Jean-Pierre Wybauw is a Belgian chocolatier, chef and teacher with well over 30 years experience in the industry. He has written several books, and publishers ACC Publishing were kind enough to send me a copy of the latest, imaginatively titled “Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate”.
This is a fairly small book, measuring just 17cm by 13cm with 192 pages with nearly half of them being full page photos. That means you could easily get through the whole book in half a day, and still have plenty of time to make some of the 40 illustrated recipes inside.
But although the bulk of the book is taken up with recipes, it also contains chapters detailing the various types of chocolate, its production, nutritional values and current trends. The book may be small, but there’s a lot of useful information crammed into it.
The recipes are particularly interesting to me, as they concentrate on the kinds of topics that would be of interest to aspiring chocolatiers than the average chocolate recipe book. There are simple recipes for all kinds of ganaches, patisseries and desserts, and although they don’t go into a great deal of detail, they are bound to inspire. I can certainly see myself referring back to it for ideas in the near future.
Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate is available from 28th September, published by ACC Editions. RRP £12.50.
Another new addition to the ever-changing Paul A. Young range are these rather beautiful looking blackcurrant and sea-salted caramels.
With so many new products coming from Paul’s shiny new Wardour Street kitchen, it’s difficult to keep up with what’s new at the moment. In fact, last time I visited, there were three new chocolates since my previous visit, a mere four days earlier.
This particular offering is quite simple. Distinct layers of blackcurrant reduction and sea-salted caramel, covered in dark chocolate.
I’ve always loved Paul’s sea-salted caramels. The whole salted caramel thing isn’t quite as fashionable as it was a few years ago, but this is still one of my favourites. It has a real depth of flavour to it, but it’s never too sweet or too salty.
The blackcurrant layer is fruity, tangy and sharp. It has a real zing to it that works perfectly with the dark chocolate. Yet I’m not completely convinced it works with the caramel. The flavours are very different, and for me they just don’t quite work together. I find myself wanting individual, separate salted caramels and blackcurrant chocolates.
I think this is probably a subjective thing, and some people will love the combination, but they’re not really for me. Luckily I know I’ll just have to wait ten minutes and there’ll likely be another 5 additions to the Paul A. Young range for me to try. And try them I will.
As usual for my adventures in Wawel products, I picked this up my local Vietnamese butcher. When I found it I considered reviewing it, but instead took it into the office for a meeting. These days when I have to attend meetings, I take chocolate. Strangely enough, meetings are much nicer this way. So here’s a hint, ladies and gents – to make yourself popular, give your teeth that sparkling look, have a better sex life, and make meetings more enjoyable – take chocolate. OK, perhaps I exaggerate a little. It would work as a TV ad. Perhaps I need a career change.
Anyhow, the reaction when I opened this to share around was very positive, with one attendee saying: “Gee – something that actually tastes like it says on the pack”. I have to agree. So much so I went and bought another to photograph and taste properly so I could write about it.
As the label says – Tiramisu Filled Chocolate. And it is. Quite how they manage to fill something the size and shape of this eludes me. But it’s pretty good. Opening the pack gives a big whiff of sweetness and richness. And on the eating there’s creaminess and something that seems a lot like rum. A check of the ingredients shows some unspecific alcohol (so that must be good, right?) along with cream, wafers, coffee and a few things you’d rather not know about – like hydrogenated vegetable fat.
If you’ve ever had the good fortune to make a pig of yourself on a proper Tiramisu, then you’ve had a small slice of heaven. This chocolate is not that but it does get reasonably close, and in a mass market product that sits on a shelf for weeks, this is pretty good going. And just like the real thing, the richness means you don’t want to eat too much in a sitting. So take some to a meeting, see what reaction you get.
During my most exciting excursions out to Trader Joe’s to buy produce and bread, I like also to buy something sweet. Perhaps some chocolate chip cookies or chocolate macaroons or the like. This last time, however, there was something dreadfully amiss–as I dragged my full basket of provisions to a register, the sweetest item in my possession was a handful of plums. I considered turning back around, then tried to tell my sweet tooth it would do just as well to lie dormant a while. And then I saw it.
It was tall and rectangular, sitting right at my eye level, covered in white and cream colors with splashes of blue and brown. It was silly and quirky and vintage, colorful without being bright. I blankly noted it to be a 70% dark chocolate bar with caramel and black sea salt. But all that really mattered was that it was pretty, evoking something out of a Jules Verne world. So the unanticipated object of my encounter journeyed on with me.
At home, I surveyed the card box further. The pictures on it are made to look like paper cut-outs that have been taped in place, and the color blue that accents the front and covers the sides and back is modeled after the sea, with just a hint of green in its tones. Inside the box lurks an eight-headed being, glossy-faced and resplendent in rich brown with no visible imperfections from its molding. Its back is set at intervals with shiny scales, called “stunning black sea salt… evaporated in above ground pools that form naturally from lava flows” in Hawaii.
As I began to break this monster from the depths into pieces, I noted that it is all too easy, due to the liquid inside, to break not quite along the lines that mark out the eight heads, resulting in a bit of a mess. But I bravely trudged on with my journey of discovery.
If I might make here a brief interlude, I would say that while there have been countless records of the caramel and salt species in the Chocablog logs, I myself do not come across it so often. Now, I observed that the placement of the salt crystals (or scales, as I have previously dubbed them) created a three-stage experience. In the first stage, the salt hits your tongue and makes its imprint of flavor. The second stage sees the releasing of the flowing caramel, and the third brings the chocolate to its state of melting, thereby unifying the three stages in a most proper and satisfactory manner.
Further notes on the three stages of the chocolate being wouldn’t be amiss. The salt crystals are of varying sizes, allowing for different experiences that are never overpowering. The caramel is rather dark in color, free-flowing as I mentioned, and rather rich, as well. That dark personality, the chocolate, may be the darkest of the three, but it doesn’t scare me. It leans toward a tender side, too, like the red tones of chocolate chips. It hasn’t the most complexity, nor the least.
And oh, dear. I find that what once had eight square heads now only has three left. My, my, this journey was more adventurous than I’d expected. What more can I say but this: for two dollars, it won’t literally take you to the setting of a novel, but if you put your imagination into it, you’ll get pretty close.
