Chocolate Rave

Some foods work together better than others.  This is a simple idea, but there are wide spaces for enormous variations.  The most unlikely combinations can become marvelous discoveries, when prepared in just the right way, and usually fantastic complimentary flavors can easily be made into something less than pleasing when something is off just a bit.  It is very much like tires to roads, where the agreements between the chemicals in each can cause a positive reaction or a negative one. Toyo tires don’t take to the streets so well out of mere coincidence, but by design.

This is where food becomes something altogether all-encompassing, because no matter how juicy the metaphors are in cooking, there is nothing else that can compare in quite the same way.  Adding chocolate to a dish can be very much like a better motor oil in an engine, but looking for new wheels at performanceplustire.com won’t have the same visceral experience as working with the ingredients to see how they might behave this time.  Cars are predictable in a way that food is not.

It isn’t difficult to see why there are so many metaphors for love when it comes to food, and this is particularly the case with chocolate.  As Laurie Esquivel made perfectly evident in her description of champandongo, it’s not necessarily the addition of chocolate that suddenly makes the meal stand out, as if it were a carefully considered afterthought.  The meal is made for the chocolate, and all the moments leading up to the addition were a preparation and a waiting, and it is this waiting that makes it so entirely relatable to love.  Tires work with pavement instantly, but chocolate tends to come on slowly, and love works on all the senses in ways that chocolate can only approximate.  It is a geometrically-increasing complexity.

But while there may be more metaphors for chocolate and love, it’s easier to find evidence of car tires in films than chocolate in movies.  The film world is more literal than metaphorical these days.  A car, car tires, things of the road, are more solid and dependable, and less ambiguous.  A vehicle can be a metaphor for something else, but this is usually obvious, with layers that reach fairly shallow depths.  But there are places where rich layers can find themselves, films where those who love metaphor and love equally can find reflections, and recipes that keep the mouth watering and waiting, enough like a metaphor for chocolate to count as the same thing.

With any kind of delicacy, the appeal works on a number of sensory levels.  Although there certainly are many kinds of food that are absolutely tantalizing, even though they have a very bland color, this is generally the exception rather than the rule.  Delicious things tend to also look delicious (just as pretty flowers tend to smell pretty).  It may be up for debate just how much of this is a human construction.  People can wonder whether the appearance makes the association with flavor, or whether there is a tendency in nature to make gorgeous appearances for attractive things, but there’s no question that the association is there.  So it is with chocolate.

The appearance of a well-made piece of chocolate is usually described as smooth, swirly, and shiny.  These are the qualities that make it inviting for connoisseurs (and let’s face it, everyone should be allowed into this particular connoisseur club).  In terms of color, chocolate, like wine and cigars, can have many shades and degrees, because it runs the spectrum from white to light to darker brown to black.  One might imagine, then, on a purely analytical level, that in between white and black there would be room for grey.  But grey is one of the least appetizing colors for any food or drink, and in this case, nature may not be entirely honest.  The color of grey in chocolate does not mean that the flavor is bad.

When chocolate turns grey, it’s not the sign of bad construction or improper creation at all, but of improper storage.  The grey can be one of two things, usually, either sugar bloom or fat bloom.  This means that the chocolate was stored at temperatures that were too high, or too low, and this caused a chemical reaction in which the ingredients started to separate.  They’re still tasty, however, and if one is eating the whole piece anyway (and with chocolate, one certainly should), it will retain its incredible flavor.  Turning grey is not necessarily the signs of a rank amateur in terms of storage, either.  It should be stored at temperatures between 60-68 degrees fahrenheit and between 50-60% humidity, and that’s not a very wide range.  It’s easy to see how just a touch in any other direction could affect the look of the delicacy, but rest assured that nature is hiding her creamy sweetness somewhere in the grey area.

It’s always a pleasure to come to Singapore and see what might be new and interesting in the trends.  It’s a radically forward-looking city, or rather city-state, with a unique openness to ideas from the internationally community at large.  These ideas can take on many forms, and crop up in many different sectors of life and the way people live here.  Anywhere from painting to music to photography and fashion, there is a very rich and creative atmosphere here.  The general population seems built for making or admiring creative works in the world, and although it hasn’t completely landed as one of the premiere places for style and culture, it’s close to being there, and everyone will benefit.

In this regard, then, it’s an even greater pleasure to be in Singapore, enjoying an evening at an Italian restaurant, where there is always something delicious on the menu.  With its history as a major trading port, there is a fantastic degree of access to fresh ingredients from all over the world.  Italian food is no exception, and it’s one of the most succulent styles of cooking to come from the contemporary city-state of Singapore.  There is also a great supply of fresh seafood always at the ready, making some of the traditional fish recipes from Italy shine with a great sense of aplomb and savory splendor.

Italian style has always been at the forefront in fashion, not only in European culture, but all over the world.  It seems fitting then that Italian fashion would have a place here.  In Singapore, taste really is very important, and rather exquisite, too.  This is a good place to visit to catch up on the latest styles and fashions, not only in Asia, but from everywhere in the world, because it is a culture that borders many different worlds, and they all seem to come together here.  The particular moments in time when things merge are spectacular, and unusual here because they are common.