Chocolate Pinot Clafoutis

I am probably one of those rare persons who is very attached to my kitchen. I’ll be away from home to NYC on some work for 2 months starting next week and the first thing I started to miss was my kitchen and then my probably my husband and my dogs.Lol. You may wonder why? Creating new dishes, learning new techniques and expanding my culinary knowledge has become an integral part of my everyday routine, I cannot get myself to sleep unless I’ve read or learned or experimented something new. Being away from my kitchen means I have to be away from this passion of mine, it is so hard albeit for a short period of time.

This will probably be my last dish before my 2-month break- Sigh. I’m sharing my spin on a classic Clafoutis. A Clafoutis is a classic French flan/custard like dessert baked with black cherries. Recently I happened to attend a workshop on Food blogging and photography at my Culinary school by Carolyn Jung(James Beard Award winner for her writing, her blog was awarded second place for “Best Food Blog” in the nation by the Association of Food Journalists) and Craig Lee( An award winning photographer recognized as the best photographer by the James Beard Foundation). Through the seminar, I came to know that in the reputed magazines like food and wine etc there are literally 4 people working to bring a recipe together- 1.The Chef, 2.The writer 3. The Food stylist 4.The photographer- then it struck me that a blogger, in essence, does the work of these 4 people and it takes a lot of research and learning to create each dish. Cheers to all of us bloggers that take the time to do what we do.

Before I ramble too much- The seminar also had a book signing written by them called the “San Francisco Chefs Table”. It’s a very good book for those who are passionate about cooking and is a collection of recipes from Chefs of famous restaurants around the bay area. One recipe that caught my attention is the Cherry Panna Cotta from the La Folie restaurant.Chef Roland Passot creates this dish with Pinot Noir and Cherries. I created this dish inspired by that flavor profile. Now we know Cherries and Chocolate are a match made in heaven(Think black forest cake), I happened to make a red wine cake for one of the places I worked for before and absolutely loved it, thus I paired the 3 together. The alcohol in the wine is cooked out leaving the fruity tannins from the wine to flavor the dessert.

Oh did I forget to mention the cherries are from my backyard

Preparation time	1 hour
Serves	8
Serving Size	1 serving
Calories Per Serving	Approximately 272 per serving
Difficulty	Easy

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups milk

1  1/4 cup +1 tablespoon sugar

4 eggs

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cups cocoa powder

1 cup pinot noir

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 tablespoon butter

1 pound cherries pitted

powdered sugar for dusting

Procedure:

1.Preheat oven to 350F. Smear Butter on a 9*13 baking dish and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar and arrange the cherries on the bottom of the pan in a single layer.

2.In a saucepan bring the pinot noir to a boil and reduce it until it becomes 1/4 cup and let cool.

3.In a different pan bring the milk to a boil and add the cocoa powder and mix well and let cool.

4.Now take wine reduction, the chocolate milk and the remaining ingredients in a blender and blend until combined well.

5.Pour this mixture over the cherries and bake in the oven for 45 minutes-1 hour until puffed and a knife inserted in the center of the dish comes out clean.

6.Sprinkle powdered sugar and serve immediately or chill in refrigerator and serve later.

Tips:

I personally liked this dessert chilled.

Use a fruity red wine if you do not have a pinot noir. You will not like this dessert if you aren’t a wine lover or a chocolate lover.

Traditionally the clafoutis is made with cherries with the pit. The pits release a flavor profile similar to almonds into the dessert, if you wish you can use the cherries with the pit, however, it is not to my preference.

Any stone fruit can be used to make this dessert in place of cherries.

Do not skip the step of adding the cocoa powder to hot milk, this process is called blooming-  In this process, the cocoa powder dissolves and thickens the liquid and releases flavor to bring out the flavor of cocoa powder and makes it chocolatey which otherwise will only taste like raw powder.

 

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