Notes on chocolate: a date with Walthamstow’s master chocolatier
This is a story about me and a man in Walthamstow, northeast London. The man just happened to be master chocolatier Paul A Young and I went to his house to make chocolate. Largely, this involved me talking a lot while Paul did all the work of melting, tempering and pouring the chocolate into moulds. But I’m going to use the royal we.
We melted some Valrhona chocolate and tempered it all over Paul’s marble counter top, and then we poured it into some splendid ‘Mars bar’ moulds (from Chocolate World). These moulds are so nostalgic they can’t fail to bring joy, I’m going to buy some and experiment with different fillings (caramel/biscuit/salted peanuts to start); these would make delicious little ‘desserts’ for when people come round. We ‘painted’ ours with metallic powder (from Keylink), but you don’t have to.
We then filled them with a mixture of water ganache, feuilletine, which we spent many a minute trying to pronounce, let alone spell, and some Proper Nutty peanut butter. Then more chocolate to cap it. Then in the fridge for 15 minutes while we chatted about Paul’s past as a pastry chef, and chocolate we like. And then the bars were ready and we shared one and for a brief moment everything was right with the world, because they were truly wonderful. He packed them up for me as well as two brownies (Paul makes the best brownies ever) and I ate the last bar writing this column because I stay in character, just like Succession’s Jeremy Strong.
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