Recently in Global Category

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Paris chocolatier...

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

Michel Chaudun (in Japan)

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.

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...

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.

I am such an idiot.

I won't tell you who, but years back, someone with a thriving restaurant on 18th Street in San Francisco alerted me to a great business opportunity nearby. Food-related, of course. I passed, and now the area is the culinary destination in the Bay Area.

(Aside from the taqueria on Church Street across from the Afeway...)

Although I missed the proverbial boat, I'm glad to see the smart folks at Bi-Rite Creamery scooping up some excellent ice cream in that neighborhood. I sampled just about all of them, from the fruity Cherry-Almond to the most curious Soy Chocolate. There's a seductive Salted Caramel and a Butter Pecan as well. But my absolute, hands-down favorite scoop was the Mint Chip. Flavored with organic mint oil, it's a big dose of refreshingly cool mint with big, honkin' chunks of housemade chocolate chards. Think the best kind of Girl Scout cookies all mashed together and piled in a cone. Yum!

There's plenty of toppings to choose from at Bi-Rite Creamery, but where there's salty little grains of fleur de sel enrobed in dark chocolate from Michael Recchiuti, why order anything else?

Bi-Rite Creamery
3692 18th Street
San Francisco, CA

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.

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.

I don't know if some of you noticed this, but there's been a petit void in cyberspace lately. As some of you know, Michèle of Oswego Tea has moved to London and at the same time ended her blog. The good thing is I don't need to add that pesky backwards accent anymore now that she's moved to England. (Although she started adding the British extra u to words like flavour...who does she think she is anyways, Madonna?)

A while back one of my readers advised if I ever got back to London, I need to go to Melt, one of the highly-regarded chocolate shops in the city. Since I didn't know when I'd get back there, I thought I'd send Michele in to check it out.

So I started bugging Michele to get over to Melt to hopes she'd write an entry here about it. It took her a while, but she finally wrote back, saying she was really busy after her move, but realized that it was time to "...get my ass to melt!"

However in deference to folks searching the internet for photos of butt-melting (which I'm sure there are out there...) I changed her wording a bit since I didn't want to get my potty-mouth washed out with soap, like Michele's gonna get next time she comes back to Paris for punishment.
Which may incite more internet searches, bien sûr...

While I've no doubt pictures her butt melting might be far more intriguing to some readers out there who came expecting something other than a visit to a chocolate shop, you'll have to make do without. But for those of us who've missed Michele's terrific blog, I finally was able to get her to do her guest post here on my site about getting her butt to Melt.
And here it is.

Getting My Ass To Melt

When a friend sends you an email asking for a favour, admit it, sometimes you worry. In the back of your mind there's this nagging voice that says "Please don't let it have anything to do with moving a large couch up a narrow flight of stairs.."

Luckily for me, the friend in question was David, who at the first mention of looking for a new apartment will come right out and say "Don't ask me to help you move." I think he waved a finger the first time he said that to me.

The favour he wanted of me?

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.

The word 'consulting' always sounds like a dream job when you're stuck working in a restaurant kitchen, slaving over a hot stove, on the line. As a consultant, it sounds like you sweep into a kitchen, where the staff welcomes you with open arm as their savior, and you magically transform the meals coming out of the kitchen into extraordinary feats of culinary magic.

In fact, it couldn't be more different.

Restaurants call in consultants when they've exhausted all other possibilities, and the kitchen is in such dire trouble that they need to get some poor sucker from the outside to come in a try to fix what they've screwed up. The pay seems great, until you walk in the kitchen and realize no one wants to talk to you, no one wants you there, and worse, no one wants to change anything, since it means more work for them (and if they really cared about their work, they wouldn't have had to call in someone from the outside in the first place.)

I was once a consultant for a corporation that owned several prominent restaurants. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out that one of their major problems was that there were a lot of high-paid executives sitting in meetings upstairs, while there were a lot of low-paid people downstairs, in the kitchen, putting the food on the plate. And let's face it: Customers don't care about executive meetings, they care about the food.
And that's basically it.

When I mentioned this discrepancy to the high-paid executives (who hired me to tell them things like that...right?) we had another round of meetings, discussing things for hours and hours, until I told them I couldn't sit through any more meetings since I had work to do in the kitchen. (Stupid me! What was I thinking? Those meetings were totally cush. Why slave over a hot stove? Maybe those executives weren't so wrong after all...)

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.

The other night I was having dinner in a restaurant, and struck up a conversation with the fellow dining at the next table, who turned out to be Swiss. As we talked, the conversation turned to what I did and when I replied that I wrote cookbooks on baking and chocolate. His curiosity was piqued...as well as that of the two Belgian women at the other table.

I knew exactly where the conversation soon would be heading, and of course, I was asked the inevitable question: "Which country do you think makes the best chocolate?"

Before I go on, I would just like to say for the record:
"Who cares?"

It's really a pointless question.
What if I asked; "What country makes the best wine?" Well, you might answer that there's great wine made in Italy, France, the United States, Switzerland, Germany, etc. And there's lousy wine made in all those countries too. As you may have tasted.

But is there one country quantitatively better than at making wine than another? Is there some formula that one can follow to show who wins the mantle of Best Winemaking Country in the World? Perhaps one could argue that the soil in one county is better than another, or the weather, or maybe other factors. But for making chocolate couverture, pure, solid chocolate, most of the time the cocoa beans aren't grown in the countries where chocolate is produced, with a few exceptions.

And is there really a country that makes the Best Chocolate In The World?
Is there some competition going on that no one told me about?

Anyhow, back to dinner...

So I answered, "The best chocolate in the world is made in the United States."

The man was surprised, and the two women started rolling their eyes and laughing. And my French dining companion just smirked at me, since he knows that I said that matter-of-factly as well, just to irk them. But seriously, I don't know what was so funny. Maybe they were laughing at themselves for not realizing that there's very good chocolate produced in the United States.

How silly of them; what were they thinking?

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.

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 accidentially 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

(Slitti chocolate bars are available in the United States through Chocosphere, which is listed on my chocolate links page.
I don't know about the availability of Slitti's Crema da spalmare al Cioccolato Fondente ricca di nocciole in America, but I don't feel to bad for you if you can't get it, since I haven't been able to find a source for it here in Paris, France...and we share a common border!)

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.

Every year the International Association of Culinary Professionals hands out awards for what they deem are the Best Cookbooks of the Year. Last month in Seattle, I attended the ceremony with a few friends and instead of getting drunk on the free wine and champagne and heckling the winners as usual, I was thrilled when the names were called and not one...not two...but three of my 'chocolate' friends won awards!

Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
By Mort Rosenblum
Award: Literary Food Writing

When I moved to Paris, chocolatier John Scharffenberger told me that I must meet Mort Rosenblum. He told me stories about what a colorful character he was, living on a boat in the Seine, and being a war correspondent for the Associated Press. Not being very adept at making friends via the 'cold-calling method', I worked up the verve and took his advice, and Mort turned out to be one of the most, um, interesting people I've ever met! Having spent a lifetime as a journalist, he tackled chocolate in his latest book, researching everything from the working conditions on the Ivory Coast of Africa to the Mexican chocolate culture of Oaxoca, and finally exploring the exclusive realm of chocolate in Paris, including the laboratoire of the elusive Jacques Genin.

Mort also writes of an interesting 'incident' about my experience with a certain, er, French chocolate company that wasn't very, um, nice to me. Even though my mother always said, "If you don't have something nice to say, blah...blah..." (she obviously didn't have a blog), he coaxed some of the gory details out of me. The rest was a story in my chocolate book, which was later deleted, so you'll have to wait for my posthumous biography for the real dirt.
Since I can't keep a secret for very long, you can read about some of my encounters with them in his book, Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light.

I'll be leading a sold-out week-long Chocolate Exploration of Paris in May with Mort that promises to be great fun and we'll be visiting Jacques Genin* himself for a hands-on presentation and tasting. Will report on that in May.

Chocolate Obsession
By Michael Recchiuti and Fran Gage
Award: Best Photography and Food Styling

After knowing him for almost 10 years, I think I've got his name right. In spite of my mangling his name too many times to count (we're still friends)...and there's certainly nothing convoluted about Michael's sensation chocolate creations. I admire him so much that he's one of America's great chocolatiers, and I profiled him in The Great Book of Chocolate. After working for years in restaurant kitchens, he launched his company in San Francisco in 1997, selling his chocolates via local shops. An advocate of using locally-grown ingredients, soon Michael was a fixture at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, and gave out tastes of his chocolates to eager early-morning shoppers. Once the farmer's market opened their spanking-new, gleaming indoor facility, Michael opened his first boutique and his fame spread far-and-wide. With creations like Key Lime Pears, thinly-coated in bittersweet chocolate, and his do-it-yourself kits for making terrifically-gooey S'Mores (hey!...I'll bring the marshmallows...), Chocolate Obsession reveals many of his secrets and tips for successfully producing chocolate desserts and confections in your own home.
And if you ever get a chance to visit his shop, his chocolate fudge brownies are a-m-a-z-i-n-g...

(Maren Caruso, who won the Photography Award for her stunning photography, and co-award winner Kim Konecny, food stylist, will be shooting my next cookbook, due for release in the May of 2007.)

Chocolate Chocolate
By Lisa Yokelson

This oversized book is almost overwhelming with the variety of chocolate recipes. Lisa likes things over-the-top, everything from Chocolate Pancakes to deep-chocolate bar cookies studded with chips and nuts. Everything here is loaded with so much chocolate that you'll go crazy.
You may go insane.

You may end up like TomKat.

But I hope not.

*Many of you have asked where you can get Jacques Genin chocolates. A limited selection is available at Pain de Sucre, 14 rue Rambuteau (Tel: 01 45 74 68 92). As far as I know, they're unavailable in the United States. You can also try to visit his laboratoire at 18 rue St.-Charles. It's not a shop and normally not open to the public, but he's quite nice and often he'll sell his chocolates to visitors if the weather is right, the planets are in correct alignment, and he's in the mood.

Everytime I go back to the United States, I'm certain to spend a good part of one day wandering aimlessly up and down the aisles at Target.

(And can everyone please stop correcting folks when they say "Target", with "Tar-jay", which was somewhat funny...about 10 years ago. But we've all heard it a zillion times before, and people expect us to laugh in response, but it's hard to muster a plausable chuckle anymore, so let's give it a well-deserved rest and go back to calling it Target, please.)
Thanks...

In France, prices for everyday items like towels and bath mats are outta sight and it's worth lugging back an extra suitcase full of sundries, une valise géante, stuffed with corn tortillas, horizontally-lined notebooks, sunscreen, 12-packs of socks, bottles of Target PM, and a Michael Graves' designer toilet brush.
Or two. Just in case. I mean, you never know.

One of the newer items at Target is a line of 'upscale' chocolates, whatever that means.

I guess it's chocolate that's either supposed to be of higher-quality, or has a certain je ne sais quoi. I had completely forgotten about it when I made it to the cash register, my shopping cart overflowing with DVD's, socks, a pistachio-green yoga mat, mini-marshmallows (I need to count out how many are in a bag for a project, believe it or not), a 2007 monthly calendar (they only have weekly and daily calendars here...and who knows when I'll be back), when I spotted some colorful boxes of Choxie, which Target states their new line of chocolate bars will "...satisfy the most sophisticated chocolate palates."

Aside from the people wolfing down corn dogs and gulping down giant Cokes in the snack bar (and damn them to hell...they were out of my favorite: popcorn!), it wouldn't be stretching the truth too much, nor would I be giving myself a ill-gotten pat on my back, to say I was perhaps the most sophisticated palate in the joint at that particular time of day (aside from my craving for Target popcorn, that is...) I felt like they were talking just to me, and me alone. So I knew I had to use my 'upscale palate' for a higher purpose and give those choxie chocolate bars a try.

The first was the hot chocolate bar: deep, dark truffled chocolate with chipotle chili heat.

First off, I have no idea what the heck "truffled" means...so I guess I can't be all that sophisticated after all now, can I?
*Sigh*, how the mighty fall...

I assumed it suggests some rich heavy cream has been whipped in, but the only dairy item listed was butter "oil". Sounds kinda greasy.

It was also cautioned on the packaging that my chocolate bars be kept "away from amateurs" as they were indeed intended for only the "most sophisticated of chocolate palates." Not wanting to sound like a snob, but I think that might preclude an inordinate number of people who were Target shoppers that afternoon, including the girl who held up the Carmen Electra's Fit To Strip erotic video workout DVD and attempted her own rendition for her boyfriend, who encouraged her, in the video aisle while I, along with several other sophisticated Target shoppers, watched in amusement. (Ok, maybe they were amused. I wasn't. I don't know what's worse; considering buying a Carmen Electra workout video, or performing your own version of her moves in the Electronics Department.)

Getting off my high horse, safely back in the car, I snapped off a bite and took a taste. It was fine. Nice, not too intimidating or offensive. The heat of the chipotle chiles was spot-on; not feeling the heat at first, but the lingering warmth of smoky chili followed shortly afterwards.

Next up was the peanut butter pretzel bar: creamy peanut butter, pretzel twists and roasted peanuts, inside pure milk chocolate. (Apologies about all those lower-case letters, but that's how they're printed on the package.)

What should bother you more than writing in all lower-case letters is the words "pure milk chocolate". What does that mean? "Pure" as opposed to "impure"? If you think about it, milk chocolate itself is actually "impure" chocolate, having been ameliorated, desecrated if you will, with milk. So why not call it as it is? I mean, does anyone buy a Carmen Electra DVD because she's 'pure'? Would we buy Fit To Strip if it came with some assurance of purity?

I think not.

Ok, maybe some of us would. Just keep it to yourself.

Anyhow, the pretzel bar was pretty good. The 'pure' milk chocolate was truthfully enrobing a nice, gooey filling of peanut butter, encasing the whole pretzel twists tucked inside. It was good, although you could buy a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, slice the whole she-bang in half lengthwise, slip a pretzel in, and call it a day for about one-third of the price. Then you could buy another pair of socks, perhaps. Or another designer bathroom brush.

Finally there's mint cookie crunch: dark truffled chocolate (damn them, how dare they use the word "truffled" again...there's so little respect for the truth nowadays) with a cool mint candy and chocolate cookie crunch.

I'm enamored with all things mint and dark chocolate, such as thin mints and Girl Scout cookies. And the last time I was in San Francsico I saw a tribe, or whatever they're called, of Girl Scouts being rousted by the police for trying to sell their cookies in an 'unauthorized' location. What is wrong with a world that punishes cheerful, enterprising young ladies presenting their delicious baked goods in a public venue, yet allows Carmen Electra to make exercise videos and appear on their packaging, in various states of undress, without any regard for public decency, while evoking impressionable young girls, and perhaps a few boys, to follow in her tawdry footsteps?

This minty bar rated not so well on my sophisticated chocolate-palate meter; it wasn't minty enough for me. I found the quality of the chocolate a little lacking as well. I mean, it's hard to be so sophisticated, but the chocolate was lame. (Imagine if Carmen feels a bit lacking, having to hawk all those silly videos wearing those ridiculously skimpy outfits. How does that girl do it?)

The Verdict?

If you're looking for bargain chocolates, you could do worse.
However you could also do better.
Each Choxie bar weighed in at 2.5 ounces and sold for $1.50 to $1.80. But if you lived near a Trader Joe's store, you could pick up a 3 ounce bar of Chocovic's Ocumare chocolate (one of the best chocolates I've tasted) for $1.79. And presumably they don't sell Carmen Electra workout videos there either, so think of what else you'd be saving?

But finally the real test. The "If-I-Keep-It-On-The-Counter, Will-I-Pick-At-It-Incessantly-Until-It's -Gone?" test. Sure enough the chipolte and the mint chocolate bars sit sadly neglected, but the peanut butter-filled tablet is gone.

Now if only I could say the same for Ms. Electra.

The city of Torino (or Turin) is one of the great centers of chocolate. In the early part of 1500, a Italian named Emmanuel Philibert served hot chocolate to celebrate a victory over the French at Saint-Quentin. And in 1763, Al Bicerin opened it's doors and began making a celebrated coffee-and-chocolate drink called il bavareisa. The hot drink was a soothing mixture of locally-produced chocolate, strong Italian coffee, and topped with a froth of whipped cream.

The drink was often served in a small glass, called a bicerin (bee-chair-EEN), hence the name got changed to what we know now today as il bicerin.

Just across the border from France, Torino is the city where chocolate is an integral part of life, and where ice cream on a stick, the pinguino popsicle, was invented in 1935. Now there are exceptional chocolate-makers throughout the city, such as Peyrano and A. Giordano, who still make gianduiotto by hand, selling it at their historic chocolate shop on the Piazzo Carlo Felice.

The Piedmontese region is famous for a few other things than just chocolate and hazelnuts, most notably white truffles, but also for their exceptionally delicious hazelnuts. Back in those days, cacao beans were very expensive and rare, so a local chocolatier named Michel Prochet began blending hazelnuts into the chocolate to extend it, inventing gianduja (gee-an-DOO-ya) and is now perhaps most famously consumed as Nutella, which has become the most popular sandwich spread in the world.

But even now, every afternoon you'll find the locals stand in one of the city's historic caffès, sipping a hot bicerin from a small, stemmed glass. Or sitting at a marble-topped table and letting one of the waiters present them with your bicerin, savoring the atmosphere.

My favorite place is the overly-ornate Baratti & Milano, where I like to sip my bicerin surrounded by crystal chandeliers and bronze sculptures. And I always am sure to pick up a few bars of their handcrafted chocolate or gianduja at the gilded-and-mirrored confectionery counter on the way out. Here's my recipe...

Bicerin
Two servings

It's important to use a clear glass; you need to be able to see all three layers.

To make a bicerin, warm one cup (250 ml) whole milk in a medium-sized saucepan with 3 ounces (90 gr) of chopped bittersweet or semisweet chocolate. Whisk the mixture until it begins to boil, then let it boil for 1 minute, whisking constantly (the chocolate mixture will foam up a bit.)
Afterward, remove it from the heat and set aside. Make a small pot of very strong coffee, or good Italian espresso.

Fill the bottom third of a clear, heat-proof glass with the warm chocolate mixture. Pour in some coffee or espresso. (If you want to help it create a definite layer, pour it over the back of a spoon, into the glass.)

Top with a nice swirl of sweetened, freshly-whipped cream.

Places in Torino/Turin, specializing in local chocolates, gianduiotti, or to find an authentic bicerin:

A. Giordano
Piazzo Carlo Felice, 69
Tel: 011.547121

Al Bicerin
Piazza Consolata, 5
Tel: 011.4369325

Baratti & Milano
Piazza Castello, 29
Tel: 011.4407138

Caffè Torino
Piazza San Carlo, 204
Tel: 011.545118

Gobino
via Cagliari, 15/b

Confetteria Avvignano
Piazzo Carlo Felice, 50
Tel: 011.541992

Peyrano
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 76
Tel: 011.538765

Platti
Corso Vittoria Emanuele II, 72
Tel: 011.5069056

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

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!

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.