Ted meets Borat

.. oops sorry a bit of dyslexic moment there. I didn’t mean the Sasha Baron Cohen created Borat who bought us the famous mankini - apologies to anyone reading this over breakfast - well actually apologies to everyone for even mentioning it at all … what I actually mean is Rabot - Rabot 1745. It’s a chocolate shop come café in Borough Market (yes I've been stalking in Borough Market again) and it’s got something special that lots of people just pass by and never realise … upstairs there is a handsome restaurant with an outdoor terrace that sits under the cover of the soaring arches of the crown court market, in the heart of Borough itself.  As lovely as the surroundings are it’s the food that you come upstairs for, and it’s here you find that chocolate features as an element in the cocktails and the entire food menu.

Chocoholics dream, sure in theory … but would it be too much??? I decided to test the waters with a Negroni made with chocolate (cacao) flavoured gin. The chocolate was definitely there but not overpowering or weird, so by the second sip I was doing the “pleasantly surprised” head nodding.

To start the Doll chose mini Yorkshire Pudding with rare beef, white chocolate mash and a cacao red wine jus and pronounced it well cooked and delicious.  Apparently Yorkshire Pudding can be tricky to neither over or under-cook – who knew this about the Sunday roast lunch staple. I went for the rare seared cacao gin cured salmon, prosecco jelly with fennel and lime tonic salad. Now if that sounds like quite a mouthful, it was, several in fact, lovely balanced flavours with the gin giving the salmon an earthy touch that was nicely offset by the rest of its plate fellows.

Mains were a 9-hour braised lamb shoulder, cacao beer pickled onions, garlic mash, cacao pesto, balsamic glazed dish and a cacao crusted pork, maple pecan glazed bacon, with more cacao infused ingredients that I didn’t actually read - I say this not because I was disinterested, but the font on the menu was tiny - 6 point at best, the light very low, and the Doll almost burnt out one of my retinas when she got out the handy high powered torch app on her iPhone to help me read the menu.

Was I blind-sided by the chocolate restaurant? yes ... but not enough to go on and create my own “elastic waist band crisis” by having dessert … would I go back again … absolutely … this time I would sit on the terrace …

Ted goes to the dark side

... and the light side too, all at the same time. How is that possible Ted?  well ... the Princesses of Popcorn and their Ladies in Waiting decided it was time for another taste outing, and this time they fancied chocolate.  The pre-tasting instructions (to me) were clear. “As well as all the fancy shmancy dark stuff you want us to taste Ted we want some of the stuff we really like to eat, we want some of the white stuff as well”. So much for the high tastes of royalty then eh ... sigh ... ok ...

I did a bit of shop lifting and lined up five readily available dark and serious chocolate bars for the first round: Green & Blacks (G&Bs) 70%, Sao Tome 71%, Montezumas 73%, Divine 85%, and Lindt 99%. The "Milky Bar Kid" gang were asked to rate them based on categories that proper chocolate tasters use:  look, smell, snap, texture, and taste.  The range of categories is supposedly designed to stimulate as many of your senses as possible in the experience. I enlisted the help of an accountant friend who shall remain nameless (Lizzie) to do the score-sheet analysis and collate the results of the dark side preferences.

Look - Lindt was a narrow winner.  Smell - Montezuma romped home well ahead of the pack. Snap – Lindt again saw off the competition.  Texture – G&Bs and Montezumas first equal, and they repeated that performance in Taste. No such luck for Lindt in the taste category where someone else who shall remain nameless (Mandy) gave it a score of minus 5 out of a possible 5 with the comment “tastes like bitumen”. After a bit of data normalisation the overall placings were … 1^st Montezumas, Divine was just pipped at the post and pushed back to 3^rd place by G&Bs who took out 2^nd, Sao Tome limped home in 4^th and Lindt was a long way back in 5^th place, after a promising start. The accompanying Tawny Ports (10 and 20 years old) both averaged 4 out of 5 for match (if indeed anything could match and compliment bitumen as a foodstuff??).

The line-up of the white chocolate goodies, with their accompanying Muscat desert wines, were much more popular judging by the far nicer comments, and the left over ratios at the end of the evening. The “stuff we really like to eat” like Willie’s Cacao El Blanco and G&Bs Madagascan vanilla bars, Hotel Chocolat white bunnies, Godiva crème brulee truffles, and Confetteria Raffaello (the light side of Ferrero Rocher), all pretty much disappeared in a waft of cocoa butter.

For some totally unfathomable reason there was a huge amount of that snappy and more than good looking Lindt 99% leftover. 

Ted limbers up for Easter

Ted .. if you’re going to eat all that chocolate at least you can eat something that has good ingredients, is good for the planet, and tastes good .. said The Doll.  Of course I knew this was a trick right away, and a thinly disguised attempt to disrupt my training schedule for my annual challenge on the Guinness Book of Records 4 day Easter chocolate consumption world record ... as surely there can be no such thing existing in the heavenly world of chocolate decadence!

But … apparently it’s true.  It is possible to get chocolate made from organic ingredients sourced from fairtrade growers who follow sustainable practices, which tastes good, and looks good as well. 

The Doll came home with a selection for me to try from Green & Blacks to prove her point. G&B started out 23 years ago in the Portobello Road flat of husband and wife team Craig Sams and Jo Fairley, and right from the start their focus was on ethically sourced chocolate.  Their first 70% dark chocolate offering in 1991 went down so well that today they have over 19 varieties in their range, as well as seasonal Easter eggs in several sizes and flavours (duck extra).

Their newest additions are called “Thin”.  It’s a new concept of a thinner bar with bigger individual pieces, designed to stimulate your senses, from the satisfying “snap” when you break it, to being able to put it on your tongue and have it melt in your mouth.  A chocolate connoisseur once taught me that if you chew chocolate rather than let it melt naturally in your mouth, it changes the flavour profile completely. You get a lot more of the volatile acids released in the chewing process and lose a lot of the real chocolate flavours as result (who knew).

The unspoken hint of “Thin” is of course that you eat less but get even more enjoyment  … see I told you I knew that The Doll had a trick in there somewhere …“Thin” comes in 4 kinds and The Doll got me the Salted Caramel and Milk Chocolate to try. The “snap” was indeed satisfying, and in fact I only stopped snapping when The Doll said to me “Ted what are you doing? .. it’s chocolate not bubble wrap!”… The flavours and textures I got from letting it melt in my mouth were equally satisfying.

Ted counts beans

Cacao (cocoa) beans that is .. the little gems that give life to chocolate, the world’s favourite confectionery. We love it so much we spend more than 20 billion dollars every year on chocolate and chocolate products.  The Mayans and the Aztecs had it all pretty much to themselves for a long time. In fact, they considered the beans so valuable that they used them as a currency. Naturally as long as there has been currency there have been counterfeits, and their's were made of terracotta.

Christopher Columbus and then the Spanish Conquistadors whisked the beans back to Spain where they proceeded to make “xocolatl” (bitter water) in the Aztec fashion. They sweetened it up with honey and a few herbs and introduced it into the Austrian royal courts in the early 17^th century, where it gained immediate favour, and within 100 years it was widespread throughout Europe.

From that time to this chocolate has seduced human kind and been accorded fabulous powers – it has the ability to make us feel good, fight tooth decay, help prevent heart attacks,  increase IQs, why it even acts as an aphrodisiac apparently.  However, supposedly this only really applies to the 70% cacao plus level of dark chocolate, and not the sugar laden impersonators that inhabit our supermarket shelves.  Sadly "white" chocolate, like common sense, just “isn’t”.

So it was with high hopes of a sensory experience that I headed off to the London chocolate festival, where the purveyors of all things that you can make from chocolate (and quite a number you can’t) were gathered to let us experience and purchase their wares.

I started with a choux pastry filled with chocolate praline crème, accompanied by a Bailey’s Belgium chocolate liqueur. After a few moments of over excitement I calmed down and took in the surroundings.  There were chocolate stalls with chocolates goodies in all shapes and sizes from all over, chocolate baubles for the Christmas tree, chocolate making and tasting classes, and even chocolate art. As if that wasn’t enough there was a Christmas market filled with things that any good chocoholic should have like chocolate moulds, fondue pots, and knives for cutting chocolate. Phew ... Oh I almost forgot to add, chocolate also has life-saving powers. Well it did for Milton Hershey anyway when he had to cancel his trip on the Titanic due to chocolate related business … 

Spooky Chocolate

A creepy skull created in chocolate is Fortnum & Masons contribution to Halloween. Plus a range of chocolate tricks with delightful flavours such as fish sauce.

Sweet Dreams

I had a slice of chocolate cake at the 'Bank of Baking', very tasty it was too.  What you may be asking is the 'Bank of Baking'?  Well it looks like this:

A giant cake bank vault filled with gingerbread coins, gold bars made from cake and piles of edible cookie bank notes.  There is more to this than yummy cake, it is part of a promotion by Tate & Lyle (the sugar people) to help you set up your very own business. The 'bake your dreams come true' campaign offers a chance to win £5,000 cash to make your sweet dreams a reality.  The entry form is on the Tate & Lyle baking sugars or golden syrup bottle.  There are also lots of instant prizes including European holidays.  Or you could just learn how to make a sachertorte and then invite me to tea.

I read that chocolate is good for the brain. I'm heading for brilliance.

Chocolate Art

More chocolate.  How long could your resist before a piece was snapped off to pop in your mouth?

Chocolate

Chocolate all around me with free samples thrust upon me where ever I  turned.  Had I died and gone to heaven?  Although that's how it felt, I was really at the chocolate festival at Covent Garden.   And I can confidently report back that there is no such thing as too much chocolate.
 

Stocking Up on Chocolate

Plenty of chocolate in my cupboard now. Fortnum and Masons sale is on.

My Easter

My Easter Egg seconds before being demolished. Hope you have lots of yummy Easter treats. What foods are traditional where you live?

Easter

I do hope Bella likes her chocolate Easter egg. Dropped into Fortnum and Masons to see what was on offer this Easter. They had a team offering to personalise your chocolate egg. Very impressive, almost too lovely to eat.

Happy Easter

Hope you are eating lots of lovely chocolate.

I am away exploring the UK