Usually Mondays give me the blahs – but not since my favorite chef moved to Montreal! His name is John – and like most restaurant chefs, he works crazy hours all throughout the week, including the weekend, and then gets to enjoy a Monday off. Incredibly, on his day off, he actually comes to my place and helps me experiment with chocolate.
John instills in me “kitchen confidence”. Basically, knowing he is around and is a true king of the kitchen, makes me try all sorts of new things. 3 weeks ago he taught me the secret to infusing cream. This is a technique which allows you to add flavor – lets say mint – to cream. Once the flavor is in the cream, you can then blend it with the chocolate to create a flavored ganache. It is difficult to directly flavor chocolate, because once melted chocolate comes in contact with most watery liquids, the chocolate “seizes”, making it very difficult to work with.
The secret to most flavoring of chocolate is through creating a ganache. First you infuse the flavor into the cream, and then you mix it with the chocolate. It is kind of a sneaky way to get interesting flavors into chocolate…YUM!
Chef John on his latest Monday visit!
