Inspired by Chocolat: Chili Con Carne Y Chocolate

Tonight you are invited by Marc of No Recipes and Susan of Sticky Gooey Creamy Chewy to Dinner and a Movie:

This is a new monthly event, whereby we are invited to make and post about a dish inspired by the movie selected by the host for that month.

This month's movie is Chocolat, and Marc is our host.

Today was the last day of summer in Melbourne, and it was a lovely, sunny day, with a moderate wind of the kind that might have blown Vianne and Anouk into town. Just in case they did arrive on my doorstep, for tonight's dinner, I made Chili Con Carne Y Chocolate.

My inspiration for this dish was the scenes in Chocolat of Armande's birthday party, where Vianne and Roux serve meats accompanied by chocolate sauce. I didn't really fancy pouring chocolate sauce on my meat, but I was curious about the meat and chocolate combination, which I have heard about before. A quick Google search later, and I found a recipe for Chili Con Carne Y Chocolate, which you can find

here.

To give you an idea of the different flavours in this dish, here are some of the ingredients chopped and ready to go, including the chocolate:

In the finished dish, you do not taste the chocolate per se; rather, the chocolate adds richness to the flavour of the dish, and blends in rather than shouting out to be recognised as an individual. This is good, in my opinion, as I believe that the other alternative would be more like the chocolate sauce served over meat, where you could not avoid the chocolate flavour potentially clashing with the meat.

Thanks to Marc for hosting Dinner and a Movie this month. This event has definitely taken me outside my comfort zone to try something new, and it is great to be inspired by such a wonderful movie.