It’s our second Saturday Spotlight with another great food blogger! If you are interested in being spotlighted and are a food blogger, chef, restaurant owner or manager, send us a message at ratetheplateutah@gmail.com.
Meet Jacqueline from Purple Chocolat Home, who has an elegant & gorgeous food blog. With all the pretty flowers in her pictures, she must have a gorgeous yard, too!
Tell us about you & your blog. How long have you been blogging? How did your blog get started?
I got started blogging one year and four months ago because my sister Joni at Red Couch Recipes (also from Utah) had started a food blog and thought I should do one. I had produced a 200 page family cookbook with digital photos, many step by step, and she knew that I loved cooking and always have. At that time I barely had learned what a blog was, but she had told me about different food blogs and I had gotten into reading some of them. I really didn't want to be committed to something and wanted to just be a guest on her blog, but she insisted and even came and spent a day helping me set up my blog. Now of course, I am totally addicted to blogging.
What are your favorite foods?
Obviously one of my favorite food groups is chocolate as my blog is titled Purple Chocolat Home. I didn't want just a cooking blog since I love to travel, to be crafty and to do interior design, so I chose a lifestyle blog. Right along with chocolate goes any fancy dessert, I love to create them and to eat them. I also love shrimp and crab.
Favorite restaurants?
I have so many favorite restaurants, ranging in price. We even spent one summer going to Utah dives. That was a lot of fun. Top of the list for a special night out is La Caille. I really like the Sundance Grill Room, and Bambara - across from the Capitol Theater in downtown Salt Lake. Everything there is unique and fantastic. I love Pizza Factory from their breadsticks to their warm cookie dessert. One more favorite is Cheesecake Factory where we always order the cheesecake as an appetizer, otherwise we are too full.
Favorite recipe?
Oh, it would be so hard to pick a favorite recipe, but I will share a chocolate one - Flourless Chocolate Cake. My current favorite I will be posting this weekend - French Peach Pie. I can forward that when it gets up.
Favorite childhood memory of food?
I have many fond memories of cooking as a little girl alongside my mother with my older sister by our side. My older sister Jean had received an Easy Bake Oven and I was just enchanted with miniature cakes. Mom got her miniature muffin pans and bread pans and I think those little pans were what hooked me. When I would babysit, instead of watching TV, I would read people's cookbooks. At college, during final exam week, when I couldn't take studying for one more minute, I would head to the cookbook section in the library and read cookbooks. I still love to read cookbooks like someone would read a novel. Of course, the cookbook needs to have photos!
Some people are intimidated by my cooking - how I wish I had pictures to show them of my early disasters. My first cake - which of course I wanted to frost with purple frosting - ended up being about 1 inch high - that was a two layer cake ! - and the frosting was more of a muddy brown. I made that at about 10 years of age. Not long after that I wanted to make a whole dinner and I remember as I went to get this fancy mashed potato casserole out of the oven, it slid off the oven rack onto the floor of the oven and was completely lost. Wouldn't those pictures be fun to have posted on my blog!!!
Favorite food tradition?
We have lots of food traditions in our home but one of my favorites is a fondue dinner. We start with a cheese fondue and dippers and then have two pots of oil going (so people aren't fighting over space) and we cook in the communal pots everything - shrimp, chicken, steak, ravioli, potatoes, broccoli and mushrooms. We end with a chocolate fondue pot. It is a wonderful family time as everyone chats while cooking their food. We also serve this for dinner parties and have set up three tables at a time for large parties. Another favorite food tradition is King Crab Legs. We serve these for special holidays - Christmas Eve and Mother's Day we always have them. We serve them in the middle of the table in a bucket lined with parchment paper. The crab legs are standing on end and hot loaves of sourdough bread are also placed in the bucket. It makes quite the sight. Everyone has their own kitchen shears to open the crab. A big dish for empty shells also sits in the middle of the table. We serve it with melted butter, lemons and limes and sourdough bread. There are no other side dishes as nobody wants anything but the crab and bread!
Photos courtesy of Purple Chocolat Home.
