Broccoli and chocolate… together? w/e Sunday 3rd April 2022

 Hello, and welcome to Episode 7 of The Next Delicious Thing. I’m Jennifer Earle. And this is the podcast where I share with you the most delicious things that need to go to the top of your list to try next.  

So, what’s worth eating this week? 

Well, this week, I’ll be sharing with you a cookie that was made for me, but you can have it in your hands within a few hours because the recipe is online. And we’ll also be talking about broccoli and chocolate together. Yeah, I know. And finally, two products that I discovered at the food shows that I visited.  

There were many more delicious things that I’ve tasted in this past week. But as you can probably tell from the sound of my voice, I am not really up to talking that much. And I also have a daughter with chickenpox who is off nursery, so I’m going to try and keep this shorter than last week’s episodes.  

MAYA SINGS  

And there she is. Fun times here in the Earle household.  Before I tell you about any of those things, I wanted to let you know that the British Library starts its food series tomorrow, Thursday, 7th of April, and it will go on until the end of May. These are live talks held at the library, but they can be joined wherever you are in the world. You can ask questions and have them answered as well. This year they’re coordinated by Angela Clutton and Melissa Thompson. If you don’t know the two of them, they are both fantastic food writers and presenters. The lineup for this year looks fascinating, as it always does, to be fair. I am personally going to be attending the bean to bar chocolate talk which will be on Monday the 11th of April. The panel will be Angus Thirwell of Hotel Chocolat, Chantal Cody OBE, who founded Rococo chocolates, and now runs The Chocolate Detective. And Nick Davis of One One Cacao. Nick is a former journalist and now bean to bar chocolate maker. I mentioned his chocolate in Episode Five. He is based in Jamaica. The link to this and everything I talk about in the podcast will be at thenextdeliciousthing.com the direct link is in the show notes.  

MAYA INTERLUDE

Let’s talk about the cookie. This was one of six cookies made by Edd Kimber for the Cook for Ukraine bake sale, it was peanut, chocolate and caramel. The caramel shards in the cookie dough made the base crunchy. So when it cooked in the oven, they melted and then solidified again. So it was like having toffee in the biscuit. I loved it; you should definitely go and make them. If you do tag me and Edd (@theboywhobakes).  

The Cook for Ukraine bake sale was so wonderful and inspiring. They raised an incredible 10,000 pounds in two and a half hours. I feel badly for people who waited in the queue and things just sold out much faster than anyone expected. So thank you if you went, thank you if you’ve been supporting the cook for Ukraine campaign in any other way.  At thenextdeliciousthing.com you’ll find a list of all of the companies and individuals who provided something for the Cook for Ukraine bake sale so if you would like to continue supporting the people that supported the bake sale, then you can have a look there. I’ll also list my favourites from each of them as well. So, if you go you know what is best to get.  

I also want to shout out the rhubarb and white chocolate Blondie made by Ellie Seaton who is a pastry chef at the River Cafe in West London. This was to Rosie Birkett’s recipe which is available online at the Telegraph or in her book, The Joyful Home Cook.  The sharpness of the rhubarb, cut through the white chocolate blondeness of it all and I loved it.  

Now, we come to broccoli and chocolate. 

MAYA INTERLUDE

I know. I thought they would never pair together as well. And broccoli is one of my favourite foods alongside chocolate. But even I can tell that that’s not a good pairing. However, what I can tell you is that chocolate actually goes with way more things and you think it does. It still doesn’t go with broccoli unless you add at least one more ingredient. How flavour pairings work is if you have molecules naturally occurring in the food, all it needs is at least one of those molecules to match a molecule in a different food in order for them to taste good together. If there aren’t any, as is the case in broccoli and chocolate, then all you need is a third food that has molecules that match each of the two individual foods. 

So, this dish was grilled tenderstem broccoli smothered in a chocolate sauce but the chocolate sauce had garlic and onions and spices and it was delicious. When you ate the broccoli and the sauce together, you couldn’t tell that it was chocolate. And yet when you ate the source on its own, you could definitely tell that it was chocolate. It was fascinating, some kind of magic. 

Other people on our table loved the refried beans twist with chocolate and cheese that was served with the flatbread that they’re so good at Both of these dishes and more were part of a chocolate extravaganza meal, which was a collaboration between Le Bab restaurant in central London and Rio Nuevo Chocolate, which is a Cornish company with Central American roots making bean to bar chocolate. The entire menu heavily featured chocolate, I really recommend that you go and try because it does kind of mess with your idea of what chocolate can be.  They’re serving these dishes until the end of April. I’ve often put some dark chocolate into a mushroom risotto or in gravy or a bolognese. But I’ve never had something quite so intensely chocolatey. If you go – or even if you cook with chocolate in savoury dishes – please let me know. I’m always up for trying new things.  

And, lastly, my new product discoveries from the food festivals that I went to. I visited the Sustainable Food Show and The London Coffee Festival. I saw lots of fascinating products but, just in case I don’t go out in the next week because I’m quarantining, for now I’m just going to mention two products. 

One from the Coffee Festival is essentially an edible coffee. It’s kind of like a coffee flavoured white chocolate so it has cocoa butter base and then it uses the part of the coffee cherry which would normally go to waste. 

The whole company was set up by a group of people who had the intention to reduce waste in the coffee industry. This product is called Cascoa – the edible chocolate bar. And Cascara is the name for the pulp that is around the coffee seeds which we know as coffee beans of which you get two inside a coffee cherry. Typically the pulp is about 45% of the mass of the coffee cherry and it’s usually discarded or burned by coffee farmers as a byproduct. Some of it can be used as fertiliser.  In using it in this chocolate bar the company is able to take on its fibre and natural fats and the caffeine which is how the seed gets the caffeine – it comes from the pulp. And it also has lots of nutritious benefits as well. The difference between this bar and the ones I’ve tasted previously is that one of the founders is from Maison Mercier, which is a fourth generation master Chocolatier in France, and this is the smoothest I’ve ever tasted of this type of bar made with Cascara. It tastes very much like an excellent dark chocolate that’s flavoured with coffee.  They sell it in 10 gram bars, which is equivalent to a single espresso. It’s a very new product so it might not be easy to find but I’ll link to the company so you can find out more if you’re interested.  

The final product contains no chocolate whatsoever. It’s a ginger drink made by Will Englander. The company is called The Root Co.  Will is a former management consultant who started playing around with ginger drink recipes at home during lockdown and now has it packaged by professionals in aluminium so it’s lightweight and infinitely recyclable. 

It is made using East African ginger which he set up a supply chain to be able to buy directly so that it would be as ethical as possible. It’s pressed with organic limes and mint and it’s lengthened with water and maple syrup. So it’s a super simple recipe, which is why it just tastes so fresh. It has that fire from the ginger. His aim was to make something between one of those ginger health shots which are pretty intense. So between that and a ginger beer, which you might get in a pub which generally is very sweet. He sells his in two versions: one is shorter and more intense and fiery and then one longer which is a bit more refreshing. 

That is enough for this week. Please tap five stars if you use Apple podcasts, subscribe, and, if you’d like this by email, go to thenextdeliciousthing.com. 

Until next Wednesday, I hope you stay healthy. And I wish you very happy eating.