valentine

A Marmite Valentine

maki — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:37:10 +0100

Back in January, I received an email from someone called Chris, who worked for the PR company for Marmite. He’d enjoyed my post about Paddington Bear becoming a spokesperson (spokesbear?) for Marmite. I pointed him to the other Marmite-love articles I’d written: the Guinness Marmite tasting and this somewhat obsessive taste comparison of Marmite, Vegemite and Cenovis. (Marmite won over Cenovis by a narrow margin, and over Vegemite by a mile. Sorry to all my Aussie readers! It’s a matter of personal taste and having spent some of my formative years eating thin Marmite-and-butter-sandwiches for tea.)

Chris and I exchanged a couple of nice emails, and he left the enigmatic words “Watch this space!” I had forgotten about it totally, until a small yet hefty package arrived in the mail a couple of hours ago, containing this:

Yes, this is a special limited edition of Marmite, made with champagne! I have to admit that I was contemplating trying to procure one when I’d first heard of it, but hesitated because I still have about two and a half jars of last year’s special edition Guinness Marmite. But then again, can a dedicated Marmite lover have too much Marmite? I don’t think so.

Then I realized that Rax from the Marmite PR people even sent this wonderful poem by email:

Hi Maki, I hope you’re well
We’ve written a poem for you
Because it’s St Valentine’s Day
And we love the blog that you do

JustHungry sums up the expatriate view
That missing home-food can seem like a curse
So we want to offer you comfort
In the form of this little verse

Whilst Marmite isn’t Japanese
Nor is it American or Swiss
It is a nomadic food available for all
That fills its fans with bliss

There are those that hate it who claim
That it’s never really been in culinary fashion
But Marmite Lovers from around the globe
Testify their LOVE for it with real passion

And it is YOUR passion that we truly admire
(We loved reading your Paddington Bear monologue
But it is your February article on Marmite
Which makes JustHungry.com our favourite blog!

So expect some Lovers Marmite
To be delivered to you in the post
Please think of us and our love for you
When spreading it on your toast!

So, how does the Champagne Marmite taste? (Naturally, I tried it on a piece of toast with butter.) It is a bit runnier than the Guiness Marmite, and does have a distinctive taste of champagne. It’s not bubbly of course, but that’s a minor drawback. But most of all, the label is just so right.

You can read more about the Champagne Marmite on the Lovers’ Marmite blog. Viva Marmite!

Hmm, I wonder if I can somehow make Marmite fit with rice…

(As an aside, when you’ve been running a food blog for more than 4 years, you get contacted by all kinds of PR folks, and this is the one of the nicest experience I’ve ever had in that area. I feel even more warm and fuzzies towards Marmite now, if that’s possible. ;))

Bittersweet Valentine memories, mostly sweet

maki — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:45:10 +0100

Happy Valentine’s Day! February the 14th may mean flowers, a romantic dinner, or promises you don’t intend to keep for other people, but to me it will always the Day Of Chocolate.

Valentine’s Day is a very odd and overly commercialized day in Japan, where the giving and receiving of chocolate doesn’t have that much to do with romance. Females are made to feel obligated to hand out chocolates to people they don’t care about, such as teachers and bosses, while males anxiously wait to see if they get ‘enough’ chocolates to satisfy their egos. There are whole lines of inexpensive chocolate products suitable for giving, called giri choco (obligation chocolate). Unlike in the Western world, it’s not a day for men to give something to their female love interests. (March 14th, called “White Day”, has been sort of artificially designated as the males-give-back-to-females day.)

Still, some people do retain some of the romantic intent of Valentine’s, especially younger women and girls. Telling a boy you like him is difficult in any society, but it’s really pretty hard in a society where being open with your feelings is not traditionally encouraged. The inability to tell that special boy/girl about ones feelings for him/her forms the crux of a lot of the plots of shoujo manga, manga for girls. Telling someone about your feelings is a huge deal, called kokuhaku, a word that also means to confess (as in confess to a crime). Valentine’s Day is supposed to be one day when a girl can safely kokuhaku her feelings, acccompanied by a beaitufully wrapped, non-obligation chocolate.

I braved a chocolate-sweetened kokuhaku twice. Once when I was 14, to the boy that both my best friend and I had a big crush on for a year; then later in senior high school, when I was 16. Neither kokuhaku lead to anything, sadly, but I still remember the nervous anticipation of choosing the chocolate, and the thrill and fear of giving it. (Both times the wrapped chocolate was placed in the boy’s shoebox ( getabako), the traditional postbox at any Japanese school.)

Both of those boys are now probably married with kids somewhere in Japan. I don’t even remember their names anymore…isn’t it weird how we forget?

For an exaggerated yet sometimes very realistic view of high school romance a la Japan, His and Her Circumstances, aka KareKano, is a very popular manga series that is available in English. There was also a short lived anime series, though the story of that ends rather abruptly around volume 6 or 7 of the original manga. And, if you’re out to impress your sweetie with something handmade and chocolate, check out the posts tagged chocolate here.

(* Bonus question: What movie did the line “flowers, chocolate, promises you don’t intend to keep” come from?)

Spiced chocolate cupcakes

maki — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:31:47 +0100

In the movie Chocolat, Juliette Binoche plays a somewhat mysterious woman who opens a chocolate shop in a small French village. She uses ancient Aztec spices in her chocolate confectioneries, which soon prove to have almost magical, often aphrodesiac, properties. While Chocolat is not in my top 5, or even 10, favorite food-theme movies (see here for that list), the idea of spiced chocolates has intrigued me ever since I saw it. One of my favorite chocolate bars is the Masala one made by Dolfin.

Making a spicy chocolate confection is a bit of a tricky affair though. You don’t want the spices to overwhelm the chocolate - it should just form a sort of interesting background, yet provide a bit of a surprising bite and a warm, ‘what is that?’ quality.

These cupcakes have a rich but not too sweet bisquit (cake) base, with the warmth of curry powder and the bite of coarsely ground pepper. They are moistened with a teaspoon per cupcake of mocca liqueur, which increases its intensity and pushes it into the realm of an adult indulgence. The chocolate ganache has a pinch of cayenne pepper in it. The marriage is quite successful (or so the Tasters emphatically agreed). I’m not sure if they work at aphrodesiacs, but if your sweetheart is a chocoholic, you never know… They make a terrific Valentine’s Day dessert or treat in any case.

Spiced chocolate cupcakes

Makes about 16 medium cupcakes

For the cake:

Spices and almonds:

40g / 1 1/2 oz. ground almonds (about 1/3 cup)
1/2 Tbs. coarsely ground black or mixed-color peppercorns
1 tsp. curry powder

Dry:

80g / about 3 oz superfine raw cane sugar (you can also whirl granulated sugar in a food processor until it’s finer)
120g / 4 1/4 oz. cake flour (about 2/3 cup)
2 Tbs. best quality cocoa powder
1/8 tsp. (a big pinch) baking powder

Moist:

200g / 7 oz. (two standard bars) dark chocolate with at least 70% cacao content
150g / 5 1/4 oz. (1 stick plus 1 1/2 Tbs.) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 eggs yolks from ‘large’ eggs
1 Tbs. instant coffee granules

Egg white:

4 egg whites from ‘large’ eggs
1 pinch salt

Booze:

about 1/2 cup mocca liqueur or rum

For the chocolate ganache:

200g / 7 oz (2 standard bars) dark chocolate with at least 70% cacao content
100g / 3 1/2 oz (1 stick less 1 Tbs.) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 pinch salt
1/8th tsp. cayenne pepper (add more at your discretion, but be careful)
1 Tbs. mocca liqueur or rum

Special equipment and supplies: a standing or handheld electric mixer, sifter, cupcake cups

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 300°F. Put the cupcake cups in muffin tins, or line up double or triple-layered cups on a baking sheet (of your cupcake cups don’t fit your muffin tins or you don’t have muffin tins).

Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder). If you end up with some sugar grains in the sifter, just dump them back in.

Put the ground almonds in a clean, dry small frying pan over medium-high heat. Toast, stirring constantly, until a light brown in color. Add the curry powder and the pepper and stir until the whole smells like toasty curry. Remove immediately from the pan and put into another container (or it will continue cooking and may burn).

Chop or bash the 2 chocolate bars into small pieces. Put the pieces into a microwave-safe bowl, and nuke at medium-low level for 3 minutes. Take out, stir and nuke for an additional 2 minutes. By this time the chocolate should be melted; if not, nuke for additional minute or so - don’t overdo it or your chocolate will turn grainy and icky. Stir well.

Add the butter in pieces to the warm chocolate and stir very well - it should be smooth and glossy. Add the coffee granules and the almond-spice mix. Keep warm.

In a clean, totally dry bowl, mix together the egg whites and pinch of salt. Whip until it forms soft peaks (an electric mixer is a very good thing to have for this task).

Add about 1/3rrd of the whipped egg white into the chocolate-butter mixture, to lighten it. Now, add the dry mixture by the tablespoon or two to the wet mixture, folding it in - don’t overmix or your cake will be a bit tough. Fold in the rest of the egg whites gently (if the batter is a bit streaky it’s fine).

Fill the cupcake cups about 2/3-rds full with the batter, using two spoons - it’s about 1 very heaped tablespoon per cup. (Use one spoon for scooping, and the other one for sliding the batter off the first spoon.)

Put in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. The cake should rise a bit, and still look a bit moist.

While the cupcakes are still warm, drizzle each with a teaspoonful of mocca liqueur or rum. Let cool to room temperature.

In the meantime, make the ganache. Melt the chocolate as described before, and beat in the room temperature butter into the warm chocolate. Add the salt, cayenne pepper and liqeur, and beat very well. Put it in the refrigerator to firm up a bit.

When the cupcakes are cool, spoon on the ganache. Put the cupcakes in the refrigerater until the ganache is firm.

Notes

To make ahead, make the cupcakes, and spoon on the ganache about 1/2 hour before serving. Be sure to serve at room temperature or warmer (not cold straight out of the fridge).

Alternatively, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of heavy cream and/or liqueur to the ganache to make turn it into chocolate sauce.Pour the warm sauce over warm cupcakes (taken out of their cups, and nuked for 1 minute in a tucked in plastic bag in the microwave), and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

To make these kid-friendly, omit the liqueur.