savory-bites

I could watch this lady forever if there were enough Youtube videos. I went to sleep an hour and a half later last night due to this woman.

(Nigella Lawson’s Sweet & Salty Chocolate Bark)

After watching possibly all of the Youtube videos on her (I’ve probably watched them all at least three times), I decided I’d make her sweet & salty chocolate bark. She uses salted peanuts, but since we didn’t have any peanuts I tweaked her recipe ever so slightly and added the best secret ingredient ever…

Fleur de Sel!! Well, it’s not very secret since there’s been this whole new fad of salty caramel or salty chocolate, and many times they’ll use Fleur de Sel. For those of you unfamiliar with Fleur de Sel, you’re probably wondering, what makes this so much more awesome than my average sea salt? Well, let me tell you…

Translated as “Flower of Salt” from French, it’s hand harvested from the top layer of the salt before the whole thing sinks to the bottom of large salt pans. Fleur de Sel contains more mineral complexity than table salt and hold less residual moisture (making it less likely to dissolve when sprinkled on moist foods). It’s best used when sprinkled upon serving.

While the traditional Fleur de Sel is harvested from the coast of Brittany in France, mine’s a faux version, having been harvested from the Atlantic. The benefit? A $5 (or more) reduction from the price tag. A jar tinier than this will run for $12 compared to the one which I got for $8.

So this morning, after rummaging through my pantry, I realized that I had a a lot of walnuts. Like… a ton. There were bagfuls and bagfuls. You’d think we’d use them but we don’t. I also found some Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips and some good ol’ Toll House semi sweet chocolate chips.

Chocolate bark isn’t rocket science. As Nigella said in her video, “I am essentially making chocolate out of chocolate.” You literally melt the chocolate + butter, add in the nuts, spread the chocolate gloop over a baking sheet, sprinkle some salt and stick it into the fridge. Takes five minutes. That’s quicker than your average 7.5 minute shower.

The greatest thing about making your own bark is that you can customize how sweet you want the chocolate to be. While the bittersweet chocolate chips I used were 60% cacao, it’s definitely possible to go higher, especially if you can snag some 80% chocolate slabs at your local Whole Foods. However, I blended some semi sweet since I figured most people still like their sugar.

In today’s case, I wrapped the baking sheet with some tin foil and plopped it into the garage where it was probably 40 degrees F. After two hours, the chocolate hardened up beautifully. It takes another two minutes to pop the slab out of the baking sheet, cut into rough squares, and stow them away in a box.

Hello coworkers- you’ll be helping me eat these!

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(If you look hard enough, you can see the Château de Chillon on the left)

We passed Montreux many times during our trip around Switzerland. It’s located on the edge of Lake Geneva, so many times, we’d catch a glimpse of the rising sun behind the backdrop of hazy mountains and lake with vineyards cascading below us. Those moments were seriously amongst the most beautiful I’ve witnessed.

We didn’t spend much time in Montreux- there’s not much to do here. It’s like a fairytale land. There’s mountains and mountains, a never ending lake, and a medieval château (Château de Chillon). Against all of that, life goes on. There’s a sweeping bridge overlooking all this scenery above the lake, where cars roar by on the highway. And across the lake, the street is littered with restaurants.

We arrived to Montreux around 11am from Davos, which was a long and exhausting ride. We left around 5am from the hotel, boarded a 6am-ish train, and rode through dusk. By the time we got to Montreux, the fog was just about done clearing from the lake. I felt as if I was in some far away land.

From the train station, the walk to the château is roughly 40 minutes. Factor in picture taking, and it’ll take you a good hour. As we were walking, they were laying down these plastic white looking mats on the ground. We found out they were for dry skiing! How awesome is that?

Unfortunately, it was in Montreux where I topped the capacity out of my 2gb memory card. I would later lose my camera with all the photos from the walk to the castle. Such a shame…

Before we started off on this walk, we searched for a place to eat. It took awhile but we ended up settling on this quite upscale bistro, Confiserie Zurcher. By far, the meal I had here was the best on the trip, and perhaps top 3 in all of my European travels.

Zurcher is not completely a “confiserie,” which translates to “sweets shop” in French. There’s a cafe attached to the restaurant where they sell little pastries/sandwiches and supposedly, it doubles as a tea-room. The cafe is actually alot bigger than the restaurant; we were amongst the few that dined in the restaurant part.