Fare Exchange: Healthy chocolate pudding for Valentine’s Day

Good morning, readers. We begin with a request for uses for special vinegars. Kittie Stauffer got the question when she gave friends champagne tarragon vinegar “made from my herb garden-grown tarragon.”

“Several of them have asked me for recipes, and I gave them a few, but I wonder if some of your readers wouldn’t have some good ones for the asking,” she says. And now, Ms. Stauffer, we can’t resist asking you for your recipe for champagne tarragon vinegar.

We have a repeated request, today from Yeast of the Ridge, for Tassajara bread and for any rolls that are studded with dried cranberries and toasted nuts.

An anonymous reader is wanting a recipe for caramelized garlic or garlic that is cooked — “many buds of it — for a very long time. “I have a huge bag of garlic from Costco and want some recipes that use a great deal of fresh garlic, please.”

If you are one of the many Southerners who consider food as love, you may be getting ready for Valentine’s Day by looking for something spectacular in the dessert department or planning a meal at a fancy restaurant. Not so for Marilyn J. Roberts, a self-described health nut with a very small addiction to chocolate. She sent the following recipe for Dark Chocolate Pudding with many exclamation points, describing it as delicious. And if you shop at the same market I visited this afternoon, where avocados are 49 cents apiece, you may be ready to go.

Mrs. Roberts also raises a question about “sea salt such as Maldon” in the recipe she sent. “What is Maldon sea salt, and where can you buy it, and why is it so good for you? Someone has also mentioned pink Himalayan salt. Are these really different from plain table salt and even good for you?”

Here is the recipe Mrs. Roberts will prepare for her chocoholic husband for Valentine’s Day, and she suspects he will not even know it’s good for him. (Having read a lot lately about the virtues of dark chocolate, I am wondering whether dark cocoa could be substituted.) Not unimportantly, Mrs. Roberts added that “This recipe takes one blender container and just seconds to prepare.”

Dark Chocolate Pudding

3 avocados, halved and pitted and peeled

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 cup honey

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Flaky sea salt such as Maldon, for serving

Puree avocados, cocoa, honey and vanilla in a food processor or blender until smooth. Sprinkle with sea salt before serving.

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Now that we are speaking of very healthful things, here is a continuation of Marilyn Murphy’s breakfast ideas. Her breakfast includes a bowl of raw whole-oat groats, a spoonful of flax seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds and some fresh blueberries. “I think some people will balk at eating the groats raw, but they could certainly be soaked overnight and eaten that way, or cooked the normal way,” she says.

If you have a similar nutty, chewy breakfast, please chime in to the conversation.

And another P.S. from Ms. Murphy about homemade bread. “As far as knowing when bread is done, I’ve always used the method of thumping on it and listening for a hollow sound.”

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Linda Leake’s recipe for a fruit casserole has a hint of curry. We will assume the cans of fruit are 16 ounces or close to that.

Hot Fruit Casserole

1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine or butter

1/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

2 teaspoons curry powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 can pears, drained

1 can peaches, drained

1 can pineapple chunks, drained

1 can apricots, drained

1 small bottle maraschino cherries

Melt margarine or butter in saucepan. Add brown sugar, curry powder and cinnamon.

Arrange drained fruit in a 1 1/2 quart casserole. Pour butter mixture over. Bake in a 325-degree oven for 30 minutes until mixture bubbles. Serve hot.

This casserole is delicious with beef, pork or poultry.

Makes 12 servings.

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A recent Janice Hixson collection, sent from Soddy-Daisy, included these specialties from “Captain Anderson’s Restaurant Cookbook on the Grand Lagoon. Panama City Beach, Fla.” “They are very simple but are great and delicious,” she says.

Tartar Sauce

1 cup mayonnaise

3/4 cup dill relish

2 tablespoons lemon juice

To the mayonnaise, add relish and lemon juice and mix well.

Variation: If dill pickle relish is not available in the stores, put a couple of large dill pickles in the blender and make your own dill relish. Again simple, but the best.

Cocktail or Red Sauce

1 cup catsup or chili sauce

1 full teaspoon prepared horseradish

1 squirt lemon juice

A couple of drops of Tabasco

Mix all ingredients well.

Captain Anderson’s Seafood Seasoning

1/4 cup plain salt

1/4 cup fresh-ground black pepper

1/8 cup powdered garlic

1 teaspoon sweet basil

1 tablespoon thyme

2 tablespoons oregano

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 cup paprika

Combine ingredients and mix well.

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And for a grand finale, again from Ms. Hixson, here’s a recipe she clipped from the newspaper years ago. She recommends it for prime rib and any roast.

Creamy Horseradish-Chive Sauce

1 cup sour cream

1/4 cup prepared horseradish

2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon fresh-snipped chives

1/8 teaspoon pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl; cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Makes about 1 1/3 cups.

Kitchen Must-Haves

Linda Benton wrote from Signal Mountain and added a photograph of her favorite kitchen utensil — the “super-easy-to-clean garlic press made by Joseph Joseph.” She bought it at Kingwood Pharmacy on Ringgold Road and is the second Signal Mountain reader who has mentioned recently that she drives all the way to East Ridge to buy gifts at Kingwood.