Poem: "Public Displays of Confection"

Look for the combination in gourmet chocolate aisles. I think I first saw that one in an international food store. People have been putting weirder and weirder things into chocolate recently. Wasabi started showing up in my area about a year or two ago, one of the latecomers after things like cayenne and cardamom.

Yes, or at least it has been. The uncommon combinations tend to come and go with fashion. You never know what will pop up, especially in the spiced chocolates.

I've made chocolate ice cream with cinnamon-cayenne chocolate bars; that one's becoming a popular blend and can usually be found somewhere. Cinnamon-cayenne delivers a glowing spicy warmth that builds gradually the more you eat, sometimes to the point of rocket fuel. There is nothing like having your mouth half-frozen yet insisting that it is on fire. (I don't make mine that hot, but there used to be a place called Chocolate Coyote whose house flavor was.)

Wasabi, people are still trying to figure out what it goes with, so it's rare in candy. It has a wild, fiery yet green flavor that is not an obvious match for chocolate. I don't like wasabi, so I'm not sure what the appeal is; but people who like wasabi in chocolate seem to LOVE that combination. And they'll try it on anything -- like wasabi on green tea ice cream.

I've only seen ginseng in chocolate a few times. Try to find it in dark chocolate where the woodsy note of the ginseng will bring up the dark, dusty, bitter notes of the cocoa. Plus ginseng tends to heighten neural activity, which gives it a reputation for sharpening the mind and sensory perceptions.

Anyhow, ginseng-wasabi dark chocolate is kind of like fireworks at midnight. It's very dark and quiet, then POW! your eyes and ears are overloaded. Only with candy it's your tongue doing that. Hence the mindfuck.

Better cooking through chemistry! I do this kind of thing when I cook, whether it's exotic meatloaves or crockpot stews or ice cream. I'm always thinking about what the ingredients DO and how they will interact. *laugh* My white peach ice cream has Earl Grey tea in it to bring out the distinctive furry, bitter notes that distinguish white from yellow peaches.

Oh, and the wasabi seems to work better as a team ingredient in chocolate if it's in tiny bits rather than fully distributed as a powder. Think like toffee chips or coarsely ground almonds. Ginseng works as a powder.

There actually are some poems with a chemistry and/or pharmaceutical slant this month. "Savour" and "This Bittersweet Weed" leap readily to mind, along with the first freebie "Bittersweet Love." Great minds warp alike.