The Art of Tasting Chocolate

HOW TO NAVIGATE A FOOD SHOW

The more often I go to the Fancy Food Shows, the more select I become.  In the early years I would eat myself silly.  Sure, I would love a hand full of jelly beans with that Polish Sausage Sandwich. And could I have an espresso to wash it all down with?

After years of acid indigestion which seemed to linger for weeks after the show I knew that I needed a different strategy. So, one year I decided to limit myself to the International Aisles.  This showed a lot of promise. The olive oils alone could take a half a day to taste. The Italians loved pouring wine. And the cheeses from the British Isles!  I ate so much Neal’s Yard cheddar one year that I swear my heart started skipping beats. But this was still too much.  It would be one thing if I was the food buyer for a gourmet food shop and was trying to stock the shelves.  I was just an inquisitive chef roaming the aisles for inspiration.

The narrowing of my tasting focus happened naturally the year that I started this website.  I tried all the chocolate confections.  ALL OF THEM.  It took two days.  But at least they were all in the chocolate family. There are a lot of confections that should be avoided at all costs.  However, I couldn’t report on what I thought was the best unless I tried them all, right?  Down one aisle.  Up another. Masterpieces of construction from Spanish confectioners were sampled beside hand dipped artisan chocolates from Oregon.  Chocolate with chilies.  Chocolate with cheese.  Chocolate with smoked pork products. I traded acid indigestion for a near diabetic coma. 

The 2008 Fancy Food Show was held in San Diego, not San Francisco.  The year off gave me a break to think about what I was trying to achieve in my tasting.  Was it breadth or depth?  Did I want to know about every fine and/or wacky chocolate combination on the planet?  Or did I want to winnow it down to the essence of chocolate?  Pure chocolate in a bar.  Not flowing from a fountain.  Not shaped into the Eiffel Tower.  Not paired with Cabernet Sauvignon and poured over ice cream.  No. I turned down an event where the host wanted only chocolate and champagne pairings.  No.  Not for me.  What I want now is pure chocolate.  The essence. Stripped down and bare. No inferior chocolate hiding behind nuts and chilies and cheese and pork.

So with that criteria, I went a’tasting.  And this is what I found. I tasted only pure chocolate.  These are my favorites in no particular order:

MICHEL CLUIZEL : Oh, those French! So elegant. So refined. A guided tasting of five ‘1ers Crus de Plantations’ plain chocolates took less than ten minutes yet transformed me into a Cluizel groupie. This was one of the best guided tastings I have ever experienced.  Starting with Los Ancones – Santo Domingo – 67% cacao, we worked our way around a tasting map that took us to Venezuela, Madagascar, New Guinea and Sao Tome.  

AMANO ARTISAN CHOCOLATE : Art Pollard always continues to amaze.  This year he added a fourth chocolate bar to his repetoire.  JEMBRANA, 70% minimum cacao, is produced from beans that Art sourced from the Regency of Jembrana, on the southwest coast of the Indonesian island of Bali.  This is a gentle bar of chocolate. Nice fruitiness with a hint of nuts and a background of vanilla that rounds out the flavors.

TAZA CHOCOLATE : This was the ‘wow’ moment for me at the show.  Stone ground chocolate so the texture is rough, not smooth like chocolate that has been conched. Only four ingredients: cacao beans, cane sugar, cocoa butter and whole vanilla beans. When I tasted the 80% Dark Stone Ground Organic Chocolate Bar I could taste cherries.  Added? No.  I was just tasting the terroir of the beans. 

If all this talk of chocolate has you drooling then you won’t want to miss the SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL CHOCOLATE SALON  which is happening this Saturday, March 21.  This year it is being held in a larger venue than in past years.  More room to roam around in a chocolate coma.  I will be there as a member of the tasting panel. See you there!

IS CHOCOLATE RECESSION PROOF?

What compels people, especially in this current economy, to pay $55 to watch a guy stand in front of a room and talk for two hours? Chocolate.  But, most importantly, chocolate as interpreted by Michael Recchiuti.  Over 20 people sat in a cool room (ambient temperature 65 degrees) in an industrial building in San Francisco this afternoon and watched while Michael demonstrated how to temper chocolate, how to form a tuile, how to make a perfect ganache and transform it into a truffle and what to do with unhopped barley-malt syrup:Oh, yeah, and then there were those triple chocolate cookies and chocolate bark.

I have taken two other classes from Michael.  He did a similar class to this one when his cookbook first came out.  There was also an amazing chocolate/wine pairing class that he did with the Ferry Market Wine Merchants two years ago.  I take Michael’s classes for two reasons. He has an alchemist’s aptitude for combing flavors (i.e. ruby red grapefruit and tarragon and for controlling fire. As I watched him make the Burnt Caramel Base(a signature Recchiuti Confections flavor) I was reminded of one of my cooking school chefs who taught me how to burn onions for the best onion soup.  It was at that moment, years ago, that I understood where flavor is developed.  It is developed at that precipice where one might panic and turn back. It is the moment when you think the onion might be burning or the croissant is getting too dark (see Tartine Bakery), or the sugar is about to burn beyond recognition.  Good chefs brown.  Great chefs burn.

For upcoming classes check out their website. The questionnaire passed out at the end of the class asked which topics we would be interested in for future demos.  I vote for Chocolate Pairings, Savory & Sweet Chocolate and Demos involving chocolate and other non-chocolate items (herbs, salts).