G'day. If you're new here, and you are interested in the Melbourne food and drink scene you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or the email newsletter below. Thanks for visiting and enjoy eating and drinking in Melbourne. Cheers.
Last week Stephen “the teabag” Twining was spruiking his wares in town. He revealed that 15 to 20 per cent of tea sold is loose. The rest is in tea-bags.
My views on tea-bags have already been aired. He told us on local radio how he used the bags in the office - apparently there is some problem with putting the leaves down his office sink. I don’t see the problem. Besides , I keep a compost bucket for the worm farm. Not too torturous really.
It made me think whether or not these so called prepackaged convenience of tea bags and their ilk are really convenient.
Move along a few metres from the tea in your supermarket isle and join the world of hot, sorry I mean pre-packaged, presweetened, flavoured chocolate. I think we are all familiar with the idea. We take it home, in a shopping bag, rip open the packaging and spill some of the powder on the benchtop and create a muddy smear with a sponge.
That’s not what I call convenient. And it’s not that tasty.
My idea of convenience is keeping a couple of kilos of locally made Kennedy & Wilson chocolate in the kitchen. I nibble a couple of chunks each day, use it in cooking – chillis, cakes etc – and eat yet more chunks. I may even make a hot chocolate.
But the last time I tried to buy some K&W it was sold out. I was forced to make a couple of kilos of Lindt. I don’t really like the taste but it’s okay for cooking. And it turns out on these cold Melbourne nights – the coldest in 20 years – it is superb for hot chocolate.
Lindt chocolate, even the very dark variety has a very distinct creamy taste that my plate finds dull on its own.
But dissolve it in some heated biodynamic milk and it comes into it’s own.
Simple chop a chunk into some milk. Add a cinnamon stick and grate some nutmeg in.
You can heat it in a pan on the stove or froth it up using the steam from the espresso machine. It doesn’t matter really. It’s just what I call convenient. And delicious.
No related posts.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I caved in a couple of years ago when I was more financial and paid $70 for a large can of hot chocolate mix at Fraus North Melbourne. I’m more of a tea drinker so there’s still about half left. Every other powdered chocolate mix tastes like sugar water in comparison.