If it weren’t for some New York Times food writer, there wouldn’t have been a Jacques Torres chocolate shop in New York. In 2000, the famed pastry chef decided to make his own chocolate for quality control purposes. This was a huge undertaking, since there are only about 10 chocolate makers in the U.S., as opposed to chocolatiers (aka chocolate melters or re-packagers).

When Times writer Florence Fabricant got wind and asked Jacques when his store would open, he threw out a random date in December. He never intended to welcome visitors; he situated his factory in seedy DUMBO (“Down Under the Manhattan Bridge” in Brooklyn) because rent was cheap, and he could easily transport his wholesale chocolates to other storefronts. But when you have Ms. Fabricant on the phone, you do your best to impress.

During the construction process, Jacques literally had to babysit equipment that was dumped on the sidewalk. He had asked for outside delivery because it was $1,000 cheaper, but it didn’t seem like a bargain as dusk approached. Jacques and about five other guys couldn’t get the machinery to budge. Then he desperately started pulling out $20 bills from his pocket.

“How many of these do I need to give so you can help me move my equipment?” Jacques asked strangers. He finally got a dolly/lift and has accepted in-store delivery since then.

Jacques renovated much of the store himself, armed with a pastry bag and an off-set spatula. He piped out cement (or caulk, or whatever constructors use) from the bag and smoothed it out, just like icing on a cake.

On “opening day,” Jacques placed some chocolates on display and hid an empty shoe box behind the counter as a makeshift cash register. After his first customer bought $20 in chocolate, Jacques did the happy dance. In the following months, customers thanked him for his charming shop. Jacques couldn’t understand why people were handing him money and thanking him for it.

In 2004, he opened a second storefront in Manhattan, Chocolate Haven. I visited on Saturday, during a private tour for the NY Metro Discover Chocolate Meetup.

Jacques Torres showing us behind the scenes in his factory

Candied oranges are boiled in syrup for so long that all the moisture is replaced by sugar.

Chocolate melter

This machine wraps more than one bar a second, if I recall correctly.

During the tour, Jacques talked about the history of his business and how to choose chocolate for eating. When he first made truffles, Jacques blended Valrhona Manjari and a 70% chocolate (probably Le Noir Amer). While the materials and technique were good, a pastry chef friend told him that the truffles tasted horrible. As noted in my chocolate database, both of these bars have fruity and spicy undertones. These strong flavors are fine for plain eating, but they’ll muddle the flavor of say, coffee truffles.

We compared the 60% house blend, the fruity Peru, and the earthy 72% Ghana.

For most of his truffles, Jacques now uses his own neutral 60% blend. This way, the said flavors explode and don’t interfere with the chocolate. For his passion fruit truffle though, he can get away with using fruity Peruvian chocolate.

As for when to use cocoa powder versus chocolate, Jacques only puts chocolate in his hot, frothy drink. Cocoa leaves the throat feeling dry, since it doesn’t have cocoa butter. Also, since cocoa powder is the unfinished ground bean, it doesn’t have as much flavor as chocolate that’s been conched (stirred) for several hours. That’s not what a low-fat baker wants to hear, but it has interesting implications. If a cake recipe calls for butter and chocolate, try keeping the chocolate and reducing the butter, rather than keeping the butter and swapping in cocoa powder.

One and a half years ago, I thought Jacques’ chocolates were very good for the money. Now I think they’re very good, period. Before, I felt that the presentation was good, but I could hardly distinguish one truffle flavoring from another. On Saturday, the Hearts of Passion went “POW!” and the Heavenly Hazelnut tasted like a European Reese’s peanut buttercup. The couvertures (base chocolate) also tasted stronger and had a thick texture. Jacques said he hasn’t changed his recipes, but he did refine his techniques. One secret was vacuuming all the air out of his ganache (truffle filling), so the aromas won’t evaporate.

Jacques conducts free demos in his Chocolate Haven store every couple of months. It’s always worth a trip to meet this enthusiastic story teller and teacher. He’s like a kid in a grown up’s body. That’s what a lifetime of chocolate does to you!

Jacques savoring his own chocolate.

Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven
350 Hudson at King Street (1 block South of Houston)
New York, NY 10014
212-414-2462 phone

Jacques Torres DUMBO
66 Water Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
718-875-9772 phone

Related posts:
Chocolate Haven Tour
Chocolate Christmas tree demo

Resources:
Video interviews from Epicurious
Chocolate with Jacques Torres (Food Network show)
Passion for Dessert with Jacques Torres (Food Network show)
Blue-Chip Cookies for the NY Times

Books:

Marilyn Monroe chocolate painting/Sid Chidiac

Chocolate Art Festival!

Australian artist Sid Chidiac invites you to the first annual Chocolates Art Festival!!!! Includes:

– Chocolate Fashion
– Chocalate Body Painting
– Edible Body Paintings
– Furniture Covered in Chocolates
– Chocolates Sculptures

There will be fashion shows everyday! 100% of proceeds are going to a local charity, God’s Love And We Deliver,
helping people with HIV/AIDS and other life-altering illnesses.

May 17-20, 2007

Festival Hours: Thursday, 6pm – 9pm Admission is $10
Saturday, 10am- 9pm
Sunday, 10am – 7pm
FREE Entry on The Weekend !!!

Location: St. Anthony’s Church at 154 Sullivan St. (near Houston) in the lower level.

For more info please visit www.chocolatepainter.com

Soho20 Gallery in Chelsea (511 W 25th, ste 605) is presenting a solo exhibition of the work of Mariángeles Soto-Díaz.

“The Divine Geometry of Chocolate” is a series of abstract oil paintings inspired by Soto-Díaz’s love of chocolate, Soto-Díaz works with the emblems of abstraction, using grids, the drip, squares, geometry and color-fields to address the principle of pleasure. These luscious paintings do not illustrate chocolate so much as evoke anticipation of an exquisite sensory experience. In her words, these paintings delight in “parallels between the sensual materiality of chocolate and that of oil paint.”

As in her prior series using spices, Soto-Díaz also unsettles geometric abstraction with post-colonial perspectives. From its use in pre-Columbian civilizations as both currency and medicine, its seduction of Europe and role within the slave-driven history of cacao production, to the modern struggle to create sustainable cacao production standards, chocolate’s semi-bitter history is nothing but rich.

A native of delicious cacao-producing land of Venezuela, Soto-Díaz uses a blend of Latin American and North American traditions of abstraction, and while infusing them with a dose of conceptualism, she crafts her own brand of neo-modern painting. Soto-Díaz has exhibited internationally and her work is in many public and private collections. She holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University, where she studied with Karl Benjamin, a central figure in the Hard Edge Abstraction movement.

“The Divine Geometry of Chocolate” runs from May 22nd to June 16th. Reception:Thurs., May 24, 5-7 pm
Soho20Chelsea Gallery is located on 511 West 25th Street, #605, NY, 10001, NY. Tues-Sat 12-6pm. Tel (212) 367-8994.

-Thanks to Clay Gordon of the NY Metro Chocolate Meetup group (and author of the forthcoming Discover Chocolate) for the chocolate listings.

Free Ice Cream
Häagen-Dazs ice cream shops will give out free cones of its new flavors, Cinnamon Dulce de Leche and Sticky Toffee Pudding, on Tuesday, May 15, 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at any participating Häagen-Dazs location. – Thanks to The Food Section

Graphic: Candy Blog

Should olive oil that’s mixed with canola oil be marketed as “pure olive oil?” Should red wine that’s diluted with grape juice still be called wine? Of course not! If the FDA has its way, something similar could happen to chocolate. Under a new proposal, the FDA wants to label something chocolate if it has NO cocoa butter.

As stated before, dark chocolate is a mixture of cocoa mass (aka chocolate liquor or paste), sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla and an emulsifier (usually soy lecithin). Cocoa butter literally makes chocolate melt in your mouth. Cheap brands substitute a portion of cocoa butter with butter, milk or vegetable fats, and they already taste really bad. Imagine if all the fat came from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Mmm, trans fats.

Good chocolate is sacred. The proposal is an insult to artisan chocolate makers who carefully select their beans, roast them, crush them, conch them and mold chocolate. It’s not just about satisfying your tastes; it’s about honesty.

Unless you want to eat waxy chocolate, tell the FDA, “Don’t mess with our chocolate!” by April May 25. You are commenting against Docket 2007P-0085. Thanks to Cybele at Candy Blog for the tip and Dontmesswithourchocolate.com for a sample form letter.

It may seem like political brouhaha, but once you eat good chocolate, you’ll appreciate its craftsmanship. Good chocolate showcases a rainbow of flavors, from spicy jasmine to sun-ripened peaches. Inspired by The Chocolate Connoisseur, I’ve created a chocolate database of more than 30 bars, complete with tasting notes, cacao percentage, bean origin and bean type. It’s a way to document my favorites and help me pick chocolate to suit my mood or cuisine. In short, my favorite brands are Valrhona, Dagoba, Domori, Amano and Green & Black’s. My least favorite are Scharffen Berger and Callebaut.

I take for granted that New York City is a chocolate buffet, but these bars are all available on Amazon.com. (Some qualify for free shipping.) One bar may cost more than a bag of Snickers, but there’s a reason why Hershey’s is cheap: inferior ingredients. A good bar will last you a long time because it’s so satisfying.

Here’s how to find your favorite chocolate.

Cacao percentage

Conventional wisdom: the higher, the better. Cacao gives chocolate its flavor, so milk chocolate must have at least 10% cacao solids and dark chocolate 35% in the U.S. In my view, 60% is a good starting point for semisweet chocolate, and 70% is the standard for bittersweet (there’s no legal definition though). In general, once you hit 80%, the chocolate borders on bitter.

The exceptions: David Lebovitz, author of The Great Book of Chocolate, says it well: “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 … 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.”

Ah, what about those other factors?

Bean variety

Conventional wisdom: Of the three varieties, Forastero is the worst, Criollo is the best and Trinitario is a hybrid. Forasteros account for about 90% of the world’s crop and arguably 100% of boring chocolate. They are hardy and grown as cash crops. Criollos are prized for their complex flavors. However, they are susceptible to disease and account for 0.1% of cacao.

The exceptions: Hershey’s uses Forasteros, but some chocolate makers like Michel Cluizel and Pralus coax out neat flavors from this “inferior” bean. Some argue that Arriba or Nacional cacao from Ecuador is a fourth variety, while others say it’s a Forastero sub-type. No matter, Arriba cacao tends to be sweet. I’ve had a 100% Arriba bar that tasted so sweet that I swore there was sugar in it.

Chloe Doutre-Roussel, author of The Chocolate Connoisseur, argues that we great humans exterminated Criollos, and all Criollos today are hybrids. Domori claims to have re-introduced Criollos to the wild.

Bean origin

Conventional wisdom: As stated before, the origin of the cacao affects its flavor. In general, Venezuela has the best cacao and Ivory Coast the worst. The West African country is notorious for exporting cacao on the backs of unwilling 9-year-olds. Bulk cacao is quickly dried in the blistering sun or sometimes burnt over fires. That’s why the recent West African cacao shortage doesn’t worry me. I avoid that kind of cacao anyway. Just like you can’t rush good wine, you can’t rush good chocolate.

The exceptions: True, Venezuela is known for its highly aromatic beans, but it’s all a matter of taste. I prefer my chocolate to taste like soil and raisins. Also, I’m growing fond of sweet Ecuadorian beans.

Place of manufacturing

Conventional wisdom: The French make the best chocolate, and the Americans (ie Hershey’s and Nestle) make the worst.

The exceptions: Please keep in mind that there’s a difference between chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate makers are rare and work from scratch, while chocolatiers re-melt bars. Godiva, for instance, is a chocolatier. Those fancy looking bars are actually re-packaged from Callebaut. It’s no secret that I love Valrhona (from France) and hate Hershey’s (U.S.). I’ve also been disappointed by San Fransisco chocolate makers Scharffen Berger, Guittard and Ghirardelli. However, small confectioners like Amano in Orem, Utah and Dagoba in Ashland, Ore. make phenomenal products. Some Italians like Domori are giving the French a run for their money.

No, it’s not a typo. Cacao is not the same as cocoa, just as hot chocolate isn’t the same as hot cocoa. According to David Lebovitz (author of The Great Book of Chocolate), cacao refers to the bean, while cocoa refers to the powder after the bean is pulverized.

Cacao beans are like chocolate-flavored nuts. They are borderline savory and 100% addictive. Last year, Marc Boatwright, owner of Choctal, sent me a sample of cacao crunch (candied cacao nibs). This guy really knows his beans. Choctal claims to be the only maker of single-origin chocolate ice cream. Cacao tastes vastly different based on its origin, which is why Kalimantan and San Dominican chocolate ice cream are two distinct products. So, it was no surprise that each of Choctal’s nibs had subtle distinctions. Some tasted fermented, others tasted nutty, and still others tasted like toasted bread. It was like getting a variety pack of chocolate.

For this month’s Sugar High Friday dessert event, I substituted Choctal’s nibs in a hot chocolate/cocoa recipe. You won’t be able to grind the nibs into a fine powder, but you will infuse the milk with deep chocolate flavor. Only make this drink if you want something rustic; the sandy cacao bits are like “pulp.”

If you have candied nibs, just add two tablespoons per cup of milk. Otherwise, follow the amounts below. Look for nibs at Whole Foods or other fine retailers. For online ordering, I recommend Dagoba’s or Valrhona’s nibs from Lepicerie.com.

For more “raw chocolate” ideas, check out Chocolate in Context, which will round up recipes with nibs, beans, cocoa butter, untreated cocoa powder, and fresh cacao fruit on Friday.

Hot Cacao

Makes 1 serving

1 cup milk or unsweetened soy milk
1 1/2 Tablespoons cacao nibs
1 Tablespoon sugar

In the microwave, heat the milk on HIGH for two minutes. Combine the hot milk with the cacao and sugar in a blender. Blend for about 30 seconds, or until the cacao is sandy and the drink is frothy on top.
Variation: Cold milk can also be used.

I once ate a chocolate chip cookie that fell in the dirt. I wash ziplock bags and reuse them. I like taking the second-to-last item on a dish so someone else will feel guilty about taking the last one.

Up until I visited my first food blog three years ago, “I like to eat Nutella straight off my finger” would have joined the list of culinary confessions above. I was so crazy about that chocolate-hazelnut spread that I Googled it, which brought me to Il Forno’s post about Nutella’s 40th birthday. After reading about Nutella’s history in detail, I no longer felt like a nut. I may eaten a jar of Nutella in one week, but one girl finished it by the spoonful over three days.

Another case in point: Sara from Ms. Adventures in Italy and Shelley from At Home in Rome solemnly declare today “World Nutella Day” – a day to celebrate, to get creative with, and most importantly, to EAT Nutella.

I made a Nutella tart from Pierre Herme, known worldwide as the Picasso of Pastry. When I went to Paris last November, I bought a 6 Euro slice of cake and a 2 Euro macaroon from his store. Boy, were they worth it. All the textures and flavors were perfectly balanced. That man is a culinary engineer.

The recipe was first posted on Il Forno’s site. It’s a mouth-shattering crust with a layer of Nutella, bittersweet chocolate cream, and toasted hazelnuts. A couple notes:

• Use unsalted butter, or the salt will overpower the chocolate. If you only have regular butter, you can be a smart aleck and call it “salted chocolate hazelnut tart” (not that it’s my thing).
• Drizzle the butter into the chocolate mixture and mix thoroughly. The mixture will want to split because it’s so greasy. I actually think silken tofu would make a fine substitute, but that’s another post.
• You only need half the amount of hazelnuts called for: a half cup.
• If you don’t have a tart pan, form the dough in a 9-inch springform pan, making the sides 1-inch tall.
• People have complained that Herme’s tart dough is difficult to work with, so here’s a recipe from Into to Fine Baking at The New School’s Culinary Arts program.

Lynn’s Tart Dough – Pate Brisee aux Oeufs (French Pastry Dough with Eggs)

by Lynn Kutner

This dough is a dream to work with: it hardly sticks and can withstand heavy rolling. The secret ingredient, an egg, enriches the dough.

Take the extra effort to blind bake the dough so it keeps its shape. Brushing the crust with egg wash and sugar will make it stay crispy.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg yolk (save the white to glaze the crust)
2 tablespoons ice water (a few more drops if necessary)

In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. With your fingers, rub in the butter until the mixture feels mealy (small bits of butter are still visible). Aerate the dough with your hands as you work.

In a measuring cup, add the egg yolk. Add water ALMOST to the 1/4 cup mark. (1/4 cup is the maximum total of egg and water)

Make a well in the flour-butter mixture and pour the liquid in the center. With a rubber spatula, flip the flour from the outside in. If the dough is too dry, break it up in the center and add a few more teaspoons of water.

Flatten the dough into a circle about 1/2″ to 3/4″-thick. Wrap in plastic and chill two hours to overnight.

If you chilled the dough overnight or froze it, let it sit at room temperature until it is pliable but not soft. If the dough cracks when you work it, let it heat up a little longer.

Lightly dust a rolling pin and work surface with flour. Roll the dough 1/8″-thick. Work from the center and roll in one direction, stopping just short of the edge. Turn the dough 90 degrees and continue till finished. Gently ease the dough into a tart mold and trim the edges. Cover with the surface plastic wrap or wax paper and freeze while you preheat the oven to 400 F.

When the oven is ready, prick the dough with a fork all over. Cover the dough with foil and weigh it down with raw dried beans, rice or metal pie weights. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the crust is lightly colored.

Remove the foil. In a small bowl, combine the leftover egg white and a couple teaspoons of water. Brush the egg wash on the crust and sprinkle with a couple teaspoons of sugar. Return the crust to the oven and bake for until golden brown, about 5-10 minutes.

Related links:
Nutella cake
Su Good Sweets’ homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread recipe
All other Nutella posts
World Nutella Day posts

Butter, sugar, flour and eggs are the building blocks of dessert. These four simple ingredients can create cakes, cookies and meringues. Now, thanks to restaurants such as New York’s wd-50, locust bean gum and carrageenan are the new staples.wd-50 is a play on words alluding to its owner, location, and the chemical compound, WD-40. Unlike the cleaning product though, everything at wd-50 is edible, all the way down to the fried mayonnaise and chocolate consomme (broth).On Oct. 7, wd-50’s former pastry chef, Sam Mason, made chocolate desserts at the French Culinary Institute’s Pushing Chocolate Forward event. Mason, who will open his own yet unnamed dessert bar at 525 Broome St. in SoHo in November, made his “classic” gelled desserts. Gelatin is typically used to set desserts, but there’s a myriad of other agents.

Agar (most commonly used in Chinese and Japanese custards/jellies), for example, sets at room temperature. However, it can also get crumbly and brittle, as I witnessed when I made vegan cashew cheddar “cheese.” Locust bean gum (derived from carob treas) and carrageenan (from red algae) are creamier. These ingredients sound scary, but they’re no more unnatural than gelatin. (You already eat locust bean gum and carrageenan if you eat commercial ice cream.) The only difference is that gelatin is widely available to home cooks.

It takes an experimental chef like Mason to figure out their applications. He takes into account flavor release, rigidity and tolerance to temperature. He even developed an eggless lemon curd with gellan so the eggs don’t get in the way of flavor.
Now that Mason has conquered gels, the next frontier is starches. Just like with gels, the Asians have already made good use of starches, specifically potato, tapioca, wheat and corn. They’re usually not used in Western desserts though. Mason is also excited about the new vacuum dryers, which allow cooks to fry food at 100 F. This device makes it possible to fry chocolate, which burns at 120F. Also, fried skittles turn into puffs.

Hopefully we’ll see these experiments at Mason’s new dessert bar, which will feature eight savory and eight dessert plates, a la carte. There will also be three or four five-course tasting menus.

During the Pushing Chocolate Forward event, Mason made soft chocolate gel with chocolate soil and bitter chocolate consomme with butternut squash gel. The chocolate was provided by E. Guittard, the artisan division of a family-owned San Francisco chocolate company.

E. Guittard is not to be confused with Guittard. The latter is the mass-market line available as chocolate chips and bulk bars (with cheap butterfat added). See’s Candy in California uses Guittard for their couverture (chocolate covering). It’s a workhorse chocolate but not artisan. E. Guittard, on the other hand, makes single-origin chocolates. My favorite is the Ambanja 65% from Madagascar, which tastes like sour cherries. Suprisingly, I didn’t like the 65% Sur del Lago from Venezuela as much. So much for my chocolate tasting map. E. Guittard makes tasty chocolate (Christopher Norman in New York uses their couverture), but I find the flavor to be one-noted and short, a common problem amongst lower end single-origin chocolates.

Below are the recipes from the demo. They are in grams and mililiters, since they’re more exact than cups. I’ll work on converting the measurements. Check out Foodite’s primer on molecular gastronomy (the innovative method that Mason uses) for more info on the space age-sounding ingredients.

Soft Chocolate Gel with Chocolate Soil

by Sam Mason

The gel is magically creamy and solid at the same time. A topping that resembles crushed Oreo cookies provides a textural contrast. If you really want to walk on the wild side, sprinkle the top with salted pumpkin seeds. I’m not a fan of salty chocolate, but Mason believes that dessert should border on savory.

For the gel:

530 g cream
500 g 64% chocolate, chopped into small pieces
120 g sugar
600 ml water
1.6 g locust bean gum
1.6 g kappa carrageenan

Scald the cream and pour it over the chocolate and sugar. Whisk to combine. Set aside.

In another bowl, add the water, locust bean gum and carrageenan. Use a hand blender to combine thoroughly. Boil the mixture.

Whisk the hot gel and chocolate mixture together. Pour it into an 8″x8″ pan lined with plastic. Refrigerate for at least two hours to set.

For the soil:

250 g sugar
250 g almond flour (very finely ground blanched almonds)
150 g all-purpose flour
102 g cocoa (can substitute coffee or freeze-dried corn powder)
5 g salt
125 g butter, melted

Whisk the dry ingredients together. Then stir in the melted butter and till the mixture looks mealy. Bake in a greased or parchment-lined 12″x8″ pan (also known as a half-sheet size pan) in a preheated 300 F oven for 15 min.

For the chocolate oil:

100 g dark chocolate
100 ml oil
15 g cocoa powder

Melt the chocolate and oil over low heat. Stir in the cocoa.

For the garnish:

Deep-fried or toasted pumpkin seeds
Salt to taste

To assemble:

Slice a piece of gel that’s 2 1/2″ x 1″ large and about 1/3″ thick. Sprinkle the top with chocolate soil, pumpkin seeds and a couple grains of salt. Garnish the edges with chocolate oil.

Bitter Chocolate Consomme with Butternut Squash Gel

by Sam Mason

Chocolate consomme is chocolate-flavored water that has had its solids removed, resulting in a clear drink. Whisked egg whites draw up the “impurities.” After long simmering, the eggs whites are scooped away and the end product can be sipped like tea or used as a base for translucent sorbet.

For the consomme:

6 L water
1 kg chocolate
60 g cocoa
650 g egg whites
65 g cacao nibs

In a large pot (allow for at least 2″ of head space, or the mixture will boil over), whisk the water, chocolate and cocoa over low heat. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites and cacao nibs till frothy. Temper the whites by pouring a little of the hot chocolate mixture over the egg whites and whisk vigorously. Add the egg white mixture into the pot and heat it so it’s just hot enough to hold your finger in there, and it barely bubbles around the edges.

The egg whites will set and bring impurities to the surface. Continue cooking for 2 hours. Strain through a cheese cloth or coffee filter. Then ladle off any remaining fat.

For the butternut squash gel:

600 g water
200 g rum
3.8 g low acyl gellan
5.7 g high acyl gellan
1620 g squash puree (Roast a squash in the oven and sweeten with maple syrup and cinnamon to taste)

Add all the ingredients except the puree in a pot. Use a handblender to mix thoroughly and boil. It will get really thick and then become more liquidy again. Then add the squash puree. Pour the mixture into an 8″x8″ pan lined with plastic. Refrigerate for at least two hours to set.

For the garnish:

Toasted hazelnuts
Fresh taragon

To assemble:

Invert the squash gel onto a cutting board and cut into 3/4″-cubes.

Place in a small bowl and ladle in 1/4 cup of the consomme. Garnish with a hazelnut and sprig of taragon.

Chocolate map by Bill Yosses; photograph by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Ah, the sweet taste of Ghana. It reminds me of a freshly roasted cup of coffee. But I usually prefer Venezuela: it tastes deeply earthy with some acidity to give my tastebuds a kick. Sao Tome is too harsh; it makes me pucker.

Can you actually “taste” countries? Yes, if we’re talking about fine chocolate! As mentioned in my Michel Cluizel chocolate review, the origin of the cacao beans can greatly affect the taste of chocolate. The type of soil, humidity, sunlight and even the phases of the moon combine to make make “terroir,” the growing conditions that affect food’s taste.

The New York Times even ran an article about the possibility and absurdity of identifying single-origin chocolate by country:

“We pondered the snappy break and acidic finish of chocolate from the African island of Sã Tomé and discussed how growing cacao trees in the soil of a former mango grove might result in chocolate with a faint flash of the fruit. We contemplated the raisiny ways of a bar from Papua New Guinea, which [Michel Cluizel chocolate expert Conrad] Miller suggested would go well with port. …

But when it comes down to it, can he really discern Ghana from Grenada? Ecuador from Colombia?

‘Regions I can tell. Continents, at least,’ he said. ‘I’m still working on the countries.’

If our chocolate sommelier can’t understand it all, is there hope for the rest of us?”

Taste is subjective, but a good place to start is The Nibble’s guide to regional variations in chocolate. I’m not able to identify a chocolate’s origin in a blind taste test, but the guide explains why I love El Rey chocolate and like Michel Cluizel’s Los Ancones bar more than his other ones. Both of those chocolates only contain Venezuelan beans, which are known for being highly aromatic, intense and earthy. There is also a slight acidity, reminds me that I’m dealing with “dangerous” stuff.

I also noticed that Jacques Torres’ 60% house blend has notes of coffee but tastes too neutral for my liking. It’s no wonder, since he said in a chocolate demo that he gets most of his beans from Ghana. The Nibble’s guide said that Ghana cacao commonly tastes like coffee and is “soothing and gentle.”

During my Michel Cluizel taste-test, I liked his Sao Tome chocolate, Tamarina, the least. Their cacao is forastero, the harshest tasting variety that Hershey’s also uses. (Hershey’s cacao comes from the Ivory Coast, a warring country that allegedly uses child labor. No wonder their chocolate tastes so bad; they have terrible terroir.) The Nibble says that Sao Tome cacao “can be tart and aggressive, full-forward on the senses, and offers little in the way of delicacy.”

Of course, there’s a caveat in choosing chocolate based only on country. Chocolate is also affected by how the beans are processed through drying, roasting and conching. Through careful handling, Michel Cluizel is able to coax the flavor out of those Sao Tome beans, so the chocolate doesn’t taste completely awful.

For more tips on how to taste chocolate, I highly recommend The Chocolate Connoisseur, a short but jam-packed book. Author Chloe Doutre-Roussel (who eats a pound of chocolate a day!) gives you the confidence to make tasting notes and choose a chocolate based on your mood.

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How fine fat is! The same ingredient that makes dessert delicious goes straight to my wannabe six-pack. I want to make my cake and eat it too, so I experiment with ways to make dessert healthier.

The oldest trick in low-fat baking is to replace half of the fat with applesauce. Besides being moist, applesauce contains sugar, which tenderizes dough. It works beautifully in quick breads and spice cakes but not so well in pound cakes and pie crusts, where butter is crucial for the flavor and flakiness. Applesauce also doesn’t fare as well in cookies. It contains too much moisture, so cookies get cakey and lose their crisp edges.

There are a couple ways to get around the applesauce conundrum. For cookies, you can omit up to half the butter because they’re so rich already. I usually leave out 1/3 or 1/4 just to be safe. Or, you can use a different fat substitute.

Other cultures have long valued puréed beans for their smooth texture. Good Israeli hummus, for example, is as rich as butter. (I’d take The Hummus Place‘s signature dish over foie gras any day.)  The Chinese and Japanese add sugar to puréed beans and put it inside pastries.

As seen in black-eyed susan cake, puréed beans are actually a good fat substitute. If you don’t believe me, scientific experiments have shown that puréed white beans can replace up to half the fat (by weight) in cookies and brownies. To take advantage of the beans’ smooth texture, I used them in a fudgy brownie recipe.

I generally prefer chewy brownies, especially Alice Medrich’s divine, low-fat ones in Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts and Cookies and Brownies.  While chewy brownies have great flavor, they lack that melt-in-your-mouth texture. For the richest brownies, you need lots of chocolate, butter, and just enough flour to hold it together. Don’t even think about adding baking powder or soda.

My favorite fudgy recipe has a whopping 12 ounces of chocolate, three sticks of butter, three cups of sugar, six eggs and just over a cup of flour. If there was ever a poster child to use bean purée, this was it. The tinkered brownies were moist, smooth and delicate. They were so delicate, in fact, that you could probably get away with using all-purpose flour. They didn’t taste beany or like they were reduced fat. I noticed less butteriness, but only because I had eaten the regular brownies before. Anyone else won’t detect the secret ingredient.

The Richest Fudgy Brownies, Lightened

Inspired by The Farm of Beverly Hills recipe, as printed in Gourmet

Makes 36 small but very intense brownies

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into pieces
12 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped
3/4 cup (six ounces) white bean purée
6 large eggs
1 1/4 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
3 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350° F with a rack in the middle. Grease and flour a 13- by 9- by 2-inch metal baking pan.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a large metal bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water (aka a double boiler). When smooth, take the chocolate mixture off the heat. Whisk in the white bean purée and the eggs.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt in a separate bowl and stir thoroughly. Combine with the chocolate mixture.

Pour batter into pan and bake until the top is firm and a toothpick inserted into center comes out with crumbs attached, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool completely in pan on a rack, about 2 hours, before cutting.

How to Make White Bean Purée:

If starting from scratch, soak dry cannellini, great northern, or white kidney beans with water by at least two inches. Cover and let stand for up to 24 hours; refrigerate if the kitchen is very warm. Soaking is optional, but it can save anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of cooking time. To cook the beans, drain them and cover with water to cover by two inches. Bring to a boil over high heat. Skim off the foam that rises to the surface. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally until they are very soft. Unsoaked cannellinis take about 30 minutes; great northerns and white kidney beans take one to 1 1/2 hours. The beans will swell to about three times their original size.

Measure out six ounces, or about 1 1/3 cup of cooked beans. If using canned beans, rinse them thoroughly to get rid of excess salt. Purée in a blender or food processor until smooth. You should have 3/4 cup of purée.

Notes/tips:

• The salt is very important to give off that buttery flavor.
• Whisk the eggs in just to combine. Don’t beat them, as the extra air will make the brownies cakey (which is fine if you like cakey brownies, but there are lower calorie recipes for that!).
• To make one cup of cake flour, subtract 2 Tbsp from one cup of all-purpose flour. Then add 2 Tbsp of cornstarch. Some say that cornstarch makes baked goods taste chalky, but I can’t detect it in small quanities. If you despise cornstarch, just subtract the 2 Tbsp of all-purpose flour and don’t add anything else. In this recipe, you can get away with not doing any substitutions, if you like.
• These brownies will only be as good as the chocolate you use. Save your chocolate chips for cookies, and do not under any circumstances use Hershey’s. You don’t have to go all out with Valrhona, but I used a mid-range chocolate from Jacques Torres.
• Silicone pans are stick resistant but not non-stick. You’ll need to grease them.

Photo: Christopher Norman Chocolates

Did you know? Christopher Norman Chocolates regularly hosts free tasting events in NYC! Thanks to Chocolate in Context for the tip.

As pulled from their website:
What will the theme be? We don’t know yet! We’ll sort it out soon and update the site with more information. What do we know? The date, for sure!Please join us at our store on Tuesday, September 19th From 6-7:30pm

60 New Street Between Beaver Street & Exchange Place New York, NY 10004

This event is free of charge and open to the public. No reservations are accepted, as we do our best to accomodate all of our guests. If you have any questions, or would like to be added to our email list to be informed of future events, please feel free to contact us via email at: [email protected]

This date is subject to change, please check back with the website periodically to confirm.

About Christopher Norman:

Christopher Norman Chocolates is a company founded in 1994. John Down, the Chief Chocolate Officer, uses his distinguished background in painting and the arts, to create a unique artistic quality in the taste and feel of all his chocolates.

Distinctive boxed collections, hand painted & sculptural truffles, and innovative flavors are all essential elements in Christopher Norman Chocolates. It is our mission to create extraordinarily luscious and sensory-provoking confections that encompass the quintessentially classic flavors, as well as unique and fresh taste experiences. Only the finest all-natural ingredients are used in our truffles and chocolates. Each piece is made by hand, here at our New York City factory.

We invite you to stop by our Gallery Shop, a charming storefront at the head of our factory, where we can offer you our freshest chocolates made on the premises in addition to hand-pulled Espresso, Cappuccino, Hot Cocoa, and Coffee. You can look into the factory where the chocolate is being made, from a window to the street, although most of our visitors seem to prefer the view from inside of our tantalizing truffle case.
FYI, professional chocolate critic Clay Gordon will lead a chocolate tasting at Christopher Norman on Thursday, Sept. 21 as part of the monthly NY Metro Chocolate Meetup. You can hit Christopher Norman twice in one week! I previously went to the Chocolate Meetup’s tour of the Tumbador chocolate factory in Brooklyn, and I highly recommend their events! Clay is super nice and knowledgable. If you’re interested, register at Meetup.com.

Joe is driving East at 60 miles per hour. Andy is driving in the same direction at 70 miles per hour. If Andy started one hour after Joe, how long will it take for them to meet?

The only test that I failed in school was for word problems. Maybe it’s because I think too much and make them more complicated than they are. Or maybe it’s because I don’t see their practical application and don’t care about the question. Unless the question were, “How do I re-create my favorite chocolate sorbet?” then I could get serious.

As noted in my gelato post, Ciao Bella Gelato makes unbelievably rich chocolate sorbet. It is creamy and rich like ice cream, but there is no dairy, so it’s virtually fat-free.

In my quest to make this sorbet at home, I looked at the ingredient list/nutrition information and deduced a recipe.

Not only does the ingredient list tell you what to use, but it also tells you how much. Everything is listed in descending order by weight. For example, there is more water than rum extract.

Since it’s such a short list, the 31 grams of sugar listed is essentially granulated sugar. 31 grams x 4 servings = 124 grams for one batch. The dietary fiber gives a clue as to how much cocoa/chocolate is involved: one tablespoon of cocoa has 2 grams of fiber, according to Nutrition Data. There’s also corn syrup, vanilla, rum extract, but they’re listed at the bottom of the ingredients, so their presence is minute. I guessed how much there was based on other sorbet recipes I’ve seen. The chocolate liquor (unsweetened chocolate) gave me some trouble, because there’s no way the sorbet could be low-fat if there were more chocolate than cocoa powder. I made an estimated guess, then subtracted the weight of the ingredients from the total weight to yield the amount of water. I came up with this preliminary recipe:

Boy, was this CHOCOLATE sorbet. The flavor was very intense, and it didn’t freeze solid. It melted as quickly as Frosty the Snowman in the Mojave dessert. I used too much sugar and liquor, which keeps frozen desserts soft. Part of the problem is that the supermarket’s “light corn syrup” actually contains high-fructose corn syrup, which is sweeter.

Rather than tweak my recipe (guessing the amount of cocoa liquor gave me a headache!), I tried an Ultimate Ice Cream Book recipe for my second attempt. Here is the recipe, courtesy of Recipe Link. It had a better flavor but was still a little icy. (I don’t have an ice cream maker, so I froze the mixture in ice cube trays and broke it up in a food processor.)

For my third attempt, I just bought a pint at Whole Foods. It was the best $4 I spent.

Resources:

The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More