Green & Black's chocolate takes time.

If normal chocolate is a hurried shower, Green & Black's is a long, soothing soak. You break off a nib and place it on your tongue - and it dissolves into such a rich, sweet-bitter melange of flavours that the aftertaste alone is like the best chocolate you've previously had. And, for now, you don't want any more.

It's how chocolate should be: so intense that you don't want more than one piece every so often. Green & Black's products (like the insanely delicious ice cream pictured here) are Fair Trade and produced sustainably using no pesticides, and since you can suddenly taste so much more, it suggests we've been mainly eating pesticides for the last century.

Green & Black's is deeply, abidingly special. It's my ingredient of choice in chocolate cookery, since it has such a sensual impact on a recipe. Last week I gave in and bought a copy of their Unwrapped chocolate recipe book, filled with astonishing-looking delights...I'll be trying them all!

Image: Kanko*