CT Food

Get Ready, Get Set, CSA’s

Put down that snow shovel. Head to your computer, your phone, whatever. Want to finally get yourself into a CSA? Run, don’t walk.

All the info is here at the Hartford Courant.

One Word: Chocolate

Turns out Valentine’s Day isn’t the biggest chocolate holiday of the year – that honor belongs to Christmas followed by Easter. But really – who cares? Chocolate is, well, chocolate.

Mmmm, not quite. Also turns out that chocolatier styles are not interchangeable. In fact there are so many completely different ways of making those really high-end chocolates that – in my opinion anyway – you can’t even really compare them.

So check out my story in The New York Times if you want to really understand 1. What these different types of chocolates are and the varying degrees care and expertise they require, and 2. Just how pervasive small, artisinal chocolatiers have become in recent years. (And don’t call the chocolate makers – those are the guys who make the chocolate from the cacao beans.)

This list will help you a little more than the one with the story. I’ve included each chocolatier’s specialty. Remember, these guys don’t all make the same things.

BROOKFIELD

Bridgewater Chocolate, 559 Federal Road, (203) 775-2286.

Enrobed chocolates featuring their own toffees and caramels plus roasted nuts. These are big, multi-bite pieces. They also have their $20 version of a Snickers.

GREENWICH

The Little Chocolate Company, 99 Mill Street, (203) 531-6190.

Been around for awhile online and catering only, but just opened a store. Bark with homemade add-ins such as peppermint – the real stuff, not the commercial junk; Chocolate dipped mini-biscotti – which they also bake.

KENT

Belgique Patisserie & Chocolatier, 1 Bridge Street, (860) 927-3681.

Classic Belgian pralines. They are really the only guys who do this level of work.

LITCHFIELD

The Dutch Epicure Shop, 491 Bantam Road, (860) 567-5586.

This is a totally by-hand operation. Easter is the big holiday for them. They make hollowed chocolate Easter eggs filled with their handmade truffles.

Three Oaks Chocolatier, 583 Bantam Road, (860) 567-0392.

Small selection topped by handmade truffles plus more basic bark, coconut stacks, turtles.

MADISON

Madison Chocolates, 908 Boston Post Road, (203) 245-4335.

Handmade truffles.

MIDDLETOWN

Tschudin Chocolates & Confection, 100 Riverview Center Main Street, (860) 759-2222.

The newest chocolatier in the state specializing in truffles and filled chocolates with unusual herb and spice mixtures.

MILFORD

H. Mangels Confectioner, 107 River Street, (203) 783-9770.

Truffles plus seasonal specials.

NORWALK

Knipschildt Chocolatier and Café Chocopologie, 12 South Main Street, (203) 838-3131.

Pralines, truffles and enrobed chocolates featuring herbs and spices. Most of it is wholesaled, however, at places like Dean &DeLuca, Balducci’s and Whole Foods.

RIDGEFIELD

Deborah Ann’s Homemade Chocolates, 381 Main Street, (203) 438-0065.

Enrobed chocolate, fudge, butter crunch, solid molded chocolate.

WATERBURY

Fascias Chocolates, 2066 Thomaston Avenue, (203) 753-0515.

The oldest of the small guys – started in 1964. Enrobed chocolates, “meltaways,” peanut butter cups with pure peanut butter, lollipops, truffles, and lots of stuff dunked in chocolate.

WESTPORT

Cocoa Michelle, 190 Main Street, (203) 221-0002.

Herb and spice truffles and filled chocolates with cocoa butter jewel-colored coatings, which is a recent trend.

What Am I Missing Here?

I admit it. I’m late – way late – to the Ikea party. I’ve been snooping around a little bit and I’m still not sure what all the fuss has been about home-wise. As for food, I’m not all that interested in the whole food court thing and the legendary meatballs – not into ground meat these days, with good reason.

But that little food shop deal, after you check out. Now that caught my attention. Mostly because you need to do some serious language intensive just to figure out what the heck you might be about to ingest.

Knackebrod flerkorn?

Saft flader?

Inlagdsill?

Skorpor kardemumma?

You know, I’m kind of wondering how big a call there is for all this stuff. I mean, I was the only one even in there. Is there a run I’m not aware of here on cloudberry jam, lingonberry concentrate, prawn cheese spread in a tube, salmon pate in a tube, or those meatballs – frozen (froz kottbullar, for the record)?

To be fair, there were some interesting cheeses and mueseli and those classic Swedish crackers. So I tried some sas pepparrot — horseradish sauce and sylt flader & apelsin — orange and elderflower marmalade (no corn syrup!) and chocolate (that turned out to have a big Kraft on it), and jelly rats (gummy bears in another life).

As for that list of stuff: multigrain crispbread, elderberry concentrate, pickled herring and cardamom crisp rolls. Actually sounds like dinner?

Let’s Hear it for the Pros

It’s nice to have someone remind everyone that there is still room for pros in this business. And, without putting too fine a point on it (and REALLY trying to not be snotty) – some opinions are more valid than others. Even some professional opinions are more valid than others. We all have reviewers we trust and reviewers we take with a grain of salt. (OK – we’re cutting back on salt, so maybe something else.)

For the record – I’ve been somewhere in the food-writing/reporting constellation for more than 15 years. And – I don’t do reviews. Do I like being able to sneak around a bit to see what’s in stores and markets and what people are buying? Yeah. Is it helpful? Yeah. Do people get freaked out when I call them for a story? Yeah. Nature of the beast.

But give this baby a read — it’s by Robert Sietsema in the Columbia Journalism Review – you’ll learn a little thing or two. I did.

The Melville Model

I’m a kind of populist when it comes to food – especially how the media handle it.

Since everybody has to eat, it seems to me media entities would have way more relevancy dealing with food safety and health and affordable meals and real-life food preparation than with insanely expensive restaurants where you can’t get a reservation anyway and even if you could you would be disinclined to eat their, say foie gras.

The worst offender, in my book, is the Food Network. It staggers me that in this day and age it can justify the financial and culinary waste of things like Iron Chef. I find it impossible to watch without thinking about how many people could be fed (like in Haiti right now, let alone all the financially strapped people in our own country) for the cost of the high-end ingredients. And Oh! The waste!

Maybe someone should try a food challenge show to develop healthy meals for schools, or packagable food for emergency situations.

Sometimes you truly need a little reminder of what food’s role in society can be aside from a life necessity. The Melville Charitable Trust has harnessed food as a social change agent in a way that is at once unique and obvious. It seems to be working in their single experiment at Billings Forge in Hartford. The good news is there are lots of inquiries about it and one day you could see this replicated in other places around the nation.

You can read more about it in my story here in The New York Times Metropolitan section.

Post New Year’s Culinary Stew

A stew of food notes is what we’re talking about here.

Wooster Square Market Jan. 16, 2010

The Diehards and Newcomers

CitySeed’s first New Haven market of the winter season (oh thank you for those 45-plus-degrees!) had a hefty showing of the stalwarts on Saturday: Stone Gardens still with Brussels sprouts and some pristine garlic; greens from [...]

A Little Angst with Your Tarte?

Guess I’m not the only one wringing my lettuce leaves over what I ought to be eating. And the right way to produce whatever it is that I finally DO decide that I ought to be eating. (See my last post)

The L.A. Times laments the shootout over local food versus, well, everything else. Sound familiar?

The [...]

More Omnivore Dilemmas – Progress and Stew

I am tired of polemics.

And I am confused. Well, maybe not confused – distressed is more like it. How can so many people be so sure they are right (and everyone else is wrong) about food? How can so many people be considered right about food when our food system is sick and so many [...]

Think Summer

Stanton-Davis Homestead Dinners at the Farm, Stonington.

The dead of January (and believe me, this January in particular) and we’re talking about Dinners at the Farm? Sounds pretty good to me.

Organizers of these quintessential depth of summer affairs – gourmet, all Connecticut product, mega-multi-course dinners cooked outdoors on…well…a farm – are getting a head start [...]

New Year, Fresh Bread

New year – new resolutions. OK a whole bunch of the same old resolutions. But they’re good resolutions. Downright laudable resolutions. Resolutions I absolutely believe in.

And an awful lot of them have to do with food. Granted, I already run in the semi-elite end of the eating/cooking spectrum, so some might argue I really don’t [...]

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