I'm happy to be taking care of two things with this recipe. One is that about a week ago, I was late to the market, arriving near the end, when everyone was packing up to leave. Scanning quickly to see what I could procure in a short amount of time, I passed by a stand where one fellow lorded over an enormous pile of organic bananas, and was hollering, "Un euro, deux kilos!...Un euro—deux kilos!"

Since that's roughly a buck for a little over four pounds of fruit, I stopped right there, and took as many as I could carry off his hands. And then, he threw another bunch in my basket after I paid. So I had a whole bunch of bananas...five, to be precise...which was great. But I was a little concerned about having what looked to be like around fifty bananas for just one person.

Once home, as they started ripening during the week, seemingly all at once, a mild panic set in. So I called into service a recipe from my archives, one of my all-time favorites: Banana and Chocolate Chip Upside-Down Cake.

Believe it or not, there's been a spate of cupcake places opening in...of all places—Paris.

I haven't been in to any of them, but I should probably go at some point since I'm not sure if it's just a fad that's going to end soon, or something that might be here to stay. Parisians aren't especially fond of cakes with thick layers of frosting or blue icing, and sugary roses don't have quite the same nostalgic effect here as they do in America.

A lot of people come to Paris and ask me what they can bring. I've kind of had to stop mentioning things when I ramble on here, because if I casually mention that I would kill for a box of thin mints, every guest that comes to visit for the next three years arrives with a dozen boxes of thin mints. So please, don't bring me any thin mints. Except those After Eight mints. As evidenced by the empty brown, envelope-style wrappers littering my apartment, I love those. (Oh, and I like Planter's Peanut Blocks, too.)

Since I got in trouble recently for using...shall we say, a less-than nutritionally correct ingredient, on my last trip to San Francisco, folks will be happy to hear that I discovered fresh, wholesome pecans for sale at Costco.

Here's some of the frequently asked questions people have about cocoa powder, and its use in recipes:

What's the difference between Dutch-process and natural cocoa powder?

Dutch-process cocoa powder is made from cocoa (cacao) beans that have been washed with a potassium solution, to neutralize their acidity. Natural cocoa powder is made from cocoa beans that are simply roasted, then pulverized into a fine powder.

What does Dutching do?

Aside from neutralizing the acidity, Dutching cocoa powder makes it darker (see photo below, right) and can help mellow the flavor of the beans. Some artisan companies in the United States don't Dutch-process their cocoa as they claim their cocoa beans don't need to be acid-neutralized. Most supermarket brands of cocoa powder in America, such as Hershey's and Nestlé, are natural cocoa powders.

Can I use Dutch-process and natural cocoa powder interchangeably in recipes?

I'm probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer, because about a decade ago, I met two guys who were planning to start a bean-to-bar chocolate company in America. And I remember thinking, "Hoo-boy, are these nut-jobs going to lose their shirts! Who in America cares that much about chocolate?"

Fast-forward to a few years later, and Scharffen Berger chocolate became a huge hit, challenging, and changing the way Americans thought about chocolate. It was eventually sold for a substantial sum of money, and the rest is history.

And I'm living in a drafty, two room rooftop apartment where getting hot water is a miracle that might happen weekly. If at all. So who's the nut-job now?

You get a little lazy living here. At least I do. And because I'm not as spry as I used to be, if someone proposes a trip that's more than one métro change away, I usually find a way to opt out of it. Arrondissements that are far, far away, like the 15th or the 17th, may as well be on the outside of the périphérique (or l'hexagone, for that matter) and I haven't stepped foot in the likes of them in years.

One place that's worth going out of my way for is A l'Etoile d'Or, and I broke my cardinal rule when Cenk from Café Fernando came to Paris for a visit and he asked me where to meet up.

I've known Denise Acabo, who lords over her confectionery wonderland, even before I moved to Paris, when I'd stop in and gawk at all the amazing chocolates and confections.

I keep a piece of paper near my front door. On it are places in Paris that I want to visit. When I hear about a place that sounds interesting, on the list it goes. Unfortunately, it seems as soon as I cross one off, a few more get added. And the list gets longer and longer and longer and longer and...

One particular spot that I've had my eye on for too long was Puerto Cacao, located in the farthest part of the city from where I live, requiring more than my limit of two métro changes. The focus of the shop is chocolate équitable, or fair trade chocolate.

So I was surprised when I was walking near the Marché d'Aligre and the store with the pricey mid-century modern furniture that I used to covet was gone. And in its place was a new hot chocolate spot.

For my birthday, back in December, Romain presented me with a Kalouga bar from Bernachon, handwrapped personally for me by Denise Acabo of A l'Etoile d'Or, one the best, and wackiest, candy and chocolate shops anywhere in the world.

I've been afraid to open it since I know what'll happen once I do. So I've been saving it for a special occasion, or a WTF moment. And yes, I'm aware that it's a long time, but I guess things have been going pretty well lately.

Well, that is until a recent trip to my bank to simply change the status of my account since I found out I was being overcharged up the wazoo for services I didn't understand or use. (Like, even though she insisted I did, do I really need two free money orders a month? I think the last time I used a money order was in 1998. But I've learned that not speaking picture-perfect French can easily tack on 20-30% to the cost of things.)

The banquière hefted a thick dossier of paperwork so voluminous, it made the Sunday New York Times look like a pin-up flyer for a lost cat. It took my breath away, and I spent an hour and a half going through it and just to get out of there, I signed away whatever it was they wanted me to sign away.

When I got home, that bar was certainly tempting me. And I held off.

But I don't need to hold off any further.

All I can say is—I hope they work...

Les Chocolats Bernard Dufoux
32, rue Centrale
La Clayette
Tél: 03 85 28 08 10

Also available at:

A l'Etoile d'Or
30, rue Fontaine (9th)
Paris
Tél: 01 48 74 59 55

When I gave the terrific recipe for the Caramelized White Chocolate, which I learned to make at Valrhona's chocolate school, I'd hoped that many of you would use it to create your own concoctions. While no one came up with my favorite (stirred into oatmeal!), there was a lot of creativity put forth as people made everything from Caramelized White Chocolate Bars to a spread for a buttery, flaky croissant.

I've listed the ones I found at the end of the post, but I wanted to give the ice cream recipe I've been making this summer.

A while back, I was invited to do a hands-on candy-making class in Salt Lake City. As usual, I arrived way-too-early, because I'm like that (to make sure I'm ready), and when the doors opened, in walked in all the participants.

Shortly after I demonstrated a few things we were going to make, everyone got to work and I started mingling with the participants. I walked around making sure everyone was okay and most of the women seemed to have a pretty good handle on things. In fact, they had a great handle on things, and were wielding their candy thermometers and dipping forks like pros. When I expressed my amazement at what a great job everyone was doing, one woman spoke up; "We're Mormons, David, of course we're good at making candy...we're don't have any other vices!"

It was pretty hilarious—that is, until things started going wrong.

If you're thinking that you've been 'set up' by the previous post for Chocolate Sherbet, je suis coupable. (I am guilty.) You likely know Adam Ried as the man who obsessively tests equipment and recipes on America's Test Kitchen. He was also an editor at Cook's Illustrated for ten years. So when I saw his new book devoted to milkshakes, because I always have a freezer full of ice creams, sherbets, and sorbets, I was delighted to have a fool-proof collection of well-tested recipes—and my blender has been begging for mercy ever since.

So get out those blenders, and welcome Adam Ried!... dl

Shake de l'Opéra

"Opera."

Quick..... what leapt to your mind when you read that word? For the culture vultures among us, maybe it was Monteverdi. Or Mozart. Or Wagner.

For me, it would be chocolate (which, admittedly, often comes to mind no matter what words I'm reading), followed immediately by coffee, and then almond.

This winning flavor trifecta defines gâteau de l'Opéra, an ever-present stalwart of pâtisseries from one end of Paris to the other. Most gâteaux de l'Opéra hew pretty close to this alluring formula: thin layers of almond cake, soaked in coffee syrup, alternated with layers of coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache, all hidden under a cloak of glistening chocolate glaze.

For those of you wondering what the difference between 'sorbet' and 'sherbet' is, a sorbet has no dairy or eggs in it, and sherbet is usually made with milk or egg whites. Of course, there's those rogues out there adding a bit of cream or whatever, but that's the story on that and any variations aren't authorized by me. And as you know, the ice cream (and sherbet) buck stops here.

(I can just hear all the fingers Googling madly out there, looking for examples to prove me wrong...Talk about setting myself up!)

This Chocolate Sherbet has, you guessed it...a bit of milk added.

Mailboxes across France are smelling a little better recently.

Because last month, La Poste released a limited-edition of, yes, chocolate stamps—or des timbres au chocolat.

When I saw them over at La Cuisine de Babeth, I raced over to my local branch of La Poste and asked to buy a sheet. When the woman behind the counter handed the sheet over, the smell of chocolate wafted towards me as well. And lifting it up to my face, sure enough, the stamps smelled like pure, dark chocolate.

(Of course, in America, they'd have to put warnings all over the place because someone would try to eat them.)

So, of course, I asked for three more sheets, because I just couldn't resist. I don't know what I'm going to do with all these stamps, but I don't think you can never have enough chocolate, no matter what size or shape it comes in. Or affranchissement*.

*Postage

I don't like to make promises I can't keep. So when I posted on my classes at the L'école du Grand Chocolat Valhrona, everyone began clamoring for the secret technique for the caramelized white chocolate that was shown.

Technically, even though I didn't promise anything, I can't say I blame you—if I saw a picture of it, I'd want to know how to make it, too.

The year was 1999 and my first book had come out and was nominated for one of those terribly-important cookbook awards. During the dinner and awards presentation, everyone thought I was a shoe-in and so I was seated right up in front, sharing a table with Graham Kerr, Claudia Rodin, some woman from Sweden (I had no idea who she was; the only Swedish women I've committed to memory are the ladies of Abba, I'm afraid)—and, gulp, Julia Child.

It was nice to be considered, but the real reason I wanted to win was because Alice Medrich was presenting the award in my category and I quickly thought of something that I wanted to say about her. When I was starting out as a baker, I used to step into her shop, Cocolat in Berkeley, on my way to work and get a truffle or a wedge of cake, which I would devour before beginning my own baking shift. And I credit her for introducing me, and a lot of other Americans, to the pleasures of fine chocolate.

Unfortunately I didn't win and the following year, I was relegated to the rear of the room, back with rest of the riff-raff.

Askinosie White Chocolate

There's nothing odder to me than people who say, "I don't like white chocolate...because it's not chocolate!" Which is like saying, "I don't like white wine...because it's not Champagne!"

In each case, both are similar, but entirely different creatures and to compare them is kinda silly. I used the scoff at the losers who liked milk chocolate, until I started appreciating it for what it really was (not dark chocolate), and I joined the ranks and became a loser myself. (Although depending on who you talk you, it started sometime before that.)

Because I was recently scheduled to speak about white chocolate with the Evan Kleiman (who is anything but a loser) on her radio program Good Food, I asked Shawn Askinosie if he'd send me a few bars, via a friend who was en route to Paris, of his new bean-to-bar white chocolate, so I could sample them.

You could've knocked me over with a cocoa leaf when I slipped the bars out of their packages, as I wasn't prepared for them to be so gently coffee-colored; one studded with salted pistachios the other with nibs.

Aside from the massive safe in the Banque de France, probably the toughest place to get in to in France is the Ecole de Grand Chocolat Valrhona in the little town of Tain l'Hermitage. Admission to the professional cooking program I attended is by invitation only, and several times of the year, pastry chefs and chocolatiers from all over the world come to Valrhona to watch and learn how their chocolate is made. And even more important, to discover the best and tastiest ways to eat it.

Our chef-instructor was Philippe Givre, who was good-natured, but never let us forget that we were there to work-work-work. And he was perhaps the best example of the hard-driving pastry chef.

Some people, when they travel, they look for hotels with amenities like spas or room service. Others look for hotels near restaurants or local attractions. Me? I look for ones near supermarkets. And on my recent trip through the states, my traveling companion was shocked that I'd managed to pack 3 empty suitcase into one larger one, the limit of our collective baggage allowance.

Not to mention our two carry-ons—"someone" was ready for some serious shopping...

I've been dying to make a batch of Scotcheroos for a long time and although I've become pretty adept at finding substitutions for American ingredients here in Paris, butterscotch chips had me scratching me head.

I've been a tad remiss in doing a write-up about one of the newest American chocolate-makers: Askinosie. When I heard about them, I couldn't wait to get my hands on some bars of their bars. The only problem was that I wolfed them down too-quickly, before I could even write 'em up.

Then I'd heard in the news (the chocolate news, which I read rabidly...is there any kind of news?) that they've been making a white chocolate bar that's made from non-deodorized cocoa butter and goat's milk, instead of the traditional cows milk. As someone who likes white chocolate, and enjoys the tang of goat milk, this sounds like heaven to me.

In my 89 Random Things About Me, #3 was that I thought small-batch chocolate makers summed up all of the best qualities of America, most notably the eagerness to do something different and improve something, making it even better than before.

I was having dinner at Racines a few weeks ago, and excused myself during the meal to run upstairs and use the facilities. While up there, I had a few minutes to stare at the wall in front of me, which was covered with pictures and pages of text from various books. One page stopped me mid-moment, it was are recipe for something called Gâteau Zoë.

It was a pretty simple-looking recipe and when I finished up and went back downstairs, I noticed it on the menu, so we ordered it. And it was delicious! Because I'm a terrible journalist and never seem to carry either at the same time—and obviously, inspiration can strike in the most unlikeliest of places...at the most unlikeliest of times—I ran back up to the bathroom to jot it down.

Today is World Nutella Day, and I'm caught with my trousers down. I prepared a dish (well..sort of) but didn't get around to writing up something unusually profound to say, so a picture of it is going to have to do for now.

I got sidetracked by a whole bunch of stuff, and had a lot of things I was going to post about this week, then along came 89 other things, plus an appointment with the podologue, so I've been washing my feet like mad, I mean, scrubbing them really, really well before my rendez-vous. Seriously, I think I spent the better part of the week washing them.

Anyhow, here's a shot of Nutella, in a slightly different form than you might be used to seeing it in.

Due to a quirk in the way my website was initially set up, a short list of recipes on my Recipes page are in a format that I can't alter. A friend suggested I get an intern to re-do the recipes, but I looked at the list and scoffed—heck, I want to remake everything there! So I'm going to be re-presenting some of the recipes from the archives, updating them over the next few months or so.

One of the first recipes I put up on the site was a hot chocolate recipe from Wittamer, one of the best chocolate shops in Brussels. And let me tell you, there's plenty of competition in that town.

The pastry department is always the most popular part of the kitchen amongst the rest of the staff. (Unless I'm in it, though. Then that's debatable.) For one thing, anytime there's a staff birthday, you're called into service to make the cake. And since everyone has a birthday, folks are usually nice to you the other 364 days of the year. Another thing is that regular cooks like...no, love to snack on anything sweet.

Whenever I made biscotti, the ends and broken bits would end up on a plate in the pastry department, and almost immediately the staff would swoop down for the kill the moment the rounded end hit the plate.

After chewing for a moment, invariably, someone would always say, "You know...(pause)...I like biscotti better only once-baked."

I'm sure they were certain I was hanging on to their every word, and how I managed to resist the urge to say, "So what?"—I'll never know...

To those of you who've been writing and pleading to get into the laboratory of Jacques Genin, the most elusive chocolatier in Paris, the wait is over. After years of jumps and starts, he's finally opening his boutique in Paris, which is open to the public.

(Previously, one had to call, or just show up at his workshop in the 15th arrondissement, and hope he had a moment in his frantic schedule.)

So his dream is finally a reality—and what a dream it is!

When I was in New York City in October I fell in love. Deeply and madly.

I'd swapped apartments with a friend and as I was leafing through her stack of new baking books, I became hopelessly smitten with one in particular: Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

And even though both my suitcases were dangerously over-packed (although my new iMac was more than worth the five minutes I spent charming the United agent so he'd waive the overweight surcharges), and I already quite a few other cookbooks wedged in there, I reasoned there was always room for one more.

I feel like I deserve a majority of the credit (or blame...depending on how you look at it) for the cupcake craze. I was eating them decades ago, when no one gave them a second thought. And now, as someone who teaches baking told me, making and selling cupcakes in America is like printing money.

I'm not much for trendy foods, but for some reason, mid-day yesterday, right in the middle of my Japanese bento box lunch of chicken katsu and seaweed salad, I was seized with the overwhelming desire for a cupcake.

If you want to see a normally placid French person go into a crazed frenzy, you don't need to watch their reaction to me mercilessly butcher their language.

One just needs to utter a single word—cheesecake.

I've never met a French person whose face didn't soften and melt at the mere utterance of the word, and le cheesecake is always spoken of with a reverence normally reserved for the finest cheeses and most exclusive wines.

Although can you find Philadelphia cream cheese here at various outlets in Paris, when you do find it, it's prohibitively expensive. If you were to make your own cheesecake using four packages of the stuff, it'd run you about €20, which is nearly $30. Holy mother of Bristol Palin!

The first time I ever really tasted chocolate, it was from a man I'd met in a dark alley. Actually, it wasn't really a dark alley, but in a barren parking lot in a scruffy section of San Francisco.

I had taken a tour of an industrial bakery with a group of local baking enthusiasts, and afterward, a strange man sided up to me, pulled a wad of crumpled up foil out of his jacket pocket, and asked me if I wanted a taste.

Recoiling a bit, when he opened the crinkly foil, in the middle was a small nugget of something dark, sticky, and melted. When I stuck my finger in, then put it in my mouth, there was an explosion of flavor: dark and roasty, only slightly sweet, and very rich. It was pure chocolate, but unlike any other that I'd tasted before. I thought it was delicious.

He told me that he was going to start a chocolate company and make chocolate like this in small batches.

I thought he was insane.

It seems like there’s a wave of macaron questions that are sweeping my way. Unlike les brownies or le gâteau weekend (poundcake), successful macarons are more the result of the technique, rather than following a mere recipe. There’s lots of tips and tricks around the web that will help you out with these little devils, including some interesting recipes, too.

You can find my chocolate macaron recipe on the site, but here are a few links and places for further reading that I think are particularly helpful and insightful.

Earlier this year I was sent some of the new chocolates from Valrhona to play around with. While I made quick work of the rest of them, one stood out in particular: Xocopili, smooth balls of chocolate flavored with a myriad of spices, including a heavy dose of cumin.

Frédéric Bau, a professor at their notoriously difficult to get into Ecole du Chocolat (I've been invited—and uninvited, a number of times...can someone please put in a good word for me?), developed this blend.

And for the life of me, I had no idea what to do with it.

Rouchoux's caramel-filled chocolate bar.

At the shop, they advise you that after you've started it, to store it upright to prevent the caramel from running out.

That is, of course, is based on the assumption that there's going to be any left over in the first place.

John-Charles Rochoux
16, rue d'Assas (6th)
Tél: 01 42 84 29 45
(Map)

Related links:

And more chocolate: John-Charles Rochoux (TooManyChefs)

John-Charles Rochoux; Parisian chocolatier

A while back it was cannelés.

Those little eggy pastries baked with a cracky-crust, that everyone was going ga-ga over and just had to bring home the copper molds to make. (Hands up, folks. How many of you have ever used them?)

Then everyone moved on to macarons, dainty little "sandwiches", made from two crispy almond meringues, with a layer of buttercream or jam in the middle.

So when I heard that pastry chef Arnaud Lahrer, who's won the award for the best macaron in Paris, opened a shop devoted solely to macarons and chocolate, I put on my reporter hat and caught the métro up to the 18th arrondissement to taste them.

Of course, I couldn't do it by myself, so I enlisted my friend Heather to come and help with this daunting task.

Paris chocolatier...

Michel Chaudun
149, rue de l'Université (map)
01 47 53 74 40

Michel Chaudun (in Japan)

Pardon, Monsieur Linxe, but I disagree.

At a recent tasting at La Maison du Chocolat, I sampled at least eight chocolates—not to mention passion fruit ganache, chocolat chaud, plus two of their newest summer flavors: melon and star anise.

It was a lot to get through, let me tell you. I normally avoid any hot chocolate that's offered in those kinds of situations, because I find that's the tummy-buster, the stuff that puts you over the edge. And when faced with a plate of such fine chocolates, I want to enjoy and savor every chocolate-dipped bite. A warm cup of silky-rich chocolat chaud alongside? That's just dorer le lys. (Gilding the lily.)

My favorite chocolate at La Maison du Chocolat is Rigoletto Noir.

We're mid-week into our Paris Chocolate Tour here and we're having a great time. Everyone's enjoying the unusually fine weather, and of course, the chocolate.

I wanted to post a few shots and notes in my spare seven minutes—it's 5:34am so forgive any typos or missed links. I'll catch 'em later...in my free time ; )

Cheerful, and the amazingly-talented, Jean-Charles Rochoux shows us a chocolate replica of his arm in his laboratory. He made it for a Halloween display at a Parisian department store. The scoop of passionfruit sorbet is from Le Bac à Glaces, an ice cream shop just a few blocks away, where we stopped to cool down.

At M. Rochoux's swanky boutique, his assistant Murielle, packs up a box of chocolate. Check out the sexy glove. Oh la la! I may need even more sorbet to cool down...

If you do stop in, be sure to get a tablet of his chocolate from Peru. This is one of my favorite chocolates in his shop, along with the tablets of caramelized hazelnuts from Piedmont enrobed in chocolate as well as his latest; a bar of chocolate with a unctuous layer of creamy caramel oozing out.

A light French salad: la salade parisienne. Yes, there is some lettuce tucked under that mountain of ham, but I was more focused on the yummy house-made fries at Le Nemrod that I dove on as soon as they landed. Unfortunately, being the consummate host, I did share a few with my table mates. But not before grabbing all the crispiest specimens. Since my salad was so light, my guests knew I needed the extra nourishment to make it through the afternoon.

Did I mention how light it was? Just checking...

Of course, it's not lunch in Paris without un peu de rosé. I had a little pitcher, which was just enough to carry me through the afternoon. Well, at least until dinner.

If the above salad looked too light for you, the salad with soft-cooked egg melting over a huge mound of crispy bacon and studly croutons, may be more suitable to carry someone through a week of tasting chocolates. They also make a letter-perfect croque monsieur (and madame), if you're in the neighborhood.

New chocolate-makers are springing up across America, in the most unlikeliest of places. Like Missouri.

Who'd a thunk it?

Using good 'ol American ingenuity, a little over a year ago, Alan McClure started grinding up beans and molding them into lithe bars of very dark, and very sleek, bittersweet chocolate.

His company, Patric chocolate, makes bars that are "micro-produced," and he's got two in his line-up, both using cacao from Madagascar.

When I asked Alan what attracted him to the cacao from that region, he said "Since the bars are made from cacao that come from one single estate, and since the family there has owned it for quite some time, they really have been able to exert an extremely high level of control on the quality and consistency of the fermentation and drying, which is actually quite rare in the cacao world."

Alan proclaims that this isn't pure "criollo" chocolate, a much-touted term for a varietal that almost all chocolate experts say no longer exists in its pure form. (Some chocolate-makers are claiming to the contrary.) Right now, the all the beans for Patric's bars are from a plantation in the Sambirano Valley.

I've been a little lax in my duties around here reporting on chocolate. In my defense, I've been sidetracked by bacon, seaweed, and kimchi. But man cannot live by chocolate alone.

Even in Paris.

Speaking of chocolate, when I was doing research for my chocolate book, it was challenging to find people to talk about what they do. I met with one representative from a big chocolate company who said he would only talk to me, and let me visit, if I only wrote about their company in the book. (Uh...sure!)

When I was writing my ice cream book, I called a gelato chain here in Paris, asking if I could come in and see how they make their ice cream to include them in the book. After much hemming and hawing, I never heard back.

It's always after the book comes out, you become a popular fellow. I seem to be always behind the curve on these things.

Seriously my friends, is there anything better than chocolate and toffee together?

Especially when the toffee has a brown sugar-flavored buttery snap and luscious chocolate is smeared over the top so it hardens and melds with the crackly caramelized matzoh underneath. When a marriage is this good, a picture can only do partial justice to the love that exists between the happy couple.

This dessert is the result of a happy accident. I've been working with a liquor company on developing some recipes and after a couple furious days of recipe-testing, I had a zillion containers of various odds-and-ends lying around.

Some had banana, some chocolate. Most were spiked with various quantities of liquor and there were a number of orphans that I had no idea where they came from. And there was that bottle of dark rum that I needed to finish the last little sip of.

So what did I do?

I mixed them all up, tossed them in my ice cream machine and let 'er rip. After 30 minutes or so, I dug in my spoon in and tasted the most delicious batch of ice cream I'd churned up in a while.

But soon after, I got to work and discovered something—the world's easiest Chocolate Ice Cream...with no machine required!

Prompted by some of your comments and messages, here are some chocolate frequently-asked questions...

My chocolate has gray streaks. It is okay to use?

That's called 'bloom' and it happens when the chocolate melts or gets warm, and then cools again without being tempered. When you buy chocolate, it is already tempered. However if it's exposed to heat or melted, it can fall out of temper. (You can read my instructions for how to temper chocolate.)

Those streaks that you see is harmless cocoa fat rising to the surface because when the chocolate was warmed, it lost its emulsion (like chicken stock or vinaigrette separates when heated, then cooled.) Similarly, if there are crystal-like formations on the surface, those indicate 'sugar bloom' and the chocolate is safe to use. In either case, the chocolate can be melted and used as normal.

If there is green mold, or anything furry, that means the chocolate got damp. In that case, it should be tossed.


How long does chocolate last?

As a cookbook author, whenever you do a cooking demonstration, there's always 'The Question'. It's the one that's the most frequently asked when you're doing classes on a book tour.

For us who write about baking, normally it's, "Can that be frozen?"

Since my freezer is usually so crammed with stuff I can't imagine wedging in a multi-layer cake amongst all the rock-hard frozen madness that I call "my freezer"...except for now, because I came home from the country last weekend and found my freezer door had nudged itself open, or more likely I accidentally left it ajar in my haste to get outta town, and when I came home, my freezer looked like an Antarctic blizzard had happened in there and had to be completely cleaned out...so now there's plenty of room and I can start jamming it full all over again.

(The upside was I found and extricated a long-lost bottle of Polish vodka completely enveloped in a block of ice, which was a more than satisfactory reward for my efforts.)

Anyhow, when you write a book completely devoted to frozen desserts and ice cream you can smugly think to yourself, "Ha! I've nipped that one in the bud."

Of course, all ice cream can be frozen.

But silly me!
Little did I realize something insidious had taken ahold of my fellow Americans.

Yes, something worse than all those little bottles of hand sanitizer dangling from people's belts...

Whenever an American friend in Paris has a birthday, I invariably offer to make the cake for the big fête. Not that there's a lack of great bakeries in Paris, but Americans always seem to crave the same thing: a big, tall, all-American chocolate cake with an overabundance of swirls and swoops of chocolate frosting.

And who am I to deny them?

And what better to make than a dark, moist Devil's Food Cake with thick, shiny ganache swirled all over the top and smoothed around the sides?

This Devil's Food Cake is a happy compromise between those richer, flourless kind of chocolate cakes which would be too intense and inelegant stacked one on top of the other, and those jumbo, three-tiered extravaganzas which might shock a few folks around here with its all-American excess.

(Although the Rice Krispy Treats I made a couple of weeks ago were quite a hit. I tried to explain their cultural appeal to my Parisian friends, but decided just to them do the ambassador work themselves. I'm willing to let someone else carry the cross-cultural mantle around here for a while.)

This one has the heft and smoothness of a larger cake without scaring anyone anyway, and will appease everyone with it's on-the-spot dark chocolate flavor. It's delicate crumb is perfect when paired with a scoop of homemade ice cream or a pour of super-cold crème anglaise, but it's also sturdy enough to weather a trip across the Paris, since if you remember, I don't have very good luck carrying cakes on the métro amongst devil-may-care Parisians.

People often say I'm the luckiest person in the world for the kind of life they perceive that I lead. But I've found some folks who've got me beat, hands-down.

I'm back from my book tour, which was exhilarating but made me a tad homesick. Although really, if one thinks about it, how many times can one visit Target in a month? And don't even get me started on Walgreens...I mean, how much chapstick does a guy need? (Well, plenty, it seems...)

With my suitcases stuffed to the gills, my last weekend was spent in Seattle, Target-free, where I had lots and lots of good things to eat and drink, from sipping espresso with gal-pal Shauna, to get-together with a gaggle of food bloggers that was well-oiled by lots of good wine mixed with plates of the freshest food overlooking the water. There was time to catch up with new and old friends, unwind, and after a few glasses of wine, a bit of comparing notes was in order.
So watch it out there, readers!

On this last day, a chocolate tasting was planned at Theo Chocolate, one of a handful of excellent small-scale chocolate makers in the United States. From the moment I walked in the unassuming front door on North Phinney Avenue, I knew this was going to be a heckuva lot of fun for me and the guests who stopped by to say hi and sample.

It was like a big party going on inside, with lots and lots of chocolate everywhere. I've never seen such happy, excited people. Now those people are living the sweet life. But can you blame them? Being surrounded by all this chocolate, I'd be the happiest fellow on the planet as well. And for one afternoon, I was.

As mentioned, Theo is one of the few chocolate-makers in the US, making chocolate from the beans to the bar. Using organic and Fair-Trade beans, batches of beans are roasted, ground, then shaped into tablets of chocolate, many of them 'origin' bars, highlighting the nuances of cacao beans from various parts of the world. But unlike some of the other chocolate-makers, they've got chocolatier Autumn Martin, who's crafting some of the finest chocolate confections I've ever tasted in my life.

Do you mind if I talk about the richest, purest flavors imaginable?

Okay, don't mind if I do.
With just two-and-a-half years of chocolate-making under her belt, Autumn's managed to hit just the right notes with every chocolate I tried.

In my continuing adventures to bring you some of the more interesting chocolates from around the globe, and get through as much of my chocolate before the meltdown of summer heat attacks my chocolate stash, you might remember a few months back I wrote about a conversation I had when I shocked some unworldly women (who...me?) that asked me which country makes the best chocolate.

For a few years now, I've been swapping messages with Art Pollard of Amano chocolate who has spent ten years searching for cacao and learning how to make artisan chocolate tablets at the company he started in Utah. But it wasn't until just a few months ago I was able to taste his handcrafted chocolate, which he sent me here in Paris.

Amano isn't currently making a whole slew of chocolates, but is concentrating on two different bars: A tablet of Ocumare chocolate, and another made from chocolate from Madagascar. I'm a big fan of Ocumare chocolate in general, which is considered one of the finest cacao beans in the world. Grown in Venezuela, some manufacturers claim it's a criollo bean, and I've been told various stories that dispute that, and many chocolate experts agree that pure criollo chocolate doesn't really exist anymore.

I'll let the geneticists work that out, and concentrate on the taste of the chocolate. Luckily I had help during this tasting from Pam Williams, who runs Ecole Chocolat, an online school for budding chocolatiers. (That's her hand with the girly-girl ring, not mine.) An expert on chocolate, Pam and I snapped the chocolate into manly-sized pieces and we tasted away.

A blog is an online diary where you can write about what you see and what you eat. It's a marvelous thing that you can use to share your culinary experiences for everyone to read.

The flip side of having a blog is that others can, and do, read it.

A while back I wrote something about a chocolate shop in the Marais that I once walked by with a friend, a very talented chocolatier from Brussels. He looked in the window and didn't find the presentation all that enticing. So I wrote a few words about the place here on the site, a comment he made in passing, that wasn't necessarily glowing nor was it desultory. (Either way, I'm off the hook. He said it, not me.) But it was enough to invoke an email from someone at the company about a year later. But it wasn't signed by Joséphine Vannier.
Maybe it was a pseudonym for Her Divine Greatness! herself.

I can't find the message, but it went along the lines of, "David: Let us assure you that our chocolates are very fine and we invite you to come and try them."

Or something to that effect. There was definitely an emphasis on the words 'us' or something about coming in for a 'meeting' that I recall rather distinctly

Seizing the opportunity, I responded, saying I'd love to come in and get shown around, hopefully by the elusive Joséphine herself, and to be properly introduced to her chocolates with her expert help.
Alas, a response was not forthcoming: I never heard back.

I don't like to stir things up too much around here. Last time I did that, I got my ass kicked in the comments. Truth be told, I'm a people-person and try to see the good in everything and everybody no matter what.

Heck, I'm even listening to Up With People! as I'm typing right now...

I don't like to trash people or companies in general. But sometimes, every once in a while, someone needs to get their pee-pee smacked.

And in this case, it's Hershey's.

Normally I make it a point to eat the best-quality chocolate I can since the good stuff has the same amount of calories as the bad stuff. Because I live in Paris, depending on how you feel about it, I don't eat much Hershey's chocolate. But when you have a blog, no matter where you like, you get 'sales pitches' from pr folks wanting to send you products to that they hope you'll mention favorably on your blog. I like to try new American products and since I don't live where they're easily found, I let the ones that sound interesting come my way.

But one French company insisted (repeatedly, against my better judgment) on sending me a food basket of goodies a while back.

Don't hate me when I tell you this:

Last week I was invited to La Maison du Chocolat.

But not just to one of their swanky boutiques in Paris, the marble-lined, cocoa-hued temples where people flock to worship at the alter of founder Robert Linxe. (And yes, you can count me as one of the converted.) Instead I was invited to tour their chocolate production laboratoire just outside the city.

Descending the RER train in the nondescript suburb of Nanterre, we finally came upon a beige building that was scrupulously clean; we knew we'd arrived at le mothership.

Robert Linxe, who was born in the Basque region and founded La Maison du Chocolat, was one the major proponents of using ganache in his chocolates; that slightly-airy amalgamation of chocolate and cream. Then he went on to develop a flavor palette of ganache-based chocolates...and the rest is one of the most successful stories in chocolate history.

The problem around here is that I buy chocolate in 5 kilo, about 11#, boxes and every afternoon, and sometimes (ok...make that 'often'...) first thing in the morning, I dig my hand deep in the box and pull out a few pistols every time I walk by. People have the impression that I eat chocolate all the time, every day. And although I usually deny it, I would have to admit it's definitely true.

Except last night when I was flossing, part of one of my teeth flew out and plinked onto the floor. So today it's like eating and talking with a thumb tack in my mouth, and I'm having a rare, chocolate-free day.

Who knew it was possible to floss to hard? Does that make me a 'power-flosser'?

(When I called my dentist, I was stumped trying to figure out the verb 'to floss' in French. Ça existe?)

Anyhow, in addition to the little palets of dark chocolate I'm always dipping into, I also have tons of unusual chocolate bars around here I've been amassing over the past few months.

Many I pick up when traveling, and some I get sent by companies wanting me to try them out. I happily sample them all and love to find something new or especially unusual. Often I taste them systematically by sitting down, snapping off a corner and savoring the flavors. As I roll and chew the chocolate around in my mouth, I ponder the different characteristics, noting origin and the various flavors: Sweet, fruity, acidic, roasty, bitter, citrusy, woodsy—all the various tastes we find in chocolate.

And other times, I'm not so good and I rip off the covering and start gnawing away at the chocolate until it's nothing but an empty wrapper with a few crumbs of chocolate left. I never did well in science since I'm lacking in patience.

So during the next few weeks, it's your turn to be patient.

For your convenience, here's links to the four posts for Sugar High Friday #27: Chocolate By Brand:

Here it is!

The final round-up for Sugar High Friday #27: Chocolate By Brand.

These are the last entries for the event and thanks to everyone for their participation.

I was overwhelmed by the number of entries (to say the least...) but was happy there was so much interest in chocolate and was amazed at all the beautiful and well-crated dessert folks are making out there. It was also a pleasure to learn about a few new chocolates and I plan to do a post in the near future to write more about them.

Due to the very high number of entries, over 100, a few photos in this post aren't included. If you're one of those who did send a properly-sized photo (100x100) and it's not here, please re-send it to me and I'll insert it. Desolé.

Thanks to Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess who came up with Sugar High Friday, the event on which these posts are based.

Starting off is a gorgeous Schokoladen-Ingwer-Tropfen mit Zimtsauce und Mango Püree, a professional-looking, teardrop-shaped river of Chocolate Ginger Tears with Cinnamon Custard and Mango-Ginger Puree which are so pretty, you'll shed a tear too!
Brigitte used Michel Cluizel couverture from France.

Two great tastes, one great dessert!
Peanut Butter Cup and Chocolate Chip Bars from Lisa Yockelson, using Callebaut chocolate.
Samantha's raised the bar for bar cookies with these buttery beauties.

Karen at Familystyle Food whipped out a simple and sensation Chocolate Truffle Tart. using her 'embarrassment of riches' (check out her chocolate stash...it rivals mine!), she plucked one tablet of Nestlé Chocolatier 62% bittersweet chocolate.
And oh, how bittersweet it is...

Slipping in at the last-minute was Plum who instead of paying the $50 bribe...er...I mean late-fee, sent a photo proving she owns all three of my books. (Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get my attention...or $50 works too, fyi.)
So here's her Chocolate-Raspberry Truffles. She wanted to use a local chocolate, but ending up using Callebaut 53.8% drops.
(Plum: Are you sure they weren't 54.6%?)

Abby at Confabulation Cooks goes all-out with Warm Chocolate Pudding using the ever-popular Lindt brand bittersweet, in her adorable new ramekins she broke out (not literally!) just for Sugar High Friday.

Another adults-only recipe, although a quick visit to Cucina Bella's site shows a younger-sort rifling through her chocolate stash! She used Trader Joe's bittersweet chocolate for her Adults-Only Mudslide Mousse with a mature measure of Bailey's Irish Cream.

Does size matter?
I think you'll have to decide that for yourself, but Brigid at One More Bite answers the question Does Brand Matter?
In her classic S'mores, she finds that good-'ol Hershey's hits the spot.
And not that spot...get your minds out of the gutter...

And from Trini Gourmet comes a fusion-filled recipe, Upside Down Chocolate Cake with a thin, biscuit-like crust and a cakey, creamy layer of fudge on the bottom. She broke out her Trinidadian chocolate for this special event: Blendo's.

The Round-Up Continues...

Ashley made Chocolate Truffles with Edible Gold with a basic ganache using Valrhona 70% Guanaja chocolate.

At Gastronomicon, she dipped her way to passionate delight with Passionfruit Truffles surrounded by El Rey chocolate, used for its robust flavor.

Baked Chocolate Fudge was a New Zealand treat from Arfi, who used Whittaker's 72% dark to scratch that chocolate itch.

Over at Café Lynnylu, there's a batch of Little Chocolate Cherry Cakes, heart-shaped, waiting for you. Using Ghiradelli 60% for these robust chocolate treats, she found these equally good for breakfast as they were for dessert!

The avalanche of entries for Sugar High Friday #27: Chocolate By Brand continues.

Thanks again to all participants, and be sure to visit their sites and click on the chocolate links to learn more about the different kinds of chocolate used from around the globe. This entry takes us all over the world, from Paris, to America, through South and Central America, as well as Istanbul and Holland.

A real Dutch-treat, Ashleigh at Stiched in Holland whipped up a Dark Chocolate and Cherry Steamed Pudding, which she claimed was hard to photograph (although I'm sure it was easy to eat.) A trip to the natuurwinkel yielded a tablet of Green & Black's organic dark chocolate, which she put to delicious use.

You'll be gnawing at your computer screen when you see Piperata's Cranberry and Chocolate Cookies which she baked up in her kitchen in Milan. Zani chocolate, produced-nearby, was her choice for the dark chocolate, and a bar of Lindt white chocolate was sacrificed as well for this sweet event.
(Although I wonder where the heck she got dried cranberries in Italy?)

Suzy, who claims Suzy's Not A Homemaker, process herself wrong by whipping up a picture-perfect batch of Chocolate Hazelnut Scones. Unwrapping a bar of snow-bound chocolate bar she had from Starbucks, Suzy proves she was up to this sweet challenge.

Alanna at A Veggie Adventure who fussed & fumed about what to make, before deciding on a silky, creamy, Light 'n Easy Chocolate Pudding she made in minutes. Alanna likes Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder, because it gives chocolate desserts, like her low-fat chocolate pudding, a dark-black chocolate color.

Although she's finds lots of chocolates to choose from in Metz, France, including Cémoi organic, Julie at Cookbook Addict chose to use Lindt 70% for her Individual Butterless Chocolate Cakes. Although it's hard to imagine a cake in France sans beurre, she pulls it off...these chocolate cakes may look small but they're big on addictive chocolate flavor.

Welcome to Sugar High Friday #27!

What?
You might be saying, it's not Friday yet, David!

To be honest, I was blown away by the amount of entries and the quality of responses, and decided to start the round-up early in the week to get them all in. Thanks to everyone who participated and although I tried to leave comments on many of your blogs, time didn't always permit me to, so I thank you all here and now.

So, dear readers, here's the chocolate entries, based on the theme I chose: Chocolate By Brand. Bloggers made chocolate recipes, including an infinate variety of cakes, cookies, creams, and candies, using a particular brand of chocolate and talked about why.

Enjoy!...

Veronica at Kitchen Musings was a double-dipper and made Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes X2, two recipes from two cookbooks...using two chocolates! One recipe with ScharffenBerger and the other using Valhrona.
If you like lots of lick-able chocolate frosting, you'll love 'em both.

Over at Winds and Breezes, Treasa used Lindt 70% chocolate for a scrumptious-sounding Chocolate Cake, with chocolate she brings back from France every time she "sets foot in the place."
(The French are wild over Lindt chocolate, as you'll see in other entries, and apparently so is Treasa.)

It's a Rocky Road over at Sui Mai, who used Cailler dark chocolate to bind together marshmallows, almonds, and dried blueberries. And where did she get the chocolate she used? And why did she use that one?
The plot thickens...like her chocolate...

In the Très facile category comes Chocolate Hazelnut Madeleines from Marie-Laurie of Autres Delices using Nestlé chocolate.
Her tiny, shiny, shell-shaped little cakes would make Proust proud!

My Franco-American compatriote stateside, Béa falls for chocolate with a petite Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Cake with Chocolate-Ginger Mousse, infused with ScharffenBerger cocoa powder and Valhrona's Manjari chocolate.
Although it seems pretty fancy-pants, Béa makes it all look so easy, mais oui!

Check out Orange-Flavored Milk Rice with White Chocolate Icing from Nemisbéka in Hungary, which her dessert will make you, especially when you see how she uses both Nestlé Caramac bars and Milka hearts from Switzerland.

Lighter-Than-Air Chocolate Roll by Kristin at Dine and Dish, with a heady suspicion of Grand Marnier. Like her chocolate cake roll, Kristin got so light-headed on chocolate she forgot to note which brand she used. When she came back down, she noted it was San Francisco's Ghiradelli.

Claudia at Food For Food made some very tasty-looking Chocolate Honey Caramels using Valhrona chocolate. Even though she claims the recipe was supposed to be difficult to make, she did an admirable job, as you'll see...

Across the border in Umbria, Judith at Think On It! got over her aversion to chocolate (!) to participate, and added some chilies to the spun sugar to give it an extra kick. Check out her dessert, simply titled Hot Silk, made with Valhrona, which she says makes everything, including stuff on her other site, a little yummier.

Although the name One Whole Clove doesn't make one normally think of chocolate, check out Lou's sinful Boules au chocolat et au rhum. They're enriched with Montignac 85% sugar-free chocolate, sweetened with maltitol, which she found at her local chocolate shop Cupidon.

One of my favorite things to do in Paris is just wander around, often in neighborhoods that aren't really known for anything special. There's always something interesting to find; shops specializing in vintage hairbrushes and combs, a locksmith for doors installed only during the reign of Napolean III, or the recently-departed Reptiles World (sic), which was one of my favorite places to pass the time while waiting for a train at the nearby Gare du Nord.

And of course, I'm usually on the lookout for food, and am especially keen when I come across a shop specializing in candymaking or chocolate. If I get lucky, I discover some little treasure, often in the most unlikeliest of places.

Le Furet Tanrade was opened in 1728, and it's still one of the sweetest little chocolate shops I've found in Paris.

Sure, their chocolates aren't nearly as sleek or refined as their Left Bank counterparts, but I appreciated their handmade charm all the same. Especially the petits dark squares filled with a crisp morsel of mint fondant cloaked in brusque, dark chocolate. And the chocolates filled with caramel and feuilleté were certainly as delicious as those found in swankier boutiques.

One chocolate that piqued my curiosity was flavored with chanvre, a word I wasn't familiar with. Although I've been previously familiar with the green leaf embedded atop the chocolate in my younger days, she offered a sample since she was having difficulty explaining exactly what was inside. (The French word for what I thought it was is a four-letter word in English...madame might not have appreciated my translation.)

But then, in that little shop, I learned my Word-For-The-Day: the ganache was infused with hemp.

(For the record, I'd advise against overseas shipping.)

But should you find yourself near the Gare du Nord or Gare d'Est, and need to pass a bit of time (or want try to get a bit of a buzz)...or if you just want to take a journey to a less-visited quartier of Paris, Le Furet Tanrade certainly makes a tasty stopping point.

Le Furet Tanrade
63, rue de Chabrol (10th)
Tél: 01 47 70 48 34
Métro: Poissonière

One of the hardest things about writing about food is coming up with that killer opening sentence. It should start with something that grabs your attention right away, tickles your curiosity, then encourages the reader (which would be you) to follow the writer (which, or course, would be me) deeper into the story. Thankfully when writing about chocolate, I can include pictures to help me get going, so most of the work is already done.

The other difficult thing when writing about chocolate is that there's only so many superlatives you can use to describe it, and words like: dark, unctuous, bittersweet, delicious, seductive, etc...don't really seem to pinpoint that feeling that you get when you walk into a pristine chocolate shop and are completely overwhelmed by the heady experience, inhaling that sweet, unmistakable scent of chocolate that permeates the air and overtakes you. There's that quiet moment, when you step into a special place full of chocolate, where you briefly forget all that's going on outside.

I'm fortunate to live a city where there's an unusually large amount of very good chocolate shops, and all-too-often one needs a refuge from the fast-pace of the streets and sprawling avenues. Here in Paris, I have my favorites, and one of them is John-Charles Rochoux. His petit shop is located just off the bustling rue de Rennes. It's not just a refuge from one of Paris' busy boulevards, but a step back to another era. In his shop, chocolate is both an edible obsession and an object of sculptural craftsmanship, and you'll find many intricate, precious little chocolate sculptures, as well as a rather serious selection of bonbons from one of Paris' top chocolatiers.

Although there's several chocolate shops across the city that are terrific, at Jean-Charles Rochoux you'll find lots of little wonders here to keep you enchanted, including the amazing chocolate sculptures that M. Rochoux creates in his small, pristine workshop just beneath the tidy boutique. This kind of craftsmanship is rarely found anymore, even in a chocolate-obsessed city like Paris.

I was fortunate enough to take some time from my busy schedule to pose for Monsieur Rochoux, so he could create one of the most iconic pieces in the shop: Le torse.

Gale Gand is a terrific baker and her latest book, Chocolate & Vanilla, is a double-sided treat of a cookbook that'll have you flipping the book over-and-over almost as much as you'll flip over the chocolate and vanilla desserts inside!

Last weekend I was invited to a birthday party, and as I flipped through the pages of her book, I was intrigued by the delicious-looking recipe for White Chocolate Sorbet, which seemed a snap to make (which held a certain attraction too, I'll admit, during this busy holiday season.)

I had a hunch this would go perfectly well with my Buckwheat Cake, which has the earthy taste of blé noir, but with a surprisingly light, delicate crumb.

That's the new one meter box of chocolates from Patrick Roger, over three feet of pralines, caramels, nougats, and creamy-smooth ganache-filled bonbons, all enrobed in ultra-dark bittersweet chocolate.

I don't know how someone would brave getting one of those home on the métro, but I'd surely appreciate their efforts if I found one under my tree!

Patrick Roger
108, Boulevard St. Germain (6th)
Tel: 01 43 29 38 42

During my recent trip to Italy, I joined an Italian friend of mine at a trattoria for a late night supper. As we hungrily ate our overfilled plates of pasta Carbonara and Cacio e Pepe, a local specialty made with pecorino cheese and lots of spicy, freshly-ground black pepper, mingled with lots of Italian voices were plenty of Americans, making sure they were heard above the din.

But Americans aren't just famous for speaking loudly.

"Americans are the best!" my friend said,"You just get them drunk and you can have sex with them. Everyone knows that."

Who knew?
I certainly didn't. That was one reputation that I didn't know we Americans had to live up to (or live down.) So I suppose I've been a failure to my people, or maybe I just need to drink more and get with the program. But with all the young men with plucked, over-arched eyebrows and waxed chests I saw, coupled with the overdose of cologne, lots of extraneous zippers and buckles on clothing, phony Versace belts (though the knock-offs seem more restrained than the real ones), and a staggering amount of hair gel that would be more than sufficient for anyone except Chewbacca, I think it might take more than a few glasses of wine to get anyone to put out for one of those giovani uomini on the prowl in Rome.

So if you're American and you plan on visiting Rome, depending on the purpose of your vacation, you might want to watch your alcohol consumption, play it safe, and stick to gelato.
Or espresso.

Or chocolate.

Chocolate in Rome, you ask?
Although one doesn't normally associate Rome with chocolate, since chocolate normally finds its way into creamy-smooth gelalot due to the warm temperatures, but friend of mine, a native of Rome who didn't offer advice of the carnal nature, gave me directions to a chocolate shop that she swore, "Rivals anything in Paris." Hmmm. Thems fightin' words. (Sorry to non-native English speakers who are scratching their heads over that poor grammar...blame it on the south.)
So we wandered the streets of Rome, searching for the shop, until we came upon a small piazza where Confetteria Moriondo & Gariglio was tucked away in the corner.

Entering the velvet-lined shop, I smelled something delightful in the air, and saw in the small, well-lit backroom, a group of women sitting around chatting and peeling freshly-roasted chestnuts. Being naturally curious, some say a pain-in-the-butt, I wandered back there to take a look. Within minutes a large Italian fellow came lumbering towards me, thankfully without plucked eyebrows or Versace knock-offs (I didn't check out the chest hair 'situation'), he seemed to have no ulterior motives and offered to speak with me about his chocolates.

Attilio Procietti explained how Rome is a tough place for him to make chocolates, since anything chocolate dipped need to stand up to the heat of summer. To combat melting, he uses a harder chocolate with less cocoa butter than normal, which resist melting. In addition, he avoids soft or creamy centers high in milk fat, and indeed perhaps the best of his chocolates that I sampled were simply little dark chocolate squares embedded with crackly cocoa nibs. His shop, Moriondo & Gariglio is the oldest chocolate boutique in Rome, started in 1850 as the chocolatier to the House of Savoy, whose recipes have been handed down for generations and generations. Attilio also gave me tastes of his molded fruit gels, similar to the French pâte de fruit, and I was impressed by the bright orange apricot-flavored ones. I was quickly becoming high on sugar, finding myself swooning, as defenseless to the charms of Rome as a wide-eyed American college-aged backpacker lugging a copy of Let's Go on his first trip to Europe, falling prey to Roman lotharios right and left.

But maintaining my professionalism (and not wanting to give my blog readers the wrong impression about me...that's for my other, top-secret blog...) I was most curious about the candied chestnuts made from the castagni the women in the back were peeling, which are called Marrons Glacés, an Italian specialty that have because a favorite holiday treat in France as well as Italy during the holiday season. Most marrons glacés end up tasting like dry, starchy lumps of sugar, but these were moist and delicate, each one a perfect bite of woodsy, earthy chestnut preserved in a slightly-sweet sugar syrup.

I feel deeply in love with these marrons glacés, but I doubt anyone would use these candied chestnuts as objects of seduction, although maybe I should. With my brush-cut hair, which requires a bare minimum of gel, and the triumphant return of chest hair, I'm probably not the best candidate for launching an Italian-style romantic entrapment.

But I would imagine it beats all that waxing and plucking anyways, don't you think?

Confetteria Moriondo & Gariglio
Via del Piè di Marmo, 21-22
Tel: 06.69.90.856

(This post is part of Chocolate In Context's Food Destinations #3: Favorite Chocolate Shops world-wide round-up.)

Other favorite addresses in Rome:

Tazza d'Oro
Via degli Orfani, 84
My favorite espresso stop in Rome. Elbow up to the always-busy counter and be sure to try the Espresso Granita in the summer.

L'Albero del Cacao
Via Capo le Case, 21
Tiny, friendly chocolate shop with good selection of Italian chocolates from my friends at Domori, Amedei, and Slitti.

San Crispino
Via della Panetteri, 42 (near Trevi fountain)
Some of my favorite gelati in the world. Try the meringue-based flavors for a special treat.

Giolitti
Via degli Uffici di Vicario, 40
Near the Pantheon, the classic Rome gelato. A must!

Pizzarium
Via della Meloria, 43
Great stand-up pizza place a short hike from the Vatican (stop at food emporium Castroni on the Via Cola di Rienzo en route). The pizza topped with potatoes is the most popular, and with good reason.

Volpetti
(near Testaccio market)
Via Marmorata, 47
Amazing food store with everything Italian, including every conceivable salumi and cheese imaginable. Cafeteria-style restaurant just around the corner is great for lunch after visiting the market.

Biscottificio Innocenti
Via della Lucce, 21a
Really fun cookie shop, but how does one choose? Try brutti ma buoni, aka: ugly but good. If she's there, don't let the gruff older woman scare you away. As she barely waddled around herself, she complained about how fat Americans are.
I guess she was too big to see very far her behind, herself!

For further places and addresses, you can read my post from Rome last year. Johanna also posted a good list of places in Rome at The Passionate Cook.

For those of you whose interest has been picqued by my interview with Frederick Schilling of Dagoba chocolate, Frederick sent me the scoop on his new partnership with Artisan Confections, a division of Hershey's chocolate.
Here's an except from that message:

"So, what's in store for Dagoba now? Well, for the most part, nothing is going to change. Dagoba will remain in Ashland doing what we've always done. All the employees, as long as they want to stay, will still be there. We'll still be able to wear whatever we want to wear to work. I'll still be in charge of sourcing the cacao and formulating new products. We'll still be using 100% recycled New Leaf Paper for our wrappers. We'll still be using renewable energy for our factory. We'll still be able to do the tradeshows as we want, when we want. We will have manufacturing support from a company that has been making chocolate for almost 100 years, which will be very nice! For those of you who do your own manufacturing, you know that it's not always the easiest thing. Yet it's fun to walk back there and see all this equipment and hear the noises… I love it!..."

"...(the) bottom line with the above statements, to answer your question of how we're going to change-I really don't foresee you'll notice anything. I still want us to do what we've always done with each other. I've told Hershey's straight up about our inter-industry relationships and they are sacred to me. They support it. They support what we're doing… what we're all doing together. And quite honestly, they want to learn from us; and I'm not going to turn away people who want to learn. Our passion and knowledge must be shared and passed on. Isn't this what we want?"

"I ask that you all continue to keep an open heart for us. I feel this was the right move to continue to make the impact I want to make. And I still see all of us as being...the pioneers in what we do. We are leading the way. We will continue to lead the way. All of our paths will continue to bring us where it brings us and I want you all to know you have my support in all your directions. I'm not going anywhere. I'm still here, doing what I do."

People come from all over the world to sip le chocolat chaud in the busy and cozy cafés in Paris. Here are some of the top addresses in town to warm up.

Angelina
226, rue de Rivoli
Métro: Tuilleries

This famous hot chocolate salon is getting a well-deserved makeover. But no matter; the place is always packed-full of French society women and tourists side-by-side spooning up their gloriously rich, and impossibly thick, le Chocolat Africain. The service has taken some knocks, but most chocophiles forget any glitches in exchange for the priviledge of sipping the world's most famous hot chocolate.

Berthillon
31, rue St. Louis-en-Î'le
Métro: Pont Marie or Sully-Morland

Pair a mug of frothy hot chocolate with a scoop of Paris' best ice cream for a decadent afternoon snack. Their salon de Thé next door to the ice cream shop has terrific desserts, including perhaps the best, and most perfectly caramelized, tarte Tatin in Paris. Pair it with a scoop of caramel ice cream making it a wedge of heaven. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Cafe de la Paix at The Grand Hotel
12, boulevard des Capucines
Métro: Opéra

Overlooking the extraordinary Opéra Garnier, this is the most picturesque (and expensive) spot in Paris to sip hot chocolate. Be sure to request fort en gout (strong flavor), unless you prefer your hot chocolate touché delicate, with a delicate touch. Open late in the evening for those after-the-opera chocolate cravings.

Charles Chocolatier
15, rue Montorgueil
Métro: Les Halles

Revitalize in this tiny, modern chocolate shop near bustling Les Halles on the trendy rue Montorgueil with a cup of their dark, bittersweet brew which gushes from their well-polished copper cauldron.

Hotel Meurice
228, rue de Rivoli
Métro: Tuileries

Unwind in fabulous gilded splendor at this chic address across from the Jardin des Tuileries. The ultimate luxury here is ordering your hot chocolate according to the cru (tropical origin), including fruity Manjari chocolate from Madagascar and intense Guanaja from South America.

Jean-Paul Hévin
231, rue Saint-Honoré
Métro: Tuilleries

Divine hot chocolate is served in the upstairs tearoom. I challenge any die-hard chocoholics not to resist one of the rich, elegant chocolate cakes as well.

La Charlotte de Îsle
24, rue St. Louis-en-Î'le
Métro: Pont Marie or Sully-Morland

This funky tearoom serves their ultra-thick le chocolat chaud in tiny Japanese cups, encouraging you to savor it one chocolaty dose at a time. La Charlotte got a boost from a favorable write-up in The New York Times a few years back, so the cluttered shop can get a bit cramped on weekends.

La Maison du Chocolat
8, blvd Madeleine
Métro: Madeleine.
For other addresses, visit web site

Only a few locations of La Maison du Chocolat have tasting 'bars' where you can sit in the summer, slurping down a chocolate frappe or during the winter, treat yourself to a steaming mug of hot chocolate made from the world's finest chocolate. The exotic Caracas hot chocolate is not for the timid, nor is the Bacchus, with a rather adult shot of dark rum.

The hardest of all foods to photograph, I've learned, are chocolate-covered marshmallows.

The bright, fluffy, vanilla-flecked cubes of sweet, airy marshmallow in contrast to the thin, intensely-flavored coating of bittersweet chocolate certainly presents a challenge.

I futzed around a bit, trying to figure out how to show the lofty-white cubes in juxtaposition to the coating of pure, dark chocolate. They're such diverse colors and textures that I tried several variations and lighting situations, until I decided that they'd looked best with a piece broked off.

So I took a bite out of one.

Then I took another bite.

And then, I stopped shooting...

...and ate the whole pack.

Sorry.

Pierre Marcolini
89 Rue de Seine
Paris
Tél: 01 44 07 39 07

David: Hey Frederick, I remember meeting you years ago at a Food Show, and was really impressed with both you, and your exceptionally good chocolate. You were so friendly and open about what you were doing, and I saw in you such a passion for producing high-quality chocolate from organically-grown beans. I'm so glad we've kept in touch since then, and you're happy to answer some questions about Dagoba chocolate.

While it's everyone's dream to open a chocolate factory, what made Frederick Schilling do it?

Frederick: I come from a mixed background of music, religion, professional ski-bumming and a passion for food. I actually never liked chocolate as a child or a young adult. It wasn't until I was cooking at a higher end restaurant in Boulder Colorado that I experienced what a higher quality chocolate was. At the time we were using Valrhona and El Rey and I started to nibble on the bricks back in the pastry corner. It was the bittersweet that managed to maintain my attention and interest. When I started to look into chocolate further and learning of the rich history and lore of cacao, I was hooked. I have a deep appreciation for religion and culture and when I learned of the Aztec reverence for cacao, it really opened my mind to wanting to explore this bean much deeper. That was what got me going.

David: I know how you feel about getting hooked. Those innocent little nibbles can really lead to something much larger.

Why did you decide to go organic?

Frederick: From the beginning of my young adult life, I have been very passionate about sustainability and organics. I was already philosophically aligned with the organic movement before the inception of DAGOBA. So naturally, since I was exploring the idea of creating a food product for the market, it had to be organic.

Aside from chocolate bars, you also have a line of other products, all organic, including chocolate chips, cocoa nibs, hot chocolate mix, and chocolate-covered coffee beans. Where are Dagoba chocolates produced, and why did you choose to open your production facility there?

Our factory is located in Ashland Oregon. It's a small town in Southern Oregon, just over the California border, in the Rogue Valley. It's absolutely gorgeous here; and that's why we chose to have the factory here. The quality of life is pretty uncompromised. I'm able to ride my bike to work, go mountain biking right out my front door, skiing, hiking, kayaking, rafting... there are a plethora of outdoor activities to partake in around here. The town also has the nations largest Shakespeare Festival, so there is the element of theater wafting thru the streets. Interstate 5 goes right by the town so access for shipping product, while not as easy as being located in a major city, is pretty good.

We just purchased 3.5 acres of land in town and will be building a new factory this coming year with completion in the summer of 07'. It's going to have many 'green' aspects to the structure; solar panels up top and permaculture landscaping as a couple of examples. This factory will be open for tours, so make sure you stop by when you're driving thru!

David: Well, you still look pretty young to me. Must be all that chocolate.
After being in business after a few years, in reflection, what's been the most difficult part of making chocolate?

Frederick: We just turned 5 in June and it has been one interesting ride. I started the company in my kitchen, hand made the product for the first 1.5 years and have been pretty much making it up and learning as I go along. So while it's been extremely fun and interesting, the whole experience has a shadow of difficulty because it was founded with blind ambition.

Starting a company is just difficult. It takes a lot of time, hard work, patience, faith and a little ignorance too. The ignorance, while makes things a little difficult, also acts as the catalyst for pushing me. I don't know something, so I'm going to dig into it. That ignorance eventually turns to skill and knowledge. Then, with that knowledge and skill I start to create more things, usually burying myself in the process, digging up more things that I'm ignorant on, then learning more, then creating more, realizing how much I don't know, then learning, then creating more, realizing how much I don't know and so on. It's a great cycle and one that the creative mind needs in order to maintain itself. We need elements of difficulty to push us.

Yet, as the organic chocolate market starts to gain legs, sourcing enough high quality organic cacao may become very difficult; sooner than later. It's all about the source, right? As more organic chocolate companies start to spring up around the world, or as current companies come out with organic chocolate, a lot of them will be going after the good beans. It's already becoming tight. That's why I'm leaving for Central America in 2 days; to maintain and create new relationships with growers.

In 5 years, it's going to be very interesting indeed.

David: We leave in two days? I don't think I can get packed in time. I'll have to wait for the next trip.
When researching The Great Book of Chocolate, I met a lot of 'characters' in the chocolate world...and not all of them were particularly nice. Without naming names (my editor wouldn't let me, but you can...) can you tell us about any clashes you've had?
Why is the chocolate world so competitive?

Frederick: For the most part, everyone I've met in the industry is really nice. For the most part, everyone has always spoken to me with openness and really helped me figure this industry out. Yet, I've never been a threat to them. I was always considered as this little organic chocolate company - "Oh, how sweet, he's making organic chocolate". The chocolate makers/companies that I always spoke to were not making organic chocolate so they were willing to share their knowledge. YET, now that things are changing, DAGOBA is growing and more companies want to move into the organic chocolate market, lips are tightening a bit and vest are being buttoned.

As for being competitive, I don't think it's any more competitive than any other industry. Company secrets are company secrets. A lot of the hush-hush attitude that does permeate our industry probably has its roots from the Mars and Hershey dysfunctional relationship from years ago.

The thing is though, when you're talking about pure chocolate, there aren't any real secrets. Everyone knows how to make it. Everyone knows what kind of equipment the others use. Everyone knows where cacao comes from. Now, companies are even saying what farm the cacao comes from! So, transparency is actually becoming the "new thing", right?

David: There's a lot of talk lately about the 'corporate' organic movement, and we're seeing organics at chain-stores and supermarkets. On the other hand, there's also increased interest in buying local at farmer's markets, which are often organic. Obviously you can't use locally-grown cacao, but where does Dagoba fit in to all of this? And will we see Dagoba at Wal-Mart?

Frederick: A very good question.
This is a huge question David and one that I think of everyday, literally. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, to be honest; it's an experiment in the making. Although, like you state, the best choice for food is to buy from the local organic farmer, or better yet, grow it yourself.

On the corporate organic movement; is it wrong to have organics at chain stores? Big box stores? Isn't this what we, the believers of true food, wanted? To get rid of the artificial food chain? Just because the stores that we now buy our food from are larger than most South Pacific islands, is it wrong that they are providing the people with organic food? This is what the people want. Now I personally don't shop at the large box stores, but ultimately, I believe this is a move in the right direction. Would I rather see an industrial farm being grown conventionally or organically? The industrial farming model isn't going away anytime soon, so in my opinion, it's a move in the right direction; to cut back on the amount of chemicals being applied to the soil. Perhaps in 10 years, the consumer will 'urge by purchase' the corporate growers to move back to a "biodiverse" farming model, which is more sustaining to the land. Ultimately it's up to the consumer to dictate what happens in the marketplace. In 10 years, if the big box consumer, after being educated on what organic means, wants food that comes from an even more sustaining farming model, the big boxes will respond as will the industrial farming operations.

Cacao grows in the tropics, so I'm forced to rely on fossil fuels to get our raw material to us; until I'm able to charter a fleet of large sail boats to transport my cacao to port and then move the beans via biodiesel fueled trucks to our new solar powered factory. As you know, DAGOBA is a company that makes every effort to be as "eco-minded" as possible. We use 100% alternative energy at the factory; use 100% recycled content paper for our wrappers and office paper, we compost our kitchen waste and many other small things. Are we perfect? Far from it. Yet, we're making the conscious decision to be aware of what we do and how we can improve upon it.

DAGOBA in Wal-Mart?
I actually just had this conversation on Thursday at our employee meeting. This very question was raised. My response; would it be a bad thing? If more people want organic chocolate, which is made from organic cacao, isn't planting more trees in the tropics a good thing? Would it be a good thing to go to Central and South America and convert deforested land to fields of cacao trees? I say yes. If we, DAGOBA, can have a positive impact on the tree situation in the tropics, I have no problem going into box stores. For me, it's not about preserving the ego of the brand perception. Some of our core consumers may be upset if we sell to Wal-Mart, but I would ask them these very questions. I think our core consumer, once they understood the potential good that could come out of selling more organic chocolate, would sympathize with such a decision.

As you know David, cacao is very different than other crops. The vast majority of cacao is grown on small family farms, where they also grow many other crops and fruit trees. Cacao, by default, is already being grown very sustainably in bio-diverse settings. If we can further this model, because of consumer demand, by replanting deforested areas then I can only say I'd be a hypocrite if we didn't do business with box stores.

We all need to be the Lorax in this day and age.

David: Another chocolate-maker, not a Lorax, told me that most cacao beans aren't sprayed much since the locals can't afford it, but I've also heard otherwise.
What's the truth?

Frederick: Both are true.
As I just noted above, the vast majority of cacao is grown on small family farms and yes, most of them are too poor to afford chemicals. It's on the larger plantations that spraying will occur and most often it's the "premium" brands that will buy plantation grown cacao because it's often of better quality. I believe the government of Ghana will do aerial sprayings from time to time, as cacao is such as important export to that countries economy.

Methyl Bromide is the fumigant of choice for cacao, and this is where the pesticide gets applied. The cacao doesn't get sprayed on the farm level; it's at the ports where the cacao gets sprayed. When a container of cacao leaves a countries port, there's gonna be insects in that cacao, so they fumigate. When the container arrives into port, say in the US, and there is any sign of insects, they fumigate again. I've heard that cacao is actually one of the most heavily fumigated commodities in the world. I have a friend in the industry that used to work at a very large chocolate company and his job was to, every Thursday, fumigate the cacao warehouse with Methyl Bromide. He had to have a special handling license to carry out this task. I hear murmur in industry that methyl bromide may be getting phased out of use, which is a good thing, as it's nasty stuff.

David: I read somewhere that professionals don't use organic chocolate, since it doesn't taste as good as 'regular' chocolate. What are your thoughts on this and who's the biggest market for Dagoba chocolate, home cooks or professionals?

Frederick: To the professionals that say this, I would say, in a blind taste test of the San Francisco Chronicle, we beat Scharffenberger and Valrhona. We were awarded 'best dark chocolate' - the first time an organic chocolate ever won this award. Taste, is of course, subjective. I personally don't like a brand of French chocolate that people do back flips over for. To me, it tastes over roasted and the particle size is actually too small, therefore making it feel slimy on my palate. Other people go gaga over it. No right or wrong. I personally don't enjoy it.

There really is no difference between conventional and organic chocolate when it comes to quality. Taste is taste and conventional chocolates all taste differently. Organic chocolates all taste differently. I would be more than happy to sit down with the professionals that say that organic isn't as good as conventional and conduct a blind taste test and have them tell me which is organic and which is conventional.

Our biggest market is thru retailers. Our retail bars are what drive our business. We're a small company and we just can't compete on price with the big boys for food service business. We do sell our chocolate to a great many elite restaurants who brand us on the menu. But outside of that tiny niche, we don't sell much in the food service sector. Plus, for the retail bars, it allows me to create more and experiment with flavor infusions, which I really love doing.

David: And are there any pastry chefs that you know who are using your chocolate?

Frederick: Honestly, not off the top of my head. I don't pay attention to this, even though I probably should. I like what I do and often times get very tunnel visioned in my passion, meaning I don't pay attention to the "who's and the what's" as much as I probably should.

David: Lately, everyone's obsessed with percentages, which signify how much cacao is in the chocolate. Why do you think that is and do you think percentages are important?

Frederick: I think it started erupting when the health benefits of dark chocolate started to get announced by the media. This is when the public really started to pay attention to the cocoa content, as they were all looking for 70% or higher, regardless of what it tasted like.

I think percentages are important as they act as a kind of barometer for how dark chocolate is. It will rest on the flavor of the chocolate for me, but I'm much more apt to purchase a 65% or higher, so I personally appreciate knowing how much cacao is in the bar.

Yet, we must also remember that cacao percentage is defined as how much cacao is in there, not just cacao solids. So the percentage can include cocoa butter, which will dilute the flavor. So we can have a 85% dark bar that has an extra 20% cocoa butter added, making that 85% bar very mild; and probably pretty nasty too.

David: To be honest, Frederick, I never really liked milk chocolate until I tasted your Dagoba Milk Chocolate Chai Bar with candied ginger and spices, and a whole new world opened up to me. So I tried some of your others, including the Brasilia Bar with coconut and Brazil nuts, and Latté, scented with coffee beans and cinnamon, and now I'm hooked on milk chocolate, as well as dark! Who came up with all these exceptional flavor combinations? (And how can we become tasters?)

Frederick: I create the products, usually after a bottle of really good wine. The Chai is actually one of my favorites too. Some people say it's too strong on the spices, but it's the way I like my chai tea - spicy! I like a lot of cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, anise in my chai tea, so that's how I wanted to create this bar. I experimented with a dark chocolate chai bar, but the bitters of the dark bar really suppressed the spices.

Once the new factory is up and running with the tours, I'm sure we'll have the "tasting trial table", where people can try some of my new creations and write comments.

Ever had a milk bar with bacon bits and sun dried figs? It's so good.

David: Bacon and dried figs? Sounds like a nice breakfast! I can't wait for that one, Frederick. I noticed you've concocted cacao 'elixirs'. Who came up with these and what does one do with them?
And what the heck is 'horny goat weed'?

Frederick: What we did is use vegetable glycerin as the solvent base instead of alcohol, so there is an inherent sweetness to the elixirs. Then, the primary botanical in the elixir is cacao; which we extracted from organic Ecuadorian Arriba Nacional nibs. From there, we built on the botanicals for each formula. THEY ARE SOOOOOOO GOOD!!! The plain Cacao Elixir is like getting your chocolate craving without eating chocolate. There is no cocoa butter, so you're not eating the fat (nothing wrong with cocoa butter though!). The Antioxidant Elixir is made with copious amounts of berries, so it's really rich in flavor.

Horny goat weed? Exactly!

David: If someone's serving a chocolate dessert, what beverage do you think goes well with it?

Frederick: If it's got a cork in it, I like it.

David: I'm very excited when I learned that you've found a source for rare and special Ocumare cacao beans and you're going to start selling it soon. I've had a few Ocumare chocolates and they're exceptional. Why did you choose to pursue Ocumare, which is rare and frankly, rather costly?

Frederick: Ocumare is expensive and rare.
We were able to secure the majority of last springs harvest and the next harvest. It's exceptional cacao and the post harvest handling is top notch. I was really impressed with their facility. Ocumare is also certified organic, which many people don't know. As we grow as a company and my desire to continue to create world class chocolate matures, sourcing the best cacao has to be the primary focus. Without the best cacao, we can't create the best chocolate.

We'll also be bringing in some other very special cacao from Venezuela. I happened to be at the right place at the right time and secured some cacao from Puerto Ayacucho. A few times a year, Indians from the Cepai tribe come down from the headwaters of the Orinoco River with wild harvested cacao. It takes them about 15 days in their canoes to bring the cacao to Puerto Ayachucho. If the river is low, they have to go over land on donkeys, which takes about 30 days - one way! They only bring about 3,000lbs per trip, so the supply is extremely limited. The flavor is very unique and I'm really excited to be able to make chocolate from this cacao and offer it to people.

David: I love your Xocolatl bar, a wickedly-dark bittersweet chocolate with chilies and cacao nibs, which is in my personal Top Ten Chocolate Bar category (actually, my top five.) People think adding chilies to chocolate is new and exciting, but it's been done for thousands of years. You're following a long-standing tradition. If that isn't your number #1 selling chocolate bar, can you tell us what is?

Frederick: Yes, it is actually our #1 selling bar. And yes, it's paying homage to the Aztecs beverage, Xocoatl. I never expected it to be our #1 selling bar, to be honest. I just wanted to show respect to what had come before me and for allowing me to make chocolate. I think it's great that it's our #1 bar, as it just shows that consumers are wanting to try unique things.

David: What's in the future for Frederick and Dagoba chocolate that readers can look out for?

Frederick: Oh boy, that's a big question and even bigger answer. People can always go to our website and sign up for our monthly e-newsletter. We report on everything that is happening in our universe and what new products are coming out.

In short, I'm really looking forward to coming out with some really unique single origin chocolates. I just secured some amazing Criollo-Trinitario cacao from the Philippines, so that should be out by the first of the year. A bar made from cacao of Bali. A single estate chocolate from Nicaragua. A bar made from cacao from the Napo of Ecuador. Right now, I'm all about digging down as far as I can go with source and bring these unique origins to the people; instead of blending it. I so love the ability to taste the terroir of cacao from each region, as it is so truly distinct.

It's a great journey and I'm having fun doing it. And thanks to our customers for giving me the opportunity to do what I do.

Thanks David!

David: Thanks for taking the time to chat, Frederick.
Have a great trip, and I'm looking forward to visiting your factory when it opens next year, and tasting your new chocolates...especially that Ocumare.

This was an easy post!

If you'd like to know what it's like to visit Jean-Charles Rochoux with me, one of my favorite chocolatiers in Paris, go visit Too Many Chefs for Meg's write-up of our visit.

Update! You can read about my visit to Jean-Charles Rochoux, and see his staggeringly-beautiful chocolate creations.

Jean-Charles Rochoux
16, rue d'Assas (6th)
Paris
Tél: 01 42 84 29 45

If you're anything like me, you're thrilled that the season for summer fruits is finally in full swing. I like nothing better than returning from my market with a basket full of fresh peaches, nectarines, cherries, and whatever other fruits happen to look best that morning. And since I've started plying the Parisian vendors with Brownies, I'm getting much-desired VIP treatment at the market, and more often than not, there's a few extra treats thrown in too. It's nice to know that Parisians can be bought for the price of a simple square of chocolate.

While others may prefer to cloak summer fruits in fancy desserts, when the temperature starts soaring, the idea of standing in the kitchen for a few hours crafting some overwrought concoction has little appeal. And to be honest, it's kind of a no-brainer when it's this hot and I can be trying on jeans surrounded by Parisian jeunes hommes instead.

My appearance on a radio program recently prompted me to share two of my favorite summertime recipes: luscious White Chocolate and Fresh Ginger Ice Cream with Baked Nectarines and Cherries. During the summer I bake fruit all the time which doesn't require standing over the stove. Invariably when I return from the market, I wasn't able to resist anything, and I'm a hopeless wreck when confronted with everything so perfect this time of the year. But baking brings out the sweetness, softening fruits beautifully into this delectable compote, which is so seductively simple to spoon up with freshly-made ice cream.

For the baked fruit, I like to use light cassonade sugar, which is widely available in France. In the US, natural food stores and Trader Joe's sell unrefined sugar, which is lighter than brown sugar but granulated and as easy to use as white sugar.

And since everyone gets their panties in a knot about making substitutions, yes, you can substitute 6 to 8 plums or fresh apricots for the nectarines, but be sure to use the larger amount of sugar since apricots get much more tart once they're baked. They'll also take less time to bake as well.

I know you're going to ask about peaches (see, now you're getting carried away...), but I find peaches soften too quickly and I prefer the tartness of nectarines. Plus nectarines don't need to be peeled and really hold their shape much better than peaches. If cherries are out of season where you live, you can add a basket of fresh raspberries or blackberries when you take the fruit out of the oven, allowing the residual heat help them meld into the compote.

Lastly, some readers have asked me about ice cream makers so I've posted some tips in the previous entry if you're thinking of purchasing one. They're come way down in price in the past year and since I personally can't imagine getting through the summer without homemade ice cream; you might think about making one your next purchase too.

White Chocolate And Fresh Ginger Ice Cream with Nectarine and Cherry Compote

4-6 Servings

Is there anything better than warm fruit, slightly-sweetened, topped with a scoop of ice cream melting on top or alongside? The creamy-sweet taste of white chocolate pairs marvelously with the piquant bite of fresh ginger. Just enough to serve as a pleasant contrast.

White Chocolate and Fresh Ginger Ice Cream
About 1 quart (1 liter)

3-inch piece (2 to 2 1/2 ounces) fresh ginger, unpeeled
2/3 cup (130 g) sugar
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk
1 cup plus 1 cup heavy cream (500 ml, total)
8 ounces (230 g) white chocolate, finely chopped
5 large egg yolks

1. Slice the ginger thinly, cover it with water in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook for 2 minutes. Drain away the water but return the blanched ginger to the pan. Add the sugar, the milk and 1 cup of heavy cream to the saucepan and re-warm the mixture.
Cover and steep for at least an hour, or until you are satisfied with the ginger flavor.

2. Put the chopped white chocolate in a large bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, then gradually add some of the ginger-infused cream mixture, whisking constantly as you pour in the warm cream. Pour the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

4. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. Strain the custard into the white chocolate, and stir until the chocolate is completely melted. Discard the ginger. Add the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream and chill thoroughly. You can set the bowl over an ice bath to speed it up.

5. Chill mixture thoroughly, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Nectarine and Cherry Compote
Four to Six Servings

I prefer my fruit less-sweetened, but you can add the larger amount of sugar if you like. If you don't have a vanilla bean, just add a few drops of vanilla extract.

4 nectarines
1 pound (450 g) fresh cherries, stemmed and pitted
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
4 to 6 tablespoons sugar
optional: 2 tablespoons rum or kirsch

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (190 C).

Split the nectarines in half and pluck out the pits. Put them in a 2-quart baking dish with the cherries. Scrape the vanilla seeds into the fruit.

Mix in the sugar and rum or kirsch, if using.

Turn the nectarines so they're cut side down, arranging them in an even layer with the cherries and tuck the vanilla bean underneath.

Bake uncovered for 45 minutes to 1 hour, opening the oven door twice during baking so you can jostle the baking dish to encourage the juices to flow. The fruit is done when a sharp paring knife easily pierces the nectarines.

Remove from oven and serve warm, or at room temperature with a nice scoop of the White Chocolate and Fresh Ginger Ice Cream.

Storage: The compote can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Summer is here in Paris. It arrived without warning last week and was brutal. It was hot, and it hit around 31°(about 88°) and so humid, I faced a real-meltdown of chocolate. And just about everything else around here, including me, suffered the same fate. Just when no one couldn't bear it anymore, it stopped. Then we had rain and cool weather. It's so other-worldly (hey...am I back in San Francisco?), but summer arriving means a lot less clothes, and since I'm now European, it's obligatory that they're much, much tighter. Damn Europeans and their fine-tailoring. So that means it's time to pay for the last 8 months of eating too many pastries, tasting too many chocolates, snacking on too many macarons, and drinking perhaps a bit too much vin rouge. I don't know if I can hold my stomach in consecutively for the next three months, but I'm going to try. I've unpacked my shorts for summer and they definitely are un peu serré.

Speaking of tightening my belt, last week I got to spend the morning at my favorite place in Paris, getting rid of a few excess US dollars I had lying around. My favorite place isn't the Eiffel Tower nor the Louvre (they don't take dollars), nor was it the Museé d'Orsay or the Jardin du Luxembourg. Yes, I got to go to the American Embassy, my favorite place in Paris! I like hanging out there, since everyone there understands me, unconditionally, and without judgment. There's no raised eyebrows or startled expressions, like last week when I recently ordered 'Big Turd Jam' (confiture des grosse selles), when I meant red currant (confiture des groseilles). Luckily they were out of the first one.

But the American Embassy is great: I can argue back with impunity and get huffy with them. Hey, why not? I'm on equal turf, and I'm an American and my English is just as good as theirs.
And I can argue with anyone all I want and make perfectly-formed sentences with correctly-placed pronouns and not worry if this verb is masculine to I need to match the adjective to the gender as well, or decide if I need to decide which of the gazillion French verbs I need to conjugate correctly, unlike I have to do at the Préfécture.
What are they going to do if I screw it up my English at the US Embassy? Kick me out? Or in?

So there I was, on the rue St. Florentin, where I waited, stood in line, got scanned, went through the metal detector, then had my water bottle confiscated (I guess it's a threat to national security), then headed to the IRS office. Being a foreign resident you get an automatic extension for paying your taxes, which comes in handy when the mail isn't very reliable. I guess somehow they caught on and give us expats a break.

So in my bid to help fight the war on terror and make the world a safer place (though things don't quite appear to be quite heading in that direction) I sat under the over-sized, overly-glossy, and over-polished pictures of George and Dick (whose has a rather curious smirk on his face for an 'official' portrait), and wrote my checks.

And prayed things wouldn't get any worse.
And in fact, for me, they were about to get better.

A whole lot better.

Since I was in the neighborhood (well, not really, but since I left my neighborhood, I'm gonna stretch it), I decided to visit chocolatier Jacques Genin. A lot of people talk about M. Genin with a hushed reverence and most of it is directed at his terrific chocolates. But one bite of his Passion Fruit Caramels and I'm singing a different tune. And you'll be too.

I had stopped at a bakery down the street for bread and noticed les palets Breton, delicate buttery cookies made from salted butter, so I bought a stack. Four was the minimum for some reason... this from the country where you can buy half a baguette for 42 centimes, and when madame wants to buy one fig, madame will be given the same courtesy and service (and take as much time) as, say, an American pastry chef trying to race through the market buying a flat of figs or a few kilos of nectarines to test recipes.

So I bought four, but M. Genin was happy to relieve me of half of them. In exchange, he swooped his hands into the tray he was wrapping of caramels and stuffed them in my bag (and those caramels are as precious as gold, since you can't buy them in stores.) As you can see, each caramel is buttery, tender, and keeps its shape just long enough to get it into your mouth, where it dissolves into an explosion of creamy-smooth sweet goo, slightly tangy from the passion fruit, with exactly enough of the tropical pulp to offset the restrained sweetness of the caramel.

So I can't say I'm going to get any thinner, or my shorts will soon fit better, or when I hit the beach in August, I'll be turning any heads. But when you have a guy like Jacques Genin feeding you chocolates and handing you caramels, who cares if your belt needs to be loosened out a notch.

Or two.

Jacques Genin
133, rue de Turenne
Tel: 01 45 77 29 01

NOTE: This post was updated in 2009, and now M. Genin has his own boutique in Paris, at the address above, which is open to the public.

Want to know what's it like to visit one of Paris' finest chocolate shops?

Read along here as Meg and I sample and learn about Richart chocolate, from the master of les petites Richart himself.

Richart Chocolate
258, blvd St. Germain
Paris
Tél: 01 45 55 66 00

Once upon a time, I worked in a restaurant that was well-known for using ingredients of exceptional quality. The most magnificent fruits and vegetables would come barrelling through our kitchen door every day, from plump, rare black raspberries to teeny-tiny wild strawberries, fraises des bois.

While I can't really guess the psychology behind it, we would often treat these marvels like precious jewels, reserving them for the perfect moment.

Or we'd just forget about them, then throw them away.

Unfortunately, because they were so fragile, they'd often last no longer than a day or so, and we'd arrive the next morning to find they hadn't been used the previous evening and had to be tossed. While I don't want to apologize or make excuses for this inexcusable behavior, restaurants are odd places full of strange people acting unusual...and no, it's not just the customers. There's mis-communications, too much going on all at once, and frankly, things don't always happen like they should. And don't tell me that you haven't let something accidentally spoil in under your eagle-eye either.

Because I'm not buying it.

So one day, one of the other cooks started to dub things as they came through the door, "Too good to use."
He used the phrase to refer to things that were so special, that we just couldn't bear to use them. And soon, the rest of us picked up the phrase too, and when something beautiful would arrive, it became the joke to label it as being something that was "too good to use."

So, last year when I led an Italian Chocolate Tour through Tuscany and Torino, we stopped at Slitti in the tiny town of Monsummano Terme. Although Slitti started out in 1969 as a coffee-roasting company, Andrea Slitti (the son of the founder) started applying his roasting expertise to chocolate-making and now Slitti is regarded as one of the top chocolate-makers in the world. After our visit, on the way out, Palmira Slitti (Andrea's wife who runs the shop) pressed a jar of their Crema da spalmare al Cioccolato Fondente ricca di nocciole into my already loaded-up bag of chocolates with a cheerful ciao bella.

When I got home, I put the jar on my kitchen shelf so I could admire it, and it sat there day-after-day. Each day I would gaze up, all glassy-eyed, imagining the chocolate-y goodness through the glass of the jar, and I could practically taste the tiny bits of roasted Piedmontese hazelnuts, embedded in a rich, dark chocolate paste that were speckled throughout.

One day I decided it was no longer "too good to use" and abruptly pulled the jar down from its perch, opened it up, and with knife poised, got ready to spread.

Ugh!
Instead of dipping into the tasty spread, I peered inside first and saw that the entire surface was covered with green, dusty mold. Ick! So at 6:30am, I had the unenviable task of cleaning moldy chocolate. Not a pretty thing to wake up to. I managed to get all visible signs of mold off, then I poured in a shot of Jack Daniels (which around here is definitely not too-good-to-use) and swished it around to kill any microscopic traces of green hairiness.

Thankfully I didn't toss it, and the hazelnut-chocolate paste was the best I've ever tasted. Unlike commercial hazelnut and chocolate spreads, this crema da spalmare from Slitti was made from the best, just-blended chocolate imaginable, studded with the world-famous Piedmontese hazelnuts from Langhe. And I've been enjoying it for the past few weeks, the warm weather in Paris makes it the perfect spreadable (ie: heap-able) consistency for my morning toast.

So maybe you have something in your cabinet, something you picked up on a trip that you're holding on to. Or do you have a bottle of wine you've been saving for a special occasion? Or is there something else that's so special that you can't bear to open it?

Do you have something that's "too good to use"?

Slitti
Cioccolato e Caffè
Via Francesca Sud, 1268
Monsummano Terme
Italy
Tel: 0572.640240

Note: Slitti chocolate bars are available in the United States through Chocosphere. At present, they don't carry Slitti's Crema da spalmare al Cioccolato Fondente ricca di nocciole but you might be interested in trying my Chocolate Hazelnut Spread recipe.

Pocket Coffee Online

While I was teaching chocolate classes at Central Market stores across Texas last month, in my free time I would wander the aisles of the store. I don't think I'd ever been in a place that had such a terrific selection of chocolates from around the world. It was a chocolate-lovers dream!
I was particularly intersted in these two, which I had never seen before and was eager to sample.

In the US, to be called 'milk chocolate', the chocolate must contain a minimum of 10% cacao solids.(Cacao solids are the ground paste made from pure cocoa beans.) In the European Union, the legal minimum hovers between 25-30%, although some companies get around it by calling their tablets 'family chocolate' or 'dairy bar', which is somewhat misleading since people often grab the bars thinking they're getting milk chocolate when they're getting something else.

So I've taken it upon me to re-name these higher-percentage bars of milk chocolate as 'dark' milk chocolate. Both bars shown contain about 35% cacao solids.

The first bar, the darker and thinner of the two, is Santander milk chocolate, made from Columbian beans. I found the chocolate to be a bit peanutty and malty. It was sharp and acidic but left little lingering aftertaste. It had a nice snap when sliced and had a faint butterscotch finish. I would imagine this would be good for chopping and substituting the pieces for chocolate chips in your favorite recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. I'm going to use mine to make a batch of Dark Milk Chocolate Ice Cream.

The lighter of the two is Caro milk chocolate. This was far 'milkier' tasting with a very creamy taste and texture. It looks a bit whipped and its flavor was somewhat elusive and candy-like. I have to admit that this one left a rather funny taste behind and I wasn't eager to eat more. Still, it was interesting to taste the two side-by-side.

I'm going to do the David Lebovitz Let-Them-Sit-In-My-Apartment-And-See-
Which-One-Is-Left-By-The-End-Of-The-Week Test®.

Wish me luck.

Some people love it, and others leave it.

It's White Chocolate, that controversial melange of cocoa butter, sugar, and milk (more on that later). Often there's vanilla, or vanillin (a synthetic vanilla-like substance) added as well.

Many people will say they don't like white chocolate, citing a preference for the dark side.
"It's not chocolate!", you'll hear.

Well, no, it's not. It's different. A different kind of chocolate.

Dark, or bittersweet chocolate, contains cacao mass (the ground beans), sugar, cocoa butter, and sometimes vanilla and lecithin.
White chocolate has none of the cacao mass, hence the delicate, ivory-like color, which it gets from the cocoa butter. Instead it's rich with cocoa butter, which gives it that suave, subtle taste, that I find compliments dark chocolate desserts and bolder flavors. I make White Chocolate Crème Anglaise and pour the cool custard alongside a dark chocolate cake. Or I steep fragrant fresh mint leaves when making White Chocolate Ice Cream.

Cocoa butter is derived from the chocolate-making process, or more specifically, when cocoa powder is made. To make cocoa powder, roastedcacao beans are ground into a paste, known as chocolate liquor, then the paste is pressed through a powerful hydraulic press, which separates the cocoa mass from the cocoa butter. The cocoa mass comes out as a solid block, which is grated into cocoa powder (which is why cocoa powder is always unsweetened and relatively low-fat) and the soft, rich cocoa butter is extracted. I've been to factories and watched the process, and the smell of warm, fat-rich cocoa butter is intoxicating.

The valuable cocoa butter is often sold to the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry, since it has the perfect melting point for things like lipstick...and why chocolate melts and releases its complex flavors like nothing else when you pop a piece in your mouth. But it's also that reason that true white chocolate tastes so good and is loved by many pastry chefs.

Here's some tips and facts about white chocolate:

• Both white and dark chocolates are emulsions. Adding small amounts of liquid, like water or milk, will cause the emulsion to break or seize. Therefore, any milk that's added to white chocolate must be first either dried into a powder or cooked to a paste, removing the water, before it's used. So you'll often find the ingredient 'milkfat' on the label.

• In the United States, white chocolate must contain a minimum of 20% cocoa fat.

• Because white chocolate contains a dairy product, it's highly perishable. Purchase it in small quantities as needed (unless you're like me, and use so much you buy it in 5-pound blocks...as shown above.) I make sure to get white chocolate from a reliable source that rotates and checks their stock regularly. Store it in a cool, dark place, but not the refrigerator, since it's high-fat content makes it a good medium for absorbing other odors...like the stinky camembert in my fridge.

• White chocolate will keep for up to one year. If you're unsure if it's any good, taste it before using (which most of us do when baking with chocolate, right?)

• Buy only 'pure' white chocolate and check to make sure the label reads only 'cocoa butter', and no other tropical fats, such as coconut or palm kernel oil.

• Due to the higher fat and sugar content, white chocolate melts very easily and at a lower temperature than dark chocolate, but more care should be taken when using it. Avoid excessive or direct heat. I like to pour a hot liquid over it and use the heat from that to melt the white chocolate.

• There's only a few companies in America that make white chocolate: E. Guittard, Baker's, and Askinoise. But most of the white chocolate you'll find is European-made, perhaps since few American bake with white chocolate.

• White chocolate should never be pure white. Since cocoa butter is ivory-colored, real white chocolate should be off-white as well. Products labeled as 'white bar' or 'white coating' are often not white chocolate and just tastes plain sugary and should not be used in recipes that call for white chocolate.
  

I ain't Mr. Organic.

I'm one of those people where "local-trumps-organic".
And taste trumps everything.
But I do generally prefer to buy from a local grower if possible, rather than from someone far away. (Unless it's Target...then all bets are off!)

That's what I like about daily life in Paris, those things are still important. You need to know the boulanger, the butcher, the fromager, the waiter at your local café, and, of course, the most important person in France: The Pharmacist.
(Next time you're a guest in someone's home in France, check out the bathroom. Holy Mother-of-Merck! The average French person gets 80 prescriptions per year.)

In many cities in America, organic has become all the rage.
Fine restaurants and their chefs are touting how organic they are. Boasting about which farms they buy their lavender-colored turnips from, and how tiny can they get their lettuce leaves to be. Branches of baby thyme are carefully draped over free-range quail eggs from birds that only eat peeled (organic) grapes. Everyone's so chummy with their farmer, smiling from the pages of Food + Wine magazine, but do we really need to know which farmer grows the most special, rarest species of Japanese blueberry blossoms to be dehydrated and sprayed over diners while they're spooning up their Smoked Lemon Sorbet?
American cuisine seems to be touting organics so much so that several French chefs have come up to me and asked,
"Why is everyone in America so into organic produce?"

I usually respond with something along the lines of "Organic is better since you often buy direct from the grower, there's no chemicals, it's better for the environment" etc...

On more than one occasion, their response was,
"Well, in France, we use very little chemicals."

"Er...um, really?", I think to myself.

I'm not an agronomist, but I've been told the opposite. And just like anywhere else in the world, including the US, I am sure that most commercially-grown fruits and vegetables are sprayed with something or other to make them as perfect and blemish-free as possible.

But eventually I realized that organic here is associated with bourgeouis or upscale. Most organic products are more expensive, and of the two organic markets in Paris, the one on the Boulevard Raspail is full of snobbish clients, pushing you aside with their strollers while they reach for their precious organic turnips (like the SUV-driving folks who run stop signs racing to get to yoga, shoving you aside in the aisles of Whole Foods while they chat on their cell phones, drinking their chai lattes, oblivious to anyone around them.)

But in Paris, the little shops are the most interesting, since you get to interact with the owners and they still take pride in their merchandise and often they like to talk to you. Each shop is like entering someone's home. A few days ago I was walking down a street near Oberkampf, and passed a nifty little bio shop, an organic shop so clean and modern. Displayed in the window were lots of interesting products and some chocolate bars, but I was in a rush and I kept walking.
But then I stopped, turned around, then went back.

I found inside a small, but rather interesting array of chocolates on offer and I am always looking for new and unusual chocolates. So I picked up a few bars while the owners offered me strips of delicious dried mangoes.

Organic Chocolate
Chocolate, or cacao (the beans ground to make chocolate), is generally grown in very underdeveloped regions quite close to the equator. The climate is inhospitable and the jungles can be very rugged. I would presume that in many of those places, the people are not treated very well who pick cacao pods, nor do they make much money, hence the interest in Fair Trade, where the growers are said to get paid a fair wage for their products. Some of these products are organic, while others are not.

However I've been told by one of my most reliable sources for all things chocolate, that most cacao is not sprayed with chemicals and is, for the most part, organic. (In many places 'organic' is a term that can only be used if the products are certified and tested, which often requires a hefty fee to be paid. Hence, farmers will often choose to label their products as 'transitional' or 'unsprayed' even if they are indeed organic.)

But what I like about these organic or Fair Trade chocolates is that the labels are chock-full of information; the region where the chocolate's grown, the climate, how it's harvested, what the growers had for dinner last night, how often they go to the bathroom, etc...

It's all very interesting, and is good for consumers who imagine that chocolate is from some big factory full of test tubes and scientists formulate bars, so it's nice to see a picture of the happy natives on the packaging.

The chocolates I purchased were interesting, although they were geared more for mass-appeal rather than the rarified palate that someone such as myself has cultivated. (just kidding...)

The Oxfam chocolate bar is made in Belgium. It has 48% cacao mass and it was a bit sweet, but had a nice fruity aftertaste and it would be great for baking. The chocolate is from Ghana (hence the black woman).

Another curious chocolate bar I found was made with quinoa.
Go figure.
Quinoa is an ancient grain, very high in protein. The grains are puffed and toasted, then embedded into the chocolate bar. I liked this one.
The chocolate is from the Dominican Republic, from an organization of 9000 little cacao cultivators. The chocolate was nice and dark (60 percent, for those of you into numbers) and had a nice snap. There was not much of a 'finish', no long-term aftertaste, and I wish there were more crunchy bits in there.

Still, what a wacky thing to find: chocolate with puffed quinoa!

Here's some interesting places to check out on the web about organic or Fair Trade chocolates, with information where to buy and taste some of the products mentioned, as well as a few other brands, some that are available in the United States.

Oxfam Fair Trade chocolate in Belgium.

Dagoba organic chocolate from the United States.

Green and Black's Organic Chocolate, made in England, available worldwide.

Max Havelaar chocolates and other Fair Trade products online.

Some of the chocolates shown, such as the bar with quinoa, are available here.

Jean-Charles Rochoux has perhaps the tiniest chocolate shop in Paris, located on an unassuming side street off the Rue de Rennes. It's hard to see and easy to miss if you're not looking for it. But what causes most passers-by to stop are the window displays, filled with intricately-sculpted statues and figures, crafted entirely of chocolate.

M. Rochoux spent many years in the workshop of Michel Chaudun, one of the best chocolatiers in Paris. And indeed, a look around this sleek boutique reveals much inspiration from M. Chaudin, including his version of Colomb, little disks of chocolate studded with cocoa nibs, and Les Pavés, tiny cubes of chocolate ganache that instantly dissolve in your mouth, the lingering pleasure lasting a few precious minutes. Then you decide it's time for another. I always buy at least six at a time for that reason.

But stacked discretely in the corner are stacks of chocolate bars, and after we had a lengthy discussion on chocolate one day, M. Rochoux handed me a tablet labeled noisettes to take home as a gift. When I got home, I tore open the wrapper and took a bite.
I was completely surprised by what I found inside.

Each individual roasted hazelnut was coated in crunchy, crackly caramel, then enrobed in the chocolate bar. The contrast of hyper-crisp hazelnuts and bittersweet chocolate makes this my new favorite chocolate bar in Paris.

Although I love finding something new, sometimes I have the opportunity to discover something nearly forgotten.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of touring the workshop and chocolate boutique of the world-famous Bernachon, in the city of Lyon.

Bernachon's Signature Cake: 'Le President'

Not only does Bernachon make great chocolates, they actually make the chocolate itself. Let's say you go to a shop to buy filled chocolates, or bars of chocolate. You're buying chocolate that the chocolatier has bought (and perhaps mixed to his or her specifications). That's the difference between a chocolatier and a chocolate-maker. There are very few chocolate-makers in the world, only 14 exist in the United States at present. Bernachon is a small shop, but it's stunning what they're able to produce.

Piping 'Couronne Noisette': Hazelnut and Praline Paste Blended with Milk Chocolate

I love Bernachon chocolate, although it's nearly impossible to find outside of their shop in Lyon. But what great chocolate it is and it's certainly worth the 2-hour TGV ride from Paris.

'Les Roches', Just-Dipped in Freshly-Made Dark Chocolate

Their most famous bonbons are the seriously-rich, ganache-filled palets d'Or flecked with bits of real gold. At the shop, they barely have time to keep them in the showcase, as customers come in, the saleswomen fill boxes directly from the decades-old wooden storage trays.

A Super-Skilled Chocolatier at Bernachon Making Chocolate Ruffles

But when I visit, I stock up on their chocolate bars, which allow me to commune with the pure chocolate all by my lonesome. I like the Nuit et Jour, the Night and Day bar, where one side is bittersweet dark chocolate. Flip it over, the reverse is smooth milk chocolate. Moka is made by grinding roasted coffee beans along with cocoa beans for a double-buzz, and Extra Amer is a super-dark bar of chocolate with very little sugar. It's bliss for some, and too intense for others.
I fall into the first category.
But my absolute favorite is Kalouga.

'Kalouga' Bar

Kalouga is a rather funny name for a chocolate bar. I'm told it's the Basque word for 'Caramel' (any scholars of the Basque language out there?) But I found the Basque word for tasty, gustagarri, and that's what this is. I first tasted one of these bars about 5 years ago, but was dismayed to find they stopped making it since. Too much of the luscious caramel would begin oozing out after the tablets were made and it was problematic to store them.

But I kept asking them to make them, and word got back to them that there was an American living in Paris who was insane for them. And lo and behold, they're back in production! (Yes, that was the story I was told...whether or not I believe it is another story...)
Either way, you may thank me later...once you've tried one.

Once you bite inside, the gooey salted caramel immediately begins spilling out, and it's hard not to eat the whole thing at once. If you're the generous type, I recommend opening it when you have a bunch of friends over to share the bouny.

Otherwise, you can just eat the whole thing yourself.

Guess which I did?

Jean-Charles Rochoux
16, rue d'Assas (6th)
Paris
Tél: 01 42 84 29 45

Bernachon
42, cours Franklin-Roosevelt
Lyon
Tél: 04 78 52 67 77
Lyon

Apparently the recent radio interview that I did with Evan Kleinman on National Public Radio's Good Food caused quite a commotion. The producer wrote they were innundated with requests for my recipe for Cocoa Nib Sausage, which I use to top my Chocolate Pizza Dough from The Great Book of Chocolate.

I get a lot of quizzical looks from people when they hear the words 'chocolate' and 'pizza' in the same breath, but adding sugar to chocolate is a relatively new idea in the grand history of the bar (remember how your mother only kept unsweetened Baker's chocolate in the house?)
And there's many cultures that use chocolate in savory dishes whose origins go back hundreds and in some cases, thousands of years, including Mole and here in France, where it's not uncommon for many cooks to sneak a bit of grated a chocolate into their Coq au Vin.

Many years ago, I became good friends with Joanne Weir, when we were young cooks starting out and before we knew any better. Now she's famous with a television career and many terrific books to her name and we try to see each other when we passes through each other's town. My favorite recollection of her is when she came to my house in San Francisco to make pizza. All I remember is there were a lot of empty bottles of Barolo the next day and a copy of this recipe on my counter that was splattered with garlic oil and a few flecks of parsley (and my oven was a mess too.) So when I was looking for the perfect topping for my pizza dough recipe, I adapted her recipe, adding crunchy and unsweetened cocoa nibs which gave it a nice savory crunch, as well as a bit of chocolate flavor...for those of you who can't wait for dessert.

And you know who you are...

Cocoa Nib and Spiced Lamb Sausage Pizza
Adapted from a recipe by Joanne Weir

Enough for two 9-inch pizzas, or 1 rectangular baking sheet pizza (approximately 11" by 17")

You can use this recipe to top your favorite pizza dough recipe if you'd like and I would imagine it would also be delicious simply cooked in a skillet then tossed with hot noodles, served with lots of freshly-grated Pecorino cheese shaved over the top.

1 recipe for Chocolate Pizza Dough, rolled out onto baking sheets

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
½ pound ground lamb
½ cup peeled, seeded, and chopped canned plum tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste or harissa
¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
large pinch (each) cinnamon, allspice and cloves
1/8 teaspoons red pepper flakes
salt and freshly ground pepper
fresh lemon juice
¼ cup cocoa nibs

4 ounces fontina cheese, grated
2 ounces mozzarella cheese, grated

In a small bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons olive oil and the minced garlic. Set aside.

Heat remaining olive oil in a skillet and cook the onions until soft and translucent. Add the lamb, tomatoes, tomato paste (or harissa), parsley, pine nuts, spices, and season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Cook slowly for 10 minutes (uncovered).

Remove from heat and add a squeeze or two of fresh lemon juice and let cool to room temperature.
Once cooled, stir in the cocoa nibs.

To make the pizzas: Brush top of pizza dough with garlic-infused olive oil. Sprinkle half of the cheese over the dough then spread the sausage over the cheeses. Finally top with the remaining cheese and bake the pizza in a very hot oven until the cheese is bubbling and deep-golden brown.

Cocoa Nibs are available from ScharffenBerger and Dagoba.

I have to admit that this is my "Little Black Dress" that many women...and perhaps a few men (since I'm from San Francisco), consider their multi-purpose, never-fail-to-impress sexy black number hanging in their closet. I'm normally wary of recipes that call themselves "The Best" since often you make them, and they ain't all that.

But of all the chocolate sauce recipes I've tasted over the years, this is the absolute favorite in my repertoire. I came up with it years ago when I was compelled to create a chocolate sauce that was rich, thick, glossy, and not loaded with butter or cream—this sauce has neither!)

From golden profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream, to a warm wedge of tender chocolate cake, I can't imagine any chocolate dessert that wouldn't be improved by being doused with a nice drizzle of this. I keep a container of chocolate sauce on hand, especially during the holidays, to dress up a simple dish of ice cream after an impromptu dinner or for a little treat in the afternoon when I crave something very chocolaty.

But often I just sneak a spoonful direct from the container.

The Best Chocolate Sauce
About 2 1/2 cups

1 cup (250 ml) water
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
1/2 cup (160 g) light corn syrup, agave nectar, or glucose
3/4 cup (75 g) unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-processed)
2 ounces (55 g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped

1. In a medium saucepan, whisk together the water, sugar, corn syrup (or agave or glucose), and cocoa powder.

2. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Once it's just begun to simmer and boil, remove from heat and stir in the chopped chocolate until melted.

Serving: You should let the Chocolate Sauce stand for a few hours before serving, which will give it time to thicken a bit.

Storage: Store the chocolate sauce in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. Rewarm before serving.

(For those of you who have asked, the chocolate cake is the Gâteau Racines, from Ready for Dessert.)

Related Recipes and Links:

Chocolate FAQs

Cocoa Powder FAQs

Ingredients for American Baking in Paris

Chocolate-Almond Buttercrunch Toffee

Chocolate Biscotti

Very Chocolate Cookies

Chocolate Scotcheroos

Coconut-Chocolate Macaroons

Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzoh Crunch

Chocolate-Dipped Florentines

When the winter chill comes to Paris, one of the great pleasures is sipping a cup of rich hot chocolate, le chocolat chaud, in a cozy café.

Contrary to popular belief, most versions of Parisian hot chocolate are made with milk rather than cream, and get their luxurious richness from lots of top-quality chocolate. This cup of chocolat chaud is deeply-flavorful, but not over-the-top rich...so there's no need to feel guilty indulging in a nice, warm cup whenever you feel the need.

Parisian Hot Chocolate

Four 'Parisian-sized' Servings

2 cups (1/2l) whole milk
5 ounces (130 g) bittersweet chocolate, (with at least 70% cacao solids), finely chopped
optional: 2 tablespoons light brown sugar

1. Heat the milk in a medium-sized saucepan.

2. Once the milk is warm, whisk in the chocolate, stirring until melted and steaming hot. For a thick hot chocolate, cook at a very low boil for about 3 minutes, whisking frequently. (Be careful and keep an eye on the mixture, as it may boil up a bit during the first moments.)

3. Taste, and add brown sugar if desired.

Serve warm in small demitasse or coffee cups.

Note: This hot chocolate improves if made ahead and allowed to sit for a few hours. Rewarm before serving. I also like to add a few flecks of fleur de sel, the very good sea salt from Brittany.

One of the most vexing tasks some bakers come across is making the perfect macaron, those ethereal little domes of almond meringue seen all over Paris, often filled with buttercream, ganache, or a fruity filling of jam. (Although the original macaron didn't have filling, but were simply fused together while warm.)

So for Prune Blogging Thursday, I decided to create a recipe for chocolate macarons with an Armagnac-scented prune filling, along with the a dark chocolate filling for you non-believers; curiously, my French tasters all preferred the prune filling.

Tender, picture-perfect macarons are not easy to make. Les Macarons are all about technique, rather than about just following a recipe. Armed with a good recipe, almost anyone can make a decent brownie. You just mix, pour, and bake.

I'm also a firm believer in cultural divides; there are some foods from other cultures are best left to their home turf. I've never had a good Madeleine in America and if you've ever had a 'croissan-wich' in the US, you know what I mean.

Using my anti-globalization stance as an excuse, I've never tackled macarons until I moved to France. But here I am. And I have no excuse.

I phoned my friend Rob who worked at Fauchon, and he warned that the batter for perfect macarons needs to be folded just-so. One extra fold, and it's all over. Not enough, and you won't get that little foot.

And he also advised that the chocolate macarons were the most difficult of all to get right But since those are my favorite, I was determined to get them right, no matter how many batches I had to make.

Curiously, many recipes warn to let the piped cookies sit for two hours before baking to develop a shell. Testing that theory, I baked one tray right away which rose nicely but didn't have the perfect 'foot'. Two hours later, I baked the second baking sheet, the same mixture, the only difference was letting it sit. The second batch rose and had a nice little 'foot' around each.

I spoke with my friend from Fauchon again, who said, "Let them sit for a few hours? No way, we just popped those suckers in the oven right away."

So I tried another batch, baking them off as soon as I piped them out. This time the first batch had the perfect 'foot' and the second batch didn't. Then I made yet another batch, where I tried rapping the baking sheet hard on the counter top to flatten the batter before baking, and that first batch looked great with little 'feet' but the second batch I baked later formed little domes. Grrr.

Determined, another batch followed. I took the advisement of Pierre Hermé who says to begin baking macarons at a very high temperature, then turn it down quickly. That caused all the macarons to crack (ouch!) which I knew could be alleviated by using double-baking sheets but I didn't feel like trying it again and washing all those dishes.

Anyhow, to make a long story short(er), here's the successful recipe I came up with after seven tries, which are perfect. You can choose from either filling.

Chocolate Macarons

Makes about fifteen cookies

Adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris (Broadway) by David Lebovitz

Macaron Batter
1 cup (100 gr) powdered sugar
½ cup powdered almonds (about 2 ounces, 50 gr, sliced almonds, pulverized)
3 tablespoons (25 gr) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
5 tablespoons (65 gr) granulated sugar

Chocolate Filling
½ cup (125 ml) heavy cream
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
4 ounces (120 gr) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 tablespoon (15 gr) butter, cut into small pieces

Prune Filling
15 medium prunes (pitted), about 5 ounces (150 gr) prunes
2½ ounces (70 gr) best-quality milk chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons Armagnac

Preheat oven to 350º F (180º C).

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and have a pastry bag with a plain tip (about 1/2-inch, 2 cm) ready.

Grind together the powdered sugar with the almond powder and cocoa so there are no lumps; use a blender or food processor since almond meal that you buy isn't quite fine enough.

In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they begin to rise and hold their shape. While whipping, beat in the granulated sugar until very stiff and firm, about 2 minutes.

Carefully fold the dry ingredients, in two batches, into the beaten egg whites with a flexible rubber spatula. When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop folding and scrape the batter into the pastry bag (standing the bag in a tall glass helps if you're alone).

Pipe the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheets in 1-inch (3 cm) circles (about 1 tablespoon each of batter), evenly spaced one-inch (3 cm) apart.

Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake them for 15-18 minutes. Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet.

To make the prune filling:

Cut the prunes into quarters and pour boiling water over them. Cover and let stand until the prunes are soft. Drain.

Squeeze most of the excess water from prunes and pass through a food mill or food processor.

Melt the milk chocolate and the Armagnac in a double boiler or microwave, stirring until smooth. Stir into the prune puree. Cool completely to room temperature (it will thicken when cool.)

To make the chocolate filling:

Heat the cream in a small saucepan with the corn syrup. When the cream just begins to boil at the edges, remove from heat and add the chopped chocolate. Let sit one minute, then stir until smooth. Stir in the pieces of butter. Let cool completely before using.

Assembly

Spread a bit of batter on the inside of the macarons then sandwich them together. (You can pipe the filling it, but I prefer to spread it by hand; it's more fun, I think.)

I also tend to overfill them so you may or may not use all the filling.

Let them stand at least one day before serving, to meld the flavors.

Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days, or freeze. If you freeze them, defrost them in the unopened container, to avoid condensation which will make the macarons soggy.

Recipe From:

For further information, troubeshooting, and tips about making macarons, visit my post Making French Macarons.

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I like the word 'addictive'.
I use it when it refers to something I like a lot and can't stop eating.
So instead of implying a substance abuse problem (the jury's still out around here whether or not chocolate is an abusable substance), the word has positive connotations for me. But I tend to use the word a lot, so much so that I fear that using the word addictive has become another addiction to me.

My friend Joanne recently came to visit me in Paris after a trip through Piedmont, the region of Italy famous for white truffles, hazelnuts, and chocolate (for some reason, though, she didn't bring me any fresh white truffles.) But she did bring me a lovely box of something dark and chocolaty:
...Baci Cherasco.

Perhaps you're familiar with Baci or Bacio di Dama, the little blue & silver foil-wrapped circle of Italian milk chocolate with a nice crisp hazelnut in the middle. Baci di Dama translates to kiss of a woman.

So I'm now in the possession of a very big bag (another reason I love Italy...big portions!) of Baci Cherasco; sinful little buttons of dark chocolate with crushed roasted hazelnuts.

The tasty Baci Cherasco were invented in 1881 when the confectioner, Marco Barbero, had make some a batch torrone and had some leftover hazelnuts bits left over...

Thinking quickly, Signor Barbero gathered up the remaining hazelnuts and had the good sense to coat them in bittersweet chocolate and made little 'kisses' from them.
Nowadays the hazelnuts are hand-crushed with rolling pins to assure they're still in irregular chunks before dipping.

(Whenever I have any remaining tempered chocolate, I scramble through my kitchen cupboards to see what else I can dip. I've enrobed coffee beans, pretzels, honeycomb, prunes...you name it, I've dipped it.)

Baci Cherasco are suspiciously simple...just two ingredients: dark chocolate and crunchy hazelnuts. They're delectable and truly addictive; the hazelnuts are perfectly roasted (always toast nuts, folks...) and the chocolate used is some of the best I've ever tasted.

Consequently, I've become addicted to the little dark nuggets with the powerful aroma of Piedmontese hazelnuts and bittersweet chocolate. So much so, I almost ate the entire bag of chocolates as if it were a sack of popcorn.

Barbero
Via Vittorio Amanuele, 74
Cherasco, Italy
Tel/Fax: 0172-488373

I am often asked the difficult-to-answer question, "Who is the best chocolatier in Paris?"

There are very few parts of Paris where you can't find something delicious made of chocolate. From my apartment, I'm one block from Dalloyau and two blocks from Lenôtre. Walk out my front door, cross the street, and there's Joséphine Vannier near the Place des Vosges, a small chocolate shop whose window delights the tourists, but belies the more serious chocolates inside.

(I'm also only two blocks from A la Petite Fabrique, but the saleswoman is so rude that I refuse to shop there. And since she refuses to wait on me, I guess we're even.)

Surrounded by all this chocolate, how does one name a favorite?

Last December, Patrick Roger decided to open a boutique in Paris (his workshop is in Sceaux, in the suburbs of Paris). Instead of setting up in a super-chic arrondissement, his shop is close to the bustling Boulevard St. Michel. Each time I pass by, there's always people pressed hard against the tinted glass (which is to protect the chocolates from the sun), peering in to catch a glimpse of Roger's stunning bonbons and whimsical chocolate and marzipan confections.

When it comes to chocolate, my philosophy is 'Simple is Best'.
The finest chocolate bonbons allow the flavor of the chocolate to come through without interference from the other flavors and ingredients. The zippy notes of fresh lime juice enlivens a cushion of ganache, a hit of Sichuan pepper, smoky Earl Grey tea, and meltingly tender rum raisin-filled nuggets: all are examples of the masterful balance of flavors that compliment dark chocolate, not compete with it.

Little flakes of oatmeal embedded in a smooth ganache. Mounds of crispy slivered almonds enrobed in dark chocolate. Oozing caramel with the curious and welcoming addition of with pear juices enclosed within a vividly-colored, glossy half-dome. These are some of Monsieur Roger's creations that continue to seduce me. They satisfy like classic chocolates do, but with curious new flavors that thankfully aren't meant to shock, but to simply taste good.

Rochers, square cubes of chocolate, flecked with little crackly-bits then dipped in chocolate couverture are my second favorite chocolates here at the moment. My first love are perfect squares of nougatine, a caramelized melange of crispy nuts and burnt sugar, ground together to a paste, formed into cubes and neatly enclosed in chocolat amer.

Most of the time I stop by, many of the customers either wandered in off the Boulevard St. Germain, lured by the simple, yet dramatic chocolate displays in the window and seem to walk around the shop in a daze, not sure of where to begin or what to taste.

The other customers I find there are food-savvy Parisians, who've stopped in to pick up a little sack of noisettes, wild hazelnuts dipped in crisp caramel and dipped in dark chocolate, a few pure chocolate tablettes, or a selection of chocolate bonbons in the easily recognizable green-blue box, which has become a frequent addition to my chocolate checklist here in Paris.

Dalloyau
Locations across Paris

Joséphine Vannier
4, rue du Pas de la Mule
Tel: 01 44 54 03 09

Lenôtre
Locations across Paris

Patrick Roger
108, Boulevard St. Germain
Tel: 01 43 29 38 42

And you can read about my experiences ultimately working at Patrick Roger's shop in my book, The Sweet Life in Paris!

Many people want to know;"How do you temper chocolate and why do you do it?"

Homemade Rocky Road, from The Great Book of Chocolate, Enrobed in Tempered Chocolate

The short answer is that chemically, chocolate is composed of lots of different little crystals (six to be exact) but the desirable ones are called beta crystals. The development and formation of these beta crystals are what makes well-tempered chocolate.

If the cocoa butter rises to the surface, some people commonly think their chocolate's gotten moldy and toss it out. If you've done that, you've tossed out perfectly good, but unattractive, chocolate.

As you can see, there is a dull white sheen on the surface of this piece of chocolate.

So that's what happens to chocolate that's not properly tempered: the cocoa fat rises to the surface and "blooms", making it unappealing and unattractive. When you buy chocolate, like a candy bar, the chocolate's been tempered and it should be nice and shiny and snap when you break it. If you leave your candy bar in a warm car and later open it up, often it'll become white and gray. The heat caused your chocolate to lose it's temper. When you buy chocolate for baking, it should arrive well-tempered. But once you chop it up and melt it, the beta crystals change, the chocolate loses its temper, and you'll need to re-temper it again if you plan to use it as a coating. If you're going to cook with it, just use it in your recipe, as indicated.

Pages and volumes of technical research have been written about tempering chocolate, but here are the main reasons for all you home cooks out there:

• To avoid fat (and sugar) bloom, characterized by unappealing white streaks or blotches on the surface.
  
• To raise the melting temperature of finished chocolate so it doesn't melt on contact with your fingers.
  
• To preserve the keeping quality of chocolate by stratifying the fat.
  
• To cool chocolate quickly. Tempered chocolate cools fast, within 5 minutes.
  
• To give chocolate a glossy, shiny appearance, and a crisp, clean snap when you break it.
  

As I've said, you don't need to temper chocolate is you're going to bake a chocolate cake or make chocolate ice cream. The only time you need to temper chocolate is when you need an attractive, shiny coating for candies that will sit at room temperature. You can get around tempering by dipping chocolates in melted, untempered chocolate and storing them in the refrigerator. Just remove them from the refrigerator a few minutes prior to serving them. The coolness of the refrigerator will stratify the cocoa fat and it's won't bloom.

There's many different methods for tempering chocolate.
Some are really complicated, and some are really messy, especially for home cooks.

Many professional pastry chefs and chocolatiers can instinctively tell when chocolate is perfectly tempered by looking at it or touching a smidge it to their lip. However a few years ago I was doing a demonstration tempering a brand-new chocolate and it just didn't temper. I kept stirring and stirring, but I could visually tell those stubborn crystals wouldn't cooperate. So now I rely on a thermometer, which is foolproof.

After I studied chocolate-making and learning from the masters at Callebaut in Belgium and at L'école du Grand Chocolat Valrhona in France, I developed a simple 3-step method that's a snap for home cooks. All you need is an accurate chocolate thermometer, although a good digital thermometer will work. I bought one of those laser-thermometers just for fun, but there's a too-large margin-of-error and it only measures surface temperature, so mine's been retired to my kitchen cabinet.

Tempering Chocolate

1. The first step is melting the chocolate in a clean, dry bowl set over simmering water, to about 115° F.

2. The second step it to let it cool to the low 80°s F. I drop a good-sized chunk of solid (and tempered) chocolate in, which provides insurance by 'seeding' the melted chocolate with good beta crystals. While cooling, stir frequently. Motion equals good crystallization, aka, tempering.

3. The last step is the most important.

It's bringing the chocolate up to the perfect temperature, where it's chock-full of those great beta crystals. This occurs in most dark chocolates between 88° and 91° F. (Check with manufacturer if unsure about your particular chocolate.)

4. Remove what's left of the chunk of 'seed' chocolate, and your chocolate is dip-worthy: you can dip all the chocolates you want and all will be perfectly tempered. Don't let it get above 91° F or you'll have to begin the process all over again. If it drops below the temperatures, rewarm it gently to bring it back up.

For more chocolate tips, recipes, and information, check out The Great Book of Chocolate

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Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzoh Crunch (Recipe)

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The Easiest Chocolate Ice Cream Ever! (Recipe)

Since I wrote the book on chocolate I realize that I should be blogging more about chocolate, but all the answers to many of your chocolate questions can easily be found in The Great Book of Chocolate. This book is the ultimate guidebook to the world of chocolate and a wealth of information with delicious recipes. If you're like me and can never have enough chocolate, this is the book for you.

Want to know the difference between bittersweet and semisweet chocolate? What's the difference between Venezuelan and Ecuadorian cocoa beans? Which country produces the best chocolate? Which chocolatiers worldwide produce the most interesting and scrumptious chocolates? All the answers, and everything else you've ever wanted to know about chocolate, can be found in The Great Book of Chocolate.

One of the most common misconceptions about appreciating chocolate is that you should base your opinion on the percentage of cacao in the bar. The was reinforced this week when a close friend came to visit, and brought me a tablet of the fantastic chocolate from Cacao Sampaka in Barcelona, which I profiled for Saveur magazine last year in their 100 Best issue. Like everyone that I bring into chocolate shops, he was raving because the chocolate tablet that he graciously brought me (albeit half-eaten) was 71%! (...insert his enthusiasm here.) Like lots of people, everyone seems to expound upon the theory that the higher the better. (...insert everyone's question here... "But what about anti-oxidants?...)

I like my friend very much and he may be reading this and if he is, I want him to continue to bring me care packages from Target and Trader Joe's on his return visits so I don't want to make him feel cuplable (well, maybe a little.) But I feel compelled to get folks to understand that the exact percentage of cacao in the bar is truly unimportant to the taste or even the bitterness. I've had chocolate bars that are 99% cacao that were palatable and other bars that were 80% cacao that were bitter and inedible (and I like very bitter chocolate.) I've had 90% bars that were amazingly good and smooth, while others were 60% and were crumbly and mushy.

So quit throwing your nose up in the air and saying, "I only eat chocolate that's at least 75%." To me, the numbers are, um, interesting, but not what I look for when evaluating chocolate, since by muddy chocolate-colored logic, that argument means that the 75% chocolate is inherently better than a 70% chocolate. It's amazing with this analytical mind that I didn't make my mother proud and become the lawyer (or better yet, the doctor) that she always wanted in the family.

Look what I have. Two Italian chocolates from Baratti & Milano in Torino:

One is 65% and the other is 80%. Does that mean the 60% is the worse of the two and should be avoided at all costs? You'll also notice one is made from beans from Ghana and other from beans from Grenada. Quick: which one is better?

It means little to judge a chocolate based simply on a number (or origin, but that's information that can be found in the book.)
Why?
The percentage doesn't take into account...

The variety of beans,
or...
The quality of the beans,
or...
The careful roasting of the beans,
or...
The blending of the beans by the chocolate-maker,
or...
The sweetness of the beans themselves,
or...
The acidity of the beans themselves.

I think part of the reason many of us Americans are hung up on high numbers (which is why we never adopted the metric system) because It sounds so much better to say, "Oh my gosh! It was 105 degrees today!" rather than, "Mon dieu, it was an unbelievable 40 degrees today!"

John Scharffenberger of ScharffenBerger chocolate says to pretend you're Helen Keller when tasting chocolate; Don't read the label and don't listen to what others tell you. Taste the chocolate and judge for yourself.
If you like it, it's good chocolate!

Forget Catherine Deneuve and Carole Bouquet.

The most photographed and revered woman in Paris is Denise Acabo. With her braided pig-tails, necktie, and crisply-pleated kilt, Denise is the sweetest woman in Paris.

Her shop, A l'Etoile d'Or, has an ethereal selection of artisan confections and chocolates from France and whenever I go, I invariably find something new to try, something tasty, something that is so amazing, that I'm compelled to go back for more. What's a guy to do?

I give myself at least one hour to shop. Minimum. Words fly out of her mouth in rapid-fire French. She'll often use the tu word, instead of the formal vous, which suggests immediately comradery.

Don't understand a word of French?
That's ok, Just nod. She'll keep going.

Gianluca Franzoni is the master chocolatier at Domori. He's the person who is responsible for selecting the beans and roasting them to perfection. Cacao beans, like coffee, need to be roasted to bring out their flavor. Domori uses no vanilla in their chocolate, unlike other chocolate companies, since Gianluca believes that vanilla masks some of the flavors he coaxes out of the beans to make his chocolate. I immediately liked him because of his dedication to making truly fine chocolate....(and perhaps because his shirt would match the colors of my web site.) Aside from making great chocolate, the Italians really know how to dress.

As you can imagine, Domori is a chocolate company that is rather revolutionary...and in a country that's no stranger to revolutions. If you've been to Italy, you know the Italians are lively, creative, wonderful people. And they're not afraid to do things a bit differently.

When Gianluca told me that Domori chocolates were so smooth that even the 100% bar of unsweetened chocolate, called Puro, was not the least bit bitter, (even without the sugar,) I frankly didn't believe him. But Puro was indeed great. It's made from 100% Sur Del Lago beans, which is used in some of the best chocolates I've tasted. For the hard-core chocolophiles, crunchy dark Ocumare cacao beans, known as Kashaya, are roasted whole and meant to be eaten just as they are. I mean, what kind of people pack up whole roasted cocoa beans and for hard-core chocolate-lovers to eat? The same people who brought us gelato, gianduiotti, and panna cotta.

As you can probably tell by now, I love Italians!

Domori is one of the few chocolate companies that actually owns their own plantations in Venezuela. Most of their beans are criollo hybrids, which is considered the best cacao available today. (The term 'cacao' refers to the beans used to make chocolate, and 'cocoa' usually refers to the powder made from the beans after they're roasted and pulverized.)

We tried a sample of all of their chocolates, guided by Gianluca....

Esmereladas is their chocolate made from Ecuadorian cacao, that had a surprising tropical banana-like aroma and flavor. Rio Caribe, from their Venezuelan plantation, had an earthy, musky character while the Sambirano from the island of Madagascar (where a lot of vanilla is grown) had a raisin-sweet taste and a gorgeous red hue. Perhaps the most intriguing was the Puertofino, which was made from a rare, pure Ocumare cacao, which we all agreed had a delightful creamy taste, even though it was pure bittersweet chocolate with no dairy added.

If this is making you crave Domori chocolate, you can order their chocolate (as well as Tuscan chocolates from Slitti and Amadei) online at Chocosphere.

So onward in my pursuit of more great chocolate here in Tuscany.
Next I'll visit Slitti, which aside from blending their superb chocolates, they roast amazing coffee...which says a lot, since each time I sip an espresso in Italy, I fall into a deep trance-like state.
In the walled city of Lucca, where we're staying, I've had a chance to stock up on Amadei chocolate as well. Amedei specializes in very rare cacaos, such as Chuao and Porcelana and is another of the world's great chocolates.

Eating in Tuscany includes focaccia flatbread permeated with olive oil and sprinkled generously with coarse salt, soup made with the Lucchese wholegrain known as farro, and I'm stockpiling delightfully bitter chestnut honey that I drizzle over toasted and buttered (salted butter, of course) levain bread. If you should ever visit Lucca, the best place to buy Tuscan foodstuffs is Antica Bodega at 31, via Santa Lucia. The wine, of course, is excellent, inexpensive, and generously poured in restaurants and enotecas.

Tomorrow I'm taking my group to a villa in the mountains for a wine and olive oil tasting before we return to Lucca to shop for local specialties at Antica Bodega, including sharp, sheeps-milk Pecorino cheese and well-aged, syrupy Balsamic vinegar, Parmesano-Reggiano and olive oil.

And of course, lots more chocolate.

Related Chocolate Links

Chocolatiers and Chocolate Makers

Theo Chocolate

Valrhona Chocolate

Chocolate FAQs

John-Charles Rochoux

Regis Chocolate

Patrick Roger

La Maison du Chocolat

Here I am in Torino, or Turin, if you're familiar with the shroud.
Being on the road means that I'm in unfamiliar hotels with less-than-ideal access. When I attempted to change the thermostat in my hotel room, the digital display read 'PARTY'. I don't know what the 'party' mode is, but when I pressed the switch again nothing exciting happened.

I'm leading a fabulous chocolate tour as I write. Torino is not on the tourist route. But it should be if you're into chocolate. Gianduja is the star chocolate attraction here, a blend of milk chocolate and hazelnuts ground until smooth then formed into a paste. Hazelnuts are a specialty of the Piedmonte region and during wartime, cocoa beans were scarce so someone had the great idea to blend them with chocolate, and gianduja was born. (If you've had Nutella, you know what a terrific alliance chocolate and hazelnuts can be.)

Once the gianduja paste is made, it's formed into mounds that are molded into a flat peak, then wrapped in gold foil. I'm not much of a fan of milk chocolate, but when mixed with hazelnuts, it's dreamy and truly delicious. The best gianduja that I've had was at A. Giordano (Piazza Carol Felice, 69.)

The other chocolate treats of Torino are Bicerin and gelato. Bicerin is great, and something that deserves to be better known outside of Torino. It's a hot drink made with espresso, chocolate, and just enough whipped cream to make is smooth and creamy. It's a fabulous combination, and each afternoon residents of Torino line up at bars for a warm Bicerin.

The gelato here is thick, gooey, and delicious. Like nothing you've had in your life. Flavors include caffe, gianduja (my favorite, of course), pistacio, tangy yogurt, and torrone loaded with almonds and sweetened with honey. Here's my favorite gelato maker at the Caffe San Carlo (Piazza San Carlo, 156). He is perhaps my new favorite person in the world.
At least in Italy.

Italians in Torino walks down the street eating gelato all hours of the day. Businessmen at lunchtime slurp cones while avoiding dripping on their Armani suits. Afternoons, swarms of teenagers with low-slung jeans send text-messages in between licks, and elderly women wander through the passages and window shop savoring gelato.

So I'm off tomorrow with my group for the mountains of Biella, where we'll dine at an Agriturismo, a farm that serves meals made from ingredients only grown on the land. Then onward to Genoa, where we'll stop along the way at Domori chocolate, one of the world's great chocolate manufacturers.