Chocolate Pudding and Opinions

So I recently thumbed through The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg and they said something that caught my attention.  To paraphrase, American home cooks rely too much on recipes while failing to learn to trust their own intuition.  Instead of taking the time to learn why a recipe works, and the way to modify it to make something that suits their own pallet, they just blindly do whatever the cookbook tells them and then complain about their results.  For example, I was clicking around trying to find a chocolate pudding recipe and I stumbled upon this unhappy critic.  "When I added the one teaspoon of salt I thought, "boy that seems like a lot of salt". Well, it was. I scooped out two big spoonfuls of this to eat and I could barely swallow it."


What the hell is wrong with you?  If something seems like too much salt for you, THEN ADD LESS SALT!  There seems to be two or three people like this on every highly rated recipe I find.  Anybody can follow the instructions for a recipe and have it turn out ok.  That doesn't make you a chef, or a good cook.  The difference is being able to adapt a recipe to fit your needs and tastes and still have it turn out ok.


Anyway, I'm done.


So I'm at my boyfriends and I didn’t bring my camera, so there aren't any pictures for this.  You'll just have to make it and see.


Adapted from Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding from All Recipes

• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 T dark brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder or 2 squares of unsweetened chocolate (I used four squares of Ghirardelli 100% cocoa bar that no one was going to eat)
• 4 T cornstarch
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 3/4 cups milk
• 2 T. margarine or butter
• 2 t. vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a saucepan, melt the chocolate over very low heat, being careful not to burn.  Stir in the honey and brown sugar.  It might start to seize on you, but that’s ok, we'll whisk it out.  Add about 1/4 of a cup of milk then whisk to temper.  Add another two cups, saving the remaining 1/2 cup.  Raise the heat to medium.  Add the cornstarch to this 1/2 cup of milk in a separate bowl (or drinking glass, if that's what's close) and whisk to combine.  This will prevent the cornstarch from causing lumps.  Add this slurry to the saucepan and slowly heat, whisking often.  You'll know it's ready when it begins to thicken, and the mixture coats the back of a spoon.  Let it thicken for just a minute more, then add the butter and vanilla.  Pour into serving bowls and chill until firm*.

*If you want (and I don't know why you would) cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding to avoid what is affectionately known as "pudding skin".  Pudding skin is, in my opinion, the only reason to make chocolate pudding from scratch.  It has a more concentrated flavor than the rest of the pudding and a thicker texture.  If you haven't tried it, give it a fair chance for me, please.  If you’re one of those people with texture issues though, you might want to opt for plastic wrap.