What good are friends?

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Incidentally, I make icecream, though I haven't made this one.

Cheers,
Marc

I'll have to come to you for ideas on where I'm going wrong with my recipe - the last one I did failed to churn properly in the maker and hence the texture was too crystalline...

I don't use dairy, nor eggs, but that's no real excuse...

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

You're quite an epicurian Marc. Massimo's gelati look pretty imaginative, he must love gawking at his bewildered clients' faces

The Chocolate Chilli icecream was from The Spirit House restaurant, as part of the chocolate tasting plate for two. Massimo's tends to be a little more conventional, sticking to things like cinnamon, pistachio, white chocolate, creme caramel, etc. in their icecreams, and mango, lychee, lime, et cetera in sorbets. There's obviously lots more, and generally marginally outside of convention, but they're all made on-site from fresh ingredients (well, mostly on-site - I know that some of the caramel that he puts in the icecream he makes at home, across the road, because I can smell it...oh, boy, can I smell it!).

Chocolate and chili are truly a classic pair. There are quite a few chocolatiers around here who concoct fabulous mixes of the two.

A chocolatier that used to be in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney did bitter chocolate-coated little birdseye chillis as part of her range. It gave you a perfect understanding of how the partnership was meant to be. Remind me, if I'm ever in your neighbourhood, to ask directions to your chocolatiers.

And what about the traditional chocolate chicken pot.

I haven't had that, though at Marque (again in Sydney, just a 100m walk from where I lived) we had a degustation that included a fillet of duck wrapped in a chocolate-flavoured, flaky pastry with a chocolate-based jus (unsweetened, obviously). It was quite tasty.

We have a beer festival around here also, last time I had a chili beer, it had a two inch chili pepper at the bottom of the bottle. Useless to say that I chose that one to be the last taste test of the day.

There's a mob called "Disaster Bay Chillies" down the south coast of New South Wales that do a Hot Chilli Wine (no grapes; chillies). It has a really ripe, fruity flavour, very sweet, best taken from a liqueur glass...and then, just as you let is pass the back of your throat, it gives you a lively kick in the cockles and warms you through. Definitely, like you say, a last thing drink though.

Cheers,
Marc