will make your life so much easier when frosting this cake, I really wouldn’t recommend doing the ganache frosting unless you have a rack or can rig up something like a rack to put the cake on. You need some space between the cake and the pan to let the excess frosting drip.

When the ganache is super smooth, pour it over the cake. Use an offset spatula to smooth it all out gorgeously. Work rather quickly, because it’ll start setting up pretty quick (especially if the cake is very cold), then you won’t be able to smooth it out. You can always reclaim all that frosting on the parchment and spread it over any holes on the cake, too.

Here’s a picture of a plain chocolate cake frosted with this frosting.

I pretty much made up the peanut butter frosting on the spot (I knew Jacob & Veronica liked p.b. + choc, but I had to quickly call Randy to make sure his sweetheart Lacey liked the combo. ["Randy, is Lacey near you? Don't say it's me!" "Sort of." "OK, just say yes or no: does Lacey like peanut butter and chocolate?" "YES!" "OK, see you tomorrow!"], and I know it’s going to enter my regular rotation. I’ve been slowly training myself to use agar-agar powder to thicken all kinds of sauces, frostings, fillings, etc.

I already make a killer fluffy chocolate fudge frosting (it’s based on one in Myra’s first book—that recipe is worth the price of the book alone, I swear) with coconut milk and agar that incorporates lots and lots of chocolate. It’s a perfect decorating frosting, you can pipe it into all kinds of shapes, and it makes great fluffy fudgy swirls of frosting on a cake. It’s the complete opposite of the cool cucumber that is ganache frosting, which is sophisticated and fierce. It’s good to have both under your belt.

I also make a super basic white frosting used only for writing on cakes and decorating that is nothing more than coconut milk, water, agar-agar powder, maple syrup or sugar. It sets up very firm then I process it in the food processor and it’s perfect to put in a pastry bag. You can tint it with those nice all-natural food colorings the health food stores have, or you can go all DIY and add some turmeric (yellow), or beet juice (red).

Oh wait, but what is agar-agar? I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about it on the blog and as I am writing all this from a hotel room in downtown Manhattan on the Fourth of July,* I’m not exactly inspired to get all into it right now, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Vegans should be using a lot more agar than they do (I use the terms “agar-agar” and “agar” interchangeably). Agar is often called “vegetarian gelatin” and that’s exactly what it is. You don’t use it exactly like the ground up hooves and whatever else is in death gelatin though.

Hmm, can I find something already written about how to use agar, so I don’t have to do it myself? Well, here’s something.

Where they get it wrong:

• “Agar, also know as agar agar,”   Um.
• “Create a mousse or pudding by adding tofu or yogurt—or both.” Eeeew. Tofu thickened with agar, ick.
• “Gelatin can be replaced with agar powder or flakes in a one-to-one ratio.” Nope. Agar powder is about ten zillion times stronger than agar flakes. My guidelines are to 1) NEVER EVER use agar flakes, or those horrid agar bars. They are a huge pain to work with. Buy agar powder. You can get it in health food stores where it will cost you dearly, or in Asian (usually Thai) markets where the exact same stuff will be 99 cents for a packet that will last you a while. I’m all fancy these days and I buy Ferran Adria’s brand of agar, but that’s because I like to pour money down the drain. If you can only find agar flakes, grind them as finely as you can get them in a coffee grinder. The truth is, it’s not difficult to get the flakes to work perfectly too, but agar powder is so much easier that I hate to think of novices even fucking with the flakes. The bars are twice as annoying as the flakes, so, skip those all together. 2) If you’re using powder in a recipe that calls for flakes, use about 1/2 as much powder as flakes.
• “Agar will not gel liquids containing vinegar or foods that contain high levels of oxalic acid, such as chocolate.” Uh, that’s completely wrong. I’ve made lemon gels and tons of chocolate-agar concoctions. The trick is to use a lot more agar in recipes that contain a lot of acid, and if you’re using chocolate make sure you have some sort of carrier like water or coconut milk, because you couldn’t just melt chocolate and add some agar powder and you know what, actually? Who knows? It seems like it wouldn’t work because of the oxalic acid, but I’ve never tried it. I’m not sure why anyone would, but I’m not going to be a hater like stupid ehow and say it’s impossible.

OK, clearly someone different wrote this article on using agar in dessrts, and it’s a lot better. Good tips, lady!

So, that peanut butter frosting.

I didn’t write down what I did, but here’s what I can reconstruct after three days, two glasses of wine, 1 glass of sake, and four beers standing between me and the frosting:

2 (14 oz) cans coconut milk

3/4 Tb. agar powder (I bet you could do 1/2 Tb. I always add too much agar because if you add too little your recipe is crap, and if you add too much you just need to process it more later and it’s fine.)

pinch of sea salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 c peanut butter, but actually I have no idea. It could have been 2 cups.

splash vanilla

So you just bring the milk, agar, salt and sugar to a boil, whisking once in a while. Bring it to a boil slowly so the sugar dissolves. When it’s all dissolved, crank up the heat and let it come to a real, rock-solid, rollicking boil. Agar needs heat to do its thing, but too much heat will kill it, so don’t boil it forever. Turn off the heat and whisk in the vanilla and p.b. If the p.b. doesn’t want to get totally smooth, don’t sweat it, it’ll be fine.

Taste it and see if you want to add more p.b. or sugar or anything. If you want to add more sugar, use powdered sugar so it doesn’t get grainy. Put the entire thing in the fridge for an hour or so until—magic!—it sets up super firm and hard. You can now have fun by slicing it up and handing out slices, or you can make a frosting by whipping it in the food processor until it’s creamy and smooth. Keep tasting and adding stuff (vanilla, sugar, peanut butter) until it’s perfect.

Spread it on the cake!

*

(Oh, hey, local peeps: I brought this cake to Garden Café in Woodstock**, and they were so incredibly sweet about a party of 11 people and a cake—they even put candles on it and brought it out singing, though I didn’t ask them to do either! And as always the food was super super tasty, and I loved that they were only going to let me bring the cake if it was vegan—fuckin’ A! Go Garden Café!)

OK, oh dear, its getting late, I’ve got to go outside!

*

*Can you believe there are hotel rooms so teeny that they don’t even have a bathtub? This Wall St-area hotel is ridiculous. One of the main reasons I decided to follow my sweetheart around for the past few days was to stay in an NYC hotel room & take a bath, because my bathtub at home is so shitty. Tragic.

**Um, a message to the person who wrote the “disappointed” review on that page: you are possibly certifiably insane and should really seek professional help.

Argh, I can’t stand it when I have a super negative post up and it’s the first thing people see when they come to the blog. No time for a real post now, lemon cupcakes with lavender icing and edible flowers (you know the ones) need to be made, NYC trips need to be taken, long-distance sweethearts soon need to be kissed. Until I have some computer time, here’s a preview of some prettiness to come in the form of (not quite tempered) chocolate poetry. Be excited! Poetry in chocolate as a form of postmodern unification of the signifier and the signified? YES, how did you guess?