In Your Kitchen

June 6, 1999

In Your Kitchen

Chocolate and rosemary make elegant mousse

by Mark Handelman photos by Joan Brennan

"Cooking is like religion. The high priests keep their secrets because they don't want people to find out how easy it is to do these things at home."
With that proclamation, Warren Laine tosses balls of Brie cheese covered in white chocolate into a bowl and sprinkles them with 24-karat edible gold dust.
He is in the kitchen of London's Murano Restaurant, which is featuring three of Laine's unusual desserts during June.
The gilded Brie will be presented with marmalade sauce. He has also dipped baby carrots in white chocolate and will serve them with cocoa cinnamon bread.
Laine is vacationing in London, which was his home from 1990 to 1994. He worked at various restaurants here, ending up with a stint at the Delta Armouries Hotel.
Delta offered him a choice of jobs in Europe. He choose Munich, figuring that since learning Japanese was easy for him, German would be, too.
German was not easy, but Laine managed well enough to open a catering and restaurant business in Munich named Chocolate & Cheese, or Kunst in Schokolade. Check out its Web site at http://pages.vossnet.de/chocolate.
"London is the best," Laine says. "It is amazing for food, more interesting things and more creativity than anywhere in Germany."
As he talks, he starts a third dessert: chocolate mousse flavoured with rosemary.
It will be cooled in moulds, then popped out and topped with chocolate ganache -- a decadent cream filling --mixed with the steamed North African grain called couscous, diced strawberries and kiwi. It is all wrapped in chocolate purse.
Chocolate and rosemary? Laine says there are no rules. Recipes are mere guidelines. He loves rosemary. I want the whole recipe, but am concerned it may be too complicated.
"OK," Laine says, "We'll just put the mousse in a martini glass. That makes a simple, tasty dessert."
Laine strains the mousse from the saucepan into a bowl, careful to leave behind the fat that has separated from the chocolate. He spreads plastic wrap over a miniature muffin pan, pushing it down into each indentation to make the individual mousses easier to unmould.
He pours some of the mousse into the martini glass, the rest into the muffin moulds.
Laine puts the mousse into a refrigerator, checks melting white chocolate, separates cooked couscous with his fingers, then mixes chocolate ganache and strawberry coulis (puree) into it.
As he works, he offers this advice: Always remove chocolate and chocolate mixtures from the heat before they completely melts then stir until they melt. This is called tempering and it keeps the chocolate shiny and lovely.
The mousse in the martini glass looks a bit plain, so Laine prepares some caramel to spruce it up. Over low heat, he combines 1 tsp./5ml of water and 1 c./250 ml of sugar. He takes it off the heat just before it is the right colour and spreads some onto wax paper.
Then before the cooling caramel hardens, he wraps it in a spiral around the wax paper-covered handle of a ladle. After it cools, he removes the spiral and carefully extracts the paper.
The artistic touch reflects his whimsical nature. "The decorations do not have to be neat," he says.
Laine is animated and productive, ricocheting around the kitchen in seemingly random motion. Despite many interruptions, including my pestering and a pause to quote Shakespeare, he turns out about 35 elegant desserts in less than three hours.
The mousse alone is our feature recipe, but feel free to use it as part of a composite dessert.
To do this, make a ganache (see recipe above) and mix it with an equal amount of cooked couscous. Fold in some diced kiwis and strawberries.
Turn out the mousse onto melted chocolate spread on parchment or wax paper. Put the couscous mixture on top of the mousse before the chocolate hardens so you can lift it off the paper and form it into a purse shape before it sets. Then garnish, decorate and serve.
You can always cheat and buy chocolate cups, or serve the ganache on the mousse with some fruit and/or coulis. Laine encourages people to be imaginative. Of course, you could just eat at Murano this month, too.
For the cinnamon bread, Laine consults a battered spiral notebook containing 20 years of tips, notes and recipes -- his collected wisdom.
That wisdom includes mixing rosemary into chocolate to subtly -- and decadently -- enhance nuance and flavour. A typical touch for a chef who maintains desserts too often come last on the menu, figuratively and literally.
This one goes to the head of the class.
Mark Handelman is a London freelance writer.

ROSEMARY CHOCOLATE MOUSSE
(Serves eight)
1/2 - lemon - 1/2
4 oz. - white sugar - 100 g
1/2 c - dry white wine - 120 ml
3-4 in. - sprigs of - 8-10 cm fresh rosemary
3 oz. - bittersweet dark chocolate - 75 g
1 c - 35 per cent cream - 250 ml
For garnish - rosemary - For garnish or mint sprigs
For garnish - strawberries - For garnish
METHOD
1. In heavy-bottomed saucepan, add juice from lemon half to sugar and wine.
2. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves.
3. Strip rosemary leaves from sprigs. This should yield about 2 tbsp./30ml. Do not use dried rosemary. Finely grate chocolate.
4. Stir in rosemary, grated chocolate and cream.
5. Bring mousse to a low boil, immediately reduce to a simmer and cook uncovered for about 40 minutes. The rosemary should be very potent, as its flavour will recede when the mousse is cooled.
6. A thin layer of fat may separate from the chocolate. Try to leave this in the saucepan. Strain mousse into a bowl. If some fat gets into the bowl, soak it up with paper towels.
7. Cool mousse at room temperature for about 15 minutes but don't let it set.
8. Pour mousse into martini or champagne glasses or dessert bowls and refrigerate.
9. Remove mousse from fridge about a half-hour before serving and garnish with rosemary or mint sprigs and strawberries.
Note: Use only very good quality European baking chocolate or mousse will be grainy. Bernard Callebaut chocolate is available from the store at 484 Richmond St. Lindt is available from Cakery Decor, 123 Wortley Rd.

GANACHE
1/2 lb. - bittersweet - 225 g baking chocolate
2/3 c. - 35 per cent cream - 160 ml
1 tbsp. - unsalted butter - 15 ml
1 tbsp. - light corn syrup - 15 ml
METHOD
1. Coarsely chop chocolate.
2. Over moderate heat, bring other ingredients to a boil.
3. Remove from heat, swirl in chopped chocolate. Let stand three minutes.
4. Pour ganache into a bowl and whisk or beat until smooth.
5. Let ganache cool at room temperature before mixing into the couscous.

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