I have been wanting to cook with chocolate for a while and today I finally got round to it.

The recipe came from Claudia Rodin’s book of Spanish cookerey. On previous weekends I had flicked through books of Mexican food but had not been able to find quite what I was looking for. Yesterday morning I was looking for something else and came across the brief description that involved chicken with prawns and chocolate. The most satisfying part was taking the pestle and mortar and pulverising up a paste of almonds, garlic, sherry and chocolate to stir into the chicken stew that had been made. The highlight of the chicken stew was the hint to grate the tomatoes. This meant cutting a tomato in half and rubbing it up hard against a cheese-grater until all there is left in the hand is is a fist-full of skin.