Make mine a T'a: Chocolate breakfast at Maze with Jason Atherton and T'a chocolates

Chocolate is high on the list of essential foodstuffs in this household. Along with good bread, butter, porridge oats, yoghurt, anchovies and brown cheese, dark chocolate is always in stock. I began my love affair with the dark stuff when I needed all the help I could get for a dastardly International Baccalaureate maths exam in 1998 and scarfed an entire bar of 70% Lindt before going in for the trigonometry kill. Armed with a ruler, plenty of sharpened pencils and a nifty Hewlett Packard calculator I was as wired as a nerd could get.

Needless to say it wasn't the most brilliant idea and in the pantheon of hairbrained ideas I've had over the years this was sheer lunacy. I could Not. Sit. Still. and was acutely aware that as my mind whirled around like a demented dervish I was losing precious time. Forget Pythagoras' theorem, I could barely scribble my own name.

So maths was never going to be my forte, with or without the ill-fated inhalation of Lindt's 70%. But the kick that ensued from this act of theobromide madness was a salutary lesson: dark chocolate makes you alert. I mean, really really alert. I may not have been able to write anything for the first ten minutes of the exam, but then I suddenly nailed it. Why snort the Columbian white stuff when you can have an instant hit of adrenaline from good dark Venezuelan chocolate I say.

So when I received an invitation to a chocolate breakfast held at Jason Atherton's restaurant Maze to launch snazzy Milan brand T'a Chocolate I did a little dance. After a gloomy and illness-laden January I was ready to enter the land of the living and what better way to welcome February's arrival than with a chocolate breakfast at Maze?

It may have been a grey and damp day in foggy Londontown yesterday but I virtually skipped all the way way to Mayfair from Bloomsbury. Upon arrival, Andre Dang who organised the event as part of T'a Chocolates' launch at Selfridges introduced me to the lovely Jason Atherton. I'd heard much about Jason and how great he is to work with from soon to be Iron Chef and all-round great gal Judy Joo. Judy knows Jason from her time working as a pastry chef at Gordon Ramsay's Royal Hospital Road restaurant and speaks highly of him so I was curious to chat to Jason about the chocolate breakfast he'd concocted for T'a.


Along with the T'a chocolates on display at the tasting, there was a table replete with four delectable chocolate spreads. Some food connoisseurs turn their noses up at chocolate spread but it's a cherished part of my childhood and in recent months I have been known to slather both chocolate spread and peanut butter on Peter's Yard crispbread as a mid-afternoon snack. The good people at Peter's Yard no doubt wince at my desecration of their delicious crispbread, but trust me it's amazing.

All of Jason's chocolate spreads were inspired by his time spent cooking and training in Spain, Dubai, France and of course here in the UK which was a thoughtful approach to creating four distinctive flavours. The British ale vinegar and winter berries chocolate spread (picture above) was mellow and tangy at the same time, a real treat using the very best of British ingredients. Sampling his Middle Eastern-inspired chocolate spread with saffron, Greek thyme and Arabian honey I thought "Saffron and chocolate, it works!" and I can imagine this spread would knock the socks off regular chocolate spread on pancakes this coming Shrove Tuesday. We then sampled an Iberico ham and sherry vinegar chocolate spread which was subtle in its porcine and sherry flavour, inspired by his time at El Bulli. But the star of the spreads was undoubtedly this baby:


Holy mackerel! I had seconds. Being the incorrigible magpie that I am I may even have contemplated sneaking the entire jar into my handbag. Mediterranean sea salt, lemon and chocolate: this is the ne plus ultra chocolate spread. If it isn't on sale soon in Selfridges alongside T'a's chocolates I shall have to do a Lisbeth Salander and hack into Jason's laptop to nick the recipe. It's quite possibly the best way - other than porridge, smoothies and eggs benedict - to wake up in the morning: a light and refreshing lemon, sea salt and chocolate spread on sourdough toast. Or so I imagine. We had it with baguette.

But it wasn't all spreads and creative flavours, there was the serious business of chocolate tasting too. Selfridges has a history of launching hot-to-trot chocolate brands such as Willie Harcourt Cooze's Cacao bars, so I expect we'll see a lot more of T'a Chocolate soon enough. While it may be unknown over here, T'a is owned by Tancredi and Alberto Alemagna, two brothers who come from a long line of celebrated confectioners and patissiers in Milan. Tancredi told me Alemagna was the first place to make panettone way back when, a claim I'm not entirely convinced of but I learnt never to argue with an Italian about the origins of panettone. We chatted more about the origin of the cocoa beans in his chocolate bars and the varying degrees of cocoa percentage. Nibbling my way through the 55, 60, 72 and 80% samples I found the smoothness of T'a chocolates comforting and the flavours not nearly as intense as some artisan chocolate brands such as Michel Cluizel or Amadei. Having just reprised yesterday's sampling as I type this blog post I reckon the mellowness of the 40, 55, and 60% T'a chocolates makes for a perfect afternoon lift.

Having tasted the best molten hot chocolate ever in Cova, an old-school pastry shop and cafe in Milan's fashionable Via Montenapoleone, I have absolute faith in the Milanese brothers Tancredi and Alfredo's ability to craft fine chocolate, and one that is more accessible than some of the complex terroir-laden big guns out there.

Not that terroir is irrelevant to T'a, they source cocoa beans from single estates in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Columbia, Brazil, Ghana and Tanzania and there's a selection of small tasting chocolate pieces, pralines and dragees to showcase the best of those countries' cocoa beans.

It just wouldn't be Milanese if it weren't stylish, and I have to confess I love T'a Chocolates' style with its vivid colours and clever packaging. It's bright, enticing and pretty. If you're looking for a gift for a chocoholic this Valentine's day then you might want to swing by Selfridges in the next week and pick up one of these eye-catching T'a Chocolate boxes:


What can I say? Good design and good chocolate do it for me. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to hack into Jason Atherton's computer for that lemon sea salt chocolate spread recipe ;-)

Chocolate Beetroot Cake

Beetroot is as mighty as vegetables come. Admittedly I spent half my life thinking it came only in pickled form as my family used to eat it with chicken liver pate and mayonnaise on an open rye sandwich. Occasionally my mother would add the same pickled stuff to salads. Otherwise I had no real conception that it existed as a vegetable until I came to the UK and saw it sold with leaves and all. Imagine my excitement!

It's still a mystery why my parents, otherwise great advocates of root vegetables in both their raw and cooked form, didn't expose me to the humble beetroot. They did an excellent job exposing me to carrot and potatoes, just not beetroot.

Endlessly versatile, beetroot I've since discovered, can be roasted with thyme and garlic, or shredded raw into winter salads. It makes a great risotto, as The Larder Lout will tell you. And beetroot works a treat in cake.

I found a recipe in the Telegraph which I tweaked slightly, reducing the sugar slightly and adding more chocolate. you can see the original here

Use raw beetroot as you would use raw carrot in a classic American carrot cake. I opted for the cooked stuff to save time on this chocolate cake; the beetroot's subtle in flavour and you'll hardly taste it with all the chocolate and cocoa in this recipe but it lends a wonderful moist texture to chocolate cakes.

Do try it, but whatever you do, steer clear of the pickled beetroot for baking and save instead for open sandwiches!

Ingredients:

250g cooked beetroot
100g dark chocolate
125g butter
250g light brown muscovado sugar (I used Billington's)
3 medium eggs
50g cocoa powder
225g self-raising flour (or the same quality of refined spelt flour with 1 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda)
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius, Gas Mark 4. Lightly grease a 22cm cake tin

In a medium bowl weigh the diced butter and dark chocolate chopped in small pieces. Place this over simmering water in a medium saucepan and allow the butter and chocolate to melt completely. Set aside to cool.

Sift the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and stir to distribute the raising agents, cocoa powder and salt.

In a medium-large bowl place the eggs and sugar and beat until pale and mousse-like:



Blitz the beetroot:



Add half the beetroot and half the dry ingredients to the bowl with the egg and sugar and fold through 4-5 times. Add the remainder of the beetroot and dry ingredients and again fold through 4-5 times until the mixture is smooth.

Finally, pour this into the cake tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 40-50 minutes (depending on how reliable your oven is. Mine isn't!) Insert a skewer to see if the cake is cooked through. The skewer should have no wet mixture when you remove
it. When the cake is done, allow to cool 10 minutes before removing the tin and placing on a wire rack. Allow to cool completely before icing with equal parts melted dark chocolate and butter, with a few tablespoons of icing sugar to sweeten the icing. If you fancy a fruity twist, pierce the cake all over with a skewer and drizzle creme de cassis over before icing.

Scandi Christmas stall at Covent Garden: Part II

Niamh aka Eat Like A Girl and I larking around at Covent Garden on Thursday - photo courtesy of Lucy Pope






Re-arranging cinnamon buns with Lucy Pope - photo courtesy of A Forkful of Spaghetti



The Scandi Christmas baking spread...photo courtesy of A Forkful of Spaghetti

So market day at Covent Garden came and went, and what fun it was. The gods provided with sunshine and a balmy 10 degrees celsius throughout the afternoon, and I was lucky to share a stall with the lovely Niamh - also known affectionately as the "pork mistress" for her mighty pork sandwiches with lashings of the BEST crunchy crackling in all of WC1! Niamh's a dab hand at this market melarkee as she's been manning a stall twice a week since the summer and her pork sandwiches fast became a staple lunchtime treat for those who work nearby Covent Garden this autumn and I can see why - having sampled her fare I'm now a pork sandwich addict

We had lots of visitors throughout the day, both punters looking around the market on a Thursday afternoon and friends and food bloggers who came down to support us by saying hello, and of course to sample the food! Niamh very kindly proffered a glass of prosecco mid-afternoon and we chatted throughout the afternoon, marvelling at the friendly visitors and the occasional cheeky passesrby - you see the extremes of human nature at a market Niamh said and I completely agree, fascinating stuff to an anthropologist. Believe it or not, someone asked Niamh if she did 2 for 1 on her sandwiches, and when I put out samples of cakes mid-afternoon two modellesque girls came round not once or twice but five times to nibble on samples. The cheek! Having two crazy aunts in Norway who used to model let me repeat my maxim in life here:

"Never trust a model as beauty corrupts the brain"

Anyway, it was a brilliant day and I wish I could do it again next week as Niamh was such fun to pal around with. From Tuesday though I'm off to Lanzarote for yuletide holiday frolics with my Ma and Pa so any reprises down at Covent Garden will have to wait til 2010

Below are recipes from the most popular cakes and biscuits of the day, if you have any specific queries about them drop me an email or leave a comment

Happy holidays to you all :-)



Let's start with the three chocolatey cakes:

tropisk aroma or spiced chocolate marble cake with nutmeg and cinnamon. The nutmeg dominates and with a coffee-chocolate icing I this is a firm family favourite which keeps up to a week and can be frozen if need be for future cake scoffing

Recipe:

Cake:

250g refined spelt flour
250g golden caster sugar
150g butter, softened
2 medium eggs
120 ml whole milk with 2 tbsp plain yoghurt
2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp strong coffee or espresso
pinch salt

Filling and icing:

200g icing sugar
200g butter, softened
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp coffee powder (depends how much coffee you like)
pinch salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly oil 23cm round cake tin and fit the bottom with baking parchment

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar til pale and fluffy (circa 5-8 minutes). Add the eggs one at a time along with a spoonful of flour to stop the mixture splitting, whisking after each egg to incorporate it into the mixture. Add the spices, remainder of flour and alternate this with the milk and coffee to create a thick cake batter

Take 1/3 of the cake mixture and place in a smaller bowl, add the cocoa powder and stir through until the mixture looks even

Place half the plain mixture at the bottom of the cake tin, then layer the chocolate mixture on top. Cover with the remaining half of plain mixture and using a fork, swirl through the two mixtures to create a marbled effect. Bake on the middle shelf for 35-40 minutes. The cake is done when a skewer is inserted and no wet mixture remains on the skewer

While the cake cools on a wire rack, make the filling: cream the butter whilst adding the icing sugar, coffee and cocoa powders, and vanilla extract, taste as you go along as icing is subjective - some like it very buttery, others intensely sweet. I like a balance of butter, sugar and chocolate/coffee myself

When the cake is completely cool, spread the icing all over. Sprinkle extra cocoa powder on top if you like a cocoa hit or simply leave it plain. Savour with a cup of tea or coffee

Cardamom-Chocolate Cake

There was a run on this cake, definitely a hit with both punters on the day and food bloggers who came down to visit Niamh and I. Cardamom and chocolate is a match made in heaven - grind the cardamom pods yourself if you have the time and inclination, I like to coarsely grind them so you get a few small seeds of cardamom rather than fine powder. The occasional cardamom crunch when eating this cake is an unexpected treat I find. This recipe is an adaptation of Nigella's dense chocolate loaf in 'How to be a domestic goddess' but I've substituted plain flour for spelt and reduced the sugar and syrup quantities and upped the chocolate

Ingredients:

250g softened butter
350g dark muscovado sugar (light will do fine)
250g refined spelt flour
150g dark chocolate, melted
2 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
2 medium eggs
200ml boiling water
1 shot espresso or strong coffee
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1-2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 190 C. Lightly oil a 23 x 13 x 7 cm loaf tin

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time along with a spoonful of flour to stop the mixture splitting. Add the melted chocolate and incorporate fully before adding coffee, cocoa powder, flour, the boiling water, cardamom, bicarb and salt. It should be a thick liquid batter

Pour this into the prepared loaf tin and bake on the middle oven shelf at 190 C for the first 1/2 hour, then reduce the oven temp to 170 C and bake the cake for a further 15 minutes. The cake will rise, but once you remove it from the oven it will shrink slightly and look like it collapses. This is normal.

Cool on a wire rack. Needless to say this is great on its own but also good with a dollop of creme fraiche on the side. As Nigella says, this is like gingerbread in that it improves as it ages so worth making up in double batches if you can


Gingerbread with lemon icing

another Nigella classic. What can I say, the woman can bake

It's worth making this in double batches, it's VERY popular!

Ingredients:

300g spelt flour
150g butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle
2 teaspoons fresh ginger
1 tsp cinnamon (and I add 1/2 tsp clove, 1/2 nutmeg)
250ml milk
2 eggs
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda mixed with 2 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp salt

Icing:

200g icing sugar
zest of 1 lemon
2-3 tbsp lemon juice

Method:

Preheat oven to 170 C. Lightly oil a 30 x 20 x 5 cm rectangular cake tin

In a large saucepan melt the butter, sugar, syrup, treacle, spices, ginger. Add the milk, eggs, bicarb off the heat.

Add the liquid to the flour in a large bowl and beat well until the mixture looks even.

Pour into cake tin and bake 45 minutes to 1 hour

As the cake is cooling, make the icing:

sift icing sugar in a bowl, whisking in the lemon juice and zest. The icing should be thick not runny so don't add too much liquid...

spread over cooled gingerbread with a palette knife and leave to set before cutting slices. Keeps for a good couple of weeks if you can resist eating it in one go

Kokosmakroner or coconut macaroons

these mallowy macaroons are dead-easy to make and the coconut acts as a humectant so they stay soft for ages. Dip in melted dark chocolate for that 'bounty' effect or eat plain as they're moreish on their own

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
180g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
250g shredded coconut

Method:

Meringue the egg whites and sugar til stiff peak, then fold in the coconut. Bake at 170 degrees celsius for 10-15 minutes and allow to dry on a wire rack before eating

Almond Raisin Cake with Manzanilla Sherry

Manzanilla may seem an odd choice for cake as it's bone dry, but I love that ozone savouryness to Manzanilla and had half a bottle languishing in the fridge so I thought I'd bake a sherry-fied cake with it. Thanks to A Forkful of Spaghetti for tweeting me a recipe! This is my version:

Ingredients:

200g raisins
200g manzanilla sherry
150ml plain yoghurt
150ml melted butter
150g light muscovado sugar
3 medium eggs
150g spelt flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt

Method:

preheat oven to 180 C. Lightly oil a 20cm round cake tin. Whisk the eggs and sugar til pale and fluffy. Add the melted butter, the yoghurt, flour, almonds, salt and raising agents to the mixture and combine til evenly incorporated. Fold in the raisins, adding some of the sherry too if you fancy :-)

Spoon the cake mixture into the cake tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Drizzle with icing sugar, or skewer the cake a few times and use up the remaining sherry liquid to pickle the cake...

Needless to say, great with a glass of sherry



lefse or potato pancake - cheat's version available at Scandinavian Kitchen

This is usually served with a cup of coffee in Norway and a childhood favourite of mine. I love lefse, which is a soft potato-wheat pancake filled with cinnamon buttercream and folded like a book.

For 10 lefse you'll need 5 sheets of the pre-fab stuff you get at the Scandinavian Kitchen plus:

150g butter
100g creme fraiche
150g icing sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Cream the butter til pale then add the creme fraiche, whisking til its incorporated and add cinnamon, sugar, salt. Taste to see if it's right for you - remember the potato-wheat lefse is quite bland. Place a dollop of mixture on a sheet of lefse, spread evenly and then fold in the sides. Keep in an airtight container

Sugar & Spice - A Scandi Christmas Stall in Covent Garden 10.12.09

Traditional Christmas biscuits from Baker Brun - bakery in Bergen where Papa Scandilicious grew up


In recent years three of my flatmates have each declared Christmas to be their favourite season for food. And I can see why - all the roast meat, the sprouts (yes I love sprouts), the mince pies, the brandy butter, mulled wine - or in my case as I'm Germanic at heart - glühwein...

In Norway we always had smoked lamb ribs which were steamed over birchwood and water for a day, served with creamy and buttery mashed swede (not a pun I promise), steamed potatoes and carrots. It was simple country fare and utterly repellant to anyone who hadn't grown up in Norway. My English grandmother tried it once and came away convinved my Mother had married a barbarian. Well, the volume of aquavit consumed during a Norwegian Christmas meal certainly lends credence to her conviction but I love juleribbe and frankly think the simplicity of it is more in keeping with what Christmas is all about. Forget 14 types of vegetables to go with a roast bird, this meal is as low-maintenance as cooking gets. My Mother loved it as she didn't have to slave over a stove for an entire day and I like the fact that juleribbe harks back to Viking days when smoked meat was a vital foodstuff for survival

Anyway as a child my parents always dispatched me to Bergen for the requisite pre-Christmas family gathering before we'd escape the mad Johansen family to our house in Lanzarote. At the time I thought this was normal, and in fact it is normal for families to gather before Christmas and then to run away, no? My Norwegian family aren't entirely normal, they argue constantly and a lot of hysterical shouting goes on for no particular reason. It's hilarious for an outsider to witness but a little terrifying for a 6-year old and my Mother made a pact with my Father when we moved to Norway that we escape to the sun as we all needed the Vitamin D. Or so she says. At any rate, instead of listening to the aunts' madness I would hide away in the kitchen with my Norwegian grandmother and help her bake

I'd marvel at the huge quantities of biscuits, breads and cakes she baked at the start of advent. Much like here in the UK, the run-up to Christmas in Scandinavia is a sociable time, everyone gathers, eats and gets pickled from too much aquavit or mulled wine and that's really what the festive season is all about. My grandmother only stopped baking the "syv slag" or seven varieties of traditional Christmas biscuits you see above when she reached her 80's

So tomorrow I'll be down at Covent Garden piazza manning a stall that will feature some of the yuletide favourites I grew up with. A few recipes are from my grandmother, others are favourites I've discovered since moving to the UK and having an experimental streak I've baked a couple of new things like the chocolate cardamom cake because I love cardamom. If you're in the area feel free to come by and say hello between 12 and 7pm, and while you're at it you can try author Daniel Young's potato latkes and Niamh Shields aka Eat Like a Girl's roast pork sandwiches too!

Available tomorrow at the Scandi Christmas stall:

* Tropisk aroma or spiced chocolate marble cake replete with nutmeg, cinnamon and a hint of coffee

* Cinnamon buns which may or may not be glazed with marmite salted butter caramel (am looking at you @aforkful and @youngandfoodish )

* Peppernøtter or spice nuts (strictly speaking pepper but there's clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger aplenty in these biscuits)

* Serinakaker or butter biscuits with toasted almonds

* Kokosmakroner or coconut macaroons (gluten-free)

* Nigella's gingerbread - not Scandinavian but so good it merits inclusion

* Cardamom chocolate cake

* Almond Raisin cake with Sherry - recipe courtesy of A forkful of spaghetti :-)

* Whisky cake (gluten free)

* Marmite salted butter caramel - not Scandi but a personal favourite of mine

If you can't make it tomorrow but fancy trying something from this list drop me an email or tweet me @scandilicious and I'll see what I can do to help ;-)

Recipe from the Blaggers' Banquet - a sumptuous chocolate fondant from Trish Deseine

Much has already been written about the Blaggers' Banquet so I thought I'd share the recipe we were given by chocolatier Trish Deseine for this sumptuous chocolate fondant I made for the dessert component of the banquet. Trish very kindly also donated her moreish 72% chocolate for us to use in the fondants which you see in the photo above

Trish's chocolate fondant is a brilliant mise-en-place dish in that you make it up the day before and it actually improves with time, so if you're wondering what to do for Christmas or New Years I'd recommend foregoing more complicated desserts for this easy-peasy fondant

Trish Deseine's favourite Chocolate Fondant Cake Recipe:

1) Melt 200g Chocolate by Trish 64% cooks chocolate buttons with 200g pure, semi-salted butter in the microwave (honest). Add 180g sugar, stir a bit and let it cool before breaking 5 eggs into the melted chocolate one by one, stirring well after each one.

2) Add a tablespoonful of plain flour and cook at 180° in a floured 22 cm cake tin for 20 minutes or so. Take it out of the oven when it's still wobbly in the middle.

Trust me, it's a chocoholic's bombshell of a dish - I made 10 of them the night before the banquet and I swear the smell of sweet chocolate still suffuses my Bloomsbury flat...

As a final word on the banquet let me extend a huge thank you to the food and drink suppliers I dealt with in the run-up to the banquet who were generous and helpful in equal measure:

Abel & Cole

Barber's 1883 Cheddar

Billington's

Brockhall Farm

Firefly Tonics

Fish for Thought

Lahloo Tea

Laverstoke Park Farm

Peter's Yard

Riverford Organic

Sainsbury's

St. John Restaurant


The fundraising for Action Against Hunger continues online, so if you want to save yourself the tedium and stress of Christmas shopping why not bid on some of the fantastic prizes we've blagged for the Ebay auction here


Blaggers Banquet Menu: 15 November 2009

Menu conceived by Signe Skaimsgard Johansen with Charlie Nelson, Neil Rankin and Danny Kingston

Canapés and table nibbles:

by Danny Kingston aka Food Urchin

Fresh goats’ cheese and pomegranate crispbreads with a salty vanilla twist and fresh chives
(Brockhall Farm, Abel & Cole, Peter’s Yard and Halon Mon)

Buffalo mozzarella, tomato and fresh basil brochettes with a pesto dip
(Laverstoke Park, Abel &Cole and Purely Pesto)

Crispy chicken skin bites
(Silfield Farm)

Cheddar Gougeres with thyme
(Barbers 1883, Abel & Cole)

Spicy Bar Mix
(Munchy Seeds)

The canapés were offered with a choice of the following (also available throughout the evening from the bar):

Apple Wood Badger Cider was via Positive PR
Chapel Down Pinot Reserve 2004
Albarino Laga de Bouza 2007 (The Wineaux )
Sipsmith’s Gin martini
Sipsmith’s Vodka Martini
Sipsmith’s Gin or Vodka and Fevertree tonic
The Blaggertini (Sipsmith’s vodka, Chegworth Valley Apple and Raspberry juice. Galliano Balsamico)
Cornish Cocktail (Bramley & Gage Quince Liqueur, Chapel Down Sparkling Wine)
Black Velvet (Chapel Down Sparkling Wine and Porter)
Marston’s Pedigree
Innis & Gunn
Fullers London Pride
Daas White
Chapel Down Brut
Chapel Down Porter
Firefly Tonics
Chegworth Valley Apple Juice
Chegworth Valley Apple and Blackberry Juice

Starter:

by Charlie Nelson aka Eat My Nels
Monkfish and beetroot tartare with tomato salsa
(Fish for Thought, Abel & Cole)

Paired with:

Brewery Hill Chardonnay/Viognier 2008 (Naked Wines)
Main Course:
by Neil Rankin aka The War on Cookbooks

Grilled buffalo steaks with bearnaise sauce
(Laverstoke Park)

Spiced winter beef stew
(Donald Russell)

Lamb hotpot
(Donald Russell)

served with a selection of seasonal vegetables from Riverford organic and handmade sourdough bread from St John Restaurant

paired with:

Quinta do Lagoalva 2004 (Casa Leal and Viniportugal)
The Pastor's Blend Journey's End 2007

Dessert:

by Signe Skaimsgard Johansen (yes that would be me)

Golden Chocolate Fondant served with Crème Fraiche
(Trish Deseine, Easy Tasty Magic and Sainsburys So Organic)

Titillating Jellies from Bompas & Parr

Paired with:

Lorca Fantasia Malbec 2008 (Naked Wines)
Castello Romitorio Morellino di Scansano 2007 (The Wineaux)

Cheese:

Barbers 1833 Vintage Cheddar
Brockhall Farm Chive Goats Cheese
Trethowans Dairy Gorwydd Caerphilly
A selection of deliciously fragrant cheese from Pong’s (each table had a different cheese)

Served with Peter’s Yard crispbread and a selection of seasonal fruit from Abel & Cole

Paired with:

Albarino Laga de Bouza 2007 (The Wineaux )

And to finish:

Coffee from Square Mile, with milks from Sainsburys and Brockhall Farm
Lahloo Tea
Chocolate truffle by Lahloo tea and Damian Allsop

We also used ingredients throughout the menu donated by the following:

Abel & Cole – herbs
Billingtons – sugar
Halen Mon – flavoured salts
Hill Farm – extra virgin rapeseed oil
Maldon Salt – salt and pepper
Riverford Organic – assorted vegetables
Sainsburys – all dairy produce except cheeses and goats milk
Silfield Farm – chicken used for stock

A final word of thanks goes to Danny, Charlie and Neil for being so unflappable on the day of the banquet - they made a stellar team and I hope we'll get to work together again on the next Blaggers' Banquet!



Photo at top of page courtesy of FoodbyMark

Nostalgia

Chocolate week is in full swing and the quality of real chocolate now available in the UK - like the hilarious Boris Johnson - is really something to marvel at

When it comes to real chocolate my adopted home has advanced leaps and bounds since I first arrived ten years ago. As evinced by the plethora of chocolate brands at last weekend's Chocolate Unwrapped event and a dizzying array of chocolate tastings and events taking place across Blighty this week, there is much to rejoice about if you're a committed theobromine addict. With the likes of Paul A Young and Chantal Coady of Rococo flying the flag for real chocolate this country is finally on the right track chocolate-wise, even if the postal system is a complete shambles. Perfidious old Albion still has some way to go with real bread too but that's another blog post in the offing

Musing on chocolate recently I found myself nostalgic for Norway. This often happens when I hear Peer Gynt, eat gravad laks or reminisce about skiing - that is until I remember my propensity to ski into trees

Visits in the past week to the Scandinavian Kitchen and Scandi restaurant Madsen have ostensibly triggered my most recent bliss point of 'Weegie nostalgia. I picked up Scandi chocolate confection Kvikk Lunsj and Daim from the good people of Great Titchfield Street, and tried to excavate memories of skiing that did not result in spectacular crashes with the woods and wildlife of Oslo

For the uninitiated, Kvikk-Lunsj is akin to a Kit-Kat but addictive as crack. The Kvikk-lunsj fan page on facebook boasted 15,907 fans when I last checked, a measure of how damn good this biscuity milk chocolate is. 'Weegies take with us a bar or three whenever we go on long hikes through forests and mountains, and on wholesome ski trips in winter. We don't really get fat because we're outdoors so much. Needless to say the clever marketing department of Norwegian chocolate brand Freia play on our love of outdoor frolics and romanticize kvikk-lunsj to the Nth degree - as you can see in the first photo above and if you click on that last link above. I'm a sucker for buying into it of course, but this chocolate so good who cares if I'm being duped

So imagine my total horror when I arrived in October 1999 to discover most chocolate here was crap. It was like something out of Hogarth. Norway's pulchritudinous populace may have prejudiced me somewhat, but I was literally surrounded by pasty, spotty, gin-soaked urchins who thought Cadbury's dairy milk constituted real 'chocolate' and booze was more important than food. It was a culture shock one step too far and I confess the first taste of Dairy Milk one of my mates shared still haunts me. Suitcases of kvikk-lunsj and other Freia confection were ferried over and distributed to my friends as a humanitarian act, rescuing them from purple brand addiction

Perhaps my British grandmother had convinced me everyone knew and understood food in this country. She cooked roast beef every Sunday so why wouldn't every other Brit do the same I assumed. Yorkshire pudding and bramley apple crumble were not part of my mates' repertoire I soon discovered, and when I bought organic milk and waxed lyrical on the joys of good butter this elicited some very quizzical looks from fellow students, not to mention when I subjected one poor soul to a rant on the evils of homogenized milk

Apparently Welsh rarebit at Fortnums was not considered integral to every eight-year old girl's visit to London and few of my peers really rated PG Wodehouse. Honestly, I felt like Alice peering through the looking glass - the Britain I had been shown by my beloved Nana was not quite what I imagined and being resolutely contrarian I refused to snap out of my sheltered little existence, digging my heels in further after some snot-nosed little neo-Marxist called me a "posh foreign snob"

And therein lies the rub. It's still hard today for even the most committed fairtrade, organic and sustainable food-supporting eater in this country to shake that subconscious fixation with class. Sometimes in those sunny and cool autumn days of October '99 I wondered whether Britain was still languishing in its Victorian past and if I wasn't just an insufferable brat for being so judgmental. Plus ca change!

Thankfully a delicious Scandi lunch at Madsen and a previous visit to meet owner Charlotte Kruse Madsen helped alleviate the worst of the nostalgia pangs I was experiencing earlier in the week. When Charlotte presented me with a fresh piece of kransekake, a classic Scandinavian dessert, I knew I had an excellent reason to visit South Ken, other than to see the dinosaurs and the new Darwin centre at the Natural History Museum

Scandinavian kransekake: a baked marzipan-rich biscuit

What do you think? Am I imagining things - does food trigger nostalgia or is it all nonsense? The best answer gets a couple of kvikk-lunsjes in the post. Remember, you must be over 18 and recognise the addictive qualities of said chocolate. After all 15,907 fans can't be wrong...

p.s.

will winter 2009 be the year I cease to crash into trees? watch this space...

The crafting of chocolate: Paul A Young

Thought you were getting a recipe for sea salted caramel truffles there didn't you?

Or perhaps some tips on decorating truffles?

Marzipan: the way to a Scandi's heart

After an extended hiatus from posting recipes a mea culpa is due: I've hardly baked since the reine de saba featured here last month. But if you're a regular reader you might have spotted I have something of a predilection for all things theobroma cacao. This post is inspired in part by a recent tasting at Paul A Young - virtuoso chocolatier and impassioned defender of orangutans - and by the imminent arrival of Chocolate Week Britain's biggest celebration of real chocolate

I love chocolate so don't expect any high-minded objectivity here. The smell of it renders me giddy and grinning dementedly like a Cheshire cat - who needs opium when you can have chocolate I say. Having written features on tea and chocolate pairing and wine pairings for a chocolate-themed dinner party it's safe to assume I would be happy if every week were a celebration of chocolate and since Paul opened his chocolate shop in 2006 I would occasionally pop in whenever I happened to be in Angel, which sadly wasn't that often. His marmite chocolate truffles are manna from heaven for a marmite fan, and you don't need me telling you his salted butter caramels (pictured above) are so moreish that all you really have to do is close your eyes and purr

My musings on matters theobromine boil down to the profound dichotomy of "yum" and "yuck", hence this is really a cursory introduction to one of the great fermented foodstuffs in existence besides my other favourites gravadlax, sourdough bread, Riesling, anchovies, and of course cheese...

Imagine my excitement when I saw this on display at Paul's tasting two weeks ago:

Chocolate and cheese may sound bonkers, but it's an umami bombshell of a combination, think of Ella Fitzgerald singing a fine romance when you pair chocolate and cheese and you know what I'm on about. Paul isn't the only advocate of unusual pairings with chocolate, food scientist and "curious cook" Harold McGee has a killer recipe for chocolate and cheese truffles Try it, you'd be surprised what a natural affinity good dark chocolate has with Stilton and indeed unpasteurised Stichelton

As a Scandinavian I grew up with good chocolate. It's our vitamin shot during long, dark winters and Norway's biggest chocolate company Freia is still my favourite source of milky chocolate confection that hits a certain blisspoint. Pangs of nostalgia occur whenever I eat a Kvikk-Lunsj, Freia's answer to the Kit-Kat and nothing really says weekends spent Nordic skiing, frolicking in the snow and steamy saunas like a bar of the stuff

So when American Kraft bought Norwegian Freia back in the mid 1990's there was a national outcry. Sound familiar? Kraft of course now have their eye on Cadbury's, that beloved British institution whose source of popularity has always eluded me. Cadbury's isn't real chocolate. They may have highly commendable Quaker ideals and social programs but they produce what should be more accurately called vegelate that masquerades as chocolate, replete with startling amounts of bleached sugar and some vague notion of cocoa. Yuck. Nothing, we discovered, makes Paul quite as hopping mad as people who claim chocolate is fattening. Cheap mass-produced chocolate is full of sugar, and that's what is so addictive, not to mention fatal to one's waistline

The heady aroma of real chocolate suffuses Paul's shop when you enter, and this is deliberate. He wants chocolate to be a sensory experience, and since all his chocolate is hand-crafted on site there is no other escape for the intoxicating aromas unleashed by tempering chocolate and freshly baked brownies. Automation is strictly verboten. Instead marble slabs are used downstairs in the kitchen for tempering, and there is no outsourcing at any stage in the chocolate production

Paul and his business partner James Cronin's enthusiasm for teaching us about real chocolate is clear as soon as we arrive. A tasting programme is planned for the evening in which we methodically work our way from bean to bar. Everything from malty Valrhona milk chocolate to silky 75% Amedei 9 and fiendishly tart and bitter 100% Valrhona manjari pate is sampled, the latter resolutely my favourite. Akin to a wine tasting, we diligently take notes and compare thoughts on what each chocolate evinces in terms of nuance, texture and aroma. Ultimately whether we like it or not is to some extent irrelevant. Real chocolate is an education in taste, not an exercise in expressing opinions of "yum" or "yuck' as I normally do

James Cronin talking to us about the business of chocolate

True chocolate lovers will already know the three main cocoa beans are Criollo, Trinitario and Forastero, Criollo being the elite bean and Forastero being the banal bean used in Cadbury's, Nestle, Kraft, et al. or as part of a blend. Being a fermentation nerd with an acidic palate I was intrigued to learn fermentation determines the acidity of cocoa beans, and if done properly releases all the inherent aromas of the bean. As Paul told us, it can be tricky discerning which bean is used for which chocolate with the Big Three Amadei, Valrhona and Michel Cluizel diverging in the way they reveal the bean's provenance, or what blend of beans they use

What struck me about Paul and James is how passionately they believe chocolate is a craft. Craftsmanship is not really part of the noughties' vernacular - we live in an age of instant gratification and mastering a craft requires a singular attention to detail, not to mention years of training, experience and embodied knowledge. Paul told us he had trained under Marco Pierre White, a chef who certainly does not suffer fools lightly. I can only imagine how character-forming it was to work for Marco, and as Paul told us the most salient lesson he learnt from him was that the product is king. To some extent I agree and I appreciate that Paul and James are running a business so the product is key, but the anthropologist in me would of course argue the product is nothing without the people. Cooks, chefs, chocolatiers, cheesemakers, winemakers, brewers all practice a form of craftsmanship, and you can't divest what they make from who they are. I suspect we'll be hearing more about this subject in the coming years as artisanal food producers hit their stride. At any rate, if you're a craft nerd then have a look at Richard Sennett's inspiring book 'The Craftsman' for more profound observations on the matter

Paul and James wrap up the tasting by introducing us to San Francisco-based chocolate brand Tcho, a company channelling the terroir of beans into their chocolate. By breaking down each variety to their flavour profiles of nutty, fruity, chocolatey, earthy, citrus or floral, you have a clear choice depending on your own taste in chocolate. It's a fascinating concept, and certainly the first of its kind amongst the elite chocolate brands. With Paul being the first retailer to stock them in Britain, Tcho are a brand to watch

To complete the evening we're given a tour of the kitchen downstairs, as spotless and spatious as they come. In the photo above is Paul clutching a delicious block of pure cocoa butter, chocolate's most prized ingredient. Remember that. As Paul explained, cocoa butter is the key to real chocolate, and ersatz ingredients such as palm oil are to be avoided at all costs - not merely for fiscal reasons but for conservation ones. The demand for cheap palm oil leads to serious deforestation of rainforests, the natural habitat of both cocoa bean trees and the mighty orangutan. Eat cheap, mass-produced chocolate and not only will you get fat but you'll be contributing to the decline of rainforests and orangutans

If you love proper chocolate, start reading the ingredients on the back of the label. Go to tastings, masterclasses, be a nerd and start swotting up on the subject. There is a Chocolate Unwrapped event in London on the weekend of October 10/11 where you can sample a whole range of brands, beans and varieties of chocolate.

Honestly, if you like eating chocolate it is worth investing a bit of time and effort in learning the whole ecology of chocolate-making from bean to bar, and I can't recommend Paul's tasting highly enough

On that note, I leave you with a word of advice: theobromine is a stimulant so as tempting as it is to make hot chocolate before bedtime you'll find yourself rather more wound-up than wound-down

Doesn't stop me from dreaming about that fiendish Valrhona 100% manjari pate though...

Paul A Young

33 Camden Passage

Islington

London N1 8EA

www.paulayoung.co.uk

'Adventures with Chocolate' by Paul A Young published by Kyle Cathie 2009

Julia Child's Reine de Saba

They don't make them like Julia Child anymore

Yep, I'm officially on the bandwagon of Julia enthusiasts. Spank me with a spatula but I grew up reading cookbooks from the 60's so Julia was a familiar figure in our family - my Mother's vintage edition of that other doyenne of American cookery Fanny Farmer sat alongside the Great Scandinavian Cookbook - an ersatz Larousse with some gravlax and smoked sheep heads thrown in - and a signed copy of the Ballymaloe Cookbook (OK, not from the 60's but from the 70's) summers spent in New England meant we accumulated quite a few classic American cookbooks, but Child really was in a league of her own

Patrician, francophile and in possession of an extraordinary voice that bordered on comical, Julia Child was a salt-of-the-earth sort of woman, that breed of tough cookies who were unconventional and ever so slightly eccentric. I like Child for what she represented: a smart, self-assured woman who was didactic and a true enthusiast for all things French, her integrity as a cookery writer lay in her singular dedication to a craft and perfecting the techniques inherent in classic French cooking. This is rather quaint in our age of instant gratification, in which food is entertainment and we're constantly bombarded with bland cookery books and banal TV programmes

A lesser woman would have accepted being placed in a class of bored housewives at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, but Child aimed higher and evinced a diligence and work ethic in the professionals' class that paid off - her determination meant she literally did master all the skills integral to French cooking, and eventually she wrote her magnum opus "Mastering the Art of French cooking" a book now in probably it's 200th re-print

So when Niamh of the blog Eat Like A Girl emailed the London Food and Drink Bloggers last week asking if anyone was interested in attending a screening of the forthcoming film 'Julie & Julia' I jumped at the chance. You can read plenty of reviews about Nora Ephron's film about blogger Julia Powell re-creating every recipe from Julia Child's masterpiece, my only comment on this otherwise well-executed film is why did Julia Child's life not merit a film in itself? Why did it take a simpering, narcissist blogger desperate for a book deal to resurrect the unfashionable, warbling Julia? Meryl Streep stole the show as Child and I suspect that's not merely down to her skill as an actor. Child is the compelling character in this film, and I have to admit that despite my enjoyment of the film as a whole I left the screening with a sense of disappointment that this formidable woman wasn't the main focus

Anyway, enough eulogising about Julia Child. You can read more about her in the following features: AA Gill's piece here in the Sunday Times, Michael Pollan's New York Times article and another Times article on the business of cookbooks finally this piece in last month's Vanity Fair is well worth a read. If you're a keen bean have a look at Child's cookery programmes on YouTube

Without further ado, here's a recipe from 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' for her favourite chocolate cake: the Reine de Saba or Queen of Sheba...a cake as robust and full of character as the 6ft 1" Child was

Ingredients:

• 110g (4 oz) butter, softened
• 110g caster sugar or light brown sugar
• 110g dark chocolate (70% or higher)
• 55g plain flour
• 55g ground almonds
• 3 medium eggs, separated
• 2 tbsp strong coffee, rum or brandy
• pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 C. Lightly oil and dust with flour a 20cm diameter cake tin

Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, allow to melt and cool

In a large bowl cream the butter and add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Then add the melted chocolate and coffee/rum/or brandy. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form, then add a spoonful of sugar and whisk to stuff peak again. Add a spoonful of the egg white to the chocolate mixture to break it up and then add the flour and ground almonds. Add the remainder of the egg white mixture to the large bowl, stirring through with either a large spatula, a la Child's method, or with a large metal spoon. Use figure of eight motions and fold in the eggwhite to the cake mixture with a gentle motion. If you're heavy-handed you'll knock all the air out. Better to have some pockets of flour or egg mixture dotted through the mixture then to be over-zealous about distributing all the ingredients

Pour this into your cake tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 25-30 minutes. The cake is ready when it's spongy to the touch, doesn't wobble anymore and a skewer inserted comes out clean

Let the cake cool on a wire rack, then decorate as you wish. Child made a rich chocolate and butter icing which goes well, but I just dusted some cocoa powder on top

* If you're gluten-intolerant simply substitute the flour with the same quantity ground almonds, or about 40g gluten-free flour

Julia Child's "My life in France" published in the UK by Duckworth 2009