Posted in hunger management
If Pierre Hermé is the Picasso of pastry, then Oriol Balaguer is the Dalí of desserts. When I was looking through Gourmet Abu Dhabi's archives, the pictures of Chef Balaguer's chocolate creations already got me salivating.
Two days ago, the office had the great pleasure of savouring Chef Balaguer's chocolate confectionery. Freshly imported from Spain, solely on sale at Jones the Grocer - Chef Balaguer presented 'The Best 6'.
Mascleta - a delightful concoction of hazelnut praline, maldon salt and pop rocks. - is the prized flavour everyone was looking for. Remember the citrus flavoured (sometimes Coke Cola) 'popping' candies we used to eat as kids? Once in contact with liquid substances (i.e. the saliva) the candies would 'explode' in your mouth. Hence the 'popping' or 'exploding' sensation. Yeah, that's the prized praline everyone was coveting for. One colleague got lucky and perhaps this is the most expensive and delicious praline she'd ever had. She took a long while to savour her praline; it's approximately $5 per piece.
Like every other chocolatier, Chef Balaguer doesn't miss the opportunity to showcase his mastery of chemistry of chocolate and various ingredients, in this case, such as olive oil, yuzu, passion fruit, salted corn and saffron. In my very humble opinion, all of them were fantastic.
I've tasted enough pralines to declare I would prefer truffles instead, for the rest of my life. This was before my tongue touched the smooth, wildly fragrant praline of Chef Oriol Balaguer. Just the well-rounded crackling snap of the praline shell got me excited. The ultra-smooth praline centre was a breeze to swallow. Many too often, off-the-shelves pralines' fillings are either too sweet or overly sticky. I exclaimed, "C'est suffice!" But I guess I would have to take back my words, seeing that decent quality pralines are now available for non-royals like myself.
It is a tad costly for a box of 6-piece pralines (about $30). Then again, if consumers are already willing to pay this much for a tiny-puny bit of truffles from Godiva, I could tell you your money's definitely worthed with Chef Balaguer's pralines.
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