Culinary Muse

AMANO ARTISAN CHOCOLATE 'GUESS THE ORIGIN' CONTEST

  Okay, all you chocolate connoisseurs, the time has come to put your vast chocolate experience to the ultimate test.  Guess the origin of the cocoa beans that Amano Artisan Chocolate Amano Artisan Chocolate used to create their new chocolate bar and you will win a ‘one year’s supply’ of Amano Chocolate?  How much is that? Ten bars per month for a year, over $800 of chocolate.  And not just any chocolate, my friends. Some of the finest chocolate made.

Just take one look at the picture of the cocoa beans and you can already imagine the deep, rich chocolate flavor with hints of fruit.  Good luck, dear readers.  Make me proud! Contest details here.

San Francisco's Favorite Summertime Drink

While Parisians are sipping rosé this summer and New Yorkers are knocking back iced coffee, we San Franciscans will be huddled over our favorite summertime drink: Hot Chocolate.  Whether served in a mug with a shot of bourbon or in a paper cup, there is nothing better to ward off the bone-chilling effects of San Francisco’s dense summer fog.

If you plan to be in the City in June, July or August, here are a few hot chocolate stops that you won’t want to miss:

Empirical evidence shows that the Ferry Building Marketplace has the highest ratio of gourmet hot chocolate per square foot than any other place in San Francisco, maybe even the world.  On a typical Saturday morning there are five places that you can purchase a cup of over-the-top, to-die-for, hot chocolate. Blue Bottle Coffee  has three locations where you, too, can queue up for twenty minutes for your chance to order hot chocolate made with chocolate from confectioner Michael Recchiuti .  Rumor has it that if your cup is not deemed perfect by the barrista it will be tossed away and a new one will be constructed.

 If you would rather sit while the magic of creating a perfect cup of thick hot chocolate is performed, then Boulette's Larder  is the place for you. Not quite a sidewalk café in Paris but pretty darn close.  Better even. Boulette’s is more like a carefully curated culinary museum where you can eat the exhibits.  Their hot chocolate tastes as though they have melted a bar or two or three of fine dark chocolate into the best organic milk you can imagine. 

If you had something more quicker in mind, then Peet’s is the place for you.  The line moves fast, so within 5 minutes you will have a perfectly delicious cup of hot chocolate made with Scharffen Berger dark chocolate.  I know someone who then heads outside to one of the benches overlooking the bay and discreetly slips a shot or two or three of Maker’s Mark into the her cup.  I doubt that you would ever tag this French Market Basket toting grand dame as a lush as she weaves her way through the aisles.

Now, if you are in Union Square there are two great choices within the same block.  Crepe O Chocolat at 75 O’Farrell Street has two different hot chocolates to choose from. One is listed as ‘Homemade Hot Chocolate’ and the one that I recommend is the ‘Melted Chocolate Drink’. It might be billed as a drink but I would argue that it is just one tablespoon of hot milk short of a pudding.  A few doors down at Cafe Madeleine  they start their drink with a generous spoonful of ganache - a thick concoction of chocolate and heavy cream that has been whipped together – to which they add hot milk.

Mark Twain may have complained that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco but that’s only because the he didn’t know where to find a great cup of hot chocolate.

Can't get to San Francisco this summer? Then try our recipe for hot chocolate for one: 

Recipe:

1 c milk

2 heaping T unsweetened cocoa

1 T sugar

pinch of salt

In a small saucepan, stir together ¼ c milk, cocoa, sugar & salt to form a smooth paste. Whisk in the remainder of the milk.  Heat over low heat until it reaches a simmer, stirring constantly.  Serve in a heated porcelain tea cup. Enjoy!

Paris, San Francisco

It seems a shame to waste a cold gray morning in San Francisco pretending to be in Paris, but that is what I did Sunday. Sometimes we need to leave the place we are in even if it’s just in our head. We need to get away for perspective. Open all the windows in the flat and let a breeze flow through.  Pull back the bedcovers and let the sheets air.  Open the closet doors.  Burn incense.  Vacuum and dust away the old dirt. And then step away.  And take a walk. Go to lunch. Have a glass of champagne and chocolate for dessert. And walk back home.

But back to Sunday morning.  Having just made an extravagant purchase of something very French I felt a little giddy. And I wanted to celebrate.  No better way to keep a shopping high going than with a hot cup of thick, dark chocolate. I headed to Crepe O Chocolat at 75 O’Farrell because they use Belgian dark chocolate.  The thick black potion is served in a clear glass mug.  Isn’t it great that so much happiness can be had for just $3.50 a cup?

HOW TO NAVIGATE A FOOD SHOW

The more often I go to 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 The Art of Tasting Chocolate 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. 

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).