Chocolat

Long time no blogging. This week gone was a bit of a writeoff on account of my backache. I spent some time getting some tests done which have all come up negative, so we are back to my arthritis, which obviously has taken a drastic turn for the worse. We are back to the village at the moment, so once I am back in town I might consider badgering the doctor for a referral to rheumatology. We'll see.

I have been to the theatre twice last week: on Monday I saw the Producers for the third and definitely last time. The interesting thing, however, was the fact that this was the best of the three, even though the lead was played by my friend's husband for the second time and now I loved it a great deal more. I suppose every performance has its own dynamic, or perhaps I was in a more receptive mood. Who knows, but that was great.

The play last night was a different kettle of fish. A two hander, it was based on the age old formula of the Jewish mother and son relationship. It was funny and even witty in places, but the formula somehow didn't grab me sufficiently for the non-stop 90 minutes it was on for.

The star event of this week, however, was my truffel course.(see pictures!) I signed on last month to learn how to make truffels at my favourite chocolate shop. It was 4 hours long, cost £30, but that included taking home all the truffels we made plus the ingredients for the first batch to be made at home. So I think it was pretty good value. As it happened, I had a really good time. It even made me forget my excrutiating backache and I learned a great deal. Bea and her husband, Peter are really lovely people. The pictures above (except the last one) were taken by Peter and they show us girls making a mess on the granite slab while tempering chocolate, then rolling the little balls, finally dipping and decorating the square truggels. The last one shows the truffels I brought home (except two square ones which got eaten yesterday). The little decorated squares are plain ganache inside, then dipped in tempered chocolate and decorated. I made 8 of these and they are delicious. Even Roy likes them and tomorrow I will try them out on Nelly as well. The small pack of dark coloured balls are rum truffels which were rolled in cocoa and the balls in the cellophane bag are orange truffels rolled in cinnamon sugar. We haven't had any of those yet, as we are trying to make them last and I can't have too much sweet stuff all at once anyway. The only slightly risky thing about this is that we have not added any glucoze syrup to the ganache, so they will not keep as long as otherwise, so we need to eat them fairly sharpish.

My next plan is to go out and buy some equipment for making them at home and the first item is a big square of granite or marble for the tempering of the chocolate. That is an amazing procedure and it includes heating it up to about 40 degrees Celsius, then cooling it down by pushing it around on the marble slab to below 30 and finally bringing it back up to about 30 degrees before working with it. If you want shiny, smooth coating for your truffels, or you want to make bars of chocolate, that is what you do. The coating on my square truffels is tempered. It cracks as you bite into it, which is due to the special crystallisation the tempering causes.