バレンタインデー！

schoolpsychnerd and I traditionally don’t do much for Valentine’s Day. We first started dating around the end of February, so we’d put off any celebration until then, and then when we got married we continued the lack of tradition. It wasn’t until we moved to Japan, where we adopted the Japanese way of celebrating Valentine’s Day and the corresponding custom of White Day. This year we went out to Ethiopian Diamond for dinner, almost entirely because I could make reservations using OpenTable and thus I didn’t have to expend any real effort on it. Plus, Ethiopian food. Yum.

But after that, schoolpsychnerd still had time to make me some chocolate. She’s only made traditional 本命チョコ one year, and every other time has done some kind of cheesecake. In Japan it was always a no-bake cheesecake because we didn’t have an oven, and then in America that continued just because I like no-bake cheesecakes, but this year I asked for a baked chocolate cheesecake as a change of pace and to see how it turns out, and so she retired to the kitchen, worked her culinary alchemy, and came up with this:

Berry added as garnish

She modified the recipe a bit, and while it didn’t turn out at all like I expected, I liked it a lot. She reduced the sugar in the recipe and used 85% cacao chocolate instead of the 75% that the recipe called for, and the result was that instead of tasting like a chocolatey cheesecake it tasted more like a flourless chocolate cake with a hint of cheese. I’m not complaining about this, because flourless chocolate cake is objectively the best kind of chocolate cake and mixing it with cheesecake will only end well, but it did catch me by surprise after the first bite. Then it was great, because I’m not a big fan of anything that’s too sweet anymore and the heavy chocolately taste was exactly what I was hoping for when I asked her to make a baked cheesecake.

Presentation by schoolpsychnerd.

I thought about drizzling butterscotch sauce over the slice, but I forgot this time. I’ll make sure to do it tonight when I have another slice, though!

Here’s to almost ten years together.

Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries: Week Twenty-Two: Pista Chicken

The hardest thing to write a review about isn’t something that you hate or that you love, but something that you think is pretty okay. Hate is easy, and as anyone who’s had someone who’s passionate about something rant at them at length knows, writing about something you hate is easy. Writing about something you love is harder, but not enough to really slow anyone down--just ask me about old RPG campaigns or living in Japan and I’ll go on for hours. But writing about something that you’re mediocre on is very difficult, and that’s why this week’s "Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries" post is not going to be very exciting. I’m just telling you what you’re getting into before you start.
( Read more... )