"semi-sweet chocolate" news and stories

I know it sounds like a new music sensation that's sweeping the nation, but Hot Fudge Salsa is actually a recipe I found in Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens, by Tucker Shaw (Shaw also wrote Everything I Ate, a book where he photographed and wrote about every single meal he had for a year). It has "salsa" in the title, but this involves ice cream, chocolate, and peanuts. Full recipe after the jump.

Saturday night, I had some people over for fondue. It was a dinner that a friend and I put up in a service auction last spring and it was due time to give the winners the event they had won. I did both cheese and chocolate, all with a varied array of appropriate dippers. Someone commented, as they took in the number of things I had put out to dip, that they'd never really been given so many options of things to dip.

I served the cheese fondue with the traditional chunks of bread as well as pieces of grilled and cubed chicken, blanched veggies (broccoli, carrots and brussels sprouts) and grape tomatoes. The chocolate was matched up with pound cake, chunks of rice crispy treats, shortbread cookies, pineapple, strawberries, apples, oranges, banana and pears. I was disappointed with the cheese fondue, for the first time ever, it was sort of chunky in texture. I don't know why that happened. However, it was totally redeemed by the chocolate. Smooth and the perfect consistency, it was a winner. The recipe is after the jump.