I know; all the other food columns this weekend will be telling you how to prepare the World’s Best Corned Beef and Cabbage, or Yummy Irish Stew prepared with Guinness stout. They are all about St. Patrick’s Day, and green beer, and steak and ale pies.
You won’t find any of that malarkey here at The Spy. I still shudder at the very notion of corned beef. That cooked cabbage odor haunts me lo these many years since I last smelled it, wafting up the stairway from my mother’s kitchen to my lair at the back of the house. I will NEVER cook a cabbage. I can promise you that.
Instead, we are going to share with you a deelish recipe we found in last week’s Wall Street Journal, a newspaper not known for its flights of whimsy. Power up your printers, because this is too good to be true. You will go down in your family’s annals as the sainted chocolate mousse magician. You will never be forgotten. And many thanks to Wall Street Journal writer Gail Monaghan for lighting the way to bliss!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/recipe-for-a-flawless-chocolate-mousse-1425668817
Ingredients:
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped (we used Ghiradelli semisweet chips – hooray, no chopping!)
¾ cup water
2 tablespoons instant espresso coffee granules (we used 2 teaspoons, and next time will use 1 teaspoon – I am not a big coffee fan, but the little coffee kick intensified the chocolate flavor)
4 egg yolks
Salt – just a pinch
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons Cognac (or Bourbon, use your imagination)
Note: Make some extra whipped cream for topping. You’ll be glad you did. We also splurged and bought some raspberries which are hideously expensive right now, because they probably came from deepest darkest Peru along with Paddington Bear, but they were well worth the extravagance.
Directions:
Heat the chocolate, water, coffee powder and salt in a double boiler – or in a metal bowl over a pot of just simmering water. Be careful not to scorch the chocolate! Stir the mixture frequently until the chocolate melts. Take the bowl off the heat and beat in the egg yolks – one yolk at a time. Cool the chocolate mixture in the fridge. In another bowl, whip the cream until soft peaks form. Be sure to add the Cognac. Fold the whipped cream into the cooled chocolate. Pour the mousse into cups or small bowls or wine glasses. Top with whipped cream and some raspberries.
The mousse will be very rich, so use small containers. We made the mistake of using large wine glasses, and were overwhelmed by the luxurious richness of the dense chocolate-y mousse halfway through gobbling up our desserts. We had to cover them with Saran Wrap, and store them in the refrigerator overnight. They were even better the next day, I am happy to note. Of course, we added more whipped cream and some more raspberries because we need to get our daily vegetables and fruits…
Forget the corned beef. Make Chocolate Mousse your new St. Patrick’s Day celebratory food. Its charms are so glorious that it will be equally nice for April Fool’s Day, Easter, Passover, Martha Washington’s birthday and Labor Day.
“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat
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