A Favourite Thing : Chocolate (Lindt Excellence Dark Chocolate)

Member Name: SueMagee

Product:	Lindt Excellence Dark Chocolate
Date:	12/07/02 (633 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can be self-indulgent.

Disadvantages: I've already been too self-indulgent., It shows., It really does.

Oh, dear. This is a difficult one. My favourite thing. Mm, I really don't know, you see. If it's what matters most to me, then it's my family, my friends and the dogs. They're not always in that order; it depends how they've been behaving. If it's a place, then it's a field that's presently covered in clover and all sorts of other wild flowers and I'm certainly not telling anyone where it is! An object then? Well, no, nothing's that precious to me. What do I hate having to live without?

Ah, now we're getting closer. Chocolate, wonderful chocolate. Not any old chocolate though. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that to sound elitist, because I can scoff my Galaxy and Cadbury's Dairy Milk with the best of them, but somehow I always feel that they're a bit too sweet and I feel rather guilty when I've eaten them. What I want is something that's bitter-sweet in my mouth, and leaves me wanting more. What I want is Lindt Excellence. Please.

What's the difference? Well, to an American it would be obvious. You see, they make a distinction between chocolate, and candy, which contains lots of other things such as sugars, fondant centres, vegetable fats and flavourings. Chocolate, the real thing, real, dark chocolate contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter with a small amount of sugar so that the bitterness isn't too bitter plus an emulsifier such as lecithin to bind it all together. I've always thought it a great pity that we don't make the same distinction in the UK.

Mass-market chocolate contains a very low percentage of chocolate, strange as that may seem. With most milk chocolates the percentage will be in very small print, hidden on the back of the packet and will probably be around 20%. The product will have been bulked out with sugar (probably about 50%, yes 50%), flavourings and vegetable fats (to the permitted maximum to make it more profitable). Lind
t Excellence contains 70% cocoa solids. It's so proud of this fact that it says it in big print on the front of the packet. There is a warning that the chocolate may contain traces of peanuts, hazelnuts, almonds and milk, but I believe that this is because some bars of chocolate which intentionally contain these things are made on the same site.

Yes, I can hear you telling me to get on with it! I'm delaying the moment, you see, when I know that I will have to open the packet that's sat here on the desk next to me. I mean I can't adequately describe it without checking the taste can I? It's well wrapped, with folded-over ends and the whole thing sealed down, so that you know it's not been handled and, yes, that's important to me. The chocolate is wrapped in silver paper and then placed on a piece of firm cardboard. Why? Well, you can always tell a good chocolate because it makes a snapping sound when it breaks and Lindt chocolate is so brittle there wouldn't be any pieces large enough to break if it wasn't on something firm. Try breaking a piece of Cadbury's Dairy Milk and all you'll hear is a clunk.

There are ten squares of chocolate in a block. I like to have a square at a time. No, that doesn't mean that I eat one piece and then put the packet away! I mean, have you ever tried breaking off just one square of chocolate? It's impossible. No, you see, I eat one, feel virtuous because I've only eaten one, eat the other and because I feel I've got self-restraint licked, I allow myself some more.

Taste? Well, it is a little bit of an acquired taste if you're used to Dairy Milk and Galaxy. You might have to work at it for quite a while, but you will be rewarded. The first thing that you'll notice is the absence of sweetness and then a bitter, more-chocolaty-than chocolate flavour. All the chocolate you've ever eaten has had the sweetness taken out and the
flavour is there in your mouth. The smell will have made your mouth water and the texture is smooth, without any of the graininess that you get with cheaper chocolates. It's crisp and you're not left with that greasy taste in your mouth that a lot of chocolates leave. It's a fresh taste.

I've been known to add a square of this to a beef casserole to enrich the gravy. It produces a lovely flavour and really delicious gravy, but it's for puddings, as you would expect, that this chocolate really comes into its own. I'm going to tell you about two of my favourite recipes. One's really fiddly, but worth it for a special occasion and the other is exceedingly simple. I'll do the simple one first.

Banana Boats

For each person bake an unpeeled banana at 180C/Gas Mark 4 for 30 minutes. The skin will go black. Remove from the oven and open very carefully. Put the points of as many squares of chocolate into the banana as you think a boat needs sails. Serve, with ice cream if you feel piggy.

This next recipe is a bit fiddly, but I tend to do it whilst I got other things on the go, even over a few days.

Chocolate Orange Rind

The next time you have a couple of unwaxed oranges, don't throw the peel away. It's the best bit. Remove the rind in strips. I usually do this with a potato peeler and be careful not to remove any white pith with the rind. Cut the pieces into strips about 2.5cm long by 1cm wide. Bring a smallish pan of water to the boil and pop the rind in and allow to boil for three minutes. Remove and rinse in cold water. Do this three times in all, with fresh water each time. (Easy to remember, you see. Three times at three minutes each.) Leave to dry on kitchen paper.

Mix 500ml of water with 500gr of caster sugar and bring to the boil stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the orange peel and cook gently for one hour. Remove the orange peel and l
eave to dry on a wire rack for at least three hours. I usually leave them overnight.

Melt a block of Lindt chocolate over a bowl of gently simmering water and dip the pieces of orange peel in the chocolate and leave on greaseproof paper to set. If you like you can dust these with cocoa powder. Serve them with coffee after that perfect meal (much nicer than After Eight Mints!) or with a Whisky Syllabub as a sumptuous pudding.

Lindt do other chocolate bars as well. Their white chocolate is less sickly than the Milky Bar counterpart and good for cooking as well as eating. Just imagine a white chocolate mousse with raspberries! White chocolate is notoriously difficult to cook with, but this is better than most.

You?ll regularly find Lindt Special Edition chocolate bars. I?ve recently seen Apricot, Stratiacella (chocolate chip, to you and me!) and a Pistachio and Orange combination. I just know I?m going to end up making a pig of myself!

Jill Murphy asked me to write about one of my favourite things to help her celebrate her fourth anniversary of cancer-free living and to remind ourselves of all the nice things in the world. It takes more muscles to make a frown than a smile you know. If you'd like to join in, whether you've only just joined dooyoo, or you've been here ages, you're more than welcome. Just write about one of YOUR favourite things, make your title "A Favourite Thing: [your choice]" and include this paragraph at the foot of your opinion. And post before Friday, 9th August.

Please.

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