Like Water for Choclate uses Magical Realism to capture the transformative qualities of everyday food and drink into something more. Also consider reading (and enjoying) Joanne Harris' amazing Chocolat.
Sotheby’s has just completed their Hong Kong auction of Ferran Adrià’s wine from the world famous elBulli Restaurant. When the evening’s sales were totaled, the coffers of Ferran’s future Barcelona culinary research center were US$1.82 million richer.
The most sought after wines were in three lots of Romanée Conti wines from various years. The Romanée Conti 1990 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti lot fetched top dollar, commanding US$72,708 for just three bottles.
The lot's final bid surpassed its original estimate auction value of US$33,547, certainly signaling many smiles from Sotheby’s wine staff. However, perhaps the most esteemed item auctioned off was an evening for four lucky guests with Chef Ferran Adrià himself in beautiful Barcelona, Spain.
The bid packet consisted of a meeting with Chef Adrià at his culinary test kitchen El Bulli Taller, followed by dinner at his brother’s acclaimed tapas restaurant, Tickets La Vida Tapa. The final winning bid for this evening of discovery and delight was an amazing US$28,451.
The funds generated by the auction will be well needed as the future elBulli Foundation is projected to cost US$7.7 million to build and another US$3.85 million annually to operate.
But Ferran need not fear. On April 26th Sotheby’s will auction off the remaining elBulli 10,000 wines in New York City to what will surely be another recording breaking evening for wine lovers from around the world. Additionally, Spanish telecom and broadband provider Telefonica SA has signed on as a Foundation sponsor.
Ferran has also committed to prepare what are sure to be a legendary series of meals once a year for the 100 to 200 supporting Foundation members.
The accumulated funds will result in a Foundation that, as Ferran recently told members of the press, will be "a mix of Cirque du Soleil, the Museo Daliand MIT’s media lab." Once completed, Ferran will most likely amazing the culinary world - yet once again.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013
Today when people hear the word “Hershey’s” they think instantly of chocolate. But that was not always the case. In fact, Milton Hershey’s first fortune was crafted from caramels and baseball cards.
Hershey began his rags-to-riches life story in Derry Church, Pennsylvania, the son of religious Mennonite parents. Yet it was his mother Veronica “Fanny” who was the guiding light of his childhood. She taught him the value of hard work and the Bible’s Golden Rule, remembering always to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
He learned to work hard for what he wanted and what he wanted more often than anything else was something his family’s limited means did not allow - candy.
He saved the few pennies he made each week running errands just so he could make a special trip to the local candy shop.
By the time he was 13, those candy shops were located in the seven different towns his family had moved to and from.
As a result, his grades were very poor in school. It is not difficult to understand why he failed at his first apprenticeship to a newspaper editor (try absolutely no spelling skills).
But he found his calling as a confectionery apprentice. He work hard, very hard, and in four short years mastered the creation of sweets from hard candies to chocolate fudge.
At the early age of 18 he was ready to start his own company.
Years of failure followed as he moved from Philadelphia to Colorado to New Orleans and finally to New York City always trying to find the candy that would make his fortune.
Penniless and discouraged, he returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so broke he couldn’t even buy ingredients.
Everyone he tried to borrow money from to restart once again his business turned him down. He was, in short, a known loser.
Yet as he pleaded for additional funds at bank after bank, even with a major order from England for caramels in hand, one person only saw the opportunity that everyone else was overlooking.
That person was a lowly bank cashier at the Lancaster County National Bank.
Hershey was so grateful for this man’s support that he ran down the street in Lancaster, still in his work apron, with the English company’s check in hand to repay the loan that had saved (and started) his legendary career.
Soon orders were poring from around the world for his softer milk caramels, making him millions of dollars. But to his amazement, the largest orders seem to always come from Great Britain.
So at 37 years of age, he traveled to England and was amazed at what he found there. British candy merchants were discarding the American baseball cards he enclosed with his pound blocks of caramel candies. They then cut the blocks into individual pieces, dipped them in chocolate and sold them for a per-piece price that by far exceeded the profit margins that Hershey was making Stateside.
Hershey quickly understood that chocolate, not caramels, was the future. He returned to America and sold the caramel division of his company to American Caramel Company for $1 million dollars (roughly $25 million dollars in today’s currency).
The funds generated by the sale lay the foundation for the Hershey chocolate empire, which still produces and sales chocolate around the world.
American Caramel continued to produce caramels, packed with baseballs from 1909-1911. Baseball cards packed with caramels, instead of cigarettes or chewing tobacco, were popular with many mothers during this baseball-crazy era.
In fact, one of the most desired (and expensive) baseball cards sought after by modern collectors was produced during this period. Most recently the Shoeless Joe Jackson card released with the American Caramel Company sold for a stunning $79,000 at auction.
So when you're next at a game (or planning a sports related menu), remember caramels along with hot dogs and Cracker Jacks as part of baseball cuisine. They're sweet, versatile and definitely part of the all-American game of hope and challenge even in the bottom of the ninth or in life itself.
For as Shoeless Joe Jack would himself have been the first to say, "People will come!" if we but have the courage to believe that life is a Field of Dreams that we can make real - just as Hershey did with a little sugar and determined skill.
POST NOTE, April 8, 2013
No Smoking Please!
If you still have doubts that baseball cards (and caramels) still hold a place in America’s favorite game, just considerate that over the weekend a rare 1909 card sold for US$2.1 million.
Yes, that’s right – US$2.1 million! Wow! That card was of Honus Wagner, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Only 50 of the rare cards were produced by the American Tobacco Company before Wagner, who had never authorized their release, demanded the Company stop production.
Like Hershey, he did not approve of smoking and was concerned children would buy (and possible use tobacco) just to get the sport card.
In the future, his image on baseball cards was produced by the far healthier (and much sweeter) American Caramel Company. Bravo to an early baseball legend with a conscience ahead of his time, who cared more about children than self promotion! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013
As the winds blow, James Naismith has been struggling with an assignment given to him by his supervisor, Dr. Luther H. Gulick at Springfield’s Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Training School.
Dr. Gulick wants a new vigorous indoor sport created for the School’s male students that equals the exercise value of such summer sports as American football and soccer.
And Naismith was given just 14 days to create an indoor game that would provide a much needed "athletic distraction" for the bored students.
Dr. Gulick further demanded thatthe new game should not take up much room, help to keep the school’s athletes in shapeand explicitly emphasize fair play "for all players and not be too rough”.
(A little like being asked to create a new form of soufflé without heat, no?)
After some thought, Naismith divided his physical education class of 18 students into two teams of nine players each. He then directed their attention to the elongated commercialpeach baskets he has strapped up high at either end of the gym.
He explained that the new game was played by throwing the ball (on this day a soccer ball was used) into each team’s basket while the opposing team tried to retake the ball and score points in their basket. And so basketball was born – thanks to a peach basket, a ball and one creative teacher.
Well, not quite because there was the ladder. The ladder? Yes, because the peach basket still retained its hard commerce bottom requiring the janitor to climb a ladder after each score and remove the ball. An activity that, as you might expect, slowed the game down dramatically.
By 1906, the basket bottom had been removed (great decision) and the wooden fruit basket was replaced by a chicken wire frame. Still later the wire frame was replaced by a net 15 to 18 inches in length.
And while the net’s supporting metal ring is now universally called the “hoop”, everyone still refers to the score as “making a basket”.
So, please, don’t forget the noble peach who got it all started when you plan your March Madness promotionals. After all, it did all began with those specially designed long beautiful peach baskets.
Well, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has done it again. This time their winning series is Mr. Selfridge, the story of the rise and fall of Harry Gordon Selfridge, American merchant extraordinaire.
And although Selfridge began his career in Chicago at Marshall Field, it was in London that he won lasting fame as the founder of Selfridges Department Store. Within its elegant walls, he redefined the shopping experience from one of merely purchasing an item into an exciting and singular experience.
He was the first to connect celebrities to in-store product promotion. He created such lasting marketing phrases as “Only XX days left ‘til Christmas” and “The customer is always right”. He blended dining, relaxation and style into a new form of client interaction that still affects our world today.
When a restaurant trains their wait staff to be informative rather than aggressive, they can thank Selfridge for establishing that prescient. When diners are aware of (and expecting to enjoy) exotic ingredients from around the world, again it was Selfridge who first suggested such items should be offered to shoppers along with the traditionally expected.
Based on Lindy Woodhead’s book, Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (not excluding, of course, Selfridge’s own text, The Romance of Commerce), the new series traces Selfridge raise to the heights of Edwardian society (complete with his very own castle) to the sadder days of the Great Depression and World War II.
Definitely a must-watch series, Mr. Selfridge offers a glimpse into the mind of a brilliant, yet very human, man whose courage and creativity still inspires us today, right down to the phrase, “How may we serve you?”
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013
Not everyone celebrates Easter with chocolate Easter eggs. The French have a charming tradition that honors the Spring Holiday with both sweet chocolate and savory bread.
During the medieval period, the Church in Rome dictated that from Good Friday to Easter Sunday all village church bells in France would be silenced to honor the liturgy of Christ’s suffering.
And while this might seem a noble idea in the Vatican, it was one that caused great concern in France’s small rural towns.
For you see, in a world without clocks and phones, the church bells regulated the activities of the everyday worker. Their tolling marked the start of day before the sun rose and its end as the star came out. Without their rising, life was without order or focus.
To justify their silence, local priests created a legend that the bells, high in their church towers, actually flew through the air to Rome on the eve of Good Friday carrying all the sins of the villages with them.
Once in Rome, the reigning Pope would absolve the collective sins and send the bells flying back through the air, ready to ring loud and clear on Easter morning.
Over time what was once thought of as fact transformed itself into a charming tradition, one now celebrated by the French through the exchange of chocolate bells on Easter morning.
These sweet bells, or “cloche” as they are called in French, are often molded and elaborately decorated. But that is not the only “cloche” honored in French cuisine.
Since medieval times, French bakers have used clay cloche or bell pans to bake their bread in. Their design insures a crisp crust and a cloud soft interior. In other words, a perfect French loaf.
Commercial made cloche pans are available and are excellent. You can also create a personal cloche from unglazed terra cotta pots.
Add a stainless steel ring hook to seal the planter drainage hole. Oil the base plate and preheat in the oven before adding your raised dough. (Be careful when transferring the dough not to touch the heated the lower plate).
Bake at the temperature and time stated in your recipe. The results will make you want to celebrate Easter all year long!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013 at 5:17PM 
