Chocolate Covered Monday

Valentines Day. A time for wasting money and the advertisement of childlike love... I mean really? Look, I'm Italian and as far as I'm concerned - Valentines Day is just a reason to allow myself to spend extra money at the store so that I can make some tasty treats. Russel Stover can shove it. I usually try to eat healthy meals, but I allow for exception on "special occasions." Another thing - I'm a Procido, which by nature means that I do things in excess. Speaking of health, dark chocolate is way more tantalizing and beneficial for the soul and body than milk chocolate. I much prefer using high quality bittersweet and semisweet chocolate than some gnarly milk chocolate hershey's chips. Chocolate covered strawberries are a must, then I made some dark chocolate ganache truffles rolled in nuts, toasted coconut, or dusted with cocoa powder. For dinner I made a delicious white wine sauce for a big pot of whole wheat linguine with shrimp. Roasted asparagus are what I call a fancy veg, but I'll eat those every night of the week! Yum. Yum. Yum.

For the chocolate truffles, making the ganache center is really easy! Chop 10 ounces of bittersweet chocolate with a chefs knife. (Chop chocolate from a bar or baker's chocolate. Chocolate chips have stabilizers that help them keep their shape, so the bar chocolate melts better). In a small saucepan heat 3/4 cup heavy cream on medium heat until small bubbles are rising around the edge of the pan. Add about 1/4 of the chopped chocolate. Stir until smooth and velvety and then combine the remaining chocolate with the cream/chocolate mixture. This is a simple way of tempering the chocolate - which is just a fancy way of not getting the chocolate above a certain temperature so that it stays glossy when it hardens later. Using a whisk, beat the ganache until all of the chocolate shavings have melted and you have a smooth and thick chocolate sauce. Add 2 tblsp. room temperature butter cut into pieces. Continue to whisk the mixture until it is combined. Line a square or rectangle dish with plastic saran wrap, using a large piece that extend at least 1 foot over the dish. Pour the ganache into the dish and smooth it out with a rubber spatula. Take the excess saran wrap and fold it over the ganache, pressing it directly over the surface. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes or allow the ganache to cool at room temperature for several hours. 

Dark Chocolate Truffles

Using two teaspoons scoop small mounds of the ganache onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Refrigerate until the mounds are hardened. Using your hands, roll the ganache mounds into round balls - truffles! Refrigerate while you melt some chocolate. I usually melt a couple of more bars of chocolate in the microwave 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between, until melted. Prepare a tray with chopped nuts, toasted coconut, and cocoa powder - or any other topping you like. Set up a station so that you can take a ganache ball, dip it in chocolate, roll it in a topping, and drop it off to cool. Use two forks for the dipping process so that the ganache center is only covered in chocolate - but not dripping. Play with it! This is not rocket science. But it is chocolate excellence :)

Now that we have fancy chocolate for sharing, delicious dinner is a must. I was quite surprised and delighted to find some large shrimp in the freezer section at the store. They were gulf shrimp - about 12 count to a pound! I defrosted, peeled, and deveined them (important!). White wine sauce is one of my favorite pasta sauces to eat with seafood. I don't make it that often because it's expensive and it has butter in it - which is delicious, but not healthy! To make the sauce melt 2 tblsp. butter and 2 tblsp. olive oil in a pan. Add 2 chopped shallots and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped, and saute about 3-4 minutes. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper and add to the pan. Cook until pink and remove the shrimp. To the pan add 1/2 cup good white wine (I used a white burgundy from France)... by the way you should be drinking whatever you are cooking with at the present moment. Also, add the juice of one lemon and plenty of salt and pepper. Allow this to simmer for a few minutes, add half a pound of freshly cooked whole wheat linguine, the shrimp, a handful of fresh parsley and a sprinkle of pecorino cheese. Heaven!

For some greens, I made a yummy salad with half spring mix and half baby spinach, fresh blueberries, crumbled feta, toasted pecans, avocado sprinkled with salt and pepper, dried cranberries, a few parsley leaves and a champagne vinaigrette. We barely had room for this! The pasta was soooo good.

And of course, don't forget... Alpine and Pepper could tell something exciting was happening because I put a scarf on pepper, which she loved! I've never seen a dog with so much sass before as this little girl...