The Heart of Darkness

I love chocolate and the best chocolate guy I ever came across in New Zealand was Murray Langham of Schoc Chocolates. Talk about Schoc therapy. You walk into this deceptively quaint chocolate shop and the place is a den of iniquity for crying out loud – a haven of good vibrations, a sex shop of pre-traumatic chocolate syndrome. Schoc chocolates are not only the best and the most unusual chocolates I’ve tasted in NZ but the experience is not superficial. Thanks to Murray you get to find out that you are what you love in chocolate terms. He’s into the whole chocolate psychology thing. 

Murray says that when we choose a chocolate filling we like – what is it that attracts us? Is it the smell, the texture on our tongue and mouth, the colour, the taste? These centres link into our own subconscious mind or the inner part that guides our emotions, our moods, our inner thoughts, our self esteem. By understanding the meanings of the centres we can begin to see what is guiding us through the complexities of life. So even though the way is littered with the corpses of men who have tried to analyse my taste, Murray came up with this: because I like almond chocolates I am successful, quick minded and love change. The down side is people think I am flippant if they don’t know me, I am impatient and want to bend people to my will.

The trick in terms of romance, is to find someone who goes well with an almond personality. Murray told me not to go anywhere near a Turkish Delight man because they just aren’t there for me - too busy finding themselves. A good match might be the chocolate person who has a sense of humour and is forward-looking. But it doesn’t end there. What about post-chocolate behaviour? The person who smoothes out the chocolate wrapper loves to massage and is very sensual so they probably shouldn’t go for the person who shapes their wrapper into a ball – they are bored and jealous. 

Incidentally, an unusual and frightfully good thing to do with chocolate is to hand-make chocolate pasta. To do this you make a normal pasta dough and add 3tbsp of cocoa powder per 1 & 1/2cups of semolina flour. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, let sit for an hour then roll out. Cut into tagliolini or thin, flat noodles with the pasta machine or cut by hand into pappardelle or wide ribbons. Chocolate pasta is good with rich stews, especially hare, and rather moreish as a dessert served with vanilla ice cream and Grand Marnier-laced chocolate sauce. I urge you right now to go out and access your inner heart of darkness.

Peta