I consider myself a spiritual man, even though it could not be said that I am a religious man. It has been decades since I spent regular time inside a church.
But I do believe in God. I believe in Heaven. I believe it is important to strive to live a good life and to treat your fellow man with simple, basic human respect. I believe we should be kind to animals and carefully husband our natural resources. I believe that if we do that, we will go to Heaven. And I believe that when we get to Heaven, there will be lots and lots of chocolate. If not, what’s the point, really?
A week ago, my sister and her husband invited me to join them for a concert. After the concert, as we chatted in the parking lot waiting for the crowd to dissipate, she casually handed me a small chocolate bar and said, “enjoy.” I thanked her and tossed it in my pocket. When I got home, I dropped it on the kitchen counter and happened to notice that the price of the individual sized bar of chocolate was $3.50! Three dollars and fifty cents! For one bar of chocolate! And then I tasted a chunk. Dark, earthy, rich, vaguely smoky, a lingering, slightly bitter after taste. Sexy. My sister got a bargain.
Chocolate comes from the Theobroma Cacao tree and was originally found 4,000 years ago in the Amazon River valley. The Mayans thought cacao pods brought life and fertility and used it in religious rituals. They were the first to refer to it as Theobroma, which means food of the gods. Aztecs, to the north, loved it, too and also considered it to be of divine origin. Montezuma drank something made out of cacao, dyed red, from golden goblets. Aztecs didn’t know anything about sugar, so it was a bitter drink, but he drank it, anyway. He was said to drink 50 a day and after he finished a drink, the goblets were thrown away, because no other human was then allowed to touch them. You know, like we do with Starbucks cups, only they were gold.
The Aztecs loved the stuff so much they actually used it as currency. One hundred beans would get you a slave. Twelve beans would get you the services of a courtesan and ten beans would buy you a rabbit. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking even if you have a serious craving for some sauteed rabbit, for a lousy two more beans…..
Anyway, Cortez is credited with taking the idea to Europe, by piling up a shipload and planting it in Spain, which allowed them to corner the chocolate market for the next 100 years. But it was the French, who really made things interesting, by declaring it to be an aphrodisiac and promptly slapping a tax on it. The government always ruins the good stuff, don’t they? Henri Nestle first added milk and sugar and fashioned it into a bar, but it was good old American ingenuity that figured out how to make big bucks from it, when Milton Hershey started mass producing it, in 1894, and selling it for five cents, a far cry from my sister’s $3.50.
Let’s get scientific, for a minute. A couple of years ago, a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire found that people who consciously try to avoid thoughts of chocolate tended to eat more of it, than people who didn’t worry about thinking of it. Later, the Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand did a similar study with similar results. I say go with the flow – it’s science. Go ahead and think about it.
I’d say we’re on a roll with all this science, so consider this quote from a recent article: “Ample research suggests that the flavonols in dark chocolate increase cerebral blood flow, which in turn may trigger the creation of new blood vessels and brain cells. And a new study showed that older adults performed better on cognitive tests after eating small portions of the sweet stuff.” The same article also mentions that chocolate weakens heart attacks and contains cavity fighting compounds. Personally, I think it may also help you balance your checkbook and program your VCR, but I don’t have any solid research to back that up. The bottom line is, I’m sold. More chocolate for the masses in every form – truffles, kisses, mousse, fondue, dipped fruit, mole sauce and movie titles (Chocolat).
My buddy, Jon, is a great cook and baker. When he makes chocolate chip cookies, he mixes in more chunks of premium chocolate than you would think the dough could handle – totally oozy and good. And then, for good measure, he takes a large chunk of broken chocolate and pushed it into the center of the dough, so that it melts into a big, juicy chocolate center button, that you get to eat your way to. It makes for a great finale and teaches you the importance of setting goals in life. As if that weren’t enough, he uses an ice cream scoop to put them on the cookie sheet, so when they are cooked, they turn out to be the approximate size of Rhode Island. The best!
But there is a thing that may be the culmination, the apex, of all thought and research on the subject – Pots de creme. It’s a French idea, so keep it quiet, or they’ll probably slap another tax on it. Here’s how you do it:
Ingredients
9 ounces of high quality semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
6 large egg yolks
5 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
Directions
Place the chocolate in a blender. Whisk the milk, 1 cup cream, egg yolks, granulated sugar and salt in a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a heatproof spatula, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the spatula and almost boiling, 5 to 6 minutes.
Immediately, pour the milk mixture over the chocolate in the blender. Cover and hold the lid with a thick kitchen towel; blend until combined and smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides of the blender as needed. Divide the chocolate mixture among ramekins or small cups and refrigerate until set, about 2 hours.
Whip the remaining 1/2 cup cream and the confectioners’ sugar with a mixer or in the blender until soft peaks form. Top the chilled pots de creme with whipped cream.
Try it out on your friends. It’s quick, so you can throw it together in no time. But don’t share the recipe with them. It’s too easy and if you tell them that, they will think they are slumming, at your house. If you don’t give them the recipe, but you do use the French pronunciation (poh-d-crem) and sneer a little, they will be so impressed that they’ll assume you’re slumming, with them. It will ratchet up your social stock, almost immediately.
One thing is for sure; if you end the meal with chocolate Pots de Creme, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to Heaven. Really.