Celebrate with Chocolate [antikvár]

My love affair with chocolate makes me want to celebrate every day. More than a momentary sensation of pleasure, chocolate has enriched and distinguished my life. When I was a child, my mother's chocolate treats illuminated every conceivable holiday, including birthdays and Christmas, as well as everyday occasions such as staying home from school on a snowy day, or celebrating a cousin's return from the navy during the Korean conflict. As the years progressed, and this culi-narily curious teenager turned his after-school work into an avocation, chocolate started speaking in different ways. More than a treat, chocolate became a passion. However, my subsequent studies at The Culinary Institute of America, then located in New Haven, Connecticut, did not include much chocolate. The curriculum instead required us to learn the basics of culinary classics such as hollandaise and bouillabaisse. Baking and pastry making at that time were a modest part of the two-year program and mostly consisted of learning techniques from the primarily European instructors of making such staples as croissants, puff pastry, and pastil-lage (a modeling paste used to make elaborate decorations). Although ganache made its entry later in my nascent career, by the time I reached the Culinary, I had learned enough about the mystique of chocolate from my mother that it became my entree to wooing the damsels of New Haven. Pity the neighboring "Yalies," for chocolate set me apart. Instead of studying together, my dates and I made chocolate treats, and we made sweet time. After I'd graduated from the Culinary, Manhattan beckoned. Working with the best cooking talent in the country opened my eyes to ganache and its offspring, truffles. I knew I had found my calling. Alas, after only a few months into this part of life's journey, another call came—the draft. I had always dreamed of Paris, but not Parris Island, South Carolina. The flavors and aromas from the kitchens of New York were a far cry from those of the mess hall, where three times a day, indistinguishable monochromatic mush was plopped from a metal spoon onto metal plates held by grunts all in a row. And even more wretched, no chocolate (much less anything else pleasurable) could be found in boot camp. Then came an all-expenses-paid trip to a former French colony in Southeast Asia, where chocolate again achieved supremacy, thanks to