Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

@Boscompb: how do i "press" it?

@phaelon56: thanx a lot for that cocoa nib in chocolate idea!

it's raw whole cocoa beans - straight from the pod.

i would love to learn food photography,
i always tried to take pictures of the food i make, but the pictures alway weren't as good as the food

i hate chopping garlic too. it's just sticky...
but i love chopping celery, esp when i slice the ribs into strips,
it's so fun

oh and:
OMG= oh my god
NVM= never mind

I'm Rosezilla (named for my three year old daughter and the giant lizard thing that stomped Tokyo...it's what I call her when she's being...how you say...willful). My real handle is Mandy. I live in Santa Barbara County again after growing up here, but lived for 11 years in western Sonoma County...home of fabulous food and wines. It spoiled me rotten, to become an adult surrounded by all of that luscious produce and foodie opportunity. I managed a microbrewery's kitchen for 6 years, and have SERIOUS opinions about ales, should anyone care for them. Now I'm a home cook primarily, although I do a little catering here and there. My daughter's favorite foods are salmon and broccoli, so I feel as though I've triumphed a bit over the three-year-old beige-food diet. We do, however, eat at McDonald's every Friday after school...it's our little Happy Meal indulgence...and those tiny cheeseburgers are SOOO good. I live with and cook for my mother, as well. I am dating a high school band director, who has actually LOST weight being with me, as he's eating more asparagus and less fast food. I think that size 14 should be the new size 6. I am curvy, healthy, happy and active...and think that excellent foods should be part of everyone's diet. I am active in the "S'Cool Food" movement here, which tries to bring local and sustainable healthy food into school cafeterias. And I love, love, love this website.

You can certainly haver some fun with them. If you have access to an old hot air popcorn popper such as the original West Bend Poppery and you can do it outside or near a window it's easy to roast the beans. Folks who roast green coffee beans at home this way go both by bean color and by the sound of cracking during a certain transformation process so they know when to stop the roast (called "first crack" and "second crack" stages).

I'm not sure what the target temps or metrics are for knowing when cocoa beans are roasted to the right level. If you don't have a hot air popper you can instead rely on conductive heat (rather than convective) and roast them on a cookie sheet in the oven with frequent agitation or even in a cast iron skillet on stove top. And some folks swear by "dog bowl heat gun" roasting (done outdoors using a large stainless steel pet food bowl, a pair of gloves and a heat gun).

You could then crunch the roasted beans with a mortar and pestle to get cocoa nibs of a sort. I went to the chocolate show in NYC late last year and some vendors had incorporated cocoa nibs into various chocolate confections - gave them a nice crunch and flavor burst.

@phaelon56 :after i roast them, can i just crush them and use it as cocoa powder?

Bro recently made these avocado eggrolls for a party. They are wonderful. We didn't use a sauce - no one noticed :D.

Whip 'em up and bring 'em down to the party!!

Mrs. L, a, ahem, 40 something (at least for two more weeks) who is just learning to cook and dealing with the fact that I own over 500 cookbooks (over 400 that have never been cooked from!). I live in San Jose CA and I see dead people for a living (no really, I manage a cremation business). I love serious eats to help me find out what's going on in the food world and to make me feel even more behind cuz I cook recipes I see here rather than open up one of my many cookbooks!