The New Chef's Journal

This summer, when it was preposterously hot and humid in DC, I started looking around for some nice cold dessert recipes. I found this recipe for iced chocolate on David Lebowitz's website . His recipe is based on the frozen hot chocolate served at Serendipity in New York. The drink is essentially a very dressed up version of a chocolate milk shake. The melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder really help to take it up to another level. Unsurprisingly, this was a very rich and delicious dessert. Definitely worth trying at home. Next time I'm in Manhattan I'll have to try Serendipity, as everything I've heard about it sounds great. Ingredients 3/4 cup (180ml) whole or lowfat milk 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-process 8 chocolates or 4 ounces (115g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped 1 1/2 cups (6 ounces, 175g) ice cubes 2 to 3 scoops chocolate ice cream or chocolate sherbet Directions 1. In a small saucepan, heat two-thirds of t

When I was visiting my friends Anna and Justin in Madison, WI last month we went to a Sichuan Chinese restaurant called Fugu Asian. As a spoiled New Yorker, I was shocked to find such good Chinese food so far from the East Coast (though the Chinese food in DC's Chinatown is remarkably underwhelming). Fugu had some amazing and highly authentic dishes. In fact some of the dishes on the menu were far too authentic for me to actually try: ox tongue, pork kidney, pork intestine, intestine in hot pot. And that was just on the menu that had been translated into English. Anna's already talked a good deal about Fugu on her blog,  Dining and Opining , so I won't go into too much more detail on it. My favorite of the various dishes we ordered was eggplant in garlic sauce, also known as Sichuan eggplant. This was an amazingly dish, with a very unique flavor that Anna and Justin informed me was Sichuan peppercorn. This is the description wikipedia offers for Sichuan peppercorn: "

A week or two ago I started craving tortellini salad, so I decided to make my own Mediterranean version. The salad is my own combination and the dressing comes from allrecipes.com . I'm very happy with how this turned out, but most of the credit should go to Danielle M. who posted the dressing on allrecipes. It was an absolutely perfect Greek dressing. It was delicious and simple to make. This is definitely something I'll be making again. The one mistake I made was that I stored the dressing in my fridge, when the recipe calls for it to be stored at room temperature. After a couple days the the oil and herbs clotted and got gross, which was a waste of very good dressing. Ingredients For the salad: 20 ounce package of cheese tortellini One pint grape tomatoes One red bell pepper One yellow bell pepper 8 ounce can sliced mushrooms 1/4 red onion sliced thin 3 ounces crumbled feta cheese For the dressing: 1/2 cup olive oil 1 1/4 teaspoons garlic powder 1 1/4 tea