Who doesn’t love chocolate? Well, for me, it depends on the quality of the chocolate. I am definitely not a fan of overly sweet, multi-coloured chocolate bars available in every supermarket, corner shop, petrol station, deli, cinema – it’s everywhere.
Chocolate is made from the fermented seeds from cocoa pods from the cocoa tree. They are dried, cleaned and roasted. The shell is removed to produce cocoa nibs which are ground to cocoa mass in its rough form.
Once the cocoa mass is liquified by heating, it is called chocolate liquor. The liquor is then cooled and processed into two forms, cocoa butter and cocoa solids. This obviously only involves natural sugars from the roasting and fermenting process, so depending on the quality of the pods and the cure in the roast dictates the flavour of the end product. Note that there is no milk added until we do so to make the overly sweet, sickly chocolate so many of us are used to.
Now unknown to a lot of people we have some of the world’s finest chocolatiers in Scotland – Alistair Birt who works with Callebaut; the legend and chocolate master from Fife, William Curley MBE and Iain Burnett, the Highland Chocolatier, who produces some of best chocolate products in the world.
Here at the Newport we work with Alastair and Friederike Gower who own the Chocolate Tree in Edinburgh where they use the very finest award-winning craft chocolate.
Their chocolate has all the correct taste profiles, like ripe banana, dark fruits or natural flavours, of how great chocolate should taste. They import the dried beans from specific growers and make the chocolate themselves in their factory in Edinburgh. They also support the growers by providing a great premium and making sure the growers are taken care of and can provide for years to come.
Now I don’t want to ramble on about chocolate and not even give you a recipe for the quickest and easiest chocolate mousse ever. Ingredients are 150g of good quality 70% chocolate, 6 egg whites, 2 tbsp golden caster sugar and 4 tbsp of good quality crème fraiche. Melt the chocolate and vigorously beat until smooth, folded in the remaining whites and split between 4 glasses, refrigerate for 1-2 hours and serve with honeycomb and crème fraiche. The better the quality of the chocolate the better the flavour of the mousse.
