Winner of Your Best Fondue

Congratulations to hardlikearmour, whose Coconut Cajeta & Chocolate Fondue won this week's contest for Your Best Fondue, earning her a beautiful All-Clad Fondue Pot with Cast Aluminum Insert from Williams-Sonoma, plus big prizes from Viking, OXO and Tiny Prints, and a spot in the next food52 cookbook!

Q&A with hardlikearmour

• Describe an early food experience that has influenced the way you think about food and/or cooking. 
• I was lucky growing up. My mom cooked supper for us every night, and she is a good cook. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to cook; it just seemed like a normal skill to have.

• What's your least favorite food?
• Fishy fish. It gets my gag reflex everytime.

• What is the best thing you've made so far this year?
• Wow, the year is young so this should be easy. I did make a really nice supper for friends using almost all food52 recipes.  It was fabulous! Started with TheRunawaySpoon's Fig and Blue Cheese Savouries and aliyaleekong's Smoked Earl Grey Tea Cocktail, then lorinarlock's Butternut Squash and Roasted Garlic Galette, wanderash's Not-Too-Virtuous Salad with Caramelized Apple Vinaigrette, and butterflied grilled chicken (the only non-food52 recipe). Dessert was aliyaleekong's Fastest Baklava Ever.  The meal pretty much knocked everyone's socks off.

 

• Describe your most spectacular kitchen disaster.
• Most recently was a carameltastrophe. Completely lost my brain, and was making a batch of caramels in a 3-quart saucepan when I should've been using a 6-quart saucepan. When the cream hit the hot sugar, a lahar of caramel goo spilled over the side of the pot -- all over the glass cook top, down the front of the stove and onto the floor. It was a disaster of a mess & filled the kitchen with smoke to boot. The good news was that no injuries were sustained, and no villages were buried.

 

• What is your idea of comfort food?
•  It's gotta be creamy and full of fat. Savory would be macaroni and cheese. Sweet would be a rich chocolate mousse or white chocolate coconut gelato. Or maybe coconut cream pie. Darn my accursed sweet tooth!

• Apron or no apron?
• I have a really cute apron, but I almost always forget to put it on.

• What's your favorite food-related scene in a movie?
• I love the scene in Ratatouille when Remy (the main rat, and a gourmet) and Emile (Remy's brother, and a glutton) are reunited, and Remy tries to teach Emile about food. It's hilarious.

• If you could make a show-stopping dinner for one person, living or dead, who would it be?
• This one stumps me. I should have a good answer, but I just don't. I'm content cooking for family and friends.

• You prefer to cook: a. alone, b. with others, c. it depends on your mood
• a.) Alone. It's hard for me to have others "help" me in the kitchen. I have been improving on it, I swear!

• When it comes to tidying up, you usually: a. clean as you cook, b. do all the dishes once you've finished cooking, c. leave the kitchen a shambles for your spouse/roommate/kids to clean.
• I wish I could claim A. I really do try to clean as I go, but somehow I never seem to accomplish it. I always run out of time somehow. I'm definitely a mix of A, B and C; thank goodness for the invention of the dishwasher, or I'd end up leaning very heavily toward C.

• 
• A cake decorated by hardlikearmour; the lovely All-Clad Fondue Pot with Cast Aluminum Insert from Williams-Sonoma she's won!