CHOCOLATE CHIPS & WWII

Chocolate

Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies Apparently chocolate chips were only ‘invented’ in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield of Massachusetts, when she added a broken up bar of Nestle chocolate to her cookie mixture. The cookies became very popular in the Toll House Inn which she ran with her husband & by 1939, ‘Toll House Cookies’ had become a Nestle product.

Chocolate chips & The Toll House cookie then took on extra significance when they became highly desired by Massachusetts’ soldiers stationed overseas during WWII & subsequently their popularity grew & grew. C-mail definitely became cheer mail!

I always love biting into a cookies or cake and being rewarded with little creamy bits of chocolate. I think it makes you appreciate the chocolate more than in a cake of pure cocoa. Here’s a great recipe for chocolate chip buns which I made on saturday afternoon, knowing that they’d make for a brilliant sunday breakfast & the perfect accompaniment to some nice strong tea or coffee.

It’s a recipe by Dan Lepard of the Guardian & they were delicious – not a million miles away from a pain au chocolate, which have always been a favourite of mine. Note the amount of chips in the recipe makes for very chocolatey buns, so I might add a bit less next time. Enjoy!

Home-made #chocolate chip buns. Not bad for a first attempt!

A photo posted by Cocoa Hernando (@cocoahernando) on

THE MUGHALS

Himalaya

The Pink Diamond salt used in our Himalayan Luxury Chocolate bar was first discovered by Alexander the Great during his Indian Campaign of around 320BC. Or to be more precise, the mineral was discovered by his horses, who were found licking stones leading to the salt mines.

Dal LakeHowever, the salt was first commercially traded by Mughals, former islamic rulers of the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughals were responsible for a vast amount of economic & cultural development in the region. The reign of Shah Jahan (below) especially saw a golden age of creativity for the Mughal Empire, including the construction of the Taj Mahal & hundreds of beautiful gardens & pavilions around Dal Lake (right) & Srinagar in Kashmir. The area of the lake also became the summer resort of the Mughal leaders, who loved cooler climate & dramatic Himalayan skyline.

Shah Jahan
The Mughals ruled the Indian region from the early 16th century until the mid 18th century, when they were replaced by Hindu Maratha Empire. To learn more about the Mughals, I highly recommend the 1950’s Bollywood classic, Mughal-e-Azam, which is loosely based on the adventures of Prince Salim, who falls in love with a common court dancer against his father’s wishes, leading to disastrous consequences. It’s a wonderful folk story, which looks & sounds incredible.

PARAKEETS: FROM HIMALAYA TO LONDON

Himalaya

Ring Tailed ParakeetTo any kind of twitcher living in the South-East of England, spotting a tree full of noisy green Parakeets could now be as commonplace as noting a flock of native starlings or jackdaws. I love seeing these birds in my local parks of North & East London. To hear that distinctive high-pitched squawk instantly sends my head skywards to try & catch a flash of the bright green whizzing by.

Many people wonder how such an exotic, tropical creature has managed to settle into the cold, damp climate of the UK. However, the natural habitat of the Ring-tailed Parakeet is actually the rainy foothills of Himalaya, while they’ve even been found in the region’s higher, snowier altitudes.

I’ve heard all kinds of interesting stories of how these birds managed to settle in this country. One common rumour is that a breeder from South West London released a flock during the 1950s. I’ve also heard that they simply escaped from the Shepperton set of the African Queen in 1951. However, my favourite theory is that rock star Jimi Hendrix bred them whilst living in West London during the 1960s – maybe Little Wing is written about his pet birds…..?

WONDERFUL CHILLIES

Chocolate, FlavoursOfPlaces, Herbs & Spices, Mexico

elephants_trunk

Chillies are one of my most favourite things. They come in such beautiful colours and shapes (like the wonderful packet of East Indian chillies I picked up in Kerala, left) & they’re always so exciting to eat and cook with. I think that I’m actually slightly addicted to that heat rush, but despite often burning my mouth & developing irritating hiccups, I always come back for more.

Ear Flowers

The chilli is native to Central and South America and the Carribean, so it’s no real surprise that this spice was one of the first additions to the earliest forms of chocolate, made by the forefathers of the Mayans and Aztecs. Along with Vanilla, Bee Honey and the peppery Ear Flowers (right), Chilli was used to add flavour to the bitter liquid they called xoclatl.

According to Fred Czarra (Spices, A Global History), the Spanish were the first to bring chillies to Europe, courtesy of Christopher Columbus in the 16th century. The Spanish & Hernando Cortes are also often thought to be responsible in bringing chocolate to Europe soon after. However, it was the Portuguese who were probably responsible for taking chillies to South and East Asia, via their mighty trading routes which ran from Brazil to Macao and Goa.

Bhut Jolokia

The heat of a chilli is measured by the Scoville Heat Index, named after the pharmacist William Scoville. The hottest chilli on record is the Trinidad Scorpian ‘Butch T’, discovered in Australia in 2011 which measured 1,463,700 Scovilles. By comparison, a jalapeño comes in at 10,000!

The home of the chilli belongs to Mexico, who use them in salsas (guajillo), pickles (jalapeno), for stuffing (manzano) and even as vegetables (poblano). My favourite is the chipotle, which is a mild, dried & smoked jalapeño and will star in our Mexican chocolate bar. They have a delicious, smoky flavour and just the perfect amount of heat.

Chocolate and chilli also star in Mole, which is a dark, rich sauce popular throughout Mexico. Here’s a recipe for Chicken Mole, which tastes like a Latino Chicken Chasseur & goes perfectly with rice & home-made guacamole. It’s a simplified recipe for four people, which is easy to cook but will take you about an hour…

1. Blend 1 clove of garlic, 1 sliced onion, 500g of chopped tomatoes, 4 tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds, 1, tablespoon of paprika, 1 teaspoon of cumin, 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves and 1 teaspoon of chilli powder (I’m using a mild Guajillo chilli). This gives you a rich fragrant tomato sauce.

2. Heat some oil in a big pan, then add the tomato sauce and simmer for 20 minutes, then cover & leave.

3. Cover 4 chopped chicken breasts with 1 chopped clove of garlic, 1 sliced onion and a few sprigs of mint in a pan with water & simmer for 30 minutes until the chicken is white & tender. Then remove the chicken & add to the tomato sauce. Finally carefully strain the remaining stock from the pan into a container & put to one side.

4. Pour a little of your stock into the pan with the tomato sauce & chicken, add 25g of dark chocolate & stir / simmer for ten minutes or so until the sauce thickens. Add more stock if the sauce becomes too thick, then serve up!