I think it’s fairly safe to say that for many people Paul Wayne Gregory was something fo a highlight at the South Bank in London last weekend. If the seemingly permanent crowd his stand were anything to go by, he and his team were certainly doing something right. When I got close enough to be able to introduce myself, I had had a few minutes to observe the easy banter that had obviously been going on all day, and you’d have sworn that these were full time market traders, not master chocolate makers. Of course, offering free samples of rum and whisky soaked ganaches never hurts when it comes to drawing a crowd either.
I did sample a couple of Paul’s chocolates while I was chatting to him. As far as I’m aware Paul is the only black British chocolatier at work in the UK, and like all food creatives his roots show through in his choice of flavours. His use of a rare Wray & Nephew rum (a Jamaican favourite) for a limited run of chocolates, his self-confessed love of spice (and lack of fear when it comes to spicing things up in his chocolates) and a playful attitude towards his work make him a very approachable and affable character.
I decided on this bag of three lollipops when I was told how they had been constructed. This is Paul’s playful side – his Willy Wonka, if you will. The chocolate is a dark, slightly bittersweet blend, but those irregularities you see in the surface are part of the surprise.
Bite down into this lolly and the little lumps and bumps are revealed to be popping candy. Caramel popping candy to be precise. Popping candy has been something of a craze among chocolate makers of late – you could say it’s been popping up a lot. (Sorry, I had to.) Finally, deep in the heart of this formidable creation, there lies a molten heart of rich, dark, salted caramel.
As you can see from the photo, some of the pieces of popping candy used here are fairly large, delivering a surprising level of pop as you chew your way towards the caramel.
And what of the caramel? Well, it isn’t the satin liquid we might find in a Paul A Young egg, but if it were then the eating experience would be terribly messy. What you get is a thick, gloopy caramel with a good dash of salt thrown in. It’s a great counterpart to the slight sweetness of the popping candy, and the chocolate is rich and deep enough to carry the whole thing through.
I liked these little lollies. I do think the dark chocolate makes them a bit too grown up to give to children, but older children (particularly those with children of their own) may enjoy a slightly more sophisticated version of an old childhood favourite. Unfortunately, Paul’s web site doesn’t yet offer these for sale, but I’m sure it won’t be too long before they’re more widely available.
Update: They’re now for sale on the web site.
On a cold and rainy spring afternoon, I ventured into town and into the depths of John Lewis’s food hall to meet the man from Zotter and sample his wares. That’s him in the picture. And the man with the chocolate covered face is Josef Zotter himself.
Zotter are a bean-to-bar organic and fair trade chocolate maker from Austria. They source all their beans from the Americas and as you can see, have some fairly interesting ideas about flavour combinations.
The first chocolate I’m going to look at is a 70% dark chocolate filled with nougat and 7.27% pork crackling. Yeah. You heard me. That’s significantly more pork crackling than you get in your average bar of chocolate.
The actual format of the bar is quite interesting too. Rather than being divided into chunks, it’s a single, thick slab with lots of filling.
The blurb on the inside of the wrapper recommends you let the chocolate breathe at room temperature for a while, then cut it into small pieces. So rather than attempting to stuff the whole thing into my face (my normal reaction to bacon-based products), I did exactly as instructed.
The chocolate on this bar is quite thin and the filling soft, so it’s quite difficult to sample it in isolation. It doesn’t have much of a gloss to it and the aroma of the filling dominates, but the taste is light and slightly fruity.
The filling – described as nougat – is predominantly a hazelnut paste with a little bit of cinnamon. Oh yes, and crispy chunks of bacon.
It has to be said that the bacon doesn’t add as much flavour as I’d hoped. In fact, there’s hardly any flavour from it until the chocolate and hazelnut have melted away. Then you’re left with a mouthful of tiny pork scratchings. But still, there’s no overt saltiness. There is a little bit of a fatty taste to it, which perhaps isn’t the most natural flavour to go with the chocolate, but it’s not offensive at all.
The main thing the bacon bits add to the bar is texture. A satsifying crispy crunch that reminds you you’re eating meat-chocolate. The overall effect is actually rather nice, but I can’t help thinking that the bacon is a little bit of a gimmick. It’s a tasty bar, but aside from the crunch, it doesn’t add much that couldn’t have been achieved with more traditional ingredients.
Galaxy Counters – a blast from the past, reincarnated in sexy new packaging. Well, I say ‘sexy’. It’s really just a plastic pouch, but it’s a step up from what we used to have in the seventies.
Clearly they were aimed squarely at kids back then, which hasn’t been true of anything with the Galaxy name on it for quite some time. I’d dearly love to have a time machine to go back in time to compare them to the new, relaunched Counters, but unfortunately they haven’t been invented yet. So you’ll just have to make do with my impressions of this updated version.
First off, in case you’re wondering what they are, I can sum them up in two words: Naked Minstrels.
In case you’re still none the wiser, they’re simply Galaxy milk chocolate buttons. Rather than the sugar coating of Minstrels, these have a thin coating of glazing agent (pectin rather than shellac, thankfully), giving them a slightly glossy finish, but not too much.
If you’ve ever had any Galaxy chocolate, you’ll know exactly how they taste. It’s a little sweet and creamy for me, but I know many people love it. The button shape makes a big difference here though.
Any button-shaped chocolate has a large surface area, meaning there’s more of it in contact with the heat of your mouth – and so it melts more quickly and pick up on the flavours differently than a thicker chunk of chocolate. It’s the reason many people swear that Cadbury Buttons just taste better.
There’s no doubt that these do melt quickly and release that sweet creaminess quickly and efficiently to your gob. Although I’m not the worlds biggest Galaxy fan, I did find them quite moreish – despite the low (25%) cocoa solids and high sugar content. I’d certainly rather have a bag of these that I could pick at through the day – and share – than a big bar.
“Cricket anyone?” would normally result in my explaining that standing in front of three sticks of wood while someone hurls a lump of leather-wrapped cork at me isn’t really my thing but, as you may have guessed, the cricket in question here was once hopping around in a vivarium somewhere the United States minding it’s own business before it was taken, cooked and covered in milk or white chocolate. Likewise the worm/grub you see in the photo below.
Yes, I have friends who like to buy me presents, especially if the present in question may result in my being out of the food comfort zone. It might have been easier to taste these if the chocolate coating hadn’t fallen off one of the crickets. Look closely and you can clearly see abdomen, wings and a leg or two.
The broken bits of white chocolate did allow me a small taste sans creepy crawly, and having read the packaging I wasn’t expecting a treat for the taste buds. Palm oil, sugar, whey, nonfat milk, and no mention of cocoa content. So, not even a tasty coating to soften the blow. Humbug.
Less brave souls may have opted to throw one in and swallow it ASAP, but I decided that if there was any flavour to be had from a cricket or a worm I wanted to know what it was, so I bit down hard on my first selection (the partially covered cricket) to see what it had to offer.
Crispy, dried cricket has a certain tang to it but it was more of a musty, dusty sort of taste as opposed to anything meaty or distinctly ‘insecty’ Maybe a lack of coating had allowed air to degrade the overall taste? Only one way to find out – eat cricket number two (this time a milk chocolate one). Legs, wings and abdomen casings aren’t particularly palatable on account of they’re being pretty dry and flavourless, and the chocolate is just sugary, slightly oily rubbish. The white chocolate more so.
What surprised me was the amount of flavour I got from the worm. It was a kind of toasty, biscuity flavour which made me think that a good handful of these paired with some decent quality milk chocolate could actually make quite a tasty snack. I understand they’re quite nutritious in their own right anyway so why not improve the recipe?
Obviously these are sold primarily for people who are either of a slightly evil bent and want to see their friends’ faces when they open them, or as the sort of thing you buy for someone who is keen to try anything once (like me). I’d have liked more crickets (at least then I might have been able to find out what cricket tastes of) and obviously I would much prefer some decent chocolate around them, but the worm was a pleasant surprise. Strange as it sounds, I’m interested to try more of this sort of thing in future.
