The Things We Do For Mousse

We had a surprise windfall of eggs here at the Petit Moulin.  And since we don't have a fridge and only a few of us eat eggs, we need to use them up fast.  You know what that means!  Mousse!  I just bought some dark chocolate that is a little too bitter for regular consumption anyway!  We don't have any butter or sugar, but we can totally work around that.

How do you make mousse without a stove or a fridge and only 2 out of the 4 required ingredients, you ask?  Let's find out.




First of all, you heat water up in the marvelously convenient water boiler we thankfully (albeit slightly incongruously) possess*.  Pour boiling water into a pot, nestle a glass bowl on top and fill it with the chocolate pieces and hopefully the right amount of sunflowerseed oil.  Cover with a plate and wait for the heat to melt the chocolate.

In the meantime, separate the eggs.  Oh these fresh and organic yolks are a beautiful deep yellow, almost the orange of marigolds.  Add honey.  It's the clear kind because the big jar of cloudier (tastier) local honey is quite expensive.  But this honey is still sweet!  Stir all the gold together.

Check on the chocolate.  Swap out the cooling water for new boiling hot water.  Stir to help the chocolate pieces melt all the way.  Then mix the melted chocolate/sunflowerseed oil with the egg yolks/honey.  Hm.  It's thickening fast.  Hope that's okay.

Whisk up the egg whites!!  What's that?  The whisk you found in the drawer is rusty?  Well then, wash it first.
It's kind of dark in the kitchen at dusk, but it seems to be clean enough now.  Add a pinch of sea salt and start beating.  Go outside because the people in the living room are having a meditation moment and you've made enough noise already.

Hm.  Cross your fingers that that isn't a streak of rust in your egg whites.  Cross your fingers again because egg whites aren't supposed to set up correctly if there are impurities.  Does rust count as impure?  Must not be because they whipped as well as any egg whites you've whipped before!

Fold 1/3 of the whites into the chocolate stuff.  Weird, the chocolate firmed up pretty thick.  That's never happened before.  Maybe oil solidifies stuff?  Maybe honey does?  Anyway, the thick chocolate goo is accepting the egg whites perfectly fine.  Listen to the rustle of a million egg white air bubbles popping.  Fold in the rest.

Looks normal.  Tastes normal.  Actually, the honey gives it a new edge.  That could be good.
Put a plate over the mousse and set the whole thing outside in the storage room to catch the night air and stay cool into the morning. 

Et voila!  You just made Mousse Chocolat a la Petit Moulin.  We'll see how it tastes in the morning.




*I love adverbs.