Sweets for your Sweetest - Indulge 10th - 16th February
Sweets for your Sweetest
Published on Indulge - the weekend supplement of the Nation newspaper on 10th February, 2008
Valentine’s Day is huge now, but 30 years ago Chef Gerard Mendis - the executive pastry chef at Colombo Hilton - recalls was something that many have not heard about. He remembers with laughter how people squirmed with embarrassment upon receiving tokens of appreciation. Today, people from almost all walks of life, irrespective of race or religion, anticipate this day with much planning and expectations.
Though today this has boiled down to a day of love, to truly appreciate Valentine’s Day, it’s worth taking a trip down history lane. Only then, could one (especially the ladies) be grateful to what Valentine’s Day has evolved to be. For nearly 800 years Romans had a pagan practice during mid-February to commemorate the young men’s rite of passage to God Lupercus. During this celebration, young men would pull a name of a teenage girl from a box and this girl would be his sexual companion for the rest of the year!!! (Yikes)
Thankfully the church intervened during the 5th century and even replaced the pagan god, Lupercus with St. Valentine - the great supporter of love. During 270 AD Valentine defied Emperor Claudius’s ruling against marriage as the emperor thought married men make poor soldiers (must be related to Prabakaran!). Of course, when the emperor found out, Valentine had to pay with his life, but while waiting for his sentence to be carried out, he fell in love with his jailer’s blind daughter. His love for this girl was so great that she regained her eyesight. In his farewell message to her, he signed, “From your Valentine” and this phrase has been used by lovers ever since.
In 1415, Charles, duke of Orleans, was imprisoned in the Tower of London and he sent his wife a card on Valentine’s Day and this is considered the first true Valentine card. This romantic gesture was quickly emulated and expanded to many more ways to express love. In all these expressions food, especially sweets, plays a vital role and this is why bojoon.com thought of visiting Chef Mendis for a chat on his sweets.
There are many talented culinary experts in Colombo who are expert ‘mood-benders’ with their extraordinary cuisine. Why we chose Chef Mendis for a chat on Valentine delicacies was because of his special ribbon cake. This cake of his is fabulous and is famous even in Kandy. To win over Kandy tongues is not easy for Kandians are used to real home-cooked food. They detest many cakes from Colombo claiming it to contain more cream than cake. That is why they love Chef Mendis’s special ribbon cake.
Perhaps Chef Mendis, been a product of Kandy himself, knows better than to fiddle with quality. Anyhow, been heavily inclined towards art and music, culinary inspirations come easily to him and have created a masterpiece from the most simple and basic of cakes - the ribbon cake. Covered with a marzipan layer and real butter icing this is a treat.
Chef Mendis, clearly a man of principles, explained that food must not only taste good, but also be as harm-free as possible. That is why, he said, he always chooses not only the best of products, but also products that are good for health and avoid preservatives and trans-fats. For instance, for his special ribbon cake he uses flora and not butter.
Apart from his special ribbon cake, there are apparently over 300 varieties of cakes at any given time and nearly 60% of these can be bought over the counter. His hand-made chocolates are equally famous and for this Valentine he has created a special collection, which includes special chocolates such as ‘kiss-me-quick’, ‘heartthrob’ and ‘blueberry hill’.
His fully-equipped kitchen can handle almost any request and indeed he has received some strange requests - like green-chili in chocolate! So, if there’s a very romantic lover out there who wants to give something unique to his Valentine, you now know the place to go.
Chef also revealed that the special boxes he had ordered have small verses of sweet-little-nothings written on top. This should ease the burden of many a young man, who wants to express his love but are at a total loss for the right words.
Cakes and chocolates aside, if you are thinking of something different, then do try the alpé from Delight, Kandy. You can’t miss the place as this is just in front of Cargills Food City, Kandy. Alpé is a caramel stick of different degrees of caramelized sugar. This is totally unique to Delight and is wicked tease on the tongue. However, you can only get this from Kandy and it doesn’t come packed like chocolate. While you are in Kandy picking up your alpé, do stop over at Hotel Earl’s Regency and try their Sri Lankan styled hotpot, which we guarantee would be an amazing experience.
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