JANUARY & CHOCOLAT CHAUD

I don’t know if it’s as cold in San Francisco and South Carolina as Tennessee right now, but we have been shivering in our boots and looking through bottom drawers for underwoolies! It’s barely gotten above freezing here and they are predicting snow sometime over the next few days.

It’s made me into a tea fiend lately. Tea bags, loose tea steeping in little wire baskets in my teacups, English Breakfast tea, almond tea reminiscent of a lunch that I enjoyed in a Paris café on the Champs-Elysées and Earl Grey in all of its delicious, fragrant forms.

I also start thinking about hot chocolate. In France hot chocolate has another name – chocolat chaud. And the name isn’t the only thing that’s different. It’s thick, rich and molten chocolate heaven. Pamela would have approved! I mean, seriously approved!... maybe enough to get her into a plane! A famous place to have chocolat chaud in Paris is the tearoom - Angelina’s. They have several locations, but the one that I visited with my friend L-Lou is practically a next door neighbor of the Louvre. They serve their hot chocolate in a little pitcher with an accompanying dish of luscious, velvety whipped cream to stir in according to your taste.

But the other night L-Lou, my photographer friend, Carmencita and I found that Nashville had a chocolat chaud offering that very nearly rivaled Angelina’s. It is a spin taken on the traditional Mexican hot chocolate, Abueletta, which is a mix of sugar, cocoa and cinnamon. But ChaChah’s tapas bar in Nashville has conjured up their take on it by melting a whole chocolate bar into coconut milk with heavy cream and gently tickled with some cinnamon and other spices left unnamed…. Cayenne?... We couldn’t tell. But this restaurant also adds a stick of homemade marshmallow that has been toasted. The waiter skillfully poured our chocolat chaud for us into shining white porcelain cups and made sure to drizzle it over that toasted marshmallow.

Pamela was a definite chocolate devotee. I usually found chocolate bars tucked into little places around the kitchen, under magazines in the den and peeking out of her pocket book. I think I will find that a personal chocolat fix at ChaChah’s might be a frequent occurrence for me…and I will raise a cup to Pamela every time I do.

Stay warm Pamela’s Girls!

Love,
Auntie J.