For the love of chocolate.

I have always loved chocolate.  I've been a member of the Chocolate Tasting Club for twelve years, and always have tea and chocolate first thing in the morning on a day when I'm not going to work.  Until recently, I had a brown sofa and rug, bedclothes and towels, so that the chocolate stains didn't show!  When a friend discovered a relatively new chocolatier in Leicester called Cocoa Amore, offering chocolate making workshops - we decided to book a workshop for two - as our birthdays are a fortnight apart it would be our birthday presents to each other.

As it turned out, our visit was even better than anticipated.  The team (two very friendly blokes) welcomed us and and shop was beautifully appointed and smelled lovely!

Our host immediately put the kettle on and we sat down with a little cast iron cup of special and delicious cocoa tea, together with a glass of water to cleanse our palate between tastings.  On the stainless steel worktop in front of us was a map of the world's cocoa growing regions, which are 10-20 degrees north and south of the equator, and dotted all over the map were little tubs with samples of chocolate from each area for us to taste.  It was very similar to a wine tasting, the growing conditions, area and variety make a big difference in the taste of the chocolate. We were first given an introduction to the cocoa plant and how it is grown, and how the beans are harvested and treated in order to produce the various products.  

I found this website which gives you an idea: 

http://www.icco.org/about-cocoa/growing-cocoa.html

Then came a fascinating combined history and geography lesson all about how chocolate has developed through history, the different sorts of modern day chocolate and the ingredients therein (Hershey's tastes weird as it uses soured milk powder!). There was a lovely story about The Grenada Chocolate Company which must be the eco-friendly chocolate company ever, but had a sad ending as the mastermind behind it all sadly died when he was electrocuted while mending some machinery.  Read more about the company at www.grenadachocolate.com.

As we travelled the cocoa-producing world from the comfort of our stools, we tried the chocolate as we went along, experiencing some surprises along the way - such as white chocolate which contained a higher % of cocoa than some milk chocolate - and a spectacular dark chocolate that gave my friend goose bumps!  We also tried 100% cocoa chocolate, which while very, very intense was not as bitter as you might expect.

After that, it was time to get messy and do some proper hands on chocolate making.  First we made chocolate shells, which would be chilled and later filled.  The chocolate was already melted and tempered in a special machine and as soon as we had polished our moulds with cotton wool (yes, really!) to make sure the finished chocolates looked shiny and professional, the chocolate was ladled into the moulds and the surface scraped, then we knocked the side of the mould - for a long time - to bring air bubbles to the surface, tipped the mould upside down, more knocking and scraping which was quite fiddly, and the shells were ready for chilling -  well once they had been "tidied up" by the pro...

While the shells chilled we made truffles, from ganache which was 70% chocolate to 30% cream, rolled into balls and coated with chocolate before being finished with cocoa powder. The coating was fun, instead of delicate dipping we scooped up a handful of melted chocolate (wearing gloves) and rolled the truffles in it in our hands.

After that, we made the filling for the shells, using a softer 50/50 ganache.  We chose our flavoured oils - I chose raspberry and mint, my friend chose orange and cinnamon.  We carefully mixed the flavourings in, tasting to get the balance right, then piped the filling into the shells.  I think I impressed them with my piping skills!!

The filled shells were then given a top coat of chocolate to seal in the filling and were put to chill in the fridge while we chilled with a very special hot chocolate and a choice of one of their very special chocolates.  I chose green tea and sesame hot chocolate and my friend birds eye chilli. It came on a special tray, as a glass of hot milk with a bar of chocolate separately to mix in as much or as little as you liked - you could eat some of it as it was if you wanted - with a special stirrer to mix it with.  And the chocolate I picked - well - no prizes for guessing it was the peanut butter cup!

The photo above shows what I came home with, including the rest of the piping bag of filling. We asked what to do with it and the recommendations were either to pipe into espresso cups and serve as a dessert (which I did) or to drizzle over pancakes or waffles. Yum.

I think the results look great - I was praised for my polishing of the mould, making the chocolates very shiny!

The leftovers.

I would highly recommend this day to anyone who loves chocolate, I also had to buy a selection of their other creations to try, and will be returning.  They make all sorts of gorgeous things, even chocolate dipped potato crisps!  See their facebook page for more information.

Thank you for reading,

Caroline :-)

Olives for breakfast.

I've just come back from a fabulous and very hot few days in Spain - my first visit.  My husband and I enjoyed a few child free days in the sun while they were having their own holiday in France with their Scout Group. I was looking forward to enjoying the food and it seemed the ideal opportunity for a blog post as I haven't written one for ages.

We arrived late at night and the first meal consisted of chilled Cava and olives as that was all there was in the villa - but I wasn't complaining!  In the morning we headed out in our cute little red rental Fiat 500 to the local supermarket - Pepe La Sal.  They had an impressive array of whole cured hams hanging up behind the meat counter and an equally impressive array of cakes and pastries - I wish I had taken  a photo. There was also a big fridge full of ready made microwaveable tapas dishes (discussed later) but we didn't have a microwave. You could get the ham sliced to order or buy it ready sliced in packets.  Similarly the cheeses. There were olives stuffed with all sorts of fillings, we thought we'd try the smoked salmon and the serrano ham ones. We bought ham, cheese, bread, olives, local unsalted butter, Allioli (creamy garlic dip), crisps, and nibbles.  Then we headed back to the villa for assembly of our DIY continental breakfast, and very delicious it was too, as you can see:

On closer inspection, we had bought three sorts of sliced ham, the cheapest was €3.05 for 104g, the next most expensive was €3.59 for 72g and the last one was a mind boggling €8.57 for 72g!!  We had been joyfully throwing goodies in the trolley without noticing the price, after all we were on holiday...  I looked them up and the cheapest was Centro D.O. Teruel - a serrano ham- for more information try the following link: 

http://jamonesairesano.es/en/designation-of-origin-of-teruel/

The mid price one was Iberico a Maquina, which from some googling appears to be an Iberian ham possibly where the pig is fed on acorns. The final one (and it WAS the most delicioso, having a very deep flavour) was Bellota a Maquina. Any readers who can tell me the difference please do because I  haven't been able to find out!

Our breakfasts were so filling, and eaten quite late, so we didn't really bother with lunch other than wine/beer and crisps and the odd Mojito (from a Chinese restaurant where you could sit outside on a sofa looking out to sea, we never had any food there, just enjoyed drinks and the free wifi!!!) and saved ourselves for dinner.  Sometimes I made my own tapas, a little slice of bread with Allioli and tomato/cheese, topped with an olive.  I would have liked to try more tapas dishes in a restaurant, and might next time, but it can work out quite expensive if your're not careful, and also I didn't seem to be hungry at the right moment.  All our evening meals were eaten al fresco, so as not to waste a moment of the wonderful weather, and there seemed to be a theme of orange tablecloths and/or napkins.

The first night my husband had prawns wrapped in bacon followed by lamb chops, and I started with a lobster salad, which truly deserved to have it's photo taken:

followed by slow roast piglet with orange sauce. Both mains came with chips, picked red cabbage served warm and mixed vegetables. All was delicious, especially the orange sauce. We never did have a dessert!

The next morning we popped down to a little convenience store called Deli Merkat (affectionately known as the deli meerkat) for bread, chocolate croissants and a beef tomato which I thought would go well with the rest of the ham and cheese, and it did, being packed with flavour.  The fruit and veg was not a perfect looking as at home, the rest of Europe seem to embrace "inglorious vegetables" rather better than we have.  To learn more see :

http://www.wimp.com/allsupermarkets/

Dinner on day two was at a fish restaurant - I had grilled sardines followed by Sole Menier (Sole Meuniere) and hubby had prawns with garlic followed by rabbit with garlic. Again both mains had the same accompaniments - buttery rice and crushed potatoes with olive oil and a sort of aubergine thing.  All good, though they didn't manage to get our starters out at the same time, and to be fair my husband's glass of pre-prandial gin was so enormous it should really have been served in a bucket!!  There was only a thimbleful of tonic in the huge glass - it was the first time ever he has asked me to "help him out" with an alcoholic beverage!!

On the last night, we found a restaurant that specialised in paella. I had only had this dish once before, and obviously never an authentic Spanish one, and really wanted to try it, but there was a snag.  They would only cook it for a minimum of two people, and my husband really didn't want it, as it's not his type of thing at all, he wanted steak.  So after some discussion, and not having a starter or dessert, I ordered a Paella Marinera for two all to myself!! I really hoped it was going to be good as it was €30!  Eeek!  The waitress gave us some funny looks and I suspected this had never happened to her before but when it arrived, it was delicious and included baby squid and squid rings, mussels, clams, white fish, shell-on prawns and langoustines. Peeling them gave me yellow fingernails! I did have to leave some of the rice, and my husband enjoyed his steak with salad and chips.  The white wine was a bit rough though, we wished we had ordered red instead.

before...

and after!

Speaking of the wine, it was generally very good, we had Cava, Verdejo, Torres de Casta Rosado (the Spanish seem to drink a lot of rose), Campo Viejo white Rioja, and various house whites (variable!)  The Spanish beer - Mahou was lovely too.

I would definitely go back to Spain, I loved the outdoor dining and the whole experience. And they eat more vegetables than the French.

Thank you for reading,

Caroline :-)