Recipe Index

Now is the winter of our discontent 
made glorious summer by this son of York.

In the opening soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Richard III, the doomed future king utters some of the English language’s most famous lines. As he muses upon his family’s recent seizure of the English crown, the sweetness of victory quickly curdles into bitterness.

It was in Barcelona that I first tasted a hot chocolate so outrageous in its richness that not even Superman would have been able to finish it, much less claim to be fulfilled. Well, either Superman or a Spaniard raised to understand the complexity and thickness of this local favourite. Often it’s not a drink, but a dipping partner for churros: dip, chew, dip, chew, dip, chew.

The War Memorial’s website includes several recipes for what its describes as an “army biscuit” or “Anzac wafer or Anzac tile”. More than likely, the biscuit was in production well before Anzac Day, as a “long shelf-life, hard tack biscuit…substitute for bread.” The original biscuits were “very, very hard. Some soldiers preferred to grind them up and eat (them) as porridge.”

Salted chocolate caramel is at the top of almost everyone’s list of guilty pleasures. Why is it such a happy partnership? Salt can enhance our perceptions of sweet flavors, and, as humans, we’re programmed to crave salt. So be it if we satiate our yearnings with this delicious Thermomix-made fudge.