Monday, 26 June 2006 @ 3:03pm.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a chocolate-lover. Some call it a weakness, but I don’t mind. :) My mother insists that this is completely natural for me since she was very fond of a particular Filipino dish - chocolate rice - during her pregnancy with me. She also says that the little birthmark on my left temple is a “chocolate mark.” I don’t need to have chocolate everyday. It’s more like I have a special appreciation of good chocolate when I encounter it. Some nice memories include:

* Hot chocolate with whipped cream at a diner in Oxnard, California when I was in the second or third grade.
* Chocolate silk pie at the Acrop (Acropolis Diner) in good ol’ Po-Town (Poughkeepsie), New York when I was a student at Vassar College.
* Chocolate-chocolate ice cream at Washtenaw Dairy (Washtenaw Milk & Ice Cream) in Ann Arbor, Michigan last year.
* Flourless chocolate torte at an Italian restaurant in Denver, Colorado last October.
* “Peace Corps” recipe brownies at a friend’s potluck in South Jakarta earlier this year.
* Dark chocolate torte (real Belgium chocolate!) and basil ice cream at Koi Restaurant in South Jakarta also earlier this year.
* Chocolate brownie ice cream dessert, which I think is called “Chocolate Heaven,” at the Hyatt in Central Jakarta earlier this month.

Growing up, the two best chocolate desserts were definitely my mother’s chocolate rice and my grandmother’s peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses on top. Both recipes have been passed down through the generations and some of my earliest cooking memories are of me helping make these desserts.

While I am fond of chocolate, I do have great interest in and appreciation for non-chocolate desserts. First on my list is fresh fruit, of course! But putting that temporarily aside, I really like cheesecake. New York cheesecake is by far the best I’ve had. You know it’s going to be good when it comes served on its side. I also like icecream, especially if it’s strawberry, mango, or pumpkin pie flavor. The icecream is top-notch when it has pieces of real fruit in the case of strawberry or mango and chunks of pie for the pumpkin pie flavor. I also know a good rice pudding when I taste one and cinnamon dusted on top is a must. I love Chinese red bean buns (the wedding food kind) and Hong Kong bor-lor-bao (”pineapple” bun/baked roll). The latter isn’t made from pineapples, but rather the top of the bun looks like the surface of a pineapple. Then there’s the wonderfully simple and oh-so-tasty Chinese sugar donuts. Yummy! Oh, and who can forget Filipino coconut sweet rice? That’s a baked, sticky concoction made from glutinous rice, coconut milk, and sugar. I enjoy Mexican apple empanadas, too. When I was a child, this was a must-have on trips to swapmeets in Southern California. Finally, I really like fried bananas and pisang molen (another version of fried or baked bananas).

Cooks who know Indonesian can check out the following blog:
Resep: Joy of Cooking

Even if you don’t know Indonesian, you may want to check out the site to see the food pictures. My favorite section is under “Makanan Kecil” (literally “small food,” meaning “snacks”). There you can find pictures of jajanan pasar (market snacks) and kue tradisional (traditional cakes and cookies). I like Bika Ambon in particular. :)