Today my friends Henry and Jill are having a barbecue. It is a “Beat Bush Barbecue.” Everyone who attends is supposed to bring a check for John Kerry for President or MoveOn.org. At first I thought this was kind of annoying, but then I realized that these are both organizations I believe in. I haven’t given either organization financial support yet, and this BBQ is just the kick I needed to donate.
I made a chocolate mousse for the BBQ. I got the recipe from Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cookbook. This is a great cookbook. All of the recipes are well tested, and you don’t have to be an expert chef to use them. It is definitely one of my go-to cookbooks.
Below is a photo of my chocolate mousse. It is in a pretty Emile Henry dish. The dish is red, but you can’t tell because the mousse is backlit.
The recipe is not as safe as it could be. It contains raw egg whites, which could cause Salmonella poisoning. You can cook egg whites to 160°F to kill any bacteria, but this is a fairly annoying extra step. I will definitely let people know that there are raw egg whites in the mousse, but I am not too concerned. To look up techniques to make raw egg whites safer, just do a Google search for “safe raw egg whites.” Many sites will come up. I found the directions at Aki’s Kitchen fairly easy to read. Again, I didn’t bother.
I think a chocolate mousse is only as good as its ingredients. I used heavy cream from Ronnybrook Farm, unsweetened chocolate from Lindt, orange liqueur from Grand Marnier, and large organic brown eggs from Organic Valley (cool domain name). I also used white granulated sugar to sweeten the chocolate, and vanilla beans from Blue Apron Foods.
[Wonderful Blogger behavior. After spending a good 20 minutes writing this post, I clicked preview. When I clicked the “back” button, Blogger essentially deleted my post. Web sites that cause the “back” button to have poor functionality are very lame.]