Hey all, I had a column published in The Orange County Register today. It’s not available on the newspaper’s site, so here it is! Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

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You can tell a lot about a person by the way he takes his chocolate mousse. A chocoholic may often choose bittersweet chocolate over milk or white, while daring palates may choose fruit- and alcohol-flavored mousses or those with herbs and spices over the traditional versions. A voracious eater will inhale a mousse no matter how rich it is, licking remnants off of his spoon while other diners at the table will slowly relish every bite. (It’s fun to watch and analyze your friends.)

Traditionally, the French mousse au chocolat is made with melted dark chocolate and egg yolks, using egg whites to lighten. Modern versions call for things like whipping cream and even gelatin to achieve the desired airy state. Purists may claim that the only real mousse is the traditional one, but in reality, you really can’t argue that any of the recipes that steer away from the original are wrong. The beauty of mousse is because there are literally hundreds of recipes out there, so you can choose a recipe to suit every mood and accommodate every taste.

A close cousin of chocolate mousse is the chocolate pots de crème, a dessert that’s baked and served in lidded pots. (Since most of us don’t have these traditional pots on hand, we can achieve the same baking results by using espresso cups and covering the custards with aluminum foil.) The ingredients are almost identical to those of the mousse (eggs, chocolate, cream), the reason being they are both in the custard family of desserts. Making a mousse almost warrants making a pots de crème, based on that fact alone.

The following recipes omit the use of raw egg whites, using whipped cream to lighten them instead. While a mousse is light in texture, a pots de crème is dense, with an almost chewy mouthfeel. A mousse is put directly into the refrigerator to chill, while a pots de crème is baked in a bain marie, or water bath, before chilling.

I like to serve the mousse and pots de creme side by side, for a “chocolate two ways” dessert – thought it might be a bit too rich for those not completely addicted to chocolate.

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… lounging on powdery beaches with the scent of plumeria wafting through the breeze. I’m in Hawaii for the week. Regular posting will resume next Wednesday — thank you for reading and hope all is well with the rest of the world.

Am I too late for this bandwagon?

If bacon has left the building and ham is the new swine product of choice, then I’m totally running a little behind on the up-and-up here. It’s like I got the memo that bacon was on the out, but I tossed it into a pile of other memos that include not wearing acid wash jeans after 1986 and how Pluto isn’t a planet anymore. Bacon is so last year, the memo says. Artisanal ham is what we’re supposed to be doing now. But guys, I dunno about this. The 80s can have its acid wash, but as for bacon and Pluto, I can’t let go. Not yet.

Pluto was that odd-tastic planet that was too faraway to see or understand until a few years ago. And apparently, scientists didn’t like what they saw, so it was hastily snipped out of textbooks and disowned by the planetary family. All because it was a “dwarf” planet. Harsh.

And bacon! What has it ever done to us to make us want to drop it like a hot potato? This bacon thing, to me, is not a fling. There is still so much to explore before we throw in the towel.

Fortunately, there are others that feel the same way with both Pluto and bacon. And if any of you bacon/Pluto fans are out there in hiding, you’re not alone. But we are indeed fighting an uphill battle, one that we may ultimately lose. But on the bright side, we can still keep bacon and the former ninth planet in our hearts. Pluto may have been nixed, but there’s still time for bacon to realize its full potential. And, if the meat candy’s decline is ultimately imminent, so be it. We tried.

But let’s send bacon out with a bang, shall we?

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Simple is just the way to go sometimes.

Like when you’ve spent the last few weeks in meetings with loan officers and real estate agents and all those other folks who are helping you realize a dream of buying a home. It’s too bad we can’t do all of this over dinner, which I’m sure would be better received than the hollow white lights of an office we should have left hours ago. Yes, we would all be happier if we met over dinner.

But because we can’t, I’ll have to compromise with simple dinners that can be made between meetings and work. Spring and summer are the best seasons for these types of speedy dishes mainly because of all the produce at your fingertips. And because everything tastes better in the summer, you can have bruschetta three nights in a row without risking taste-bud fatigue – which is one of the worst kinds of fatigue, in my opinion.

This magic bruschetta, as I’ve been calling it lately, seemed to pave the way for other areas of my life to behave with simplicity. The meetings waned; the paperwork finally done. I found a home. We completed the first day of Escrow yesterday, just in time for my 28th birthday today (this getting older part still hasn’t hit met yet). We get a three day weekend next week, and then I take off for Hawaii. I’ll knock on wood to be safe, but I don’t think that things can get any simpler (and more exciting!) than that.

And aside from being thisclose to owning a slice of the world, the forces at work gave me the best gift of all: my sanity has returned.

Or maybe that’s the result of all the really, really good wine I’ve been drinking lately.

In any case, both reds and whites pair well with this simple bruschetta – one so laden with garlic that it seems to set your mouth on fire. It’s a simple dinner, but that doesn’t mean it’s a simplistic one. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

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