SeaBear Valentine's Day Dinner for 2 Ships 2/5

Designer Chocolate:
Known as the food of the gods, nearly two-thirds of women eat chocolate candy or desserts weekly. Chocolate surely is a trend that has taken hold and has the masses clamoring for more; and the latest trend is not just any old chocolate... it's designer chocolate.

Scrumptious, smooth, creamy, rich, delectable and indulgent are just some of the adjectives often used to describe chocolate, the delightful substance of which the average American consumes 10 pounds each year. A cultural pastime and a sweet-tooth favorite, chocolate's taste and texture incite passion unlike any other confection. From hot chocolate to truffles to cookies to cakes, chocolate is well established as a substance Americans love to love. It makes some of the best gifts for just about any occasion.

Making Designer Chocolate:
Especially passionate for chocolate are chocolatiers, those who create fine chocolate with masterpiece-like artistry. Here's how they do it:

Chocolate's pleasure comes from the painstaking process that yields the finest varieties. Chocolate begins with the seeds from inside the fruit of the cacao tree, native to regions that include South America, Africa and Indonesia. These seeds are known as cocoa beans.

The beans are fermented and dried in the sun before they are ready to go to the chocolate maker. The chocolate maker roasts the beans, sorting and blending beans from different locales to create their own distinct flavors. Next, the beans are winnowed, a process that removes the meat, also known as the nib, of the cocoa bean from the shell. The meat or nib is then ground into a substance called chocolate liquor, which is pure, unsweetened chocolate.

Much talent is required to turn this chocolate liquor into fanciful and delectable treats. The chocolate maker adds sugar, flavoring (such as vanilla) and milk (found in milk chocolate) according to his or her own special recipe. Then conching occurs; this is done with a special machine that blends ingredients. The process can take from two to six days. Next, chocolate is tempered. This involves slowly heating the chocolate then slowly cooling the chocolate in order to let the cocoa butter solidify without separating from the rest of the ingredients. The exact processes and ingredients used by each chocolate maker determine the texture, quality and taste of the final product.

Ingredients:

• Compound Butter: Compound Butter Ingredients: Butter (Cream(milk), Salt), Chives, Gorgonzola cheese (Cultured pasteurized cow and sheep's milk, enzymes, salt, mold), Garlic.Processed in a facility that handles soy, milk, wheat, tree nuts, peanuts. Contains Milk.
• Dungeness Crab: Dungeness Crab
• French Bread: Organic Unbleached Wheat Flour, Water, Sea Salt, Organic Barely Malt
• Lemon Bundt Cake: Cake Base (Sugar, Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour, Food Starch - Modified Soybean Oil, Dry Whey, Leavening, Vital Wheat Gluten, Salt, Propylene Glycol, Mono and Diesters of Fatty Acids, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Dextrose, Tricalcium Phosphate, Corn Starch, Artificial Flavor, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Soy Flour, Egg), Eggs, Canola Oil, Water, Sugar, Lemon Juice, Lemon Emulsion (Natural Flavor, Water, Propylene Glycol, Acacia Gum, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid, FD&C Yellow 5), Yellow Food Color (Water, Propylene Glycol, FD&C Yellow 5, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate)
• Salmon Chowder: Ingredients: Fish stock (salmon, water, carrots, celery, onions, rosemary, thyme), smoked salmon (salmon, sugar, salt, natural alder wood smoke), potatoes, flour (unbleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), canola oil, onion, carrots, celery, corn, clam base (cooked clams with clam juice and clam extract, salt, butter oil, hydrolyzed corn protein, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, sugar, onion powder, dehydrated potato flakes, natural flavor [torula yeast, gum arabic, citric acid], seasoning salt [salt, sugar, spices {including paprika and turmeric}, onion, cornstarch, garlic, tricalcium phosphate, natural flavor, soy lecithin, extractive of paprika [color]), parsley, thyme, sea salt, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, dill.