We have lots of chocolate bars and pieces of chocolate that have been nibbled on for reviews, as well as blocks of couverture chocolate (used for baking).

When life gives you extra chocolate bars, make chocolate curls.

Also known as shaved chocolate, the curls can be used to garnish cake, ice cream, pudding, hot chocolate (or iced hot chocolate), cappuccino or anything that can benefit from a bit of chocolate glamor.

You can make dark, milk or white chocolate curls—or a combination. We’re particularly fond of white chocolate curls atop dark chocolate frosting.

TIP: If you won’t be using the curls immediately, place them in a storage container instead of on a cookie sheet.

In addition to the chocolate, you’ll need a vegetable peeler, cookie sheet or storage container (we use a low, square Tupperware-type container), waxed paper and a toothpick (we use tiny tongs that our grandmother used to add saccharine tablets to her tea).

For small curls, shave the narrow side of the bar; for wide curls, shave the broad side of the bar. You may have to practice to get the pressure right (maintain a steady pressure and speed).

1. The chocolate bar needs to be softened: hard enough to shave, but not so hard as to be brittle. We put our bar in a cold oven for half an hour, or on the stove top for 10 minutes on each side (to be warmed by the pilot light).

2. While the chocolate softens, cover a cookie sheet or the inside of a square or rectangular plastic storage container with waxed paper.

3. Make the chocolate curls by drawing the vegetable peeler across the chocolate. Don’t use a light touch, as with a potato or carrot. You’ll need a strong and steady stroke.

4. Use the toothpick to lift the curls gently onto the waxed paper. If you’ll be using them shortly, place them in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to harden. Otherwise, store them in an airtight container in a cool place (we keep them near the vent of our kitchen air conditioner). Some people refrigerate them, but the quick transition from cold to a warm room can cause the chocolate to bloom.

Once you get the hang of it, we think you’ll be using chocolate curls a lot!

MORE CHOCOLATE FUN

Check out our Gourmet Chocolate Section for tips, recipes, reviews, trivia and more.
  

Here’s an ice cream recipe idea for a sweet yet light ending to a big dinner: ice cream demitasse.

Use your demitasse (espresso) cups to serve small portions of ice cream or sorbet. They will be just enough to qualify as dessert, but not enough to go overboard after a big meal.

Surprise your guests with a second flavor underneath.

Garnish with a raspberry, lemon curl or chocolate shaving, and you’ve got a hit!

Fruit ices are thousands of years old, dating back to ancient China.

But gelato, the first type of ice cream (see below for the difference between the two), is comparatively recent. It likely dates to Florence, Italy in the late 16th century.

Some culinary historians believe that a multi-talented genius named Bernardo Buontalenti created gelato. Buontalenti, who spent his life in the employ of the Medici family, was, among other things, the impresario of the fabulous Medici banquets.

While no historical record exists to credit Buontalenti with the invention, we can imagine the first time people tasted gelato at a huge Medici banquet.

And whatever the history, the happy result is that we have gelato today.

Talenti gelato is named after Buontalenti. We’ve had a great time tasting our way through the line, from the classic chocolate and vanilla to the subtle coconut to the sorbetti, which include an outstanding peach.

Cool off this summer with a few pints.

Talenti’s dense and delicious gelato, in pints
and quarts. Photo courtesy Talenti.

Talenti is available at fine food stores nationwide; there’s a store locator on the company website.

The Tea-Over-Ice Brewing Pitcher from
Tea Forte.

June is National Iced Tea Month; June 10th is National Iced Tea Day. Eighty percent of the tea drunk in the U.S. is bottled tea, meant to be served cold.

Who invented iced tea?

It’s possible that centuries ago, some wealthy* person (or servant) in the tea-growing nations of Ceylon, China, India or Japan may have taken some ice from the ice-house to cool down a cup of hot tea on a warm day.

If it ever happened, the practice didn’t take hold, and no old recipes exist for it.

________________

*Before refrigeration, only the wealthy could afford to have ice cut from lakes and rivers in the winter and stored in ice houses for summer use. The oldest known ice house, built by a king in Persia, dates from about 1700 B.C.E. Most other people dug ice pits, lined with straw and sawdust. While commercial refrigeration was available by the late 1800s, the home refrigerator didn’t arrive until 1930. Prior to then, people used an insulated metal “ice box,” which held ice delivered from the “ice man” to keep perishables cold. When the ice melted, it was replaced.

We don’t know who made the first iced tea, but we can approximate when it happened.

The oldest known recipe for “sweet ice tea” (with lots of sugar) was published in 1879, in a community cookbook called “Housekeeping in Old Virginia” by Marion Cabell Tyree.

The recipe calls for green tea, which was popular in the Colonies (Benjamin Franklin mentions it in his autobiography) before falling out of favor—likely because milk and sugar, the popular accompaniments, taste better in black tea.

There’s also a newspaper clipping recounting the menu served at the 1890 Missouri State Reunion of Ex-Confederate Veterans, which included iced tea.
 
 
THE 1904 ST. LOUIS EXHIBITION

What you’ll most likely find in books and online is that iced tea was inadvertently “invented” in St. Louis at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (often called the 1904 World’s Fair, but that term was not yet in use).

As the story goes, Richard Blechynden, a tea merchant, was having limited success getting people to taste his hot tea in the intense summer heat and humidity of St. Louis. He had the idea to add ice into the tea, thus creating a refreshing, cool drink.

Blechynden is sometimes referred to as a tea plantation owner, but in fact, he was an Englishman employed as the India Tea Commissioner. He headed an initiative, begun in 1896, to publicize the black teas of India and Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) to Americans.

According to TeaUSA.org, Blechynden and his tea samples were in the elaborately designed India pavilion. When he realized that it was too hot to get the crowds to taste free samples of his hot tea, Blechynden and his team did something ingenious.

They didn’t toss ice into the tea, as is commonly written. Instead, they created a cooling apparatus, filling several large bottles with brewed tea and placing the bottles upside-down on a stand that allowed the tea to flow through iced lead pipes, emerging chilled.

The “iced” tea was a hit at the fair, and a real boon to India tea awareness. After the fair, Blechynden took the lead pipe apparatus to New York City, offering free iced tea to shoppers at Bloomingdale Brothers’ department store.
 
 
GREEN TEA FADES AWAY…FOR 80 YEARS

Word spread, and iced black tea became a popular summertime drink. It led to recipes for tea punch, which included simple syrup, fruit juices (cherry, grape, lemon, orange and/or pineapple), lemon and/or orange slices, maraschino cherries, fresh mint and canned or preserved fruits.

Blechynden’s efforts also raised the popularity of black tea as a hot drink. Interest in green tea faded—except to those who visited Japanese restaurants beginning around 1970—until the health-conscious 1990s.
  

Fortunately, as we were searching through old emails, we found one from our friends at the Coffee And Tea Show, suggesting alternative uses for coffee filters.

1. Strain Wine. If an old bottle has sediment or the cork breaks, put a filter inside a funnel and decant the wine into a carafe or decanter. The coffee filter will trap the sediment or cork pieces.

2. Protect Good China. Coffee filters placed between plates and cups that are stacked for storage will protect them from chips and scratches.

3. Make An Ice Pop “Napkin.” Slide the wooden stick of an ice pop through a coffee filter to catch drips and keep kids from getting sticky.

4. Clean Windows & Glass. Use coffee filters as an emergency substitute for paper towels. They leave no lint or residue and can fit on your hand like a mitt.

5. Line Flowerpots. When planting or repotting, first put a coffee filter over the drainage hole in the flowerpot; then, add the soil. The filter will prevent the soil from spilling from the bottom of the pot, yet permits proper water drainage.

The History Of The Coffee Filter
Prior to the invention of the coffee filter, ground coffee was boiled in water, and the brew was strained through linen. Compared to today’s coffee, the brewing technique turned out coffee that was bitter, gritty and murky.

In the summer of 1908, Melitta Bentz, a German housewife, posited that if she could pour boiling water over the grounds, instead of boiling the grounds with the water, the bitterness might be reduced.

She punched holes into the bottom of a brass cup and lined it with blotting paper from her son’s school books—thus inventing the first coffee filter and the drip method. The ground coffee was placed into the paper-lined cup (today it’s a ceramic or plastic cone); water was poured over the coffee and it dripped into a pot below.

The Imperial Patent Office in Berlin issued a patent to Melitta, and in 1912, after some fine-tuning, a company was established to sell the paper filters, and later, filter bags. The company is still in the family: Melitta’s grandchildren market not just filters, but coffee beans and coffee makers.