Willie's Chocolate Factory

It was a miserable day. I'd started it in Exeter where I sidled up to a guest house and caught their wi-fi. I felt a bit dodgy but there was nowhere to park in town and it was pissing with rain. I got on the M5 up to Tiverton and ran over roundabouts and through puddles to get to oor Willie's chocolate factory. It was great to finally be there after hearing about the place for over a year. There was Willie, doing hundreds of things at once but looking fighting fit - even if he did complain of exhaustion.

The place is a warren of rooms; little units of high activity all lorded over by the heavy mechanical clunk of moving paddles and vibrating metal. In one area workers with blue hairnets wrapped freshly molded chocolate cylinders in gold foil. They were wordless in their concentration. I didn't hang around with them for long. Willie finally got off the blower and gave me a proper tour of the place.

There was a room heaving with jute sacks, full of single estate beans just arrived from the Venezuelan Cloud forest. He slit open a sack and emptied it into a waiting container. From there buckets full were thrown in the top of the enormous Bilbao roasting machine. After 20 minutes they'd come out the bottom all toasty and smelling great. Into the winnower where the shells got sucked away ready for the beans to begin the grinding and conching process.

The concher had been going on one batch for a few days, slopping the dark liquid back and forth, refining the particles for the smoothest end result. Willie lifted the lid and we both got a scoop of warm, melted Rio Caribe prime for tempering and barring up. It feels like a meal; like the ultimate in nutrition - complex and deep with notes that sing of a far flung land.

It would have been good to stay and talk all day - so many questions! But the road to Cornwall called. I loaded up with fresh supplies and thanked Willie for the bags of beans and nibs he threw in for good measure and hit the highway.

Look out for more of Willie back on the box soon....

Downtown Hastings

I left C&C and drove all the way down the long sweeping hill to the seafront - with things flying everywhere in the back - and made it onto the pedestrianised road by Debenhams. It felt a bit illicit but I'm sort of used to going against the grain, traffic-wise in the van.

Rob Woods at the licensing dept. in Hastings had been very buoyant about our arrival. Some people were a bit aghast that I hadn't been allowed to trade on the seafront or in the Old Town but you get a much better feel for a place by being in the main civic centre. Apparently the town is on the up since being named a few years ago as the '27th most deprived' place in the country.

Like most towns in the South, Hastings seems like a mix of 'types'. I served milkshakes and ice cream to yummy, London-fleeing mummies ("it's soooo much better down here by the sea"); teen-age mums with painful looking hairstyles ("ohmygod, ohmygod Shaneice - try that. It's aMAZing"); not very busy estate agents; lottery winning gran'mas and LOTS of Willie fans.

Dios mio, the power of TV! It's so rivetting how mobilised people's minds are over the Wonky series.. The main subjects of interest are: whether Willie is really that mad; the poor wife; the hot wife; are they really poor/how can they be when they live in such a big house; how brilliant that someone is following his passion despite everything else and of course, chocolate. I was sold out of truffles in no time and relieved to discover that a new shipment of Venezuelan Black had arrived at my next destination. Not much cop for all those disappointed Willie fans in Hastings though but good news for Hampshire, Berks, Bucks......

My favourite people of the day were the family who drove down especially to see me and Jimmy. They'd contacted me a while before as they're about to start their own mobile food biz - an organic waffle van. They've bought an old orange Ford and are getting it all together and had a million questions about this world of mobile trading. My heart leapt for them - it's such an exciting time but so scary too. They even invited me for supper that night. So did another lady. But my most tempting offer of all was from this trampy looking guy from Brighouse in Yorkshire - "Aye - ya can com op to mine f'ra bacon buttie an a cuppa tea, but that's aboot all". I shed a little inward tear as I declined and instead got on the road to Hayward's Heath.

Where's Willie?

Hi choc fans,

Thanks for all your nice messages about my TV appearance in Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory the other day - it's been great for tour suggestions (do keep them coming!) and nice to know that I'll have people looking out for the van while we're en route.

So far I'm getting crazy love from all over the west country and Sussex and Kent have been very friendly too with lots of suppers invitations...not so forthcoming from the North though. Who knows anyone in Yorkshire/Lancashire/Nottinghamshire/Staffordshire? The Scots have also been great and I want to go as far up in that beautiful land as the invitations will take me.

Bring on the suggestions!

So since I was spotted on telly on Sunday I've had several people calling/e-mailing/turning up on my door...well, almost if this one guy earlier is anything to go by, DESPERATE for a piece of Willie and his wares. All I can tell you is that I spoke to him yesterday and he's holed up in that factory 24/7 trying to produce as much as the stuff as he can. The final episode should shine a light for non-London people on where to buy the choc as well...and check this out - his chocolate has become the fastest selling item in the history of Selfridges! Brilliant.

And I'll certainly be packing it for my tour and will be making delicious things with it along the way as well as selling the actual bars.

So, although Willie's a bit incognito at present there is plenty of hope on the old horizontal.

Wonky Willie

I was so excited last night to see my favourite chocolate supplier doing his thing on Channel 4. Willie Harcourt-Cooze was one of my first contacts when I set up Choc Star and is responsible for introducing me to a world of chocolate that is...incendiary. It's the only word for it - the stuff seeps into your soul and plays tricks with your mind and, suddenly, makes you feel as though everything is right with the world.

I'm going to be serving up Venezuelan hot chocolate shots and some Super Dark High Energy truffles made with harvests from Willie's finca at Taste East this Friday and Saturday.

If you need a little pick-me-up come and find us by the farm - and if the weather's good we may start shaking some milk!

Take me home, country roads

Here’s Jimmy hanging out in Lavenham a few days ago. I picked him up from the wilds of North Suffolk and we bounced along at our usual leisurely pace - taking in a bit of Bury St Edmunds to see what was new (not a great deal, but everything just looks so much smaller than I remember), then down to Lav’nam and on to the village of 100 people where I grew up.The winter sun fell steady on the ravaged countryside. A sludgy, untidy looking time of year anyway, the storm of the other week had really been busy - uprooting trees that had been around for years, churning up fences, shooting holes in the roofs - all things I hadn’t been aware of in London. I pottered around quite happily for a bit, then went over to Tash and Noches to catch up after their two month stay over in Jamaica. My three year old god-daughter Zahara goes around singing Buju Banton and talking in her new little patois chat and her sister Mya tried to show me some of the dances, but came over all shy and giggly halfway into it…I’m not surprised! There’s one called the Dutty Wine which involves some pretty vigorous neck spinning - apparently it’s common to see girls being carried off after fainting from giving it too much turn!

So anyway, I left Suffolk after a few days and returned Jimmy to London. We’ve got back into the flow of things at Brick Lane and done a couple of really fun parties. While the chocolate martini shots have been seized very heartily by all who come near, so too has the Venezuelan hot chocolate…there’s a bit of a beast to be fed here and I’m a touch nervous as the supplies are dwindling. My Chuao connection, Willie, is in the midst of setting up his very own mini chocolate factory down in the West country and the beans are en route…but not processed. It’ll be worth it in the end though as I’ll have access to a magical supply of pure, single estate cocoa liquor - the things I want to do with that stuff set my heart a flutter! (So please be patient if I have to cross the Ven Hot Choc off the board for a couple of weeks).

Now, one more thing before I go. On Monday night I was invited to a steak extravaganza at Hawksmoor. I’ve been in there enough times before, propping up the bar, munching on the thrice cooked chips and getting intimate with many different bourbon based drinks (courtesy of the lovely Lucas and the hilarious Jorge), but their steak and me had not yet met. Well, we have now and it’s all rosy. Great juicy slivers of Sirloin and chunky discs of Chateaubriand kept arriving on my plate, whereupon I’d gather them up on my fork with some Bearnaise sauce and proceed to enter That Place. You know the one - where voices and noise fade away, the eyes close and, for a moment…you can’t be reached. Joyous, indulgent escape.



And then came this little fella - the Chocolate Sazerac. I’m a big fan of this cocktail anyway, but when they made it with chocolate-infused bourbon and creme de cacao I could barely contain my delight. I usually stay away from anything too sweet with drinks, but this guy is bad. It’s Sean Penn in a glass with a Jay-Z twist and I’m going to be hunting down that recipe and executing it at home, in the van and wherever else I can find.