SpiceLines

A school of caramel "carp" with dark chocolate scales are a sweet
April Fool's Day prank. Photo credit: www.patrickroger.com

Oh, to be in Paris today, scooping up these cunning faux carp from Patrick Roger. Not that they would actually fool anyone. But with their caramel filling, black chocolate scales and googly white eyes, a netful of these little darlings would make a delectable April Fool's Day prank.

Roger, one of Paris’s top chocolatiers, has a passion for sculpting fish and other whimsical creatures out of his favorite medium. When I was at his Boulevard St. Germain boutique last spring, schools of bright tropical fish were swimming through one window while life size penguins perched on ice floes in the other. A few weeks later, wicked caricatures of Nicholas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal, on bowling pins made of chocolate, danced across his website.

Go here to read more about Patrick Roger on Spicelines. And for the dark (not chocolate) side of April 1 pranks, read “April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks” by Benedict Carey, in today’s New York Times, Science Times, pp. D1 and D5.

“How sophisticated we all felt back in the dark days of the 1970’s when the moustachioed Italian waiter approached our table with a three-foot-tall, polished-wood pepper mill…” writes Charles Campion in “Real Food: Hot Stuff,” at Independent.co.uk (March 29, 2008). “Black pepper became the mainspring of fine dining and…the ingredients list of every recipe…tailed off with an identical mantra—add salt to taste and freshly ground black pepper.”

Gerard Vives, photographed in Paris last spring, sells 19 varieties of extraordinary
peppercorns to the top chefs of Paris--and to you, if you know where to shop.

In Paris last spring I finally had breakfast with Gerard Vives,

I’d been on his trail for over a year. Or maybe five. That’s when I first ran across his peppercorns at Maison Izrael. Izrael is Paris’s most venerable spice shop, stuffed to the rafters with dusty packets, jars and bottles, and that wintry Friday afternoon rue Francois-Miron was thronged with weekend chefs, stocking up on hard-to-get ingredients. (One kitten-heeled woman asked for Mazola as if it were the rarest huile d’argan.) The place was mobbed and how my eyes ever lighted upon the slim box inscribed Le Comptoir des Poivres I’ll never know.

Denise Vivaldo of L.A.-based Food Fanatics dishes about food styling: "I always
tell the actors the food is poisoned so they can't eat it. If they have to nibble on
camera, I serve them a few salad leaves."

Here’s what I did last weekend: Blow-torched a nearly raw chicken into gleaming submission, sealed limp hamburger buns with Scotchgard, built a toothpick scaffolding to prop up a collapsing wedge of chocolate cake. Then there was the no-melt “ice cream” made from a blend of Crisco, powdered sugar and cornstarch, and…

Well, you get the picture.

Bittersweet chocolate truffles from La Maison du Chocolat on Madison Avenue
are dusted with cocoa and filled with coffee-flavored dark chocolate ganache.

B returned from New York Thursday night, bearing surprise early birthday gifts—forty-eight, to be exact, and all in one box.

The surprise? Oh, just a quarter pound of the most exquisite bittersweet chocolate truffles from La Maison du Chocolat on Madison Avenue. Two layers of handmade cocoa-dusted morsels, filled with unctuous dark chocolate ganache subtly flavored with coffee. Unwrapping the signature cocoa-hued box, tied up with a café au lait-colored ribbon, was almost as delicious.

At the Rice Boat restaurant in the Taj Malabar, spicy meen mulagittathu, a
delicious fish curry flavored with Kashmiri chilies, is served with basmati rice.

First taste of India: a delicate coconut cookie, thin with buttery crumbs. When I open my eyes, there are sunrise views of the Arabian Sea.

My fourth taste: a sumptuous fish curry. Chunks of tender red snapper swimming in bright orange broth burnished with Kashmiri chilies, crackled with mustard seeds and curry leaves.

Signs of spring: fresh soft shell crab and green garlic from the Farmer's Market.

Yes, spring is here. The herb and vegetable garden is ready for ex-pat transplants: Black Russian tomatoes, French tarragon, Mexican poblano chiles.

And sometimes, a purely local meal comes together in a most unusual fashion.

Susana Trilling's Chile Lovers' Tour is among the culinary
vacations featured in the May 2008 Gourmet. Here, a pail
of rare chilhuacle chiles harvested in the fall. Photo credit:
www.seasonsofmyheart.com

Somehow we wound up at a raucous baptism, drinking shots of mescal and dancing to pulsating music.

A few years ago, I took a summer cooking class in Oaxaca with Susana Trilling. One day there was a surprise invitation to a fiesta. After driving aimlessly around a colonia on the outskirts of town, we heard music and let our ears take us to the party. Susana’s friends welcomed us warmly into their backyard and sat us at a round wooden table. We got to kiss the young man whose baptism we were celebrating—a sturdy, two-year-old riding on his grandmother’s hip.