Have you ever thought about chocolate in Italian cuisine? We don't mean on tiramisu or on toast, imagine it with pasta and game meat... Cinghiale in dolceforte is a Tuscan wild boar stew with a sauce made from dark chocolate, and food writer Emiko Davies says it's "luxurious-tasting"!

IN THIS EPISODE

• Chocolate is used more widely in Italian cooking than you might think
• Traditional Italian recipes are passed down from generation to generation
• Dolceforte dates back to Renaissance banquets

Chocolate doesn't need to be sweet. You will be familiar with this if you have pushed your love for dark chocolate beyond 40-50% cocoa, perhaps up to 70% or even 100%.

In Mexican cuisine, mole negro is a hot sauce served with meat or tacos that is made with different types of chili peppers, spices, peanut butter and chocolate. Does anything like that happen in Italian recipes? Prepare to be surprised.

LISTEN TO

Cinghiale in dolceforte: A chocolatey stew from Renaissance Tuscany

SBS Italian

07/02/202334:05

Play

For this episode of The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine, Massimiliano chats about this dish of wild boar in chocolate sauce with Australian-born, Italy-based food writer and photographer Emiko Davies.

Cocoa is not the only unusual ingredient in this recipe. The chocolate-based sauce also contains candied fruit peel.

It's kind of like you're making a Christmas cake or panforte and that fell into the wild boar stew and they mixed together and somebody went, 'Well, this is delicious!'

Emiko Davies

Emiko Davies in her Tuscan kitchen. Source: SBS

To us today,

cinghiale in dolceforte

seems like a strange, perhaps off-putting combination of ingredients.

It’s actually a dish with a long history, dating back to a time when Italy’s food scene tasted very different. Hear more about the history of the dish in this episode.

Follow Scarrafoni in Cucina | The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine in the SBS Radio app or your favorite podcast app to hear all episodes in the series.

Find a collection of recipes featured in the first series on the 

SBS Food

website, including a recipe for

wild boar with chocolate sauce

.

Listen to the Italian version of this episode here.