Not too long ago I was a bittersweet chocolate snob. I would only eat chocolate bars with a very high percentage of cacao, the higher the better. But I've discovered some milk chocolate recently that I really love. If you only eat high percentage cacao, I urge you to try some of the more exquisite milk chocolates on the market. They may surprise you. They certainly surprised me.

Milk chocolate has milk powder or condensed milk as an ingredient and generally has much lower percentages of cacao. Having tasted lots of chocolate, I am still very fussy about what I like and what I don't like. Regardless of the cacao content, good chocolate has to have clean flavors, it can't be too sweet, too salty or overwhelmed by flavorings such as vanilla. It should melt smoothly without a hint of graininess. It should be so good that even a little bit satisfies.

When it comes to milk chocolate, I highly recommend each of these bars:


Scharffen Berger Milk Almond
Sea Salted Almonds & Milk Chocolate
41% cacao, 3. ounces $4.95
If you like nuts with your chocolate, this is the bar for you. It's perfectly balanced with just a little crunch of nuts, not big chunks. The salt is barely perceptible, which is to my liking. If offers luscious caramel notes and is rich and creamy.

This bar feels most like an everyday bar. It's like a Hershey bar with almonds, but all grown up and way, way more satisfying.

Scharffen Berger is now owned by Hershey and unfortunately I have no idea where the cacao beans come from. Scharffen Berger has always promoted the idea of blends rather than single origin bars, though they do sometimes put out limited edition bars from time to time that are single origin.



Valrhona Tanariva
33% cacao, 2.5 ounces, $5.99
The Tanariva proves even a bar with very low cacao content can be rich and complex. It is very smooth, like all Valrhona chocolate, but also has some acid to it and so it doesn't seem terribly sweet, just milky, creamy and with a bit of citrus as well. Valrhona uses exceptionally high quality beans, in this case they are from Madagascar.

Don't compare this with a dark chocolate bar, just enjoy it for what it is. I think it may be the best bar with only 33% cacao. It has a lot going on.

The bar comes in an innovative form, with asymmetrical breaking lines intended to make it easier to break and share. I am finding the Valrhona "tasting" bars available in more and more shops these days.




Original Beans Esmeraldas Milk Bar with Fleur de Sel
42% cacao,3.57 ounces, $11.95
This bar is an indulgence. It is perfectly suited for gift giving but you might just want to be the recipient. I don't detect any salt at all, just heightened chocolate intensity. It has lots of dark toffee notes, a lovely buttery texture and flavor. It has an extremely long finish and amazing depth. It's conched for 50 hours, from Arriba beans that come from Ecuador (interestingly I tried another Arriba bar from another manufacturer and I didn't like it at all).

The founders of Original Beans are committed to sustainability and each bar carries a tracking number so you can learn more about the conservation efforts at the rainforest where the beans for your bar originated. The price is higher than most bars, but for every bar your buy the company plants a tree in the region of the bean's origin to replenish and protect the areas where the cacao beans grow. It's also a much bigger bar than the others.

I have a weakness for flatbread, all kinds of flatbread. If flatbread is on a menu, it's pretty much a given that I will order it. Years ago I made those Chinese spring onion pancakes, but other than that, I really haven't bothered. Why? Well, making flatbread seemed like it would be a bother, what with the yeast and the kneading, and rising and resting and all I figured it was easier to just order it in restaurants. Until last week.

While in London I spent many hours perusing food magazines and the fantastic cookbook collection at Books for Cooks, one of my favorite book stores in the world. I will share with you my list of purchases at some other point, but suffice it to say one of my purchases was a Donna Hay magazine. Donna Hay is Australian but she is tremendously popular in the UK and for good reason. Her recipes are generally not that complicated but offer maximum impact for a minimum of effort. When I saw her recipe for rosemary flatbread I was intrigued.

I adapted her recipe by leaving out the rosemary. Plain flatbread is more versatile and easy to top with just about anything. I tested the recipe for one of my recipe development clients, MyWinesDirect. I topped it with smoked salmon, goat cheese, cucumbers and chives so that it would pair well with a fragrant and crisp Pinot Grigio.

Because the dough has a lot of parmesan cheese in it, the resulting bread is quite hearty and robust but with great texture, soft on the inside and flecked with crisp brown freckles. Some suggestions for toppings toppings:

* Smoked salmon, goat cheese, cucumbers & chives (pictured)
* Fresh tomatoes & olives
* Sausage & winter squash
* Mushrooms, onions & bacon
* Pears, gorgonzola & toasted hazelnuts
* Figs & prosciutto

These are just a few off the top of my head, you can probably think of even more. I also think you could swap out some of the unbleached white flour for white whole wheat or whole wheat flour. Let me know how your variations turn out...!

Parmesan Flatbread
Makes 2 large flatbreads

Ingredients

1 cup unbleached white flour (or 1/2 white flour and 1/2 whole wheat white)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup boiling water

Instructions

In a mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder and parmesan cheese. Add the olive oil and boiling water and quickly stir to form a soft dough. Divide the dough in half and roll each half on a floured surface into a roughly 8 1/2 inch round. Heat a non-stick pan or flat griddle over medium high heat. When hot, cook the flat bread, about 3 minutes on each side or until brown in spots. Top with whatever toppings you like and slice into wedges.

Enjoy!

I am very pleased to introduce a new feature on Cooking with Amy. If you scroll down the page on the right hand you will find a Google Calendar that lists local events that I have cherry picked. These are not randomly chosen, but only events I personally think will be well worth attending. I may even be attending some of them myself. Note: the image on the left is just that, an image, so don't try clicking on it!

To use the calendar just click on the title of the event you are interested in for more details. Click on the title again and you will again see the full listing of events. If you click on the "+ Google Calendar" image you can subscribe to the calendar if you wish. I'll be adding more events as they come to my attention.

A big thanks again to my coding guru Christine Vilar for making this calendar come to life.

Have you ever noticed how the perfect fruit demands your attention? A run of the mill apple or banana is fine, benign even. But really spectacular fruit grabs you and doesn't let go. I hope everyone has the amazing experience of fresh, intensely flavored, sensual and almost overwhelming experience some day that Chip Brantley had when he first tasted a pluot. It changed his life. No kidding. The Perfect Fruit is his personal and journalistic investigation of this relatively recent stone fruit.

Barely into the first chapter I found myself inexplicably drawn to a local farmers market where I found the aptly named "flavor king." You have to admit, it is an awfully beautiful looking fruit. It tasted even better. Sweet, tangy, juicy, floral and complex.



The season for pluots is pretty much now over, but if you want to read a book about a most unlikely subject that will draw you in, much like a piece of perfect fruit, I wholeheartedly recommend The Perfect Fruit. Brantley covers the breeding, the marketing and flavor of the fruit. The book is well-written, with a strong attention to detail, it covers much of the business related to stone fruit but also the passion that drives fruit breeders to keep working on new hybrids all the time.

I was a bit skeptical about a whole book on pluots. But it's a book filled with interesting characters, almost dynastic families and the forces of nature. I found it fascinating, I hope you will too.

Guy Prince is a man with focus. He grills and he smokes and coaxes the best out of food in his own unmistakeable way. Who else would serve squares of bacon as an appetizer at a picnic? There is no mistaking the man, his food or his writing. He's also a true gentleman who never passes up the opportunity to help anyone with their smoking, grilling or meaty dilemmas. His blog is Meathenge and his stunning carnivorous photos will make you insanely hungry.

"Excellent question. For me, when I was a lot younger I found that I could cook better tasting food at home. And since I live and grew up in California, I could sure as hell out grill or out smoke any my local BBQ joints. The deal was sealed."

Last week I got a sneak peek at the Hodo Soy Beanery factory in Oakland. I learned how tofu, soy milk and yuba (tofu skin) is made and my ability to eat store bought tofu was ruined forever.

I am not a tofu hater. I like it. I don't find it bland, but mild, and I love the way it picks up the flavor of whatever else is in the pot or pan. I even like the Japanese style of serving cold cubes of tofu topped with a little grated ginger, soy sauce and scallions. Hodo Soy founder Minh Tsai likes tofu too. But he missed the fresh tofu he ate in Vietnam where he grew up. He experimented making it and his creations were a big success. Today he sells to high end restaurants like Greens, Slanted Door and Coi. Tsai explained at first restaurants used his products for staff meals but quickly it migrated on to menus. Soon his tofu will be at retail outlets and in December you can visit the factory and see it being made too.

It's not a very complicated process, though much of the process is done by hand. Organic non-genetically modified soybeans grown in the US are soaked 6-8 hours, then ground, water is added, they are cooked by steam injection and filtered. The soy milk can be drank fresh, used to make yuba, a most delicate and tender tofu skin (nothing like the kind that is rehydrated) and also used to make tofu. Calcium sulfate is used to coagulate the soy milk and turn it into tofu, and then it is pressed and cut into chunks.

Fresh tofu is a lot like fresh mozzarella. It tastes very different and much better when it is super fresh. The texture is better and so is the flavor. Yes, flavor. Fresh tofu and soy milk have unbelievable creamy, nutty, slightly bean-y flavor. It is delicious with sweet or savory preparations. You just have to try it to believe it. I can see using the sheets of yuba like crepes, as noodles, and stir fried. "Ho" means good in Chinese and "Do" means bean. Good bean. Really.

Have you noticed that Halloween has become a major commercial holiday? I'd complain except that I am completely beguiled by the marvelous creations in the October edition of Martha Stewart Living magazine. I actually got a sneak peek at the photos for this issue when I was in New York last year. That chocolate cake with the green snake has been haunting me ever since!

If I need one more thing to put me in the Halloween spirit it's this, Michael Recchiuti's adorable Jack o'Lantern decorated Halloween motif chocolates. They are filled with burnt caramel, one of the most popular flavors. A box of eight chocolate confections is $19. Any excuse is just fine to indulge in Recchiuti chocolates and these little sweets are more cute than creepy. But treat yourself soon, they are available only until October 31.

Burnt caramel is something Michael Recchiuti clearly enjoys playing with, it ends up as a sauce, coating nuts, and even in ice cream. It really is the flavor of Fall as far as I'm concerned, a little bitter, a little sweet and whole lot delicious.