Cooking with Chef Abram: Mexican Bouquet | A delicious gift for your Valentine

February 5, 2020

Chef Abram made a delicious gift idea for your Valentine.

Surprise your love with something very special like a colorful, multi flavored and caliente Mexican Bouquet, this year!

What’s a Mexican Bouquet and why are we calling it Mexican?

A colorful and delicious treat to surprise your love…

You’ll find out in a second by reading this post and the recipe below.

The Bitter Sweet Marriage of Flavors

The marriage between bitter sweet Chocolate & Flowers is one of the oldest union ever existed.

This couple expresses love to the nth power and it’s a 100% satisfation guaranteed in any situation.

Since the recipe is called a Mexican Bouquet and Chef Abram is preparing it for Valentine’s Day, we have to talk about chocolate!

A Mexican Chocolate Civilization

Chocolate (cacao) played an important role in both Maya and Aztec civilizations; the Mayans believed cacao was a “gift from the gods” and they even honored a Cacao God, celebrating the beans’ powerful transformation of mind and body.

In its early history, chocolate was consumed as a bitter beverage, flavored with hot spices like chillies.

It was introduced as a confectionary ingredient only around the 16th century, when Spaniard’s used cane sugar and vanilla to sweeten the bitter cacao flavor.

As cacao was an expensive import, it became a symbol of wealth, power and luxury – fit for royalty.

Speaking of royalty, from Mexico we step now to Piedmont, to Turin, the Kingdom of the Italian chocolate, more precisely.

Origins of Chocolate Culture in Piemonte

In 1559 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy was the first to introduce chocolate to Italy.

The Duke had been serving as a general in the army of the King of Spain and the Spanish were the only people who were importing the raw product to Europe.

The first official licence to actually produce chocolate in Turin was granted in the 1678 and soon the well to do in Turin got a taste for liquid or hot chocolate.

Joining the Bicerin during our Sweet Tour La Dolce Torino.

And so the city and wider region has become known as the main center for chocolate production in Italy.

Turin’s taste for Gianduiotto

One historical curiosity is the popularity of adding locally produced hazelnuts to their chocolate.

Such famous names and brands as Gianduiotto and Nutella are actually made with combinations of chocolate and nuts.

https://www.deliciousitaly.com/piemonte-food-wine/history-of-chocolate-making-inturin

By the early 1900s, chocolate was produced and distributed on a much larger scale, and to this day retains its status as one of the most delicious foods on earth.

Chef Abram chocolate Lover

The history inspired us to reunite Mexico and Turin in one dish as chocolate lovers for Valentine!

a plate of food on a table

Party of Lovers is coming: what are your plans to share love…to your love?

No plans, yet?

Let’s find out if Chef Abram can help you with a lovely recipe, that includes both chocolate and flowers

(still the favourite Valentine’s gift, accordingly with a recent Black Friday Survey).

Food is alla about “contaminations” and Chef Abram loves making dishes that are a party of flavors and express lots of Love and Life (Food=Life=Love).

Look at this cute and hyper colorful Bouquet:

a bowl of food on a table

doesn’t make you feel happy and long for a Feast of Taste… and Love?

The recipe below is how you will impress your Valentine!

Now, before I leave you to the recipe, I’d like you to know that Chef Abram is happy to create your incredibily memorable Culinary Event in a Royal Residence of Turin, Italy.

As much as very happy to show you his magic and culinary tricks at your home or B & B during your stay in town.

https://ieatfoodtours.co.uk/live-cooking-event-turin/

Look very much forward to having you in Turin…

INGREDIENTS for 6 Bouquets

a variety of food on a table

a bowl of food on a table

1 Avocado

1 Mango

100 gr soft goat cheese

200 gr smoked salm

90 gr hazelnuts

1 Lime

1 freshly cooked sweet corn cob

3 Italian piadina’s or soft Mexican tacos’s

100 gr cooking cream

50 gr dark chocolate (70%)

2 or 3 Fresh Chillies (to taste)

Leaves of Celery (decoration)

Leaves of Fennel (decoration)

Rosemary (a sprig)

Balsamic Vinegar

PREPARATION:

1.Pour two generous glasses of water in a glass pan and add 12 ice cubes.

Chef Abram Recipe: Mexican Bouquet

2.Select the nicest lieves of celery heart, andcut some fennel lieves off with a scissor. Peal the celery stalk using a potato peeler.

3.Place celery and fennel lieves into your ice water and take them out just before using the mas garnish at the end (this way they become crispy, and the celery even curly.

(You’ll use them to garnish the dish at the end).

4.Now make a mango and avocado tartare in a round glass pan.

Chef Abram Recipe

5. Add 1 chilly finely chopped

1 lime (squeezed)

Salt and Pepper (to taste)

a person cutting a piece of food

6.Add the cooking cream to the goat cheese and place the mixture into a pipingbag

a person cooking in a kitchen preparing food

a bowl of food on a table

It’s now time to make

a spicey chocolate cream!

a close up of a metal pan

8.Pour into a pan 100 ml of balsamic vinegar, 50 gr of dark chocolate and a sprig of rosemary and 1 chilly and boil down the liquid till is almost completly reduced till a thick and creamy residue.

a close up of a bowl

9. Roast the hazelnuts adding a little bit of evo and salt.

a bunch of food sitting on a counter

a hand holding a slice of pizza

10. Bake your taco/piadina in a frying pan without oil and make 6 small round using the iron ring

11. Divide your salmon into 6 slices

* Chef’s Tip: place the fried piadina or taco in an egg rack share it in a curly shape.

PLATING

1. Choose a lovely plate or anything else with a nice form (be creative: you want to surpise your love, right?)

2. Place a sprig of cheese cream in the middle of your plate and then your curly piadina.

a piece of cake sitting on top of a table

3. Add a spoon of your mix tartare, a rosette of salm, a drop of chocolate cream right in the heart of your bouquet, some hazelnuts and some grains of corn.

a hand holding a cell phone