cinnamon

I have been on an incredible food journey this year. I have learned so much and experienced so many new things. Of course, I would have loved to write more about it, but time seems so limited with everything going on. It seems the universe has given me one mighty shove into a whirlpool of food related adventures. I wasn’t quite ready for it --  you can still see the skid marks where I dug in my heels! But once I’ve succeeded in overcoming all my fears, I began to enjoy the ride.

The panic really set in when a new two-weekly magazine (on the shelves mid September) commissioned me to do their food pages for them on a freelance basis. I was a nervous wreck and nearly chickened out. I’ve been in the magazine business for 22 year, albeit on the entertainment side, but I’ve seen enough of the food side to know what a big challenge it was going to be. Thank God I pushed right ahead and, after the first photo shoot, I have gained so much selfconfidence I feel I can conquer the world!

This long weekend I spent all my time fooding about – visiting the new food market behind the Building Warehouse in Tokai and pottering around in the kitchen, cooking for friends. This coming weekend, I have my first official catering job – a ladies’ lunch for twelve!

But, to get back to the food road I’ve travelled these past months  . . . it seems to have been paved with chocolate. On my birthday in March this year, I decided to give myself a birthday present – two chocolate courses at the Lindt studio – truffle making and decadent desserts. The courses were only booked for May and I spent all that time looking forward to it, feeling very proud of myself for showering such a lavish gift onto myself. That was one of my New Year’s resolutions – to be kinder and more generous to myself.

And what a treat  . . .

The first one was the truffle making. I instantly fell in love with the cosy little studio at the bottom of the stairs in the old Foundry building in Geen Point. (They’re moving to the Old Cape Quarter in September – even better!) I won’t even comment on Chef Alfred Henry  . . . Let’s just say the delectable James Martin does not rank quite as high on my list of extremely bed-able Kitchen Cowboys after meeting this Chocolate Chef!

He has been with the Mount Nelson and Twelve Apostle hotels, even had his own restaurant. But now he’s dedicating his career to the thing he loves best – working with chocolate. The Lindt Chocolate Studio is one of a kind, the only one in the world. They were thinking of opening another one in Dubai, but then the world economy collapsed and we all know how it affected that shopping mecca of the world.

Chef Alfred not only is a master chocolatier – you’d be forgiven if you mistakenly believed that he was a male model posing as a chef. But with his skills in the kitchen he’ll soon set you straight. Talking of straight  . . .  he often refers to his wife and children during his presentation. With so many drooling females around – and it’s not only because of the chocolate – he has to set the record straight. Even so, nothing wrong with appreciating a thing of beauty  . . .

But you know what . . . that is when I realised just how obsessed I am about cooking. Instead of going home that night and dreaming about charming Chef Alfred and his beautiful hands dripping with chocolate, I was in a dream where I stood up at a meeting of some kind and delivered a passionate plea for updating and upgrading Kook en Geniet! (And I mean, I have never harboured any such thoughts about this beloved recipe book that actually introduced me to the art of cooking and has been a trusty old friend ever since.)   

The group that attended the truffle making session was extremely informed and really interested in what was going on. There were even a couple of trained chefs among us. And we learned so much more because of some of the really informed questions the people asked there.

(But, a word of warning, this is more of an introductory course. There’s no way you can get the hang of things in the three hours allocated to the course. You can master the basics, yes, but if you really want to learn more, you should consider the three-day courses.)

The next time I wasn’t so lucky. A group of women saw this as an opportunity for a party. Nothing wrong with that. But they had a much interest in learning how to make decadent desserts as my cat Cleo has for learning how to crochet. And after they had a couple of glasses of wine it went from bad to worse. I found them irritating and disturbing and did not enjoy the class as much as I should have. I must say, Chef Alfred handled it so well – I most certainly would have lost my temper!

But as luck would have it, BBC Lifestyle decided to introduce their new programme, Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory, at the Lindt Chocolate Studio. Poor Chef Alfred will think I have a crush on him, I laughingly declined. But in the end they convinced me to go. And guess which course he presented? The decadent desserts! It was as though I’ve been given a second chance! And you know how a group of journalists are – they ask so many questions. Finally I experienced the joy and reaped the benefits as I did with the first class. Isn’t it strange?

And the programme? By this time you all have seen it. It is a wonderful and extremely painful experience to watch Willie Harcourt-Cooze risking all he has – money, family – to make his dream of creating the perfect bar of chocolate come true. As a present we each received two bars of his 100% cacao chocolate bars and his recipe book, Willie’s Chocolate Factory Cookbook. The man lives out my believe that chocolate is a spice and only accidentally ended up as the sweet confectionary we know. He cooks with chocolate like I do and I can’t wait to try out his chocolate and his recipes.

Working with chocolate is an extremely rewarding and therapeutic exercise. You have to focus and concentrate on what you’re doing – you can’t think of anything else.Planning your time is extremely important, because it’s too expensive and you can’t afford to make mistakes. Expensive it is, yes, but don’t even think of substituting the real thing with a cheaper chocoate. That would be a sacrilege! I have had many hours of pleasure, but also frustration, making my own truffles. I believe in the achemy of the kitchen and nothing showcases that better than the temperamental nature of chocolate.

Fortunately, I’m not a chocoholic, but gets such pleasure by giving away little boxes of decadence. Writer Pamela Jooste, one of my neighbours, writes the most wonderful e-mails (all publishable) and to thank me for her chocolates she compared me to Vianne of Chocolat, who touched everyone’s lives with her chocolate. What a wonderful compliment!

It's definitely a road worth travelling  . . .

Part 2 – recipe included – to follow  . . .