Confluence!

Chocolate & Espresso: A Confluence

When I was 11 ½ years old, my parents took me on a whirlwind tour of Europe. You know, 16 countries in 28 days, one of those. We went when I was 11 ½ because at 12, I would have been full price. I didn’t care. It was great.

We landed at Southampton, spent a day in London, went to Dover and caught the ferry to the Hook of Holland (That was it for England!).

The problem for an eleven year old on these trips was that you had to have your suitcases outside your room by 6:30 in order to eat a quick breakfast and be on the bus by 7:30. Hellish!

In any case, I survived the ferry crossing and found myself barely awake at breakfast in a gray old hotel in the gray (not old) city of Rotterdam. My dad ordered hot chocolate for me – and my life was forever changed! Not Nestle’s, not even Droste’s. This stuff was pure chocolate and pure cream. Oh, God, was it good. I just sat there and sipped, and slurped, and sipped some more. I ordered a second. I would have ordered a third, but the driver was giving me nasty looks. “Vee vill now go to Belgium, and tomorrow to Germany, and the next day to Switzerland.” Yes vee vill. And everywhere vee go, diss vee is going to order hot chocolate, cause diss hot chocolate is Veddydam good.

At the end of the trip my folks and I tacked on a couple of extra weeks and came back to the Netherlands and spent more time in England and Scotland. That one day just didn’t quite do it.

And yes, we did dress up like the folks in the picture. Actually, we are the folks in the picture. It was our Christmas card picture that year. The studio was in Volendam (and yes, the hot chocolate was Volendam good). After we finished, we asked the photographer if he would take some pictures of us out by the fishing boats with our camera. He said sure, so we went out in drag and stood there. Just about then, a little American boy came running along, yelling for his father, “Daddy, Daddy, come quick, come quick. Here’s a whole family of them.” My father punched me in the ribs with his elbow to shut up. The kid’s father came running, furiously winding his movie camera. We just smiled. I do believe that one of my father’s most fervent dreams was to be shown someone’s movies of their trip to Europe and see us in it. Sadly, it never happened, but that’s true of many dreams, isn’t it?

Well, if the discovery of hot chocolate was one of the highlights of my first European sojourn, the discovery of espresso was the other. It happened this way. We came out of the Austrian Alps down into Italy one afternoon and the bus stopped for a break.

Now, there are about 40 people on this bus and there is one man and one espresso machine in the little place where we stopped. Not only was there one man and one espresso machine, this was 1956 so it was one of those old brass espresso machines with tubes going everywhere.

Those of you who knew my father will have no trouble visualizing this story. For those of you who didn’t, I offer these sound effects. You know the ad that was on TV a couple of years ago for something awful like “International Coffees” probably from Borden’s. The one where the couple offers cappuccinos to their guests, then goes into next room and makes all those Psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, sounds to emulate a machine. They copied my dad! To that he added Chaplinesque gestures from Modern Times – imagine a monkey in front of an espresso machine pulling levers and going Psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, psst, tsssscht, shhhhh. Got it? That’s him. Then he says, “I don’t know why the hell they call it ‘espresso.’ It takes about five minutes (lever pulling, Psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, more lever pulling) and then this guy puts a little tiny cup under there and the thing goes drip, drip, drip, drip. You get about eight drops and then he starts all over again for the next person. OK, one down, 39 to go.”

What was a little crazy making to me was that my dad also said, “Now Peter, you wait until all the adults have been served.” Thirty nine. Thirty eight. Thirty seven… Four (The bus driver glares.) Three. Two. One. Peter! YES! I got one. It was glorious. It was bitter and nasty and strong and unctuous and smooth and foamy and wonderful and unforgettable. Sort of like my dad and his story telling. God, I miss him.

Well, I told you this was a story about confluence. It is.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article in Good Food, the BBC food magazine, about something called Bicerin. Bicerin is a drink sold in a café in Turin with the same name (No, I won’t say eponymous!). Bicerin is basically a glass filled with 1/3 espresso, 1/3 hot chocolate, and 1/3 whipped cream.

CONFLUENCE! The best of all possible worlds. Candide’s garden. Peter’s Nirvana.

Well, the article said that the recipe was a secret, but then presented it’s version. I said, “Yeah, right. I’ll just Google it.” I did, but you know what? Each of the sites that talked about Bicerin said it was, in fact, a secret and then each of the sites proceeded to give its own recipe – each different, sometimes VERY different. For once, Google let me down.

So why should I be different? I have played around with this recipe a bit over the last weeks and have put on a couple of pounds in the process. This is the recipe for what I’m drinking as I write this. But it has been worth it. After all, that’s why they put these little panels in the waistband, isn’t it? Try this one. You may want to get out your wooden shoes and dance a tarantella. Now there’s an image for you!

Recipe for Bicerin

Get some really good dark chocolate. Personally, I love the stuff that is 70% + cocoa, but anything over 50% will do. If you want to be really ethnically pure, you might try the Italian chocolates made by Slitti. They have one that extra-bittersweet at 90% cocoa ( http://www.chocosphere.com/).

Now you have a choice, to go the northern or the southern European route. In the north, hot chocolate is made with milk or half and half (yes, you can add some heavy cream if you want). In Italy, they typically make theirs with water. My assumption is that Café Bicerin uses water.

That being said, melt some chocolate in some hot water until you get something that is still pretty thick, about like chocolate syrup. Now I have no idea whether they do this at Bicerin, but I like to get a little air into my chocolate mixture. You can do this with a handheld blender, a blender, a hand mixer, a whisk, or even a French press coffee maker.

All the recipes I read say to fill a glass or cup 1/3 full with espresso (sweetened if you wish), then add 1/3 of chocolate and top off with 1/3 lightly whipped cream. I sort of like my chocolate on the bottom. It make the last little bit taste more like dessert than breakfast. Try it both ways.

Confluence!