Chocolate by Sarah Moss (ebook voice reader .TXT) 📕

sugar, wine and lemon juice in a heavy-based pan. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally. Stir in the cream and cook over a gentle heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Add the lavender and the grated chocolate, and stir until the chocolate dissolves. Bring to the boil and then simmer the mixture for twenty minutes, or until dark and thick. Remove the lavender stems.

Cool, then pour into eight or more ramekins or small glasses. Cover the top with cling film and refrigerate (they keep well for 3–4 days). Decorate with a sprig of lavender.

Cowboy Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies have become synonymous with America, though as with so many national traditions, they are a relatively recent invention. The first ones, and the product they now contain, were famously developed in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts in partnership with Nestlé. In spite of their novelty, their connection with the Inn spoke of quaint, colonial New England tradition.

The following recipe, the ‘Cowboy Cookie’, shows a further adaptation of the chocolate chip cookie into US national fantasy, with the addition of oatmeal somehow adding connotations of frontier life. They have been the Badenoch family recipe since grandmother Edith Badenoch spotted it in a women’s magazine in the late 1940s. It is an economical recipe very much of its time – it’s hard to imagine a recipe these days leading off with shortening. The ‘cowboy’ moniker also proved useful in persuading children who were sceptical about having their cookie recipe stretched with oatmeal.

1 cup (190 g) shortening

1 cup (180 g) brown sugar

1 cup (200 g) white sugar

2 eggs

¼ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

2 cups (240 g) flour

1 cup (180 g) chocolate chips

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups (180 g) oatmeal

Cream the shortening, brown sugar, white sugar and eggs until smooth, then mix in baking powder, salt, baking soda and vanilla. Add flour a little at a time, then stir in chocolate chips and oatmeal. Bake at 325° C for 12–15 minutes or until done.

‘Historic’ Hot Chocolate

This is a melange, an invention using modern ingredients in vague homage to the irrecoverable tastes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is not ‘Aztec’, because we assume you do not have access to unrefined cacao or South American flora, and we assume that you prefer your chocolate sweetened. It might be rather like the beverage drunk at the Austens’ wedding breakfast.

water and/or milk

approx. 30 g unsweetened chocolate per person (or, since

you will be adding sugar anyway, your preferred chocolate)

grated sugar

cinnamon bark, vanilla, ginger and/or (inauthentically)

cardamom

Heat the water or milk with the spices. When it boils, turn off the heat and remove the cardamom or vanilla pods or cinnamon bark. Add the chocolate. Stir until it dissolves. Add sugar as needful (less is probably more ‘authentic’), whisk and serve.

Venison Casserole

This old English dish involves the medieval combination of meat and spices, given depth by the addition of cocoa.

olive oil

2 large or 3 small onions

3 cloves of garlic

6 rashers smoked bacon or pancetta

1 kg diced venison

2 tbsp plain flour

300 g mushrooms

4 or 5 carrots

a glass or two of drinkable red wine

around 500 ml beef, chicken or vegetable stock

1 tbsp cocoa powder

a piece of cinnamon bark of around 5 cm

8–12 cloves, according to taste

In a deep casserole, fry the onions and garlic with the pancetta or bacon until soft and golden. Meanwhile, wash and slice the mushrooms and carrots. Remove the onions to a plate, turn up the heat and sear the venison with the flour in the pan until it is browned. Reduce the heat, return the onions, garlic and bacon to the pan and add the mushrooms and carrots. Sauté until the mushrooms begin to shed their liquor and then add the wine and enough stock to cover the meat and vegetables. Add the cocoa powder, cinnamon bark and cloves. Bring to the boil and then either simmer or place in a slow oven (around 130°c) for two or three hours, until the meat is soft but not falling apart. Serve with rice or baked potatoes and winter vegetables.

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Another very English use of chocolate. Depending on the chocolate and the biscuits you choose, this can be as sophisticated or childish as you like; digestive biscuits and milk chocolate will produce something very different from stem ginger cookies or amaretti and a high-cocoa plain chocolate. For a mint version which, like the lavender pots, uses traditional herbs in an unusual context, omit the dried fruit and, before putting the cake in the fridge, spread over the top melted mint chocolate or chocolate to which you have added a few drops of peppermint oil.

300 g biscuits

300 g chocolate

100 g unsalted butter, cut into cubes

150 g chopped dried fruit, to taste (raisins are traditional, prunes

work well, apricots or cherries would also be good)

3 tbsp brandy (optional)

If you are using the fruit, put it in a bowl and pour over the brandy. Put the biscuits inside at least two food-grade plastic bags and break them into a mixture of crumbs and small pieces with a rolling pin. Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based pan and add the chocolate, broken into pieces. Heat gently until the chocolate has melted. Add the broken biscuits and fruit to the chocolate and butter, stir well to combine and pour into a roasting tin, pressing the mixture down as necessary. This can be topped with more melted chocolate at this stage. Place the tin in the fridge to set.

Experimental Chocolate Truffles

As we have seen, making your own chocolate from raw ingredients is not a possibility in the domestic kitchen, but these are an easy way of exploring possible (and impossible) combinations. Made with any kind of chocolate, these can take any flavouring you care to