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Vianne

Book by Joanne Harris · 4 quotes · Chocolate, Confections, Chocolates

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Vianne Quotes

“But when I reached Xocolatl, my heart beating ferociously, I found the display window brightly lit, with fairy lights on the window-ledge and along the shelves of chocolates. Cellophane-wrapped and gleaming like a pirate's buried treasure, they seemed to glow with a precious light, those gilded piles of mendiants, and truffles, rose creams and santons de Margot, while above them rose the centerpiece; a statuette of the Bonne Mère, much larger than the ones in the shop, one hand raised in benediction, the other holding the infant Christ, and robed in darkest chocolate. And all around the dishes and jars were origami animals; little angular butterflies and cranes and fish and rabbits in multicolored paper. I detected the hand of Grandmother Li: imagined those clever old hands at work, folding the pretty papers.”

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“Rose fondants, made with Turkish rosewater; coated in 70 per cent couverture chocolate from hand-sorted Porcelana beans. I remove the embryo myself in order to limit the bitterness. Eighty-five hours conching; then tempered on marble, my favorite way, then dip the fondant, leave to set and add a crystallized rose petal on top. The result smells like roses; chocolate-red; full-throated; the petals like the bloom of a grape.”

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“It is the simplest of recipes, after pralines and chocolate ganache. He calls them mendiants, those chocolate discs studded with raisins, and almonds and candied lemon peel. He tells me they're named after the mendicant orders of monks, who used to sell them door-to-door during the Middle Ages. It's a word I have heard before, though never in this context; instead, I remember it flung like stones in our wake as we passed through some long-ago village. It's a surprise to find this word-- this slur-- thus sweetened by circumstance, harmlessly translated into the language of chocolate. First, melt the chocolate in a bain-marie. Strange, how the Virgin seems to bless even this most secular of baptisms. Then, on greaseproof paper, place tablespoons of the chocolate to make round discs, the size of the Host. On this still-cooling chocolate, add the traditional dried fruits and nuts that symbolize the Orders. Fat raisins; yellow sultanas; cherries; toasted almonds; pistachios and hazelnuts, like jewels on a medallion.”

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