chocolate – Abstract Gourmet

Melbourne : The City

That’s right Melbourne. Stay Amazed. Naysayers might try to convince you that the toilet doors of squalid public bathrooms are not the place to get valuable life messages from, but they just haven’t seen the light of grimey self discovery that waits on the other side of cubicle door.

So this post is a little update while the other updates prepare themselves. The morning we arrived in Melbourne, we picked up the car kindly borrowed from Sharon’s friend Michelle and proceeded to drive it into oncoming traffic. Of course I didn’t think I was driving into oncoming traffic, but the inner road that runs down the middle of St Kilda road is confusing. We pulled up alongside a tram facing the wrong direction, and then made a quick u-turn to get the hell out of there. Melbourne roads (1) – Matt (0).

We eventually made it to St Ali without further injury, and then when we were sufficiently sated there, ventured our way into the city. Of course driving into the city is not the best or most efficient way to get there. Unless of course paying $45 for a couple of hours parking is your idea of efficient. At the time though I figured that wasn’t much to pay for the convenience of being able to get where we wanted to go quickly… albeit risking being killed by a horde of screaming taxi drivers.

So we park on Flinders Lane, and begin to wander up and down streets and laneways. Sharon stopping at more clothes shops than I can name, while I trundled slowly from cafe to cafe, stopping to check out the ones that looked interesting, and pondering how many coffees would constitute too many.

Now I just realised I said this would be a short post, so I’ll wrap up with a few impressions of the places I did stop at.

Journal
253 Flinders La, Melbourne

Great looking place, very cool concrete bar and dark lighting, even in the day time. I ordered an espresso and a portugese tart. The espresso was not so hot, the tart was cold but tasty. I’d go back for drinks sometime, or food upstairs at the Journal Canteen, which looks good.

San Churro at QV building
Shop LTL 255, QV Centre, Swanston St

Why do people rave about San Churro ? I guess the same people also rave about Max Brenner or Koko Black. I’m perhaps one of those few people who does not turn into a raving lunatic when describing or thinking about chocolate. I wasn’t in the mood for a mountain of deep fried stuff, so I ordered the kids meal… which was surprisingly rewarding if only for the look on the girls face. It came with two churros and a bowl of dark chocolate and hundred and thousands. The churros were quite hard and dry, and the chocolate didn’t transport me to a mystical place, the sprinkled made me feel like I was 5 years old at a birthday party… which was nice :)

The rest of the city is hard to describe, and a little overwhelming at times. So many lane way and alleys to go down, so many places holding so much potential. If we had another few weeks I’m sure I’d be able to cover most of it, but a few days will not do it justice.

On the way out I did manage to perform not one, but two (!) successful hook turns, and not get hit by a taxi or a tram. Melbourne roads (1) – Matt (2) !!

Bitter Chocolate Tarts

Just a quickie thats been kicking around in my head for a while now. I liked the idea of bitter chocolate tarts ever since having one at Divido in Mt Hawthorn a while back. I’m not a huge fan of really sweet desserts, so the idea of the bitter chocolate appealed to my savoury sensibilities quite strongly.

I’d been sitting on a block of dark (80%) Spanish cooking chocolate for a while, waiting for the next outbreak of the war on terror to hit and send my stocks through the roof. Fortunately that hasn’t happened yet (although the current one is bad enough), and so my resource speculation will have to take a back seat to my baking.

I picked the chocolate up while visiting the lovely lady at Spanish Flavours in Wembley (who i’ll call Maria for the sake of cultural stereotypes), it’s a great store full of all sorts of Spanish and Latin flavoured products. Anyone familiar with “Steve Don’t Eat It” (go there, its good) will be glad to know there is a place where you can find your very own can of Cuitlacoche to play with.

So Maria pointed me in the direction of this chocolate and said it was just the stuff for baking all kinds of delicious desserts “But not for drinking !” She said… “I got a nice one for you to try for drinking”. So after being softened up by a mug of free hot chocolate, that looked more like chocolate yoghurt in consistency, I made the purchase and was on my merry way.

Now with my recent tart making success during the Moroccan dinner under my belt, it was time to roll onto the next tart based challenge. So here we have…

Bitter Chocolate Tarts

Pastry Crust:

1 1/2 cups plain flour
100g butter
75g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
1 large egg yolk
2 tablespoons whipping cream

Bitter Chocolate Filling:

300mL thickened or whipping cream
200g dark chocolate (80 per cent)
50g butter, chopped
2 tablespoons Baileys Irish Cream
2 tablespoons Butterscotch schapps
half a cup of sugar (if you can’t take the bitterness)

How I Made Mine

For the crust, combine the flour, sugar, and salt together in a food processor. Mix it all around and then add the butter by cutting it up into small pieces and dropped in a piece at a time until the mixture turns into a rough mixture. Add the egg and cream while the processor is still going at which point it should all come together and turn into a big ball that sticks together quite well.

Take the ball out of the processor and onto a floured surface. Knead it a little and when it seems to be a good consistency that is both soft and a little crumbly, but doesn’t completely fall apart, work it into the shape you’re after and press it into your baking dish. In this case I made a bunch of little tarts. So I broke off small balls of dough and pressed them into discs before lining them into a texas muffin tin. Then prick the bottom of the tarts all over with a fork and put them into the freezer for about 20 minutes before cooking.

When they’re mostly solid and have a good shape after being in the freezer, pop them into a preheated oven at 180C and bake for 15-20 minutes until they’re golden brown. Take them out and let them cool.

For the filling I heated the cream until just below boiling point and then transferred it into a bowl along with the chocolate that had been shaved finely so it would melt quickly. Then let that sit for a minute before stirring in the butter and bringing it all together with the baileys and butterscotch schnapps (which you can quite happily omit if you don’t like cowboys). At this point please taste the mixture… I was going along happily and then I had a taste and realised it was too bitter even for my espresso loving palate (although don’t get me started on the bitterness in espresso debate). So i added a half a cup or so of caster sugar to the mixture and stirred it through to lighten the soul destroying bitterness that was currently lurking in the bowl.

Once it’s cooled, pour it into the waiting tart shells and pop it into the freezer or fridge for a good few hours until solid.

Take them out and serve with a good dollop of cream or ice cream to add in the digestive process. Incidentally, mine were still really bitter when I took them out of the fridge the night I made them, but after a couple of days they seem to have mellowed. Don’t ask me how… perhaps all the sugar and alcohol settled at the bottom of the bowl and all got poured into one of the tarts, but either way they tasted great.

The best thing is that if no-one else likes them you can just criticise them for having woefully unsophisticated palates and still come out looking good :) Tasty.

White Chocolate Passion Fruit Mousse

I stole this recipe from Nigella Lawson. I just happened to be flicking channels on TV one day and there she was, looking all nice and summery, out at the seaside (albeit a horribly English looking seaside), cooking up all sorts of tasty little treats.

This one appealed to me because i had previously made a chocolate mousse that went completely wrong… So i thought it about time to make amends for it.

Ingredients and Basic directions from Nigella:

Ingredients::

* 300g white chocolate
* 6 eggs, separated
* 10 passionfruit
* 300g – 500g raspberries

Instructions:

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in the microwave for about 3 minutes, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water then set the bowl aside, and let the chocolate cool a little.
Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Mix the egg yolks into the cooled chocolate, though be gentle to ensure it doesn?t seize. Cut the passionfruit in half and scoop them, juice, pulp, seeds, into the yolk and chocolate mixture, then fold into the egg whites until completely incorporated.

Then just pop them in the freezer or fridge for a while and serve with some more fresh berries on top.

I took this dish down to T’Anne’s place for dinner last night, and despite the fact that everyone was completely stuffed, they went down a treat.

It’s with much regret that i didnt take a photo, but trust me when i saw they looked great too :)