In Praise of Kai.

I treated myself to a bar of 70% Santo Domingo chocolate this week (on the pretext – possibly valid – that it’s good for reducing cholesterol. ‘However low your bad cholesterol is,’ said my doctor, ‘it’s always better to be lower.’ Good enough for me. Hang the expense etc, etc.)

Savouring this dark, relatively un-sweet chocolate reminded me of a drink I experienced during only one period of my life. You might remember that I was in the navy for a brief period in my teens, and during the night and early morning watches somebody would bring you a mug of kai (pron. as in pie.)

Kai was a hard block of unsweetened chocolate which was scraped with a knife until there was about three teaspoon’s worth in the mug. Boiling water was added while stirring, and there was your mug of hot kai. How simple was that?

Simple, but magnificently effective. I can attest to the fact that, when you’re standing on the bridge wings of a frigate during a force 11 storm being drenched with ice cold Atlantic spray and it’s 3 o’clock in the bloody morning, no drink in the world prompts the pleasure centre into rousing applause better than kai.

I learned two things tonight: first, how to spell it, and second, that it was popular with sailors on the convoy runs during WWII. I can well imagine it was. I also imagine that the U-boat crews probably didn’t have the pleasure, which maybe explains a lot.