I know this gets into touchy territory, but I’m surprised I haven’t seen more pushback about the, ah, let’s call it ‘political’ problems with this stuff.
I mean, everyone has their own lines they will or won’t cross, and I certainly don’t want to point fingers at folks. Some people eat foie gras, some don’t. Some people watch Woody Allen or Roman Polanski movies.
But I haven’t seen any discussion about the, I guess, ‘food-washing’ (like ‘sportswashing’ or ‘greenwashing’) at play here.
Is it a factor? Is this chocolate part of that sort of thing, or is this just a fun little treat that happens to have its origins in a complicated place?
I don’t mean to derail the discussion. Truthfully, if I happened across this stuff, I’d probably pick it up just out of curiosity, and because I happen to love pistachio.
Please do feel free to ignore my random musings. I won’t take it at all personally if discussion gets split off or doesn’t follow that particular path.
Rereading the above, I think there’s a chance someone will read it as sarcastic. It is not.
But that would indicate that officials/government of UAE was involved in the chocolate and its fame. As far as I know Fix (company behind the chocolate) was a one woman business preparing the chocolate for sometime without any huge success until some tictoc influencer posted a video about it
My 2 cents is I hate silicone molds for chocolate work.
If a nice solid injection polycarbonate mold is too expensive for something you’re probably only going to attempt once or twice, go for the cheap thermo-formed plastic ones, at least they are rigid enough to pick up, not all f’in floppy. I know, it’s for home cooks making tiny batches, but if anyone actually wants to get into chocolate, get a rigid mold that you can fill, dump, and scrape level instead of messing around painting unstable sides.
Also no mention of temperatures. Properly tempered chocolate will crystallize in a few minutes at room temp (<70F) and does not need to be refrigerated. Milk chocolate will pre-crystallize around 86-89F but temperature is not the only factor, there needs to be stable cocoa butter crystals of the correct form, so dab a little on some parchment to test that it solidifies quickly and without streaks or spots before filling your molds.
Chocolate is a PITA and I’ve made it my career, happy to advise if anyone attempts this.
I’m not making this, but I make chocolate bark at times. How do you feel about tempering vacuum sealed chopped chocolate in an immersion circulator? I don’t have much to compare it to.
I usually use semi sweet Callebaut from the bulk bins at WinCo
Apologies if you have already responded to previous requests.
Never tried it! Not sure it has any real advantage since you have to mush everything around to agitate the chocolate and also dry the bag thoroughly.
Chocolate crystallizes the same way sugar does: when it’s agitated in a certain temperature range or when stable crystals are introduced as seeds. It doesn’t really matter how you melt it at the beginning. Just don’t scorch it or get water in it and you can re-temper the same chocolate many times.
Oh, and another disadvantage of silicone is that it insulates, and you want your pre-crystallized chocolate to cool quickly once in the mold.
For microwaving, use +/- 50% power (depending on your microwave). It might be slower overall but you can leave it for a few minutes at a time while you do something else. I’ll put 2-3 lbs in at 60% for 5+ minutes at a time and it’s fine.
I’m not above sneaking in a few snacks for personal use, but that’s a lot.
I’m also constantly surprised by how many small food producers don’t list their ingredients. Sure, it’s kind of a pain, but having the FDA breathing down your neck to do a recall is far more painful, which I learned from experience . In the US, you don’t have to do the full nutrition breakdown if you’re selling fewer than 100k units annually, but you still have to list all the ingredients and the top allergens, currently peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, milk, egg, soy, fish, shellfish, and sesame. I think mustard and a few others are on the EU’s list?
So if you’re going to smuggle chocolate, make sure it’s properly labeled
I’ve been wanting to try this chocolate precisely for this ingredient (aka kadayif) which I love. I suppose I could try to make some by visiting the local Syrian bakery… they’ve also loads of pistachio treats. At that point, i don’t know how much chocolate I’ll need though…
The NYT recipe for this chocolate looks doable (gift link above in the thread) and adaptable to personal tastes. I might make some as a project dessert with my teenage kid once his exams are over.
If any of you is looking to try your hand at making this at home, I just found this video that seems fairly straightforward, and uses a sous vide to hold the chocolate at a proper ‘working’ temp so filling/scraping/etc is a bit less time sensitive.
The filling seems just to be kadayif plus some fairly pricey Italian pistachio cream. (I suppose you could make your own but it probably won’t have the same consistency.)
The procedure described in the video has you take 600g of semi-or bittersweet chocolate. Chop 400g coarsely and place in small glass bowl. Chop 200g very finely and place in large glass bowl.
Set up a sous vide bath at 90F.
Melt the 400g in a double boiler until they reach 120F. Transfer the melted chocolate (making sure to dry the bowl THOROUGHLY) to the larger bowl with the chopped ‘seed’ chocolate. Let the heat from the melted chocolate slowly melt the seed chocolate while gently folding the mixture against the side of the bowl. Once it’s all melted and down to about 80F, use the hairdryer to gently bring it up to 90F. Transfer the melted chocolate into plastic piping bags, seal, and place in sous vide bath to hold at 90F.
Use this to fill your molds, make your bars, coat your truffles, etc.
It’s something I would probably very much like to try (I took a class in Costa Rica that had us make and flavor our own bars). It takes a LOT of practice and can get terribly messy. I’m pretty certain my partner would have a conniption if she came home to find me behind a stack of plastic molds and chocolate dripped over every kitchen surface, which would DEFINITELY be the outcome the first 4 or 5 tries.
. In the US, you don’t have to do the full nutrition breakdown if you’re selling fewer than 100k units annually, but you still have to list all the ingredients and the top allergens, currently peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, milk, egg, soy, fish, shellfish, and sesame. I think mustard and a few others are on the EU’s list?
