Darker than Black, Week 21: Raaka Virgin Chocolate Coconut Curry
Last week I made a point that despite how seemingly apropos our chocolate choice was, we selected it by chance. This time, I make no such claim. When our latest Raaka chocolate shipment arrived on Wednesday and softlykarou told me what the bars inside were, I knew we had to pick this one. I mean, my last food blog series was about curry, and this one is about chocolate. A combination of the two? Well, that was definitely our next target.
If only we had had curry for lunch, then we could really have gotten the full experience, but I'm not going to give up my Japanese breakfast without a slightly stronger incentive. I did have curry yesterday for lunch when my parents came into town to visit and I thought about doing Darker than Black then, but obviously decided against it. Maybe I shouldn't have. On the other hand, maybe that would have been too much curry and I wouldn't have been in the right mood to properly write about this chocolate?
Ha. "Too much curry." What am I saying?
The is the one that softlykarou pointed out to me when she opened the package.
softlykarou and I looked at each other after we took the first bite, because this was curry chocolate, right? Where was the tang, the spicy, the whole reason that we picked this in the first place? Then, on a short delay, it hit us both at the same time. I didn't get that much of a coconut taste, but maybe I'm just deceiving myself. My idea of curry is bound up in the Thai curry that's by far the most common curry that softlykarou makes, so the lack of a separate coconut taste was probably just because the coconut was the curry. And it did taste like curry, with even a flourish of lemongrass at the end. This would have been the perfect dessert for our old apartment, on Monday nights when we'd have curry every week.
What it wasn't was spicy. While the curry taste and the way it blended with the chocolate was top-notch, there wasn't any of the heat that comes in with real curry. Maybe they didn't want to overload the flavors or dilute the chocolate too much, which I can understand. But still, the lack of heat meant that there was just a tiny bit missing and I can't this chocolate a 100% score. Fortunately, I don't score any chocolate, so that doesn't matter in the end!
I probably didn't need to post this. Raaka pretty much all looks the same.
softlykarou's OpinionI have to give this bar credit for being pretty much a full curry experience. It had nuanced spices (I could taste different ones as I ate), balanced coconut, and evocative smells. I was uncertain the first bite, but the moment the lemongrass hit it tied the whole curry together. I think the only thing missing was a hint of heat, but given how much this chocolate did for being so tiny, it was pretty amazing. I wish we'd had it when we were doing 50 curries!
You can tell we've been married for a long time because our opinions were written in isolation and ended up being pretty much the same regardless. It's like the customs agent on the trip from Toronto to Chicago saying he knew we were married because of how we kept finishing each other's sentences.
And finishing each other's chocolate, as is the case here. Yum.
If only we had had curry for lunch, then we could really have gotten the full experience, but I'm not going to give up my Japanese breakfast without a slightly stronger incentive. I did have curry yesterday for lunch when my parents came into town to visit and I thought about doing Darker than Black then, but obviously decided against it. Maybe I shouldn't have. On the other hand, maybe that would have been too much curry and I wouldn't have been in the right mood to properly write about this chocolate?
Ha. "Too much curry." What am I saying?
The is the one that softlykarou pointed out to me when she opened the package.
softlykarou and I looked at each other after we took the first bite, because this was curry chocolate, right? Where was the tang, the spicy, the whole reason that we picked this in the first place? Then, on a short delay, it hit us both at the same time. I didn't get that much of a coconut taste, but maybe I'm just deceiving myself. My idea of curry is bound up in the Thai curry that's by far the most common curry that softlykarou makes, so the lack of a separate coconut taste was probably just because the coconut was the curry. And it did taste like curry, with even a flourish of lemongrass at the end. This would have been the perfect dessert for our old apartment, on Monday nights when we'd have curry every week.
What it wasn't was spicy. While the curry taste and the way it blended with the chocolate was top-notch, there wasn't any of the heat that comes in with real curry. Maybe they didn't want to overload the flavors or dilute the chocolate too much, which I can understand. But still, the lack of heat meant that there was just a tiny bit missing and I can't this chocolate a 100% score. Fortunately, I don't score any chocolate, so that doesn't matter in the end!
I probably didn't need to post this. Raaka pretty much all looks the same.
softlykarou's OpinionI have to give this bar credit for being pretty much a full curry experience. It had nuanced spices (I could taste different ones as I ate), balanced coconut, and evocative smells. I was uncertain the first bite, but the moment the lemongrass hit it tied the whole curry together. I think the only thing missing was a hint of heat, but given how much this chocolate did for being so tiny, it was pretty amazing. I wish we'd had it when we were doing 50 curries!
You can tell we've been married for a long time because our opinions were written in isolation and ended up being pretty much the same regardless. It's like the customs agent on the trip from Toronto to Chicago saying he knew we were married because of how we kept finishing each other's sentences.
And finishing each other's chocolate, as is the case here. Yum.