Chocolate Special The Best Dishes Ever

Chocoholics beware,

because the Best Dishes Ever today are all about your big weakness.

We have brought together some of telly's top chefs

and are serving up a family-sized slab of chocolate recipes

that will get your mouth watering.

There are a few surprises in this mix,

but we're starting with an absolute classic from France.

Here's Raymond Blanc with his chocolate mousse.

-RAYMOND:

-So, I'm going to cook the simplest

chocolate mousse in the world

and probably one of the best, as well.

And it's Maman Blanc, my mother's recipe.

All what you have,

three ingredients.

170g maximum of chocolate,

about 20g of sugar

and seven egg whites.

You can buy a good chocolate.

It is actually the quality of the chocolate

which is very, very important

because, to me, gastronomy starts from here.

If you have a great chocolate,

you'll have a great chocolate mousse.

Unless you decide to murder it.

I will do the bain-marie here.

No boil, just gentle simmer, just on the simmering pot.

Just leave it to melt down of its own accord.

It's not a primadonna.

Occasionally, you can stir it, should you wish.

I've got my beautiful eggs here. They are organic.

I'm only going to use the egg white.

If you want to make sure you don't have any trace of egg yolk,

because egg yolk is fat, and the white hates fat.

You will actually lose about one-fifth of your lift

if you have any fat in here.

Don't worry. Don't worry about that.

Just scoop it out a bit. No problem.

OK. Voila.

And I'm going to add a little bit of my lemon juice to my white.

It will bring the egg white together.

I can beat it as long as I want to. It will not separate.

-NARRATOR:

-Now it's time to get going with a little light whipping.

Years ago, I was a masochist, but now...

-HE LAUGHS

-..I've learnt a few lessons.

I learned to economise myself.

So, what I want here, billions of bubbles of air as big

as possible, so my mousse is as light as possible.

When the eggs start to foam, add 40g of caster sugar.

What a machine. Oh!

Oh, mon Dieu!

Now, is it ready? No. See, it's a bit too soupy.

Oh, I hate this thing. I prefer a whisk.

Voila.

HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

OK, I've got my melted chocolate.

So, you place one-third of your egg white,

but then work fast, very fast.

The risk is if you are putting the cold egg white

into the warm chocolate, that will seize up

and you'll have lots of solid pieces into your chocolate.

Having lightened the chocolate with a third of the egg whites,

carefully fold in the remainder.

It's a nice movement, OK.

Look at my movement. I take it like that and I turn around.

Up underneath, voila.

Just pour it in.

The mousse then needs to go straight into the fridge to

cool for two hours.

That's it, it's as simple as that.

It should take, for any cook, about 10 minutes of your life.

I think it's worth it. Most worth it.

OK, I promised a few surprises and this is the first one.

Not something you would expect to come by in a show

about chocolate, but Nigella Lawson is always up for something

a bit different, and this is certainly that.

Right now, I'm after these dark beauties.

I haven't got into the nether reaches of wholemeal here.

The reason these fusilli are dark

is because they are made with cocoa.

You know there are days when you get back from work and you can't

make up your mind whether you need chocolate for supper or pasta.

Why not combine the two?

In go the fusilli.

I'm going to be full and frank.

This is chocolate pasta with a dark butterscotch and pecan sauce.

I want a bit of salt for the water.

Now, actually, this is a pudding pasta.

But I still want the salt because when there's sweet,

I love a salty edge.

I'm toasting some pecans.

When I say toast, I don't need them to colour.

I just want to get a bit of heat under them

until their scent wafts up to me.

And I am fully aware that pudding pasta sounds

and is inauthentically Italian, but in my defence, Milord,

the inspiration and, indeed, the recipe for this

comes from Anna Del Conte

who is the most distinguished Italian food writer around.

So, I'm going to tip these pecans out

and carry on with the butterscotch sauce straight into this pan.

I want some butter.

BUTTER SIZZLES

And some dark brown sugar.

This is a dark butterscotch sauce.

It's a very easy sauce to make, which is good

because the days you need to eat this are the days

you don't have the energy to do anything complicated.

This really needs just to bubble up and as you can see now,

I have a syrupy seething sauce.

Into that I am going to pour some cream.

That's what turns it, really, I suppose,

from toffee into butterscotch.

Back in with the pecans.

Leave a few out for now.

This can bubble up while I test the pasta.

Mm.

Very good.

And here we go.

Now, the pasta goes straight into the pan of sauce.

A bit of a stir.

This is instant gratification of a very profound kind.

And now, the pleasure is all mine.

There are times when you just need to dive in to the dolce.

Dessert.

This does it all for me.

Easy to cook...

all too easy to eat.

Now, a more conventional use of chocolate.

But that doesn't mean this recipe isn't extraordinary.

In fact, this Italian chocolate pudding is

so good that it makes those greedy Italians, Antonio and Gennaro,

get all gooey about each other.

Tonight, I'm going to try

to seduce you.

ANTONIO LAUGHS

You seducing me?!

You are mad in the head!

I'm going to make hot amaretti chocolate pudding.

-Which you'll love it.

-Try!

-Look at me.

-Yeah.

-Inside the pot here...

-Yes.

-..I'm going to put

-two tablespoons of sugar.

-Yes.

Then one tablespoon of flour.

-Good?

-So far.

-And I have here...

-Oh, yes.

-Smell.

-Vanilla. The proper vanilla.

But did you take the seeds out of that?

-Are you making or am I...?

-No, no, no, no.

-Just enjoy yourself.

-OK, OK.

-Stay there. That's it.

-I enjoy myself.

Inside here is the seeds of love. The lot.

-What has got into you today?

-I have half a litre of milk.

-Yes.

-Which I am going to put just to start, just a little bit.

-Yes.

Stir it.

The reason why I do this, because I don't want my chocolate

amaretti pudding to get lumpy.

-Then I will put the rest of the milk inside.

-Yes.

Now, two shots of Amaretto liqueur.

That's really a potion.

-A love potion.

-A love potion.

One...

and two.

It's about 80ml inside. Keep stirring.

I am very curious to see how you can let that thicken with

a little bit of flour...

-Of course it will.

-..and milk.

-Why you never trust me?

You know what, I can never seduce you

-because you're already...

-No, you can't!

..we already argue before we seduce you. But look, mate...

You can't. Either sitting or not sitting, you can't.

Stir them around.

Remember, we never throw anything away to Italy. We use everything.

-Do want to put it for me? Go.

-Oh, thank you.

There you are. Gentle.

Such a gent. And you keep stirring.

And then out of the blue, it starts to get thicker and thicker.

-Out of the dark, actually. Yes.

-Out of the dark.

Such a romantic evening.

Romantic for you, Gennaro, but certainly not for me.

Inside now, I will put 100g of plain chocolate.

Be very careful because...

You can cut your fingers.

-Chocolate can be very...

-Hard.

You want to try to help me. You can't.

Very hard work to seduce somebody.

Come on! Get on with it!

Did you ever make this for a woman?

-Yes, I have.

-For the seduction.

-Yes, I have.

-And what happened?

-She loved it.

Slowly we are melting.

-And now I am going to add 50g...

-Of butter.

-Of butter.

And what does the butter do here?

The butter will silken it, the Amaretto gives a lovely flavour,

the vanilla is inside, plus the seed inside.

Can you do this for me?

It's done.

Now, I remove the vanilla pod. Just I want to taste it.

We are the two greedy chefs, but I know who is more greedy than me.

HE LAUGHS

And it's ready now.

It is ready.

And you want to seduce me with that?

You wait and you taste it.

And I'm going to crumble the amaretti biscuit on top.

My goodness, you're strong.

-It start working.

-What did I say?

It started working!

Just try and tell me. Look at me first.

Abracadabra.

So silly man.

Not bad yourself.

Come on, tell me the truth.

It is a fantastic chocolate.

I appreciate your intention, you remain a good friend,

but I can't be seduced by that.

Let me seduce you properly now. Are you ready?

Gennaro, go and seduce somebody else.

That's what I can tell you.

HE LAUGHS

OWL HOOTS

Now, something everyone will be familiar with.

You can buy them in every bakery in the land,

but home-made is always best.

So pay attention to the Hairy Bikers' recipe

for the fabulous chocolate brownies.

Beloved by children, pensioners, rich and poor alike.

Everybody loves a brownie

and we are using white chocolate,

as well as dark chocolate.

If we'd used all white chocolate, it would, in fact, be a whitie.

It would be a whitie.

Now, what we're going to do, we're going to melt some butter in a pan.

Because as you well know, brownies are rather calorific,

and it's a bit of a treat for us, seeing as we have lost

a few pounds, shed a bit of a timber.

-I've got four eggs in a bowl.

-Ooh, you haven't.

-I'm going to whip 'em.

-You're not.

I'm going to whip these eggs until they nice.

-Did you know...

-Oh, God!

..it is thought that the brownie was first made

at the Chicago Palmer Hotel.

And it was the proprietor's wife, a Mrs Bertha Palmer...

Not Bertha!

-And she created the brownie for a Columbian exposition.

-Really?

Because it was full of Columbian ladies

and she wanted chef to make something that wasn't

as big as a cake, that was more delicate,

that could be eaten in the hand

or, indeed, packed in a Columbian exhibition's lady's lunchbox.

So they say the brownie was born then.

And, actually, the Chicago Palmer Hotel exists to this day

and one of their favourite things they serve

is a version of the brownie, but these days

it's got more chocolate and is covered in apricot jam.

I have a baking tray here, or a brownie tin.

A brownie tin is like a baking tray with high sides.

-Now, we're going to liberally butter this.

-Oh, butter it, Dave.

-Butter it.

-You don't want your brownie to get stuck.

And there is nothing worse, ladies and gentlemen, than a stuck brownie.

'Once the brick of butter has melted

'add 170g of brown sugar

'and then the same of white caster sugar.'

There's no way you're going to get a low-fat brownie

-that tastes good, are you?

-No.

-It's a sweet little number, this.

-Oh, aye.

Well, chocolate, you know, it's an aphrodisiac.

-It puts it in your pip, chocolate?

-Chocolate does, yes.

-Of course it does because it releases endorphins.

-Endorphins.

-Yes.

-Endorphins are the things that make you happy.

But, you know, after Bertha Palmer invented the brownie in 1893,

the popularity spread massively due to the GIs in World War II.

-Really?

-Spreading brownies all over the world.

-They would, wouldn't they?

-Mmm.

-They were...

-There was a great saying about GIs, wasn't there?

-Mmm.

-BOTH:

-Overpaid...

-Oversexed.

-And over here.

My mother went out with a GI at one point.

-Broke her heart, didn't he?

-He did.

-Nasty man.

-Nasty.

'But there's nothing nasty about this sweet treat.

'Once cool, add the sugar and butter mix to the eggs.'

And just make sure that you're stirring all the time

to make sure that it's well-combined.

Look, you can see what's happening now

is it's kind of like a toffee consistency.

Kind of really kind of melty and lovely.

Kingy, do you remember in Memphis, we went to Piggly Wigglys,

the world's first supermarket?

-Oh, yes.

-And it's amazing.

The kind of choice.

Also, the fella at Piggly Wigglys invented the Keedoozle.

The Keedoozle was a thing where, like, little boxes

where you wanted a sandwich,

you put your money and got it.

-That was called a Keedoozle.

-Yeah.

-That was American, that spread over here and all.

-It did.

Didn't work very well, though,

-cos it kept breaking down, didn't it?

-It did.

And there's nothing worse than a broken down Keedoozle.

That was a famous record by George Formby.

HE IMITATES GEORGE FORMBY

# There's nothing worse than a broken Keedoozle. #

We've to sieve the flour and the cocoa.

I had...

I had a posh girlfriend once who used to say...

-POSH ACCENT:

-..cocoa.

-Cocoa.

-It's cocoa.

-It is cocoa.

Look at that. It's quite pretty, isn't it?

It is trippy, isn't it?

The only lumps in this brownie are going to be pecan nuts,

chocolate and sour cherries.

Oh, don't you just.

Remember, use cocoa, not drinking chocolate.

Lots of people make that mistake.

They try and make chocolate cake with drinking chocolate

and it shouldn't, it should be cocoa.

Roy Rogers!

Trigger!

Hi Ho Silver, away!

That was something we got big-time when we were kids from America,

wasn't it? Cowboy films.

Oh, I loved them. Loved them.

HUMS WESTERN FILM MUSIC

-Yeah.

-Brilliant.

Chocolate.

Now, these chocolate brownies, they are full of chunky chocolate chips,

and it's a mixture of white chocolate and dark chocolate.

Basically, we want to roughly hew them into chunks.

So you want proper chunks. You want a treat.

And random chip chunks. Lovely.

And while Dave's chopping his chocolate,

I'm just going to cut through some nice pecans.

Just chop them through.

So, your pecan nuts go into the batter.

-We're not shy on chocolate in these, are we?

-No.

It's important that that is cold

because you don't want the chocolate to melt.

You want to keep its integrity, don't you?

You want to have those lovely bites and bits of chocolate.

There's that much fat in this that they will stay

fresh for about three days.

But get real, ain't no way they're going to last for three days!

-Not a chance.

-You're going to have a frenzy on.

'Add the chocolate chunks to join the pecan nuts and stir in.'

'Now add 70g of chopped sour cherries.'

-Kingy.

-What?

-Sour cherries are a very interesting ingredient.

-Oh, are they?

-Yes, they are. They are.

They've been around since the Romans

introduced them in the first century AD

and they were popularised during the time of Henry VIII.

By the time 1640 came,

there were more than 22 registered growers of sour cherries in Kent.

So much so, the American colonists in Massachusetts,

the first sour cherry that they planted was called the Kentish Red.

-You don't say?

-Yeah, so, we're giving all the time.

-We are.

'And the giving continues. To your greased brownie tin, add the mix.

'And don't worry, Si, I'll take care of the washing up.'

What we're going to do is just make sure that the batter...

Dave Myers! Stop that.

..is pushed right into the corners.

And pop your tray of brownies into a preheated oven,

170 degrees Celsius for a fan oven,

for between 30 and 35 minutes

and they will be risen up and gorgeous.

HE WHISTLES THE AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM

Right, Kingy, let's have a state off.

-Texas.

-Utah.

-New York state.

-Kansas.

-Tennessee.

-Massachusetts.

-Mississippi.

-Louisiana.

-Washington.

-Michigan.

-Oregon.

-Ohio.

-Alaska.

Yeah, good one. New Mexico.

-California.

-Nevada.

-Hawaii.

-Florida.

-Maine.

-Nebraska.

-South Dakota.

-North Dakota.

-Tennessee.

-Kentucky.

Minnesota.

'And once you've reached all 50 of them,

'it's time for a state-of-the-art brownie.'

-Ooh!

-It's risen.

-Ooh! Look at that.

-Get in.

-That's it. Changed colour, hasn't it?

-It has, mate. Yeah.

The thing is, it's bound to be liquid

-because all the chocolate that's in it will be molten.

-Oh, yes.

'20 minutes of self-control letting this slab of brownie to cool

'and your reward will be this.'

-Oh.

-It's a good cutter.

It's a lovely cutter.

-Ooh, the chocolate's still moist, still melting.

-Oh, it's gorgeous.

It should be a great one to keep in the fridge, this.

And that chocolate's going to be crispy.

There was a lot of chocolate, a lot of stuff in there.

But there's a lot of slices

and you're not going to be able to eat many.

-Shall we?

-Oh, yes.

It's sticky. It's unctuous.

Still a bit warm, which has pleasure in itself.

Pecan nuts, the cherries, the chocolate.

This is definitely the Hairy Bikers' homage to that special

relationship between the UK and the US of A.

Yep.

They're the best chocolate brownies in the world.

That's a bold statement, boys. But I'm sure you're right.

Now, let's end today with something sumptuously sweet and chocolaty.

Here is James Martin showing you how to make your own home-made

marshmallows and crucially, a delicious chocolate dipping sauce.

Mmm!

Marshmallow is fundamentally

really simple to make.

It's just basically an Italian

meringue with gelatine.

And the gelatine is the really important part of this.

For this recipe I'm going to use about nine leaves of gelatine.

But what we need to do is soak this,

and the amount of water is really quite important.

We use 140ml of cold water.

And leave that to soak.

'It'll take about 10 minutes to soften up,

'so while that's happening,

'I need to get the next stage of the marshmallow mix going,

'and for that, I'm going to add 450g of sugar to 200ml of cold water.

'I'm using caster sugar, but granulated is equally as good.

'Then it just needs some glucose.'

What happens as the water boils with the sugar in it,

the water evaporates and the sugar gets hotter and actually goes beyond

boiling point and that's why we use one of these, a sugar thermometer.

It's a good thing to have in your kitchen.

What I'm looking for is 127 degrees.

To make our chocolate sauce, it really is simple.

There's different ways of doing this.

Some people use double cream,

I actually do it the much simpler way

and I think it's the better way, really,

when you've got chocolate this good, is to make a stock syrup.

And all that is is just a mixture of sugar and water.

This creates a lovely shine to your chocolate sauce.

So, a little bit of sugar

and bring this to the boil.

Then all we do now is just add the chocolate.

Now, there is a real misconception with chocolate.

And that's the higher in cocoa solids that it is,

and this is 80%, the more bitter it is.

I actually disagree with that.

It's all to do with the quality of the chocolate more than

anything else. There's too many impurities and bits and pieces

put in poor chocolate nowadays.

When you have stuff this good, it tastes fantastic.

That's why I don't really want to add any cream or

anything like that to it.

As soon as we've got our stock syrup there,

we throw in the chocolate.

Take it off the heat.

Whisk this together.

And that's your chocolate sauce.

You can see now it looks as if it's separated.

If you keep mixing it, especially when you do this off the heat,

it'll actually start to come together into a sauce,

which it's doing now.

It'll have this wonderful shine to it, as well.

Now, you can improve that shine even more

with a touch of butter.

You could, of course, put some rum, you could put whatever you wanted in

there in terms of flavouring.

A bit of whiskey in there would be lovely.

Then I can separate two egg whites into our little bowl.

Like that.

Be really careful when you're doing it.

In there, so you've got everything really ready.

Now we can start whisking up our egg whites.

'Meanwhile, my sugar, glucose and water mixture

'for the marshmallows has got to the right temperature, 127 degrees.'

Take it off the heat.

And then we throw in the gelatine.

And the water.

Whisk this up.

Now it's important you've got everything ready.

Very quickly now, you carefully

but confidently pour it on to the egg whites.

'I love these just as much today as I did when I was a kid.

'Lastly, it needs a touch of vanilla.

'And then prepare your tin by giving it a light greasing with oil.

'I am dusting it with a combination of icing sugar and then cornflour.

'The cornflour's there to dry out the outside of the meringue.

'So be generous with it.'

It's my house.

Mmm!

And then all we do is we pour this...

..into your tin.

I often think marshmallow is one of those things that people would

never attempt to do it, but when you see how easy it is to make,

people may give it a go.

Now it needs about an hour in the fridge to set.

And then what we're going to do is use this combination again

of cornflour and icing sugar on the board.

And it seems like a lot, but you will need it

because this firms up the marshmallow around the sides,

and all we do now is we just ease the sides away, really.

Oh! Look at that!

Just pop that in the cornflour.

This is one recipe that I actually wanted to do for this programme.

But my producer said, "Why do we bother?

"Why don't you just go to the shops and buy it?"

This is where rolling it in that icing sugar and cornflour is

really quite crucial because the inside of it,

the bit you've just cut, is quite sticky

so this will dry out the outside a little bit.

It's only sugar, after all.

It keeps the dentist in a job.

Lovely platter.

Who doesn't enjoy those?

They're just delicious.

Just pile them all up.

So there you have it, heaven on a plate.

Thanks for that, James.

And thanks to all our chefs

who helped with that overdose of chocolate.

Do join me for more next time.

Until then, take care now. Bye-bye.