A little wine, a lot of chocolate.. WBW13

Bourgogne Passetoutgrains and Chocolate Cheesecake
bites with a Chocolate Rosemary Ganache

When Clotilde announced the theme for this month's Wine Blogging Wednesday, my immediate thought was that there was no way I could participate. I moved to Paris 4 weeks ago and was dismayed to find that my apartment contained a stovetop, but no oven. No oven? That's right. No oven. That meant no more roasted chicken, no more roasted tomatoes, no crostini, no homemade pizzas and definitely no baking. I was ready to throw in the towel on food blogging.

As the WBW due date drew nearer I had resigned myself to the fact that I was just going to have to sit back and watch everybody else having all the fun. And then there was an email. Not just any email, but an email sent to a girl who knows what she's talking about when it comes to food, both savoury and sweet. I lamented, I complained. She read my tales of woe, but she knew that all was not lost just because I was ovenless.
And so began my no-bake-cheesecake experiment.

I browsed a number of recipes. A bit of tweaking, a dash of invention, (something I'm rarely comfortable with when it comes to desserts) and I ended up with these chocolatey little bundles. Chocolate cheesecake on top of a cookie base, covered with a chocolate rosemary ganache. And with G. away this week, there was nobody here to enjoy them but me. And perhaps that was a good thing. Because enjoy them I did.
The rosemary flavour in the ganache added a subtle and surprising mellowness. Next time I will steep the rosemary longer in the cream to allow the flavour to come through just a bit more.


Chocolate Cheesecake Bites with a Chocolate Rosemary Ganache

I popped the cork on my new wine, and there I was, chocolate and wine at hand, ready for an evening spent curled up on the couch with a good book.



The Wine
It is said that when pairing wine with chocolate, it is important to consider the cocoa content of the chocolate. The stronger the chocolate, the more full bodied the wine should be. A bittersweet chocolate would be complimented by a hearty Zinfandel. A Pinot Noir or Merlot is a good match for milk chocolates. At 52% cocoa content, the chocolate I chose fell into the semi-sweet category. It was not bitter enough for a Zinfandel, so I decided to try something from the Bourgogne region. A general rule is that the wine should be sweeter than the chocolate, so I thought perhaps I was playing it safe. Bourgogne Passetoutgrains are made with 2/3rds Gamay grapes, and only 1/3rd Pinot Noir grapes, although I did read that its possible that this ratio is not always adhered to. My particular bottle however, did indicate that this was in fact the ratio used. The Bourgogne Passetoutgrains appellation is relatively small so it is not as easy to find these wines as it is to find those of larger appellations.
Gamay grapes often have cherry and/or strawberry notes and are said to be good easy to drink table wines. It had a nice clear colour and a noticeable acidity which cut through the sweet richness of my dessert. It was an acceptable match with my chocolate, but not a particularly satisfying one.
I think I would try this wine again in another context to see how it fares. The back label recommends the wine with grilled meats and soft cheeses, such as Brie.


Bourgogne Passetoutgrains

Bourgogne Passetoutgrains
Maison Chandesais
Bourgogne, France
Grapes: 2/3rds Gamay, 1/3rd Pinot Noir
Mis en Bouteille
12% vol.
€3.15 for 375 mL bottle or approximately €6.00 for a 750ml bottle.

The Cheesecake
The cheesecake was an experiment of mine. I did not follow a specific recipe and only wanted to make as much as I could eat. A whole cake just wouldn't do when there was only me to eat it.
You can use your favourite cheesecake recipe to recreate the same thing.

100 g of cream cheese
1 heaping tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of crème fraiche
approximately 3 oz of good quality chocolate, melted
Mix the first 3 ingredients together and then mix in the chocolate.

It turned out to be quite dense, almost like a thick mousse. I only added a tablespoon of sugar to 100g of cream cheese because I knew the chocolate would sweeten the mix. If you prefer something less dense, use whipped cream instead of the crème fraiche. Adjust amounts to your taste.

I scooped the mix onto the little cookies, smoothed it out as best I could, and after a cooling period in the refrigerator, covered each of them with the ganache.

Here is a link to Martha's No bake Chocolate Crust Cheesecake that you can use as a reference for an alternative cheesecake mixture, and also for a crust if you prefer that to using cookies.

The Chocolate Rosemary Ganache from www.mslo.com
Please note, that this amount of ganache is was way more than I needed, so keep that in mind when making your own. The instructions below are the method I used, click on link above to see Martha's full instructions.

Makes 1.5 cups
9 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary needles

Place chocolate in a medium heat-proof bowl. Warm cream with rosemary in small saucepan over low heat. Bring just to a boil. Strain cream over chocolate. Stir to melt all chocolate. Pour ganache over your cream cheese bites. Let cool in fridge or at room temperature.

The Cookies used for the base
Mère Poulard, Les Chocolatines du Mont Saint Michel
I would definitely buy these cookies again to use as my cheesecake base, but they were also equally delicious plain, straight out of the box. They were a thin cookie, the bottom of them showed that they were generously laced with tiny chocolate chips. The cookies had a very small crumb, crisp to bite into, but the rest was melt-in-your mouth. The only thing that comes to mind that is somewhat comparable in texture to the crumb of these cookies are the wafers on an oreo cookie.
I was happy to find that mine stayed crisp after a night in the refrigerator covered in my cream cheese mixture. Choosing these ones for my base had been a stroke of pure luck.


The Cookie Base