CACAO

Describe your dream chocolate bar.

Every time I think about chocolate, I laugh. That’s because there’s a skit on “Portlandia” where cacao is used as a safe word, and Cacao became one of the hottest chocolate shops in Portland around the same time. The two things are stuck in my head together. I think of chocolate, I see Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein in my head.

While I lived in Portland, I went with my then-wife, Dana to Seattle. While we were there, our friend Meg took us to a chocolate factory store called “Theo.” Because of Cacao and Theo, I am not impressed with myself on pastry. That’s not my station. But I’ll give it a shot.

To best represent me, it would have:

• 72% dark chocolate
• Old Bay (no salt to crank up the amount I can use for heat)
• Mumbo sauce inspired caramel
• Salted peanuts
• Nougat

I went back and forth with myself over the nougat, because I feel like there has to be a transition layer between the chocolate and caramel. It looks cleaner to me aesthetically and that is important to me, too.

That is a creative idea above my technical expertise, but I have had Old Bay caramel before. Route One sells Old Bay Caramel popcorn in tins and it’s addictive. So, I know the flavor combination works. All Marylanders know that Old Bay and Mumbo sauce work together because they don’t come in the same dish, but they generally come on the same plate.

The reason it represents all of me is that Old Bay is my strongest sensory memory from living in Galveston, Texas as well. Old Bay is the official crab boil of the South, for the most part. I’m sure there are pockets of South Carolina where they do it differently- low country boils are also delicious, just different. On the whole, Old Bay is the seafood boil available at the grocery store in most of the nation. The thing that makes it different for Marylanders is that we don’t use it as a crab boil. We put it on everything, and it’s delicious. I particularly like shaking French fries in Old Bay after they come out of the fryer.

Gotta call out McDonalds for a negative, but I’ll call them out for a positive as well. McDonalds should sell tartar sauce packets so you can get extra tartar for your fries with the Filet O Fish. It would be nice if they had cocktail sauce in addition to ketchup, too, but I’m not here to tell them how to run their business. They seem to be doing okay. The positive is that in Maryland, they occasionally run sales on Old Bay Filet O Fish, where they add Old Bay to their tartar sauce regionally about as often as the McRib goes in and out.

I have asked for more tartar sauce when I’m in the restaurant and they’ll put some into a to-go container for you if you ask them nicely, but it’s messy because there’s no efficient container for it. You also can’t order tartar sauce for delivery.

Also, I like French fries and tartar sauce better than I like actual seafood.

I’m going off into a tangent because honestly, chocolate isn’t my thing. I’m way more into savory foods because with chocolate, my expertise is that I like peanut M&Ms. I don’t have a truly refined palate when it comes to picking out notes in chocolate. It has to be pronounced for me to get it, the way chocolate orange is nice right up until it’s overwhelming.

I think maybe chocolate oranges would be improved with salmiakki ice cream. Salmiakki is salted licorice, and salmiakki ice cream was a huge deal on a video I watched of touring Helsinki. Just one example of how I pull ideas for flavor combinations out of my brain. I think of a flavor combination, and everywhere I’ve ever seen that combination represented. I love fruit and licorice, so the oranges, cream, chocolate, licorice, and salt sounded decadent. I just got a picture of Dave Cad in my head when I thought it (Dave is said Finnish YouTuber).

Right now, my favorite sweet thing is Real Citrus, a company that releases packets that look like sweet and low, but are filled with zest. I put two packets of zest into soda water, and the flavor is intense enough to feel like it’s a Fanta, but adult because there’s no sugar at all. And by that I don’t mean that it tastes guilt free, I mean that it tastes adult because it’s not sweet. Orange Fanta Zero is one of my favorite things, and this has knocked it off the list entirely. I don’t like prepackaged seltzer because I cannot control the amount of fruit flavor in it and they have chosen “TV snow.” I kick it up several notches, because La Croix and others like it taste like they decided real fruit flavor was too expensive. Every one feels phoned in compared to adding fruit to water.

There is an exception, I have realized. Perrier is strong enough for me. I have been drinking Perrier Lime since I was a kid, and I have enjoyed it immensely. I apologize. I was wrong. Oh, and also Liquid Death Lime is on my Last Meal wish list. I’m just saying that it tastes more like a soda and less like flavored water if you control the amount of flavoring in the seltzer rather than the company.

I have also found that mixes that are supposed to be for still water bottles also make great sodas. So far, I’ve made green tea with lemon, lemon cucumber, hibiscus and berries, and a few other flavors that have come from the sugar free aguafrescas I bought on Amazon. The hibiscus and berries is particularly good. I like the water bottle packets because they’re sugar free. Therefore, when I add them to the soda water, the sweeteners actually dissolve. It’s why I haven’t made my own simple syrup. I find that adding syrup to seltzer ends in a drink where all the syrup is on the bottom unless you’re stirring constantly.

I should ask Zac if he minds taking me to Dollar Tree on Saturday. Putting it here to remind myself because I know at Dollar Tree they have water bottle mix-ins for things like root beer. That would be delicious in seltzer. I’m sure that’s what it’s for, because root beer flavoring in still water sounds terrible.

The other thing is that the sugar free flavoring doesn’t add water to your drink, diluting the carbonation. I hate doing anything that detracts from the bubbles. 🙂

Now, I have to go start thinking of my dream cup of coffee.