Thanks, blueicus, I sort of remembered someone once sayihng cocoa butter. Now, to find it! What they commonly call cocoa butter here (burro di cacao) is actually chapstick!!
I'll tell you a funny side story about translation of cooking terms - i wanted to make a strawberry tart here, my first summer in italy, and needed gelatin (it was pate brisee, a bavarian cream filling and fresh strawberries on top brushed with redcurrant jelly - one of the best non chocolate deserts ever). Anyway i thought i knew how to say gelatin in italian - 'Gelatina'
but what he gave me smelled of broth. It was actually a jellied broth cube that you use to make summer meat salads, a jellied meat broth.
So i looked it up and it's called "colla di pesce" which means fish glue. Since nobody bakes here, especially not elaborate things, it;s really just used in pastry shops, but i didn;t know that yet, i was still convinced i would encounter amazing home baking and even wanted to collect recipes for a cookbook.
So I went to the store again and said i needed colla di pesce. He sent me to the hardware store. Now you;d think i would have known better than to go to the hardware store for gelatine, but i was already prepared for weird locations of common products and was prepared not to be surprised. I had asked for salt at the grocery store and the looked at me as if i had asked for a chain saw. Of course not! At the tobacco store! (I later learned that salt and tobacco were both taxed with a special stamp on them like liqueur bottles have in the States, so they are sold in special stores that sold tobacco, salt, and postage stamps).
Anyway, i went to the hardware store. The hardware guy knew more than the food store guy and told me no, that's sold in specialty shops and not in the local little grocery store.
So wish me luck finding (and even explaining) cocoa butter.
thanks  |