Oh, fudge!

This morning I got down to doing a project that has been waiting for too long. Some months ago, in a fit of enthusiasm, I bought some condensed milk and some truly wonderful cocoa powder, aiming to make fudge. If so-and-so (you could use various names of people I know and love there) can make it, so can I, I presumed. But, with lots of ice cream to cool us off through a very long and very hot summer (which is still in progress, strangely), and lots more mithai flooding into the house through the festive season, the supplies lay unused but not unacknowledged in the store cupboard. And then work took over, with a couple of assignments breathing so heavily down my conscience that I was leery of being distracted by culinary projects that needed time, concentration and a degree of angst to be dealt with.

And then, suddenly, almost anti-climactically, things leveled off and I found a small lull in life. So I dug out the can of condensed milk, stood the bag of cocoa tenderly next to it and meditated upon both for a short while. As the battle between insecurity and surety began waging inside my head, I rushed into the study to check my array of recipe books…to no avail. Nobody had the proportions I needed to know about. So I text messaged two friends, one who makes wonderful chocolate for us and one, a professional chef who almost never fails me, even if I ask him the strangest questions at odd times of the day. Neither answered. So I muttered a little to myself, glowered at Small Cat asleep under the sofa and went in search of Father, only to find him in the bath and so not available for that moment. I wandered in and out of the kitchen for a while, staring at the condensed milk and cocoa, hoping somehow that they would provide me with the answers I wanted. Nope. Food does not speak, except to the senses, and those were not telling me anything about how much of what I needed to use and how.

Finally, after more exercise walking than I am used to, I decided to take a shot at it, no matter how it turned out. So I brought out my trusty cast iron non stick pan, my favourite wooden ladle and all the other paraphernalia that I thought I would need, buttered the plate I would pour the fudge mixture on to, licked my fingers free of the butter, dusted the plate and much of the kitchen with cocoa powder, decanted the condensed milk into the pan, cut my finger while licking the empty can clean of that last delicious gooey dribble and hopped about my kitchen with the ladle in one hand, blood dripping down the other, trying to get myself a Band Aid without leaving the room looking like a war scene from a bad soap opera. Finally, all was managed, with a little help from a now clean and fragrant father, and I was ready to begin.

I had, with a certain touch of fatalism, measured in the cocoa and was stirring the whole sticky mess with the gas flame on low when my friend the chef called. I tucked the mobile under my ear, stirring madly as he gave me instructions that came crackling down a not too clear line. Finally, with a wrist that was starting to feel it, I stopped that rotating motion, poured the dark brown goo into the plate and scraped the last bits clean with another ladle. By then, the mixture was alarmingly sticky, more like toffee than fudge, but it smelled divine and seemed to taste pretty good, judging by the smile on Father’s face as he did the first official sampling. As of now, it has not set yet, even though it is in the fridge, but setting may not be a priority considering the rate at which it is sliding off the plate.