December 16, 2010

Rain, rain, rain, more rain and then some rain. It poured down all day. Cats and dogs do not cover this kind of weather. This was hippos and elephants pouring down.

The house we are renting is a Brazilian beach house. On Friday, when we had a relatively cold day (15 C, 60 F, brrrr), we could feel that the house was not insulated in any way. The wind came right through the walls and we were quite cold. The construction is basically a single layer of planks. Today the water started to leak in at one place, just as we were about to leave the house and head for Dauro and Laura´s home. The water was dripping fast and straight down on and into the cupboard I used to store the laptops and other electronics.

Panic!

We found the source upstairs, by one of the windows. The water was running over a window post before dripping on the floor. Perfect, we could intercept the flow with a bucket.

I used the opportunity to photograph a drop building up and falling. 1-2-3:

 

We contacted the owners who live across the street, and they fixed the leakage with some silicone gel.

We headed over to our friends´s place to do some home schooling. Here´s Adrian and Viktor during a “recess.”

Branquito seemed to like getting company and was particularly fond of Iseline. On several of the days we were there he came over to her and fell asleep on her lap.

So, I guess you want to know the secret to making perfect mousse now? Have you been studying the classic recipe? Good.

OK, time to tell the world the secret the French have kept hidden for centuries. I predict that my publishing of this today will fundamentally change the power balance in the world. The French have lost so much. Their empire, the status of French as a world language, their status as a financial and military superpower,  their status as a maker of the world´s best wine (Caifornian wines now regularly win blind-test competitions in Paris), status as the world´s best chefs (Norway routinely wins the Bocus d´or). etc, etc, All they have left is dessert supremacy, and they are desperately clinging on to it.

The secret my friend, the missing piece of information, is the temperature of the chocolate! Yes, they tell you to melt the chocolate and then mix in the yolks. Nowhere do they tell you that the high temperature of recently melted chocolate will ruin the hardening capability of the yolks. When I finally noticed while watching my sister-in-law make mousse I was dumbstruck. When I asked her why this was not mentioned in the recipe she claimed “but that is obvious.” They claim it is obvious, but all their recipes use lots of text to talk about the fragile mixing of the whites, which is just a decoy. Nowhere have I seen a single sentence about the temperature of the chocolate. This is clearly a French conspiracy!

The trick, people, is to cool the chocolate until it almost stiffens again and only then mix in the yolks!

If you want to become a mousse master I will now give you the recipe as it should have been published by the French. Today I share with you the essence of over 20 years of hard work.

Holy Chocolate Mousse (4 portions)

Ingredients:

8 eggs

240 grams of sweet dark baking chocolate

(40-60% cocoa, 55% works best. My favorite: Cote d´Or “Noir de Noir” 55%. Norwegian “Dronning” works)

2 tablespoons of cognac (anything from VS quality and up will do)

1 teaspoon finely grated orange peel

1 pinch of salt

Method:

Make sure the eggs are at room temperature. Take them out of the fridge in the morning if you are making Holy Chocolate Mousse in the evening. If you only have cold eggs, do not despair. Fill the sink with warm (not hot!!!) water and put the eggs in. In about 10 minutes they will have room temperature. If you do this, make sure to dry the eggs off before separating, so you do not mix water into the Holy Chocolate Mousse later on.

Make sure you have enough room in the refrigerator for the individual servings of finished Holy Chocolate Mousse. You must clear enough space in the refrigerator before starting, since you need to get the Holy Chocolate Mousse into the refrigerator as soon as possible when it is finished.

Now melt the chocolate. Since it needs to be cooled again it is time-wise the bottleneck of the process. If you have a cermaic stove or an induction stove, with a very low minimum setting, you can melt it directly in a kettle. If not, use a hot water bath, putting one kettle inside another kettle with hot water. Do not microwave, you risk burning the chocolate and ruining the taste. Be careful with water. A single drop of water in melted chocolate will make it stiffen prematurely.

Next, finely grate the peel of an orange. Most cheese graters have a “fine” option. The best is organic untreated oranges, otherwise rinse thoroughly before grating. Make sure you get a ripe, nice, deep orange orange. Only grate the surface of the orange. All your grated orange peel powder should be nice and deep orange. Leave the white stuff on the orange.

Put the cognac in a small glass and mix in the grated orange peel. Make sure all the peel is covered in cognac. The idea here is that the alcohol will dissolve all the yummy tasty orangey stuff. You are basically making home made Grand Marnier.

Separate the eggs into whites and yolks. Make sure the bowl you use for the whites is fat-free. Fat will render your whites useless as they will not stiffen well enough. Do not, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT, get any yolk inside the bowl with the whites. They will not stiffen well enough if this happens. If you still spill some yolk, fear not. Normally all traces of yolk can be removed with a spoon, if you are careful.

Once the chocolate has melted completely (not a lump in sight), pour a little cold water into the sink, and put the kettle in the water. Again, be careful and do not spill the slightest amount of water into the chocolate. Stir from time to time, so the chocolate does not stiffen at the bottom. This is only a time saver and can be risky as you must survey the kettle at all times. If the chocolate gets too cold it will stiffen and you have to start all over. If you wish, you can also just let the kettle cool without using cold water. It just takes longer.

Feel the temperature of the chocolate by sticking the little finger of your right hand (left, if you are left-handed) into the chocolate. Lick off the chocolate in a slow, sensual fashion (this is known as the Holy Chocolate degustation ritual). Check regularly. When you do not feel the heat of the chocolate as you put your finger in, it will be ready. It should hold about 28 degrees C (82 F) at this point and it should all still be liquid.

Your orange peel should be well infused into the cognac at this point. Pour the cognac/orange mixture into the yolks. Pour all of this into the chocolate and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon, or with the manual power-mixing tool of your choice. Be quick, aggressive and firm. If you are not fast enough, and mix hard enough, your chocolate will become lumpy. This is not necessarily a catastrophe though, as long as there is not an abundance of lumps. In fact, some moussetafarian priests even prefer their Holy Chocolate Mousse this way.

Once you have finished the mixing, and avoided spilling cognac and yolks all over your kitchen, observe the surface of the chocolate mixture. If it is all shiny and bright, like a newly polished car, then your chocolate was cool enough. If it is pale and matte, your chocolate was too hot when you mixed in the yolks, and you have failed completely. Please eat the chocolate mixture and start all over.

OK. Now we are ready for the whites. Throw a pinch of salt in your whites and beat them to death, and then some, with an electric mixer. I have found that a good old Kitchenaid mixer gives very good results. Make sure the whites become as stiff as possible. You will see the pattern made by the mixer at the surface of the whtes becoming increasingly distinct as they stiffen. With practice you will be able to see from that pattern when they are stiff enough.

IMPORTANT: If you are making more than 4 portions, then never beat more than 8 whites at a time. If you do, the mixture will prematurily collpase under its own weight. Instead make several batches of whites. When you do this, make sure you have no delays between the batches, and make sure you do not start mixing any whites with the chocolate until all whites have been beaten. Otherwise the whites will start to turn liquid and you will get a liquid residue at the bottom of your Holy Chocolate Mousse. Having liquid at the bottom of Holy Chocolate Mousse is a disgrace and is considered one of the worst sins of Holy Chocolate Moussetafarianism. I self-flagellate 40 times on the rare occasions when this happens.

We´re getting closer.

Make sure you have a large enough container to hold the final coming together of the Holy Chocolate Mousse. First, mix a few tablespoonfulls of whites into the chocolate mix to make it a bit more liquid. You can mix as hard as you wish. Next, pour the mix into the large container. Mix in one third of the whites. Do not stir (nor shake, for that matter) but fold in by using a very large wooden or plastic spoon. You can mix by making back and forth movements, with the thin side of the spoon in the moving direction, as long as you do not stir. Most people think this stage is the most fragile. This is not true, and the reason for this delusion has been untrue wicked rumors put out by the French. You can mix rather violently and still get good Holy Chocolate Mousse. Remember, the secret is the temperature of the chocolate. Still, you do not need to overdo the mixing. There is no need to be violent against the Holy Chocolate Mousse, unless you need to.

Mix in the remaining 2/3 of the whites. The point with mixing in two rounds is that the mixture will get more liquid as you mix in the first 1/3. This way the second 2/3 will take less of a beating, so to speak, and lower the chances of the whites collapsing into a liquid,

Once the lumps of whites have been assimilated into the Holy Chocolate Mousse, and this miracle of the culinary world has materialized before your very eyes, you must treat it with the utmost respect.

The viscosity (how liquid it is) of the mousse can vary greatly at this stage, depending on the cocoa butter content of your chocolate. Sometimes it is almost as thick as whipped cream, other times it can be as floating as egg liqueur. Do not despair, if you have cooled the chocolate correctly before mixing in the yolks, it will readily stiffen in the refrigerator.

You have little time now, since the liquifying process of the whites has already started. Put the Holy Chocolate Mousse into 4 dessert bowls to make the 4 individual portions. I normally use a soup serving utensil for this part. You may choose to put the Holy Chocolate Mousse into a large bowl, but this will increase the danger of liquid disgrace, because the bottom Holy Chocolate Mousse will suffer from the weight of the top Holy Chocolate Mousse.

As soon as you have put the Holy Chocolate Mousse into the bowls, cover immediately with thin plastic film, and put them in the refrigerator without delay. Wait at least 5 hours before you consume the Holy Chocolate Mousse. Best results are obtained by waiting until the next day.

Remember that Holy Chocolate Mousse contains raw eggs, so it will not keep for very long. You should not consume Holy Chocolate Mousse which is older than 2 days. Leaving Holy Chocolate Mousse to rot in the refrigerator is the cardinal sin of a moussetafarian. Mousse must be consumed in time, for it is its destiny.

There you have it: The new testament of Holy Chocolate Mousse.

Now go out there and multiply, populate the land, and make much Holy Chocolate Mousse.

Eirik

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P.S. If you do make Holy Chocolate Mousse, please let me know about it and tell me about your experience, preferably in a comment to this blog entry. I am always looking for more input in my eternal quest for the perfect mousse.