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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 10/11/2022: Chocolate Art [1]

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Date: 2022-10-11

I never ever do my taxes until the last possible second of the extension, because they terrify me. That is certainly my own problem, but it explains why I am stressed and short of time this week. For both of those reasons, we’ll be looking at chocolate today. (Also: tomorrow’s my birthday, so.)

I first encountered the work of young French pastry chef and confectionery artist Amaury Guichon when I saw this video. In it, he makes a full-size cello out of chocolate, plus a little spun sugar for the strings. Like all his work, every bit of it is edible — he does not use any internal structural materials other than even more chocolate or other sweets, and the surface color he applies is edible too. [3:38]

With his eye for (and skill at) the astonishing showpiece, it’s not surprising that he’s ended up in Las Vegas, home of over-the-top things, running his own pastry school. This chocolate giant squid is entirely on-brand. (The suction cups on the tentacles appear to have Cointreau in them. Because this is a dessert!) [4:10]

I don’t want you to think he makes only monumental sculptures, though. His smaller items tend to be full-fledged pastries, whose internal structure owes a lot to yummy fillings. His Japanese tetsubin kettle and matching cups, all filled with “tea”, are so realistic, it’s rather jarring at the end when he slices into them. [3:02]

This is not just a “chocolate frog”. It’s a whole saga. [3:51]

The telescope, omg. It looks like, if the lenses weren’t made out of sugar, it would work. [3:12]

These cheeseburgers are basically enormous macarons with complicated fillings. All sorts of sweet ingredients are recruited to be reconfigured into the standard burger garnishes. [3:16]

One last long-form project: this impressive giant sea serpent. [3:04]

Although his YouTube channel is active, he also posts a lot of short-form videos on Instagram and the like. Some of them appear as “shorts” on YT, but he also has a few collections of highlights like this one. [9:06]

This is a longer piece in which the chef speaks — it’s kind of an ad for his school (and the end turns into an ad for the kitchen tools he partners with), but he tells a bit about his background and the school’s program.

The main reason I include it is, around 2:45, he spends about three minutes building a signature dessert of his and explaining step by step what he’s doing and what the materials are, something we don’t get in the other videos. [6:22]

I would be remiss if I failed to mention his 8-episode Netflix series (which I have not seen), School of Chocolate. The first season started last November, and it’s unclear if there’s to be a second season, although it was apparently well received. Unlike similar shows, contestants are not judged harshly or eliminated, but continue to participate and learn throughout. Here’s the trailer. [1:30]

Off the chocolate topic: I’d like to add a thing I learned about in the Monday APR comment thread: filmmaker Richard Linklater made a series of thirty-one videos of about a minute or less, with the support of Mothers Against Greg Abbott (“MAGA”, get it?), designed to be viewed day by day in the runup to the 2022 election. In each one, a Texas citizen explains why they want Greg Abbott outta there. They are arranged in the form of a Texas-shaped “advent calendar” at the site Abbott Out Advent Calendar. And although an image appears for a new one each day, they are actually all there. If you’re in a mood to binge for half an hour, you can watch by clicking the numbers for future days. Or, you can go to their YouTube channel. It was hard to pick just one to include here, and I haven’t seen them all, but this one was pretty amazing. [1:10]

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/11/2127964/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-10-11-2022-Chocolate-Art

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