The kitchen at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr’s Chocolate Gallery is not a place for chocoholics. If you are so afflicted, be glad you can only stare inward from the outside. As we step into the sweetly perfumed glass house, the urge to reach out and pilfer from the myriad truffles and creations that pile up on shelves around us is almost overwhelming. It’s like we’ve won Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. A firm handshake from our kindly French guide is the only thing that prevents us from coming over all woozy.
Eric Goutyeron is the executive pastry chef at Abu Dhabi’s new Fairmont, and today we’ve set him a challenge. Allowing ourselves poetic license, we’ve asked him to prepare a hot chocolate to warm the cockles (and fatten the arteries) during these cold winter months. None of your packet powder rubbish, of course – Chef Eric is going to whip us up a mug of the hot stuff from scratch, and we’ve been allowed behind his glass screens to take notes. It’s unlikely he’ll slip up, of course; this is the man who oversaw the dessert menu at the wedding of Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, as well as Eddie Murphy’s marriage (‘only his first one, though’, he adds modestly). Chef Eric has been tending to sweet teeth for the best part of 25 years.
He goes for a straightforward hot chocolate – no infusions, no messing. He calls it ‘classic chocolate’. He sits a pan of milk and cream on a portable electric stove in the back room of the kitchen, explaining that steam should be kept to a minimum in the gallery itself lest it mess with the carefully controlled atmospherics (truffles are delicate beasts). He chats amiably as it boils, recalling his days at New York’s Plaza Hotel where he lost count of the number of times he prepared sweet nibbles for Yoko Ono. Giving his lactose pan fest a quick stir, he produces a plastic container partially filled with bite-size chocolate chunks. In goes the hot milk and cream. Chef Eric sits back and smiles.
‘I used to drink a chocolate every breakfast,’ he admits, his English several leagues above our meagre French. ‘But it can be difficult…’ he laughs, his sentence trailing off as he pats a seasonally rotund midriff. He’s been at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr for a mere four months, leaving its sister hotel in Dubai following four years of service. He seems happy here – a celebrated pastry chef is never going to go jobless in the sugar-loving UAE.
With a hand blender, he helps the chocolate dissolve into the milk. Instantly, the room fills with a rich aroma – the kind that tends to render women and children feeble. The liquid looks familiar now, and the chef pours it carefully back into his pan and rides the temperature buttons until it has simmered to his satisfaction. He pours it out into a tall, insulated glass and adorns the surface with whipped cream, seasoning it with a sprinkling of gold leaf. Well, it’d be rude not to in the UAE.
Chocolate Gallery, Fairmont Bab Al Bahr (02 654 3333).Open daily 10am-11pm
Chef’s top tips
1 ‘Use a good-quality chocolate. It will change totally the flavour and aroma of your drink. We use Valrhona. They harvest their own cocoa beans and, year by year, they change their taste, just like a good wine.’
2 ‘The colour is also a factor. When you see a chocolate that is very black and dark, it means that the cocoa beans have been over-roasted. The chocolate we use is almost reddish in colour.’
3 ‘As it cools down, the protein will come to the surface and a skin will form. It’s not really possible to prevent the skin, but you could [store it] with a plastic film [touching the chocolate] to protect from the air. Or you could use skimmed milk, but [the drink] will be a little bit lighter.’
Ingredients (for six people)
1 litre whole milk
10cl heavy cream
290g chocolate, 55 per cent bittersweet
Method
1 Using a double thick layer stainless steel pan, bring the milk and the cream to boil and set it aside.
2 Chop the chocolate into small pieces and drop them into a large plastic container. The more chocolate you use, the thicker your chocolate will be.
3 Carefully pour the milk and cream mixture over the chocolate. Use a hand blender and mix the concoction thoroughly.
4 Pour all the liquid back into the pot and carefully bring it to a simmer, keeping it there for approximately two minutes, simmering slowly to diffuse the cocoa flavours.
5 Serve with whipped cream or marshmallows, adding gold leaf if you’re feeling particularly fancy.
