NYC Chocolate Show

The Chocolate Show was pretty cool this weekend. I think they packed about 5,000 people into the tiny little Metropolitan Pavillion. It's pretty bad when you walk into an event and there's firemen walking around to control the potential fire hazards. Aside from that, it was a pretty fun time. Here are the pics we took (the blurry guy is Jaque Torres):

http://remaley.org/default.aspx?CurrentCategory=Chocolate%20Show/

I got a few good chocolate ideas:

1. One demonstrator said he serves chocolate dipped in Fleur De Sel salt instead of a sorbet palette-cleansing course at his restaurant in Vegas. Temper the chocolate until is cool enough to work with, form it into a little package and then dip just the bottom in the salt. You couldn't use regular table salt for this; Fleur De Sel is a french sort of rock salt that has a much sweeter flavor than others. It's kind of expensive, but this would be really fun to serve at a dinner party.

2. Tempering chocolate if you don't have marble countertops. The same demonstrator as above suggested just lining the bottom of a large baking sheet with plastic wrap then ladeling a little warm melted chocolate into the center. Working with a spatula, bring the chocolate out to the edges of the baking sheet.

3. Chocolate should be at 88 degrees to keep it perfectly tempered.

Fine family fun.