gooey, melty, cheesy deliciousness

For a year now, I have been wanting to take the plunge. A seasonal cheese, the Vacherin Mont d'Or is only available from roughly September to May. It's a mild cow's milk cheese and I had heard from several people that it is a must-try during the chilly winter months. I often walked past the crémeries at different markets and saw this type of cheese, usually labelled "Mont d'Or" being sold to eager customers. It was finally my turn this year to see (well, taste) what all the fuss was about.

This cheese is often served as dessert or even as a main course when it is, like my friend Lucy would say- echoing the brilliance of one MTV show- "pimped out" with shallots or onion, garlic and other herbs and spices. But get this... this soft cheese only becomes even softer and more gooey when you bake it. Yes folks, you insert the fuzz-coated cheese in the oven until its interior is molten and ready for some dipping!

mmm... chocolate...

So, it is no secret chocolate is one of life's most extraordinary pleasures. It is for me anyway. So when my lovely friends gifted me this beautiful creation, I experienced chocolate on an incredibly different level. Not only did the milk, dark, and white chocolate I was eating taste so good, it looked almost too beautiful to touch.

Normally, the aesthetic I subscribe to when it comes to food follows a more rustic sensibility. Big bold, straight-forward flavors, down-home cooking, cozy and filling food. Don't get me wrong, I can deal with small, beautifully and delicately plated culinary masterpieces (as if it was that hard...) though I don't often experience such exquisite culinary beauty. So you can imagine my hesitation when I visit a nice restaurant, look at the plate before me and think that what the chef has so carefully sculpted on the plate could be found on the pages of a glossy coffee-table art book...

I digress...
I won't bore you with more of my thoughts on fine dining. On to the good stuff. Behold the beauty...

What a beautiful little potted flower from Maison Georges Larnicol. It's made of chocolate!
http://www.chocolaterielarnicol.fr/

It took me almost 2 weeks to take apart this dainty little creation. I found the chocolate to be very good!

But I ask myself: Does the chocolate seem to taste better because its appearance is so visually pleasing? Toward the end of what the French would call the "degustation" (the action of tasting food or drink according to wordreference.com) I was picking at the remnants of the pot, which no longer looked like a pot, when I realized the chocolate was actually not delicious. Don't get me wrong, it was extremely good, but it suddenly dawned on me that the chocolate was not as good as I had originally conceived.  So dear reader, here is my last question in this post:  Did the beautiful and almost perfect appearance fool me into thinking it tasted better (and that it almost HAD to taste better)?