Food of the Gods

Charcuterie is on the menu today, along with some visionary chocolate. So, how are your New Year’s resolutions going? If you’ve fallen off the sugar wagon already, don’t worry – our first guest will make you feel good about giving in to gourmet chocolate. Edinburgh-based Coco Chocolatier not only allow its visionary chocolatiers free rein to explore amazing flavours, they also work with artists to create fantastic designs for the packaging. Calum Haggerty is in the studio to tell us more about the brand, which sources ‘origin made’ chocolate from Colombia. This enables more of the product to be created at the source, rather than just the beans, resulting in a fairer and more sustainable trade. We get to the real meat of the matter with Thomas Whitaker from award-winning Tempus Foods, a charcuterie company founded in 2014. Both Thomas and his co-founder Dhruv Baker are MasterChef finalists, with Dhruv having won the title in 2010.  He fills Sue and Ollie in on the secrets of the charcuterie world, ways to do it at home and how to avoid the common pitfalls of amateur curing. Don’t miss this show if you love chocolate, as there’s a special discount available for FoodTalk listeners at Coco Chocolatier – but you’ll have to listen in to get it!