There are certain combinations of ingredients that act like catnip for kids, most of them sweet: sugar and eggs, sugar and butter, butter and chocolate, chocolate and coffee. It is a given when you are a child that the bowl, the spatula, the beaters, and any other implement used to swirl, smooth, mix, or combine, will eventually fall into your greedy, grimy, sticky hands. I call my electric $10.00 hand-held mixer (circa 1988 it cost way more than! NOT) Pied Piper. No matter where my girls are, once it’s on, they appear in the kitchen Zombie-like, eyes glassed over, hands reaching for dishes with remnants of creams, glazes and frostings. They cannot be stopped until every speck has been licked off and the utensiles and bowls rest on the counter looking misleadingly clean.
But once the dessert is finished, the fascination wears off. They will eat a brownie, a small piece of cake, a narrow wedge of pie, and forget the rest, which will sit in the fridge loosing its allure with every hour that passes, unless Husband or I rescue it late at night. It took a lot of sad-looking, old, crusty, dried-out has-beens that ended in the trash can until I learned to scale down the recipe to fit our miniscule needs.
I can resist sweets. I will make them, decorate them, put them in front of the children, and go on my merry way, tasting only while preparing to make sure I am going in the right direction. But I have a soft spot for creamy desserts, puddings, panna cotte, and flans. If there is any amount of dark chocolate involved, the temptation increases tenfold. Enter chocolate mousse. It was not a surprise to me when I fell in love with it after a measly bite. I used to dip a cup in freshly made, barely sweetened whipped cream and eat it all in one breath. I kept an irregular chunk of really dark chocolate wrapped in foil in my night table drawer, and whenever I felt overwhelmed with an urge for sweets, I’d drag it out and gnaw on it for a minute, eyes closed in bliss.
I made friends with our pastry chef and once in a while he would make sure I got my fix of delectable chocolate mousse without resorting to sneaking off to the cooler and frantically gulping down tablespoon by tablespoon, forgetting for once paranoid thoughts of being forgotten and locked in overnight. My metabolism was fired up and sustained this guilty habit for several years. Once I quit working in the restaurant, I went through some serious withdrawals, and only laziness prevented me from making the mousse every week.
There were several attempts to distance myself from it since then. I made a white chocolate mousse, en elegant, luscious dessert that seduced the younger Beastie and intrigued the older one. I made pumpkin mousse for a Thanksgiving dinner, a light, billowy, orange cloud spiced up with cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom and topped with a spoonful of whipped cream. I experimented with savory varieties, serving salmon and trout mousse, pink and creamy, kissed with lemon and parsley. I loved them all, but secretly I pined for my first love.
I have recently connected on Twitter with a very nice gal from England, Sarah, who happens to be married to a guy whose father is Serbian. She has a wonderful blog, Maison Cupcake, full of beautiful recipes and photographs. A couple of months ago she started an event to celebrate her undying love for the cookery of Nigella Lawson, Forever Nigella.
I do not need a prompt to go out and buy another cookbook filled with glossy pages of well-written recipes and amazing photography. When the College Kritter moved to an apartment last Fall, I gave her several of my most cherished cookbooks to guide her on her culinary road. My shelves therefore offer a couple of empty spots and one of them should be a book by Nigella.
The theme for February is Chocolate. I did not ask for the family council to meet. I browsed and found out that Nigella makes an Instant Chocolate Mousse. She avoids raw eggs and uses mini marshmallows which melt and act as meringue. I was sold. I had only big marshmallows, but I cut them in quarters and solved the problem. I broke into pieces several squares of Ghirardelli 70% cacao Dark Chocolate, softened the butter in the microwave, mixed everything together in a stainless steal pot, and added very hot water. A lot of it! The recipe called for 50ml. I poured one cup by mistake and, realizing it, said goodbye to any idea of instant and speedy. It took more than half an hour for all the water to evaporate while the chocolate and marshmallows were slowly simmering and melting together.
But in the end, everything blended into a dark, shiny, glistening river of chocolate lava. When it cooled, I folded it into fresh whipped cream and poured it into decorative glasses, topped with more whipped cream, just slightly sweetened and scented with vanilla. I placed them lovingly into the fridge to await the right moment, just after Jeopardy! As I expected, the girls were leaning over the kitchen sink, licking the beaters, spoons, and spatulas, their faces smudged by chocolate, fingers sticky from scraping the tiniest traces from the bowl.
That was a long wait. I gave everybody a glass, keeping the smallest serving for myself. I took my time to get comfortable on the couch, twisting the glass by its stem, choosing the best starting point. When the spoon filled with mousse hit my tongue, I felt dopamine rush through my blood and wake up every cell from its dormant mousse-deprived state. I closed my eyes in bliss and thanked Nigella for allowing me to fall off the wagon.
I did not change a lot about the recipe (adding five times as much water as needed is just embarrassing) and as requested by the rules of playing, I will not post it here. It appeared in cookbook, and if you go to Nigella’s home page you can find it. There is also a of Nigella making her Instant Chocolate Mousse on YouTube. And visit Maison Cupcake for the round-up of all chocolate goodness from the blogs all over the world.
