I’ve just put the finishing touches to my newest chocolate creation for the market… umeboshi, vodka and two tone sesame (the white’s in the mix the black’s on the top) and doesn’t it look yummy! Completely at odds with the yumminess is that I think you might be able to forge my fingerprints off the one in the middle and use my identity to sneak into all the places that only I’m allowed to go to by virtue of fingerprint identification. Yeah, all of those places.

This week I’ve done a little changeup in the flavours for the market (I love how I can do that) since, although I love chili and cardamon chocolates so so so much, it really is a little dated and I can’t really justify calling it “adventurous” any more, which is what I do want my chocolates to be.

I really dislike how trends and fads hit the food industry as much as the clothing or music business. As soon as you find something awesome and new with serious cult appeal or edge or whatever you want to call it you find that everybody else is selling the same damn thing before you know it. I think saffron (Oh, and florals, but that’s been on its way for like a year now… just its really taking its time.) may well be the darling of the season for a while since both Paul A. Young and I hit on a combination with it in a ganache and Nobu have had a banana split with saffron and chocolate on their dessert menu for a good couple of months. I imagine it won’t be long before you start seeing it pop up more and more around and then by next year despite it’s incredible deliciousness people will look at it in my flavour list on the chocolate stall and think I’m some sorry ass second rate flavour man who can only catch on to things after they’ve already died.

Someone said that they simply weren’t interested in the chili and cardamon truffle last week because it was “old news”. What should that have to do with anything?! Either something’s delicious or it’s not, isn’t it?

I know I’m terribly guilty of only trying things once so that I can know what they’re like and then not really caring about them afterwards too…. but I defend my position by saying that I want to try EVERYTHING once and it’s just that I don’t happen to really like most things. No, that’s an outright lie. I like everything, but I think that almost everywhere screws almost everything up magnificently (Now I’m a liar and and arrogant loser, can you see my shining personality?). Almost always it seems there’s a right way of doing things and a popular or economical way of doing things and they just don’t coincide and once some people catch on to some other people doing something right then they do it too… only popularised or economised and ruin the thing’s PR for life. Look at what’s happened to poor old boeuf bourguignon… you can practically only eat if you pretend you’re doing it ironically or because of its oh-so-charming retro appeal thanks to the 80s (Thanks 80s) but it’s an awesome dish which you should go and cook! Ditto coriander and Thai food in ten years or so, mark my words! At least bistro food never had the appellation of “weird” that chili and chocolate at one time enjoyed, which is completely destroyed by any sort of popularity it attains. Anything that gets attention based upon it’s quirkiness is doomed to take a popularity plunge before too long. There are some things I do simply like above all others whilst doing my best to ignore anything external, but they really are few and far between and chili cardamon truffles happen to be one of those things and the fact that they’re going out of fashion and people will look at them like yesterday’s leftover tranny hookers before too long because they’ve fallen out of favour really upsets me.

Anyway, where I’m going with this is that the latest creation is me trying to give a whole great big hearty “fuck you!” to the food trends that may sweep by. I’m almost certain that pickled plums are never going to be the next big thing in terms of chocolate flavours… they’re just plain unappealing to Western palates, quite frankly it’s an awful choice of ingredient. Except that the chocolate is ridiculously delicious. The sesame rounds it out a touch and the base chocolate of Manjari really compliments it excellently with it’s sharp, short and sweet tones leading into the second round of pickled fruityness and vodka. YUM.

The only problem is… now that I’ve made I’ve just realised that I might be sitting on top of another rising trend without realising. I can’t see a glut of sour chocolate flavours appearing over the horizon just yet, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t waiting until I’ve got my back turned before launching themselves onto the stage and me in to mediocrity. I keep hearing positive things on the wind about chocolates with “raspberry notes” or “nice acidity” or whatever and everyone always thinks of zesty flavours in the Spring. Hmmmmm….. where can I go where fashion will never find me?

On a related note, I’ve always got sauerkraut in my fridge (it’s one of my unfashionable favourites) and so I think it’s high time I tried out some of the sauerkraut chocolate cake recipes that seem to be kicking around the internet before the sour chocolate fad takes off and it’ll look like I’m just jumping on the bandwagon.

Expect a recipe from me soon!