Anybody for hot chocolate? A Llanelli restaurant is offering the ultimate sin for any chocoholic – a chocolate curry.The invention of two brothers, who thought they would use their culinary skills to experiment with the much-loved ingredient, has become one of the best signature dishes at Moods Indian Cuisine on Station Road.

Dubbed the Indian alternative to the battered Mars bar, co-owner Mohammed Ahmed said the dish had become a talking point at the restaurant which opened six months ago.

He said: “We wanted to do something different. Chocolate is used in lots of cooking. In Mexico they use it in hot dishes, and, of course, you have the battered Mars bar so we thought we would experiment with it ourselves.”

The dish, chicken cooked with white chocolate and vanilla essence, is much like a Chicken korma - a mild Indian dish.

For 33-year-old Mohammad, and his brother Abdul Mumen, aged 25, it took a while to get the right type of chocolate to make the perfect dish.

Mohammad said: “We used various types of chocolate. We tried dark chocolate but the colouring was not right. We decided on white chocolate because it is milkier and has a better colour and texture. Abdul came up with the idea of vanilla and it just worked.”

The dish was originally on the restaurant’s takeaway menu as a request dish, but as word of mouth started to grow and the dish started to become more popular, it was put on the main menu, along with other signature dishes such as Bengal duck stir fry.

Mohammed said: “My father was in the trade for 37 years and he had never heard of a chocolate curry. It took a good few months to come up with the idea, and then we tried it out on our family and friends who were quite surprised by it. People have been coming from quite a distance to try our chocolate curry, including Carmarthenshire, Swansea and Neath. When people hear about it, they want to try it. It is different, which is what we set out to do. We wanted to break away from the old traditional image of Indian cooking and stand out from other restaurants. I did wonder what response we would have, but to date it has been very good. I feel very proud that we are the first in the area to have this dish. People are very curious about it and therefore want to try it.”

And the dish is especially popular with children.

Adbul said: “As soon as they see chocolate on the menu, they want it. It is nice to see the children eating curry rather than eating nuggets and chips.”

Eventually I got round to taking a photo (not brilliant I’m afraid) before getting down to the serious business of eating it. The manufacturer’s ‘Ko-Koa’ had done a good job with the point of sale material and the smaller bars were simply mounted on gold board and wrapped in cellophane so that you could see exactly what you were getting. The bar I chose was the Marbled plain chocolate with white chocolate swirl, small size – about 3 inches square, weighing 75gms.

It was such a disappointment. The smell when I opened the packet was of vanilla, not chocolate and that should have forewarned me. Granted the cocoa solids were only 55% in the plain and 28% in the white, but there was absolutely no discernable chocolate taste at all, the overwhelming impression in your mouth was of a sweet, hard lump. The texture was smooth but you felt that you needed to chew to try and wring some flavour out of it rather than the more common experience where the chocolate flavour develops in your mouth as it melts gently on your tongue. I wondered if it might just be me having an ‘off’ day but sad to say, my daughter felt exactly the same as I did. At almost 3GBP ($6) for a small bar – we were distinctly underwhelmed by it and will not be trying it again.

No interest, chocolate eating contest cancelled

Mar 14, 2008 01:25 PM

THE CANADIAN PRESS
STELLARTON, N.S.–It sounds hard to believe, but a chocolate eating contest at a Nova Scotia museum has been cancelled because of lack of interest.

The contest was supposed to be held tomorrow at the Museum of Industry in Stellarton, N.S., the New Glasgow News reported today.

But museum spokeswoman Denise Taylor says only three contestants signed up.

Contestants were to eat as many Ferrero Rocher chocolates as they could in one minute.

Apparently, the world record is five.

Source:- TheStar.com

According to a recent article by Brian Harris which I came across on Reuters the local population are once again planting cocoa because of the increased prices that can be obtained for high quality cocoa. The added benefit that most people are happy to pay a premium for Fair Trade supplies makes it even more woth while for the farmers, who have long been taken advantage of by some of the bulk chocolate manufacturers. If the chocolate is also grown organically then there is an even higher premium which gives the farmer a fair return for his labour.

Most of the chocolate we eat comes from Africa but I have to confess to a personal fondness for the South American chocolate, the partial fermentation of the beans seems to give it an extra richness, so this is good news.

If you would like to read Brian Harris’ article, you will find it here.