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Love in any language

By JANET K. KEELER
Published February 2, 2005

	[Times photo: Patty Yablonski]
	1 Stark and Simka, Serbia 2 Valor, Spain 3 Toblerone, Switzerland 4 Milka, Germany 5 Elite, Israel 6 Kras, Croatia 7 Scharffen Berger, USA 8 Cote d’Or, Belgium 9 Jet, Colombia 10 Baci, Italy 11 Stark, Serbia

With Valentine's Day approaching, many of us have one thing on our minds: chocolate. Okay, it's on our minds most of the time.

Whitman, Russell Stover, our friend Godiva and even Hershey are acceptable gifts for the lovers' holiday, but there is so much more out there.

The world is full of yummy chocolate, some locally made by Tampa Bay-area chainlet Schakolad and Chocolates by Michelle in Port Richey. Others are packaged farther afield.

Stops at area ethnic markets and big chains turned up bars that would be welcome by any lover, greeting-card holiday or not.

At Mazarro's Italian market (2909 22nd Ave. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 321-2400) we found chocolate from Italy, Spain and Belgium. At a Publix we bought Switzerland's Toblerone nougat and Germany's Milka espresso bar. (Target has German Stork and European Lindt.)

Castellano & Pisso (4200 S Henderson Blvd., Tampa; (813) 289-5275) is one of many places that carries Scharffen Berger, a top-notch U.S. chocolate made in Berkeley, Calif. Mexico Lindo (6050 Park Blvd., Pinellas Park; (727) 548-8721) has an array of Hispanic chocolates, including Jet bars from Colombia.

We found Elite milk chocolate from Israel at Jo El's Kosher Foods (2619 23rd Ave. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 321-3847) and the Bosnia Food Store (6508 Fourth St. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 526-3292) was a chocolate gold mine. Kras, Simka and Stark chocolates, all made in countries of the former Yugoslavia, are there. Most bars were less than $5.

When it comes to chocolate, we speak the international language of love. We'll take one of each.

• Scharffen Berger, USA
• Baci, Italy
• Toblerone, Switzerland
• Elite, Israel
• Jet, Colombia
• Cote d'Or, Belgium
• Valor, Spain
• Milka, Germany
• Stark and Simka, Serbia
• Kras, Croatia

GNAWING ON THE FUNNY BONE

Kim Bailey of Tampa has wrestled most his life with weight issues, but he's not crying. In fact, he's cracking up. His goofy humor is evident in The North Beach Diet (Rutledge Hill Press, $12.99), a sendup of the enormously popular South Beach Diet . The book includes "over 50 high-calorie recipes made with lots of butter, refined sugar, white flour and chocolate."

Bailey, who produces TV infomercials, includes a phony recipe for Spam and Pork and Bean Focaccia from Pane Rustica, a Tampa restaurant more known for flatbread pizzas and artisan breads. Bern's Steakhouse is also mentioned. Fake ads for Queer Eye for the Thin Guy: Mascarpone Makeover and Chubby Cherubs Summer Camp for Thin Kids are worth a belly laugh.

Body by Jake? How about body by cake?

RESTAURANT REALITY

Chefs Todd English and Ming Tsai are launching a reality TV show on PBS. Debuting in April, Cooking Under Fire is a competition that goes to several cities to find someone who could be a cook at a top restaurant - a restaurant, they hope, that's a lot more fun than Rocco DiSpirito's Restaurant, which was featured on NBC. "For some reason, they thought that it would be good TV," English says. "I think most people saw through it, and that's why it's not on anymore." Auditions are almost over, but you can get more information at www.pbs.org/wgbh/cookingunderfire/

FLAT FISH

To keep the skin on fish fillets from curling when it hits a hot skillet, score the skin first. Place the fillets skin side up on the work surface. Using the tip of a sharp knife, make several shallow slashes in the skin about 1 inch apart. Turn the fillets 90 degrees and make several more slashes to form a crisscross pattern. - From A New Way to Cook by Sally Schneider (Artisan, $40)

THIS WEB SITE COOKS

www.foodsubs.com

The Cook's Thesaurus offers an encyclopedic gander at thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools.

Entries are accompanied by photographs and explanations of uses, varieties, synonyms and substitutes.

You can get your Ph.D. in pork cutlets.

We clicked on eggplant, just for the heck of it, and learned that it's also known as aubergine, berenjena, brinjal, garden egg, egg apple, patlican, melongene, melanzane and Guinea squash. See what we mean?

The categories are vegetables, fruits, dairy, flavorings, liquids, grains, grain products, baked goods, legumes and nuts, meats, fish, vegetarian, baking supplies and on down the line.

DRINK YOUR EATS

Wet Willy calls them edible drinks, but we know them as Jell-O shots, the silly concoction popular with college kids. It's nice to know we've become so busy we don't even have time to make our own.

Eight 2-ounce shots are stacked in a plastic container that looks like a martini shaker. Pop the whole thing in the fridge and the gelatin will set in a few hours. The "adult gelatin cocktails" contain 12 percent wine alcohol and cost about $8 at liquor and grocery stores. They come in eight flavors.

We found Wet Willy's Karmakazi at one store between the ice cream and wine, which makes us wonder who might be more interested: underage drinkers or adults?

STUBBORNLY LOW-CARB

If you're still interested in cutting carbs - and even if you're not - Low Carb 1-2-3 by Rozanne Gold with Helen Kimmel (Rodale, $16.95) is worth perusing. The queen of three-ingredient recipes (eight cookbooks are in her "1-2-3" series), Gold simplifies home cooking with a few high-quality ingredients without sacrificing taste.

Recipes denote which of three categories they fit into: VLC (very low carb, 0-5 grams carbohydrate), LC (low carb, 6 to 10 grams) and ILC (indulgent low carb, 11 to 18 grams).

More than 58 percent fall into the very-low-carb category. The indulgent-low-carb category, which makes up 18 percent of the book's recipes, makes it feasible to eat grains, fruits and desserts. Each recipe includes information on total carbs, carbs that count, fiber, fat, protein and calories.

[Last modified February 1, 2005, 10:46:03]