Whatsit Wednesday - Chocolate

“Chocolate is cheaper than therapy and you don’t need an appointment.” One of many memes or sayings you can find about chocolate. When chocolate is brought up in the US, it most often has to do with hot chocolate or chocolate chip cookies or some kind of syrup put on ice cream. Nobody is happy when the bite into a chocolate chip cookie and find out that it is actually an oatmeal raisin cookie. 

But if you want chocolate, Belgium is the place to be. The Netherlands has its own storied past as well - putting chocolate spread and chocolate sprinkles on bread - but it is Belgium that continues its love and obsession to this day. Chocolate comes from cacao beans, after all, which come from Congo, which was a Belgian colony. So it seems the Belgians colonized Africa for chocolate. I think most chocolate lovers can understand that perfectly. 

In Belgium, chocolate means pralines. Pralines come in a box. They are all shapes and sizes. They can be milk, white or pure and can come with gooey insides or smooth insides. Brand names like Leonidas, Guylian (the seashells and sea horses), Neuhaus (in Grand Central Station NY) and Godiva offer premium chocolate. You can even go to a special store to buy chocolates - a ‘chocolatey”. Mind you, for a Belgian, not just anything can be called chocolate. 

Years ago, a newspaper revealed that Cadbury’s was not made with cocoa butter. It was basically a bunch of sugar. Belgians were incensed. In 2007 Hershey and Nestle tried to convince the FDA in the US to allow them to use partially hydrogenated vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter and still call their product “chocolate”. 

So Belgians can be chocolate snobs, which is fine with me. I am one of those people who only likes dark chocolate - called “pure” here. I do not consider white chocolate to be chocolate and milk chocolate makes my tummy do loops. But dark chocolate (pure! Yummmm) just makes the day better. What do you like best and what do you consider a chocolate treat? 

Whatsit Wednesday - Kwark

“Oh, you mean yoghurt?” No. “Is it cottage cheese?” No. So what is this white stuff that looks like cottage cheese or yoghurt but is something different and is found in various countries in Europe (including Belgium and the Netherlands)?

In Belgium, it is sometimes called “white cheese” or “flat cheese”. In the Netherlands it is simply called “kwark”. You can put your muesli in it with some fruit. You can spread it on your bread as a substitute for butter or margarine. You can make a sort of cheesecake out of it. But most of all, you can completely enjoy it and know that you are eating something healthy. 

Kwark is high in protein (14 grams per 100g serving) which is double the amount of Greek yoghurt. It is much lower in salt than cottage cheese which often tops out at 406mg per 100g. Kwark has 40mg per 100g. Add to all of those healthy attributes the delicious taste and you have a great food with a strange name.

Kwark (sometimes spelled ‘Quark’ in the US) is made by warming soured milk until it curdles. Lactic acid bacteria are added and the kwark is strained in a cheesecloth. It is hung up (which is where the name of one of the products “hangop” comes from) and results in a firm yet creamy textured product. Kwark is something you can make at home if you can’t find it in the stores. 

In Belgium it has been made for quite some time in Rotselaar, a city where we have brothers and sisters in the church. So far we have only enjoyed singing together and worshipping the Lord. But perhaps in the future we will ask about their “plattekaas” (flat cheese).