Chocolate Chip Cognac Cheesecake

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

I think like most people i love a little liquor in my bloodstream on any day. Being a chef we are taught at school how to drink and drink well. So drinking is a big and important part of my job/ from understanding wine pairings with food and also the flavour profiles of wines and spirits and what the add to dishes.

My great passion in life is the relationship between alcohol and desserts, i maybe be exaggerating but nothing works quiet as well as desserts and booze. It's the ultimate in decadence, adding a slosh of booze into desserts has a multitude of impacts and affects mainly flavour.

I have fond memories of getting wasted on jelly shots with custard, whipped cream and tinned fruit cocktail, or those weekends in tertiary where we would pour a whole of vodka into whole watermelon and served it with ice-cream.

Traditionalist believe that a small amount of alcohol must be added into desserts and it must be cooked to cooked away the alcohol and only keep the flavour. Me,I'm a purist, i like to taste the liquor in my desserts, i don't want to cook it away, i want it raw and lots of it, which is why i like adding alcohol into frozen desserts. You get it as it is. Now i say if i'm cooking for myself or my friends i could add up to 80ml of alcohol, which is more then a single shot, but if you're cooking for others go easy on them. Too much alcohol can ruin a dish, there has to be a balance, the play on sugar, spice, chocolate, fruit and booze is what i love the most, you must be able to taste all the other ingredients in order to get the full experience.

There's really quiet something into eating and getting drunk. It's so classy.

Which is why i created this recipe, a year ago i started drinking cognac and not only did i love it but i was happy to find out that cognac has notes of marshmallow, vanilla and orange. It's the perfect flavour profile for dessert especially chocolate, which is why i had the idea to combine it with cheesecake. And my Chocolate Chip and Cognac Cheesecake was born.

If you try this recipe, You're welcome in advance!

Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

If girls are made of sugar and spice I would want to be speckled with pink peppercorns.
I realize that I may be a little bold in saying this, but I truly believe that pink peppercorns are the next big thing in South Africa. These amazing pink jewels are my new secret ingredient in desserts. No you read right, I did say pink peppercorns, but I promise it’s not what it sounds like.

Pink peppercorns are not true peppercorns in the traditional sense; they are the dried berries of the Brazilian pepper tree and the Peruvian Peppertree. These berries got their name because well, they look like peppercorns and they too have a peppery flavour to them. Pink peppercorns are not to be mistaken with the ripened red true peppercorns, the Piper nigurm, which are more reddish-orangey in color, but their name is based on their colour. They are similar in spice and colour but pink peppercorns are very different, which is why I love them.

Peruvian Peppertree

Pink peppercorns are not solid like black pepper; they are light, fluffy and hollow and should be ground up with a knife and not a pepper mill because they will get caught in the mill.
Pink peppercorns have a citrus flavour and are very fragrant, they have the heat of black pepper but the deep fruitiness of chilies, they are the relatives of cashews and mango which makes them suitable for a variety of dishes especially desserts and fruits. It just offers desserts an element of contrast and warmth, it really balances out the sugar in the most wonderful way, and I can’t express it enough. It just makes desserts electric, it brings them to life. They are fabulous with ice-cream and chocolate, in desserts that are really rich it works wonders.

From left: Black, white, pink and green peppercorns

I have tried it with Turkish delight and it is heaven with the rose water, the spiciness just tempers that annoying floral-ness that comes from rose water. I also love it in fruit salads, In Durban we love pineapples dusted in chili powder and to make a new version of this popular street food, I replaced the chili powder with crushed pink peppercorns, a scoop of vanilla ice-cream with a sprinkling of pistachios on the side and it was delicious and so pretty!

Pink peppercorns are the perfect secret ingredient and it goes well with every kind of dessert you can imagine, if a dessert is very sweet use the pink peppercorns to bring down that sugar, if a dessert is lacking that POW factor, throw in some pink peppercorns and it will come alive.
The French have been using pink peppercorns in desserts for decades and it’s about times us South Africans got on the pink peppercorn wagon.

Bread Pudding Cake

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

I love cake, but I hate bread pudding. There’s something about soggy bread that just makes my stomach turn.  But we serve a lot of bread pudding where I work and so I am forced to be around bread pudding a lot. I’ve tried bread pudding from donuts, thinking I love donuts so I might like it with donuts, no, I hated it.

My problem with bread pudding is its texture, the texture is just strange and unpleasant to me after all it is soggy bread. So if I can change the texture of bread pudding, I could like it. I think.

When I hate a food, like as much as I hate bread pudding, I feel the need to find a way to make it better so I can somehow be able to keep it down. Bread pudding has been one of those foods that have been like a monkey on my back. No matter what I have tried with it, it hasn’t been good to me, others have loved it but I haven’t liked it. I have yet to conquer the Bread Pudding Demon.  
So when I had the sudden idea of creating a bread pudding that eats like a cake, you wouldn’t believe my excitement. My toes were tingling I was so excited.

Initially I thought of making a cake batter and then layering the batter with bread soaked in egg custard in a baking tin and bake it all together, so the bread would bake into the cake and meld into one almost like a crumb cake but a bread pudding cake. The result was great but the bread pudding was missing its signature moist, pudding-ness. But this is an idea I will have to explore further later because it promising to me and it has potential.

I decided to try and simplify things, take things back a notch and think home cooking instead of restaurant cooking. I decided to take the bread out of the equation completely and use an alternative; I still wanted a cake so I thought of using a Madeira loaf or pound cake. This makes complete sense because for trifles I like using Madeira cake because it’s dense and it tastes great with custard, it can take a lot of moisture. So that was the base of my bread pudding cake.
I love it when a good idea comes together.

Bread Pudding Cake

1 loaf vanilla Madeira Cake/Pound Cake
100ml caster sugar
440ml milk
220ml cream
5ml vanilla essence
4 eggs
 Butter
100g sultanas
100g white chocolate, chopped
Topping
100ml whipping cream
100ml sour cream
Dark chocolate

Crème Anglaise
150ml milk
150ml double cream
10ml vanilla essence
4 egg yolks
60ml caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180⁰C. Slice the cake into 1cm thick slices, place on a greased baking sheet and bake in the oven for 8 minutes, this is to just dry out the cake not to cook it, so no colour, just dry. Remove it from the oven, turn of oven and leave the cake to cool.
Cut up the cake into bite size cubes.

In a bowl whisk together the eggs, cream, milk, vanilla and sugar. Add in the cake cubes and press in to soak into the custard. Place in the fridge to soak overnight or for 2-3 hours.

Preheat oven to 160⁰C. Grease a baking dish with butter or ramekins and set aside. In the custard soaked bread, fold in the sultanas and white chocolate and then spoon in the soaked bread into the baking dish. If your using ramekins, fill it up to the top so when it cooks the bread pudding will puff up over the top nicely, kind of like a soufflé.

Place in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes. The custard should be set. Remove from the oven and place aside to cool down.

Crème Anglaise

Place the milk, cream and vanilla essence in a pot and bring it to the boil.
Put the egg yolks and caster sugar in a bowl and whisk together. Pour the hot milk into the eggs a little at a time to temper the eggs while whisking, when the eggs are warm, pour the egg mixture into the pot. Stir the custard and cook it at a low heat until it thickens, stir it continuously. The custard should coat the back of the spoon.

In a clean bowl pour in the whipping cream and whip it until it starts to foam up, add in the sour cream and continue to whip until it’s stiff and holds its shape.

In a bowl, pour in 60-80ml of crème anglaise, pour it in the middle and then move around the bowl to swirl the custard so it’s even on the plate. I used ramekins for my bread pudding cake and so I ran a knife around the inside of the cake and then I turned it upside down on top of the crème anglaise. Place a dollop of the whipped cream on top and grate over some dark chocolate on top.

Chef!

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

The life of a chef is unnerving at times. To be the iconic ideal of a chef you have to work late into the evenings, in sometimes seriously hostile anti-female kitchens while beyond the kitchen doors customers indulge in a variety of substances barked obscenities on the restaurant floor, and all of this with a middle aged head chef screaming in your face for every order.

Being a working  female chef is definitely not for sissies, I, like many others are nevertheless inspired by the jobs dual nature, the gritty and rawness of life in the kitchen makes a good dose of old school glamour and swank delivered on artistically crafted plates seem all the more necessary.
But I think as chefs we need to get our heads out of this pre-prescribed ideal of a chef, we all aspire one day to be a head chef, own our own restaurants, write about food or talk about food on some platform.

I want to be more than just a chef; I want to be an icon, a brazen, in your face figure of excellence and creativity but not just in the food world. I no longer want to be called a chef; I want to surpass all laws of gravity blur all industry lines and smash all boundaries, I want to be regarded as an artist.
Fashion designers create wearable art for the masses and I create edible art. For the masses But being in a world where the word artist is thrown around more than a free prostitute, the word artist doesn’t quiet carry the weight it used too. Now days a pop star who doesn’t write, compose or produce their songs is still called an artist where as I who takes a bunch of fruits, vegetables and pieces of meat and creates an entire dish which is  well thought out, perfectly balanced, composed in color and texture, well rounded and tastes great ,I am not called an artist.

Creating great food requires a certain level of science, craftsmanship and skill. This is the amount of focus and dedication I apply to every dish I produce, so why am I not called an artist?
This job is all about being daring, grime, glamour and very unattractive uniforms… living the dream!

Dark Chocolate, Caramel and Bacon Cake

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

This one is going down in the history books! Hold on to your apron strings folks, I haven’t lost my mind. Your eyes do not deceive you, I didn’t make a typing error, I really mean it, its chocolate, caramel and bacon!

Before you throw your baking pans and whisks me, remember that bacon makes everything better, so why not cake?! This is a valid question I am posing to you Sugar Freaks.

Pig tastes really good smothered in chocolate. We all know that we have to season our desserts with salt, the combination of salty and sweet is hard to resist and one I love very much, salted caramel is a classic example of this combination.

So after being introduced to chocolate covered bacon recently, my taste buds were forever changed, when I bit into that chocolate covered piece of swine, there was an explosion in my mouth, a million sensations firing all at once.

This was a taste I had to replicate immediately. I went home and the first thing I thought of was chocolate cake, I wanted to create a truly decadent and gluttonous feel to this dessert, so I decided to use my classic dark chocolate cake recipe as a foundation for this cake.

Then to kick up the yum factor I wanted to add on something else into this cake that would really drive home the sweet and salty theme I was going for and it was obvious to me, caramel.

Bacon, chocolate and caramel, these have to be some of the most sinful foods known to man kind and I was going to put them in a cake.

Why a cake? Everybody loves cake and I felt that the bacon would some how make the cake moist, like how some people wrap chicken with bacon to keep it moist during cooking. I don’t know if that was the case or not for this cake, but in my mind I was convinced it was going to work out this way.

My sister loves the salty sweet combination, her favourite snack is Nik Naks and banana’s eaten together and she loves bacon, so she was the perfect lab rat for me to test out this cake.

Result?: excellent

Two gold stars for me.

Sweet Beginings: Brandy and Cola Chocolate Cake

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

I created this cake to enter the 2013 Sunday Times Food Weekly: The Best Tasting Chocolate Cake Competition. This was my very first food competition that I had entered and I was thrilled to have been selected as part of the top 6 finalists, apparently 650 people had entered and they selected my cake as part of the top 6. I was thrilled to bits!!

Being part of this competition was an adventure for me and it allowed me the opportunity to get my fingers wet and introduced me to the world of food competitions.

I didn’t win the competition; the only thing I got was a cool ass Whirlpool microwave oven and a new found will and passion for desserts and competitive cooking.

Thobeka at her bake off stand

It took me 20 minutes to formulate the entire recipe from start to finish. I wanted to keep it very simple, knowing that a bake off would be involved and I didn't want to do anything complicated and fussy. The cake is made up of three simple elements, the cake, drizzle and icing. I decided to use a simple basic chocolate cake recipe that I’ve been making for years for the cake part and because it was for a competition I wanted to make it really special and make it a celebration cake. So I had the idea to make mix a brandy and coke cocktail and simply pour that over the cake and to also use the drink in the icing as well to yumify the whole cake and make it an experience to eat.

Thobeka with her Brandy and Cola Cake

This cake has an insane yum factor and I’m pretty sure that the cake gods were with me when I was creating this cake recipe and I’m not just saying that because it’s my creation, it’s because it actually really is yum. Everyone I have served it to loves it.

I’m particularly proud of this recipe because it’s my baby, it’s what started it all for me and it will forever have a special place in my heart. I hope you all love it as much as I do.

Best Damn Chocolate Chip Drop Biscuits

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

I don’t like a crispy biscuit, I prefer to bite my teeth down on a soft biscuit and these cookies are just that. They are the best damn cookies without a doubt, I love these to bits, and they are awesome. They’re soft, slightly chewy and loaded with chocolate. The secret ingredient in these cookies is the instant pudding mix that is what gives them their amazing texture and softness.

I like to make them a little extra special by adding in a variety of chocolate chips, I add in dark chocolate chips, with semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips. The combination of these is outstanding because you have the dark bitter chocolate which is then balanced of by the sweet milk chocolate and the semi-sweet chocolate just makes the transition from rich bitterness to sweetness a lot easier.

This is sheer indulgence and is a labour of love, but if you don’t feel like doing it my way, because lets face it this is an expensive exercise, rather add 4 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the mixture and it will be just as great.

Confection Confessions

By  Chef Thobeka Shangase

These are my confection confessions; I love sweets/candy or whatever you call them. Sweets are pure sugar I tiny bite size morsels that I can just pop into my mouth one after another. Hard sweets, toffees and bon-bons, I love it all and I can't get enough of them. I love my sweets sweet and eat so much of them my teeth start to rattle, that’s when I know I should put the packet down and walk away slowly.

Without a doubt my favourite confectionary to eat is fudge, it ticks all the boxes of my most obsessive loves in the world, sugar and more sugar.

 But what I love most about fudge is that it’s essentially a blank canvas and there is nothing I love more in the world then a food that is a blank canvas for me to be able to scribble all over.

One of the first fudge recipe I was able to perfect was from A Nestle promotional recipe book, I was 8 years old when I found this recipe, which turned out to be the most perfect fudge in the world, it was sweet, smooth and ultra decadent, it just melts in your mouth. I loved every piece of it and so did everyone who tried it. This was a recipe I lost and found over the years, a recipe I have relied on and have longed for when I didn't know where to find it.

 I remember being a chubby 8 year old gorging myself on homemade fudge until I broke out in a sweat. I don't quite know why I would sweat whenever I ate this fudge, so don't ask me. But I also remember the same thing happening years later when I was high school in the eighth grade, we made fudge in Home Economics and I used my trusted recipe and even then I broke out in a sweat. I guess this fudge does things to me I can't even explain.

Being the eater I am, I like to reinvent the wheel and fudge was not safe from my creativity, now I have also eaten my fair share of chocolate fudge, or fudge with nuts, but I really think that my collection of fudge recipes that I have created over the years, tips the realms of fudge into a new domain, these recipes will make you just as excited about fudge as I am and open you up to the wonderful sweet potential of fudge.

All recipes use the classic fudge recipe as the base and all I do is add a few extra things into the mixture which are enough to transform the whole fudge experience. My favourite and most beloved is the Chilli Flakes Fudge, chilli fudge I hear you say? It works and it works beautifully. The sweetness of the fudge balances the heat from the chilli flakes and chilli powder in the most wonderful way. It also looks really pretty, red flakes speckled across the golden blocks of fudge, it’s a marriage made in heaven, the true definition of sugar and spice and all things nice.

Pink peppercorn is a close second, also just as beautiful, blushing specks or rosey pink inbedded in golden-tan fudge, you take a bite and the initial taste is soft, lovely, morrish fudge but then you get a hit of prickly warm peppercorn in your mouth which calms down the sugar canon that is fudge in its true form and it transforms it and creates a really sophisticated and elegant taste sensation that makes you go, mmmm.

Pudding Cinnamon Buns

4 cups white bread flour

Pinch of salt

4 tablespoons butter

1 sachet instant yeast

3 tablespoon soft dark brown sugar

3 eggs, beaten

150ml milk

Half a packet of vanilla instant pudding

Filling

125ml butter, softened

20ml ground cinnamon

250ml brown sugar

¼  cup pecans, chopped

¼ cup sultanas

¼ cup raisins

Icing

30ml golden syrup/honey

1x250g plain, smooth cottage cheese

2 ½ cups icing sugar

¼ cup butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ½ teaspoons milk

Sift the flour, salt and pudding into a large bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Stir in the yeast and sugar.

Make a well in the middle and stir in the eggs and enough milk to form a soft dough.

Turn the dough on to a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes. Put the dough in a bowl, cover with oiled plastic and leave to prove for 1 hour in a warm place.

Grease a rectangle baking tray and set aside. In a bowl mix together the cinnamon and brown sugar.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface to 30 cm, smear the butter on top of the dough. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar well all over the dough and sprinkle with the pecans, sultanas and raisins.

Roll the dough over the filling like a swiss roll and cut into 14-16 slices. Arrange the slices cut side up in the baking tray, so the slices are touching. Cover with oiled cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 220º. Bake the buns for 15-20 minutes until well risen and golden brown. Once you remove the buns from the oven, immediately brush with the syrup and set aside to cool. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes then remove and place on a wire rack, do not separate the buns, keep them together.

In a bowl cream the butter for the icing until pale and fluffy, whisk in the cottage cheese, vanilla extract and whisk well until combined. Then stir in the icing sugar, if the mixture is to thick, loosen it with the milk until a thick spreadable consistency is reached.

Spread all of the the icing thickly over the still slightly warm buns and leave to set.

Serve with tea and leave it for people to pull of each bun. Mmmm, delish!

Chocolat

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

Whether it’s sweet rich, dark and smooth, comforting and a source of pure pleasure? I am addicted to chocolate. Growing up I didn't have a particularly close relationship with my mother, we may have looked tremendously alike but we were two different women with an entire ocean between us, when she wanted to teach me the ten ways on how to get a floor clean and sparkly I wanted to hang out in my fathers office during one his business meetings learning how to run a business. As worlds apart as we were there was one thing that we both shared and enjoyed together unapologetically and that was chocolate. My mother and I both loved chocolate and we ate bucket loads of it, between us we must've eaten enough chocolate for half of the world’s population.

 My addiction to chocolate became very apparent early on in my life, the day I grabbed a handful of gold chocolate coins in my grubby little hands at age 7, I knew then without a doubt that this was the only food I ever wanted to eat. My father also loved chocolate and every time he visited Hyperama Supermarket he would come home with a bag of chocolate truffles which he would divide between us equally, I was the first one to scoff down all my truffles and then would launch daily and various missions to steal my sibling’s truffles. It was during this time when I was first introduced to chocolate covered Turkish delight truffles and ginger infused Turkish delight bon-bons, the day I ate one was the day my life changed and my chocolate addiction got its second wind. My obsession was in no way a secret, chocolate was something I ate very openly, by the time I was 10 I could eat an entire 777 chocolate bar in one bite. Every day at lunch I would buy two 777 bars or TV bars and I would eat them both in less than 60 seconds.

It was very common to find Beacon or Cadbury chocolate wrappers under my pillow and under my mattress tucked in for safe keeping for an emergency chocolate fix when I desperately needed one. I came to be wise to the fact that I had to at all times, keep a secret stash of chocolate in various hiding places for emergencies. One never knew when you’d need to negotiate your escape to the playground; a chocolate bar would often sweeten the deal and would allow me to make my siblings an offer they couldn't refuse.

At 13, while enjoying another chocolate bar I read the fine print behind the wrapper of my Cadbury Crunchie that stated if I was not satisfied with my chocolate, Cadbury would replace my chocolate for free. I had heard of such rumours and fables, of people getting boxes of free chocolates after returning a defected chocolate. I had never had the luck of coming across a deformed chocolate because I've never met a chocolate I didn't want to eat, so I was left with no choice but to create a defected chocolate. The first time I attempted to doctor the chocolate bar I failed dismally, I didn't have the self control required to leave a chocolate bar half eaten. 

The second attempt was much more of a triumph, I had a plan this time, I was going to buy two chocolate bars, I would eat half of one bar and then keep it until it was spoilt and the other one was a reward for my self-restraint.  I ate half of the chocolate bar and then I sat with my sister’s eyebrow tweezers picking out the puffed rice, one by one to achieve the hollow look I was aiming for. I stored the chocolate bar at the bottom of my sisters shoe boxes, a risky move I know, when the chocolate bar had reached the desired discolouration, I went out and bought a new chocolate bar and I put the old chocolate bar in the new wrapper and then sent it of to Cadbury. After months of waiting I didn't get the boxes and boxes of free chocolate but I received three replacement chocolate bars and an apology letter from Cadbury, a triumph! And not bad for a few weeks of work! I immediately set to work on getting more free chocolates from Beacon and Nestle using the same M.O, but after a while my mother started to suspect all the packages arriving for me, 13 years old didn’t often receive mailed packages. She caught on to my scheme, gave me 10 hard lashings across the bum and she confiscated my chocolates and told me she would give them back to me after I had learned my lesson. I let a few days pass and figured it was enough time to have learned a lesson but when I asked for one of the chocolates, my mother told me they couldn't be found. It later turned out that my mother had eaten the chocolates. I can’t say that I ever really forgave my mother for this betrayal.

My addiction to chocolate came to screeching halt when a busy body aunt dared to suggest to me when I was 14 years old that I should stop eating chocolate because she had read somewhere that chocolate gives you pimples, well that was the day my mother threw out all the chocolate bars in the house and placed all of us under chocolate quarantine with strict restrictions imposed on all of us. She absolutely refused to buy any chocolate as much I tried to convince her that chocolate was what kept my teenage face pimple free. The next few years are what I refer to as the Dark Years and it was during this time that chocolate took on the antithesis of cold, hunger, teenage hormonal mood swings and growth spurts and was the consolation prize for love betrayal by my mother. Chocolate became a prized possession and I could only get my fix at school.

When once I used to gorge my face on dark chocolate the likes of Bournville with my mother I was now being forced to get my cocoa fix at the schools tuckshop. School tuckshops didn't have a variety of chocolates on offer but milk chocolate was better then no chocolate, so each afternoon I would stuff my bag with Aro Mint bars, Cadbury Lunch Bars and Beacon Tempo chocolate bars, shipping illegal contraband to my secret hiding place at home, I turned my younger sister into a chocolate mule and she would help me move my illegal contraband by storing chocolates in her bra, the chocolates would often be melted from being trapped in her heaving bosom for hours but there was nothing better then a semi-melted Bar One chocolate bar eaten in the darkness of our bedroom.

 In my early twenties my chocolate addiction knew no boundaries, I dated a man for six months purely because he worked at the Beacon Chocolate Factory and he would bring me boxes and boxes of chocolates. This man had a snaggle-tooth and sometimes his armpits smelt like sour hot garbage juice, I never went out with him in public, none of my friends knew him. I kept him hidden away in the dark as he kept me in full supply of chocolates. It was during this time that I was re-introduced to an old childhood favourite when Beacon launched their line of designer chocolates, the Turkish delight filled chocolate slab. Such sweet heavenly pleasure, having it in my mouth once again took me back to the days when I would sit on fathers lap and we would eat the chocolate truffles he brought home for us. I could eat boxes and boxes of them. The muesli filled slabs were a second favourite and I would eat one everyday for breakfast.

 My addiction to chocolate has got worse, since I chose to give up premarital sex i have found comfort and a source of Vitamin B in Lindt Strawberry Sensation chocolate and Cadbury Hazelnut slabs, I could never face a plain Cadbury slab, there seems to be no point to it, I buy two or three of these chocolates at a time. A day without one never goes by. I no longer have a reason to eat food. Chocolate is without a doubt addictive, the addictive element could be merely in my subconscious feeling of being loved, when the chocolate melts in my mouth it’s like a warm hug. I don't experience the same craving sensations from other sweets, so it’s not the sugar I’m craving when I crave chocolate. My chocolate cravings can’t be narrowed down to any traces of drugs, although chocolate contains powerful chemicals such as phenylethylamine, similar to amphetamine, a chemical which has similarities to marijuana. Chocolate does contain healthy doses of caffeine. But I believe my addiction to chocolate has little to do with chemicals, endorphins and opiates and everything to do with pleasure. The sensation of my mouth full of melted chocolate gives me an exhilarating rush.

Chocolate releases a lack of inhibition in me; I lose all my facilities and abandon all discretion when it comes to talking about my love of chocolate. I shamelessly confess all my desires for chocolate in manner of a telephone sex operator. The first time I placed a dark chocolate truffle dripping with passion fruit curd and cognac I thought I had died and gone to heaven, the only words that could leave my lips were “oh god…oh god…oh my god…” I had to sit down and felt the urge to light a cigarette afterwards.Chocolate is without a doubt the most perfect food in the world. It slides, smears and drips on the body arousing a deep primal craving, when you love something you want to touch it, taste it, lick it, smell it, have it inside of you and all over you, this is how I feel about chocolate.

Chocolate is such a female obsession, eating a chocolate arises the same feelings of falling in love, chocolate can't be restrained or be minimal, it’s intrusive it loudly announces itself just like love does. I'm always able to remember a quote I saw at the bottom of a work diary long time ago, the writer of the quote is unknown but it read, “Never trust anyone who leaves a bar of chocolate half eaten.” I have used this saying as a measuring stick for friends, business partners and especially for men, anyone who doesn't gobble up an entire chocolate in one go has too much self control for my liking and not enough of an appetite. I'm a person who can inhale an entire Kit Kat Family Value Pack in one sitting and when I met a woman who confessed that she eats a slab of chocolate over a week, nibbling on a few blocks every other day, I was overcome with a deep sense of mistrust and my suspicions were proven to be true after it was discovered that she was having sex with her friends man. Whether this was a coincidence, doesn't matter much to me because people who can't shove an entire chocolate bar in their face are calculating by nature, anyone who can eat half a chocolate bar and be satisfied and it’s not due to physical illness, shows an unnatural sense of self-restraint, rigid self-control and severe self -deprivation and that is someone who can hurt you.

South Africa has seen its fair share of mass produced, over processed chocolate, when Nestle Albany first released their Albany Dark chocolate with the aim of hitching their star on the cocoa- content- in –chocolate- wagon, the only thing they proved was that you can have a high cocoa content but still have bad chocolate. Albany Dark chocolate was dark, but it grainy, fatty and it left a film of fat on your tongue that needed a hammer and chisel to remove, this was because of the poor quality of cocoa butter that they used. The chocolate was utterly bitter and left a metal almost tangy after taste, which showed an amateurish ability to balance ingredients; they attempted to create a cheap dark chocolate by dumping an extra pound of cocoa into the mixture and didn't use any good quality cocoa beans. The next time I saw Albany Dark it had been morphed into a hybrid of dark and white chocolate, an attempt to combat the sever bitterness I guess.

 I'm filled with joy to see more grand cru and gourmet chocolate in South Africa, although it has not entered the mass market, in the last few years or so in Franshoek Cape Town, there’s been a crop of chocolate specialist stores selling some high quality chocolate, these stores are mostly owned by foreigners but South Africans are working in these kitchens and hopefully in the years to come there will be more South African chocolatiers.

For now my dreams are filled with bars of organic chilli chocolate, basil and lime, cardamom and smooth chocolate ganache filled truffles sprinkled with bacon bits. I personally prefer chocolate bars to ganache- filled chocolates, i can certainly pop plenty of those tiny morsels into my mouth, but you can only eat two or three if you’re an amatuer or four-five if you’re an expert eater like me, before you suffer from a case of palate fatigue. Chocolate bars are the best because you can taste all the minute flavours that make up the chocolate, they have a clean finish if they are of good quality and most importantly with a chocolate bar I can scoff down a frightening amount without picking up an injury.

Food in Fashion

by Chef Thobeka Shangase

Once upon a time food used to be an energy source, then it became a status symbol, a source of comfort and with a sudden burst of young sexy television chefs, the precise pre-measured bowls of ingredients synonymous with Delia Smith were overturned by these young chefs, all clambering on our television sets with their cute hair cuts, hip lexicon, bulging pecs and thunderous cleavage, selling their branded kitchen goods and books, celebrity chefs were born. The food world hit the reality t.v scene, food was entertainment and food celebrities were being churned out faster than biscuits at a biscuit mill. Food was dragged into the pop culture sphere and eventually found itself smack dab in the world of fashion and the term “food trends” was born and things were forever changed.

The culinary world now has a way of constantly moving the goalposts, in fact that’s probably one definition of what the words “food trends” mean. It can also be a contradictory and tricky game in which the establishment is continually challenged.

Food truck pioneer Roy Choi

Subdued minimalism at Valentino

One season, Heston Blumenthal and “Molecular Gastronomy” was all the rage with a wild mix of bacon ice-cream and three time cooked potato chips, food was broken down to molecules of flavour filled foams, dusts, steam and smoke, food was no longer to be eaten but instead you had to be inhaled, poked, scratched and sniffed, it was out with the old boring oven roast and in with outrageous cooking methods the likes of which Victor Frankenstein would be proud of, turkey cooked with live electric currents and reduced to cloud like morsels and other ridiculous things. When others protested against this trend, Vogue magazine gave it the fashion stamp of approval and called it the future of food, a bold statement in deed especially in the fickle world of fashion where the future changes every season. The food industry was brazen and riding high, it’s safe to say that the food industry was part and parcel of the open, unashamed ease and excessive indulgence that existed at that time. Everything was gourmet, gourmet cupcakes, gourmet sweets, gourmet water and it all carried a hefty gourmet price tag.

 And then the next year, all things hit saturation point, the recession hit and brought the restaurant business to it’s knees and the pendulum swung back to all things, green, organic, classic, basic and average and “seasonal cooking”, “seasonal eating” was born, traditional farm to table cooking and eating was all the rage, for meat, snout to tail was the way to go. Restaurants were going broke and so therefore had to “Go green and organic” serving up every cut of meat and every kind of edible green they could get their hands on, cuts of meat that were normally considered cheap and discarded by chefs were taking center stage on menus, nettle soup, sweetbreads on bruschetta

The cronut

Kogi food truck in downtown Los Angeles

and flower salads were what’s hot and basic comfort food was the new black. Forget about desserts, bakeries and specialty dessert stores were sinking like dough balls in water, restaurants were firing their expensive pastry chefs and sourcing their desserts from mass producing factories and distributors. Around this time the Italian fashion house of Valentino showcased a lady-esque collection, all things vintage, gloves, hats, soft pastel colours, buttons were buttoned up, hemlines were over the knee. Everything was controlled and in moderation. People were eating and dressing with a conscious and with a purpose again like it used to be.

Then the grown up, responsible and mature farm to table concept was drowned out by the loud screeching of food trucks heard coming a mile away, with a punk rock attitude. Seasoned trained sous chefs frustrated with the restaurant kitchen food chain which allowed for little growth, were dropping their white chefs jackets for black rock n roll print t-shirts and converse shoes, they were rolling up their sleeves revealing their tattooed arms and giving the middle finger to the more established food institutions. Born out of necessity, food trucks offered cheap gourmet food to the average Joe on the street. Food truck owners were picking up the scraps of fallen food monuments and making something out of nothing, ethnic food was the focus, Greek, Korean, Mexican, old school cooking methods, old school recipes were jammed together with dishes from other nations and as a result food hybrids were born, tacos filled with Korean bar-barque pork and topped with tzatiki become a common phrase.

Korean Style tacos from Kogi

 Pop up restaurants were popping up everywhere and there was a new breed of celebrity chefs, gone with the pleasantly plump, full cleavage and cute hair cuts and in with the lean, rebellious, foul mouth, tattooed and pierced rock star chef. Food was getting bolder, rebellious, “gangsta” and over at design house Kenzo, fashion was doing the same thing, mixes of flouro pink and camo, gold trainers and embroidered track tops were making their way down the runway. Models, fashion bloggers and writers everywhere were weak at the knees and once again food and fashion met in unholy matrimony.

With the economy still recovering comfort food was still the focus but after Paula Deen was diagnosed with diabetes, butter lost its appeal and “New modern comfort food” was born, the focus is on taking traditional classics, stripping it down to its basic root and adding modern elements to it, I'm not sure I understand what they mean by that because classic food is regarded as classic because it’s basic in nature but cest la vie.

Dry Smoke Cooked Egg with Hot Sauce Pearls

Nettle Soup

Food concept trucks and stores are now the norm, chefs are choosing to focus on and perfecting one sort of food be it hot dogs, toasted cheese sandwiches, pies, donuts or cakes, which is a clever idea on paper. But there’s only so much that you can do with a hot dog or chocolate cake without the risk of bastardising it. But I know from experience that when people say “modern or contemporary” that means that the price is increased.

To be honest I'm not sure I'm a fan of this trend, yes it exists for a reason but as a food lover I am not sure I want to eat anything that is basic and blends into a plate, going unnoticed and being left craving the super normal, to me food is about escaping, embracing the strange and seeking the different in the most personal way because whatever you discover you take it inside of you and good, bad or utterly delicious it becomes a part of you. But maybe this is a much needed corrective after the over the top Lady Gaga-esque eccentricity we've seen in the last decade.

One thing I do know for sure that with the birth of the cronut, change is coming in the food world, there’s a new genre of comfort food coming, it’s comfort food on steroids, it’s innovative, it’s fun, some of it is a little crazy and it might kill you, but it’s going to be delicious and I can't wait.