On this rainy late afternoon Saturday, I found myself sitting in the Formosa Tea House reading Almost French (subtitled “Love and a new life in Paris”), and this passage made me lust (yes, lust) for a cup of hot chocolate:
At Frédéric’s insistence we order hot chocolate — the speciality of the maison, he promises. It arrives in two steaming white jugs and you can tell just from the smell that this is an intense brew made with cream and couverture chocolate. We fill our cups. The liquid pours slowly like an oil slick of dark molten mousse.
The closest I have ever come to reaching this height of chocolate ecstasy was at Le Relais de la Tour in Capdenac le Haut; here is the evidence:
How did I choose to sate my lust today? Well, Timothy’s was closed, it was too rainy to head to Mavor’s, so I had to settle for Tim Hortons. Yes, I realize I am an idiot. I wanted a molten oil slick of pleasure and instead I got a soupy paper cup of tepid Quik. What was I thinking?
Couverture, just in case you were wondering, is “a term used for cocoa butter rich chocolates of the highest quality.” (thanks to Wikipedia for that).
This brings another episode of my Europhilia to a close. Sorry for the interruption.
Comments
Explain this picture. The cup and the jug I understand, but what’s the glass for?
I love hot chocolate, too, and would try to replicate this if I could just figure out where the glass comes in.
Sorry, Ann, I should have explained the photo: on the left is my small pitcher of hot chocolate (actually empty of hot chocolate in this picture) and the cup I used to drink it. On the right are the blue bottle of orange juice that Oliver ordered, and the cup he drank it in. I thought the entire collection was, well, just plain beautiful, which is why I took a photo.