Chocolate Tahini Bars with Puffed Rice & Crushed Almonds

A Spanish proverb says "Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick" (Las cosas claras y el chocolate espeso), which I am inclined to agree with. Chocolat....What else can I add? It's a compulsion and an addiction...but when you work the tahini paste into the smooth chocolate lava, then it's double jeopardy! :)

As I was going though the Taste of Beirut blog, I came across this mind-blowing Chocolate-Tahini Rice Bars  recipe and I went "wow", this is something I absolutely have to try ASAP.

I love anything Middle Eastern & Lebanese and I read Arabian food blogs; I am always searching for the next delicious dish, ingredient, spice or herbs. I find inspiration and I get an insight into a world I'm fascinated with.

The amazing thing about these smooth delicate chocolate bars is the flavour of halva that the tahini paste delicately imparts.

Chocolate Tahini Bars with Puffed Rice & Almonds

Type of cuisine: Middle Eastern/Fusion


Cooking time: 20 minutes/ 2 hours to set


Difficulty: very easy

 

I followed Joumana's recipe, with slight alterations, as you will notice. 

2 bars of good quality dark chocolate (preferably use dark, organic chocolate)

a handful of chopped almonds (soaked in water overnight)

40 grams of unsalted butter

2 tbs of tahini paste

4 tbs powder milk dissolved in hot milk

2 tbs Dutch dark cocoa powder

half a cup of puffed rice

sesame seeds for decoration

Method

Melt the chocolate bars, add the warm butter and blend so that the mixture becomes smooth. Add the tahini paste, the crushed almonds, and the puffed rice. Because the almonds and the puffed rice made the mixture a bit rigid, I kind of panicked, so I decided then and there to heat a little milk and dissolve powder milk and cocoa powder and add to my chocolate mix. My heart was racing, to be honest, but it all turned out fine.

I cut out a big square of wax paper onto which I spread the chocolate, using a flat knife to even out the surface. I folded the paper from the sides, down over the chocolate & I set it to cool and harden on the terrace. The weather was cold and wintry, and for the first time in many months I was glad it was so.

 :) It actually makes me smile to think about it, many years ago when I was seven or eight, my mother made ganache to decorate a cake and let it cool on a table in the garden. It was a cold October day and when she went out to get the ganache, it was all gone! The neighbour's dachshund was happily licking his muzzle after such a random and unexpected treat. My mother was furious (she doesn't take waste and damage in her stride). 

*detail* a beautiful mosaic 

dark chocolate, tahini, fresh mint & sesame

After a couple of hours I unwrapped the chocolate, cut it into chunky bars and I called Mike to come and take a first bite and it was 'wow...surreal'. Thank you, Joumana, this is the taste of ancient and today's beautiful Lebanon: smooth, velvety, rich, intense, yet delicate and sweet.

I have never been to Lebanon, but this beautiful and rich country has been etched in my heart for many years...forever. How could I ever forget this exquisite Song of Salmon from the Bible?

'You are altogether beautiful, O girl companion of mine, and there is no defect in you.


'With me from Leb′a‧non, O bride, with me from Leb′a‧non may you come. May you descend from the top of Anti-Leb′a‧non, from the top of Se′nir, even Her′mon, from the lairs of lions, from the mountains of leopards. 


'You have made my heart beat, O my sister, [my] bride, you have made my heart beat by one of your eyes, by one pendant of your necklace. 


'How beautiful your expressions of endearment are, O my sister, my bride! How much better your expressions of endearment are than wine and the fragrance of your oils than all sorts of perfume! 


'With comb honey your lips keep dripping, O [my] bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Leb′a‧non. 


'A garden barred in is my sister, [my] bride, a garden barred in, a spring sealed up. 


'Your skin is a paradise of pomegranates, with the choicest fruits, henna plants along with spikenard plants;  spikenard and saffron, cane and cinnamon, along with all sorts of trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, along with all the finest perfumes; [and] a spring of gardens, a well of fresh water, and trickling streams from Leb′a‧non. 


'Awake, O north wind, and come in, O south wind. Breathe upon my garden. Let its perfumes trickle.

'Let my dear one come into his garden and eat its choicest fruits.'

Hot Chocolate, Sweet Bread & Some Soul Searching

No, I will not write down the recipe of how to make hot chocolate! :)


I know I will sound a bit mushy, but even a cuppa chocolate can bring you down memory lane. 


You may remember the famous madeleine quotation by Marcel Proust from A la recherche du temps perdu:  "I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place." [...]


"And suddenly the memory revealed itself."


"The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...." but "....as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me .... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents."


It's funny how many times a whiff of perfume perforating the air, the flavour of a dish or a tantalizing sip we take send us to a different world we once were in and thus, makes our return simply magical.


Same as in Proust's story, my mother had given me this big sweet bread named cozonac in Romanian. It's made with white flour, yeast, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, saffron, lemon or orange rind and zest, and stuffed with chocolate, walnuts, Turkish Delight or raisins soaked in rum overnight.


I have never attempted such a difficult task, but I enjoy having a slice a day, relishing every bite and going back to the hot kitchen, seeing my mother kneading the sweet aromatic dough and there I am, stealing a tiny, gluey tidbit... How many times hasn't my mother found me with the finger in the pie, literally speaking? Guilty pleasures are made of these short instances that shape our life as adults: the love we were loved with, the tenderness with which we were often reprimanded.

Sweet bread with raisins, Turkish Delight and stuffed with rich, dark chocolate. Vintage serving tray.

Coming out of the stream of consciousness, I must say I crushed some fresh leaves of mint in the mortar and pestle till they oozed their green sap, mixed them with Dutch dark cocoa, brown sugar and scalding hot milk. 


A surprising combination: something old (the sweet bread) and something new (the hot chocolate), something hot (the milk) and something fresh (the mint).


What a trip!


And I will end with the excerpt from Du côté de chez Swann in French because, as Shakspeare rightly acknowledged, "translators [are] traitors", aren't they?


"(Ma mère) envoya chercher un de ces gâteaux courts et dodus appelés Petites Madeleines qui semblent avoir été moulés dans la valve rainurée d'une coquille de Saint-Jacques. Et bientôt, machinalement, accablé par la morne journée et la perspective d'un triste lendemain, je portai à mes lèvres une cuillerée du thé où j'avais laissé s'amollir un morceau de madeleine. Mais à l'instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d'extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m'avait envahi (...)"

"Et tout d'un coup, le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce goût, c'était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin à Combray (...) ma tante Léonie m'offrait après l'avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul." 

"Quand d'un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sous leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l'édifice immense du souvenir."

Marcel Proust in Combray in Du côté de chez Swann in A la recherche du temps perdu (1913) (source http://du-sacre-au-sucre.blogspot.com)