FOOD ARTISAN
Chocolarder makes the finest bean-to-bar chocolate with flowers foraged on the Cornish coast
On the South West Coast Path, gorse bushes explode into life. Their soft coconut scent on the sea breeze is divine for everyone except chocolate maker Mike Longman (opposite). The first biscuity whiff of gorse petals in their prime means his week is about to get busier – and rather painful. “Flowering peaks twice during April and May but the timing is impossible to predict,” says the founder of Chocolarder. “As soon as I get that coconut smell, I think. ‘Oh no!’” To satisfy demand for the company’s Wild Gorse Flower bars and Easter eggs, Mike and his colleagues spend days harvesting “litres and litres” of yellow petals from clifftops near their Falmouth headquarters. “It sounds idyllic,” says Mike, stressing that the flowers are so profuse that foraging does no harm, “but all you can hear is a chorus of people shouting, ‘Ow!’” The prickly plant has been a thorn in their sides – and under their cuticles – since they made their first bar.
PLANT-BASED FOOD
Any blood and sweat is worth it. The subtle aroma of gorse is the perfect match for the mellow creaminess of milk chocolate made from beans fermented and sun-dried by cacao producers in the Dominican Republic. “I want to celebrate incredible ingredients, whether they’re gathered on our doorstep or grown by farmers who care about their craft,” Mike says.
Mike was a pastry chef at the Trelowarren Estate’s New Yard restaurant when he first experimented with gorse. He foraged petals on his walk to work, then steeped them in cream to make gorse-scented panna cotta – just as he now steeps them in cocoa butter to make gorse-flavoured chocolate. At the restaurant, he also started playing with chocolate, sourcing cacao nibs from spice suppliers to toast and grind into paste. “I was ageeky Heston Blumenthal kind of chef, wanting to know the physics and chemistry behind cooking,” Mike says. “The more I tried to find great-tasting chocolate that was ethical and sustainable, the more I realised I didn’t like what was available.”
Mike had studied economics at Loughborough University, with a focus on developing countries. When he learned that some of the biggest names in chocolate were still accused of sourcing cocoa from West African farms that used child and forced labour, his culinary curiosity was supercharged by a sense of moral urgency: “It’s not just the workforce that’s exploited. It’s the consumer, too, because industrial chocolate is full of sugar, emulsifiers and v
