Cooking with Julie in the Napa Valley California part 1/3

The first we’re going to do is I’m going to demonstrate the beginning of the truffle so that
you guys know how to make it. All right, are you guys ready to start?

So, you can go ahead and stick one of the spots here in our pasta boards. Napa is really
very well known for its wine and it’s now becoming more well known for its food as you
know we have probably one of the best restaurants in the world through the French
laundry. And people come out here to experience the food and wine in Napa and it's a
great place to experience the food. You’re going to experience the food at the restaurants
but for people who want to have more of a food experience, to taste the local cheeses and
taste the local wines and meet local veterans that you come into my classes, it really gives
you a great Napa experience because we want to show the people who come here the best
of what we have.

The first thing I want to show you is one of the easiest and most versatile things that you
wish should have known a long time before. What we’re going to make is chocolate
truffles. You’re looking at a chocolate. I’m going to cut this so that you guys can taste
this. These things are really important that when you’re going to make things that you
taste everything that you’re going to use. I’ve broken the chocolate into the small pieces
to make it melt very evenly for us.

In the mean time, while we’re tasting that I’m heating up here. I use organic heavy cream
and we’re going to just bring that to a boil here. And you pour that in on top of your
chocolate and this mixture that I’m making here is a very classic French sauce. It’s called
a ganache. All it's doing is using the hot cream to melt the chocolate. And so again think
about, we only got two ingredients here. So, if you haven’t picked the best of the best and
your favorite, you’re not going to have a wonderful tasting truffle.

This is also soft butter at room temperature. I use a butter from Pennsylvania called—it’s
very high in fat content and very low in water. A lot of the butters have a lot of water
whipped into them. And mix that up to we get it nice and smooth. Just make sure you get
rid of any little streaks of butter. Once you’ve got this mixed up and it’s nice and smooth,
this, you could use as a frosting for a cake or cupcakes. And you want it nice and smooth.
Scrape around the outside to get everything well incorporated. And look at that, isn’t that
beautiful?

This is nice and thick. Now, you’re done. I mean it doesn’t really get easier than that.
Then I take a pan. I line it with plastic. It makes it easy for clean up and to get it out. And
now take your chocolate and you put inside here. So then, I’m just going to fold this over
so there’s nothing gets into it. And this goes into the refrigerator for about an hour. So,
we’ll take it out after we make our pasta and shape this into truffles and I’ll show you
how to shape them. Dip them into the chocolate and I toasted some. We can do some
plain and some toasted coconut here. Coconut or toasted hazel nuts, toasted walnuts,
toasted almonds and then you could have some plain and some toasted coconut and it
looks really pretty on the by side.

This is a group. We got them together that wants to learn how to make pasta. So, they’re
able to come in and see exactly how the pasta is made through demonstration and then
actually go through the whole process themselves. It’s the best way to learn because they
get to see how everybody else’s done it because the next time they do it, they might do it
the way person next do it, it could be too dry, it could be too moist and they really learn
from their mistakes and how to fix things and it really makes them live with a good skill.