Today's recipe has become one of my flagship deserts - a deep, dark, rich chile and cocoa experience. The delicate addition of finely ground, carefully selected ancho and New Mexico chiles to this sinfully flourless chocolate cake creates a culinary tryst of surpising complexity and history.

I have named the cake for a very old Aztec drink served almost exclusively to royalty. Sophie and Michael Coe, note the drink in thier book The True History of Chocolate: "Universally popular throughout Mesoamerica was the addition to the drink of chile, dried and ground to a powder. The Molina vocabulary [the first Nahuatl-Spanish dictionary] calls the drink chilcacahuatl."

You will love this cake if you take care in creating it.

As I write this the snow is drifting down, the wind blowing, its cold and wet outside. It has been snowing all week, a thick wet snow that only lasts until about 10 AM each day before the sun melts it off. Tonight we are expecting 3 inches, which might stick around a bit longer, but all of this is great news. Spring is here!

Saturday I was planning a fishing trip down in Colorado, where spring is farther along. A fishing buddy, Tom and I were going to try and fish the Cache la Poudre River up in the canyon north of Fort Collins, but A fresh snowfall, a cold and fever, and a spouses migraine cancelled the trip. The fact is that the river might be too high to fish as well, and facing all of this, and no one to go with I ended up staying home.

For the trip fare I had been planning on making a lunch that my buddy and I could eat in the canyon. Eating well when out fishing is, in my opinion, an incredible pleasure, and my plan was to make a couple of shooter's sandwiches to make our day complete - with or without successful fishing.

I ended up making two different versions of carne asada tacos, with one main difference in the recipes (see recipe below). In the second recipe I added a 1/4 cup of medium heat New Mexico red chile powder.

Once a week is steak night at our house. Both my wife and I realy enjoy tri-tip and flank, both of which are a bit toothier than some more expensive cuts, but both offer great flavor, marinate well, and when cooked properly are a fantastic value.

One of my favorite ways to cook both of these cuts is Sous Vide. Cooking using this method is nothing new to the foodie community, and last year the introduction of the SousVide Supreme made affordable sous vide cooking available to the home cook. I was happy to be an early adopter of this gadget, and honestly after using it for over a year now, I am a really big fan.

At my daughters school they make a big deal about Saint Patty's Day. They tell the children that Leprechauns visit the school while the kids are out playing, and hide chocolate coins around the classroom. Fiona, my daughter, has been entirely unsure what to think about all of this, she is clearly excited about the chocolate, but inquired quite seriously recently about the existence of Leprechauns. "Tell me the truth daddy... Are leprechauns real?"

Oddly enough, I was fearful of telling her that they were not - mostly because at least in my mind, the next question would be about Santa, and at 4 I couldn't bear her thinking that Santa isn't real.

What came out of my mouth after assuring her that they were real... I have no excuse, except that it was funny..?

"Sure they are Fiona! In fact, Saint Patty's day is the one day of the year that we are allowed to hunt Leprechauns!"

Fiona didn't believe a word of it, and went straight home to tell my wife just how horrible Daddy was - teasing her that I was going to hunt Leprechauns, and even worse, make Leprechaun Sausage! My wife to her credit, thought all of this was very funny.

Now I should back up and explain that there is a lot of talk, especially lately, about hunting around the house. Many of our friends hunt and I have been shopping for a rifle and a shotgun. We have also been cooking a lot of game recently, and Fiona has expressed a sincere interest in "learning to hunt with Daddy" when she grows up.