Friday 19 December 2008

Chocolate. Because someone had to.

“Give me chocolate,
I need chocolate every day.
Just give me chocolate,
it’s a tiny price to pay.
If you don’t have too much money, Cadbury’s will do
but here’s a secret I’ll share with you:
Swiss will have me warm & willing,
Belgian, I’ll be wild & thrilling.
Chocolate to turn me on.”
From The Chocolate Song, by WA songwriter Margie Hanly

"What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead." George Bernard Shaw, 1894

"What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate." Katharine Hepburn


It was a tough assignment but someone had to do it. I spill the beans on the world’s favourite confectionery.

Chocolate. We rely upon its luxuriant, sultry richness to say we’re sorry and I love you. We use it to soothe and seduce, in celebration and by way of solace. No wonder the small tree responsible for producing cocoa beans is named Theobroma cacao – “food-of-the-gods cacao”.

Just about all eating chocolate contains cocoa mass, sugar, additional cocoa butter and small amounts of emulsifier (usually lecithin) and flavouring (often vanilla). The making of milk chocolate also involves the addition of various milk-based products, while white chocolate contains no actual cocoa but a high proportion of cocoa butter.

The Aztecs were responsible for introducing cocoa to the western world, but the cocoa tree was growing wild in the Amazon River basin and parts of Venezuela well before the end of the first millenium BC.

Propagation spread to the tropical forests of Mexico and its Central American neighbours, which was where the cocoa bean first evolved as a foodstuff. Mixed with other ingredients – vanilla, herbs, flower petals, chillies and honey – cocoa was integral to a style of cooking still found in Mexico and other parts of Latin America today.

When the marauding Aztecs acquired large parts of Mexico in the late fourteenth century, they eagerly adopted and extended the uses of chocolate, famously introducing a bitter, rather greasy drink made from cocoa nibs to the Spanish when they came a-knocking in the early 16th century.

The Spanish took chocolate home with them and, over the next 100 years, the habit of drinking hot chocolate became widespread among royalty and the cognoscenti of Europe, who reveled in cocoa’s aura of exotic luxury.

Then, in 1828, Dutchman Conrad Van Houten developed a way of mechanically extracting most of the fat from the crushed cocoa beans. Not long after, Swiss Rudolf Lindt invented conching – a mixing-meets-grinding process which involves the gentle heating and working of the cocoa mixture for hours, sometimes days, to develop flavour and promote a smooth, creamy finish. (To see what a conch looks like, go see the small one on display at Chokeby Road’s city store).

There are three main varieties of cocoa bean available in the world today. The finest of these, criollo, is highly prized for its richness and superior flavour but is fairly tricky to grow and so accounts for only 5% of the world's cocoa crop. Forastero is a hardier, more disease-resistant beast and is responsible for 90% of the world's cocoa. Then there’s Trinitario, a cross between criollo and forastero, named after the island of Trinidad where it was first developed.

Not that any of this is going to do you much good down at the local supermarket, where you’re unlikely to find the origin of the beans on the wrapper, let alone the name of the actual variety.

Almost all the chocolate we buy these days has been blended from a variety of cocoa beans
grown in various parts of the world to achieve a flavour profile associated with a
particular brand.

“Ultimately, what everyone wants is consistency,” says Chris Rayworth, who works in research and development at Masterfoods Australia New Zealand, one of the big three in Australian chocolate production. “Unfortunately, cocoa from the same supplier and the same source will vary from vintage to
vintage, so we play with different cocoas to achieve the same chocolate blend.”

Add to this the fact that even the same variety of cocoa bean will taste different depending on where it’s grown and the best bet you have of buying good chocolate is to go for a reputable company and be prepared to pay a little more for the best.

The basic way of making chocolate hasn’t changed for 150 years. At its foundation lies roasted cocoa beans fermented in the sun to develop flavour and then dried before being shipped to chocolate factories for processing.

But chew on a raw cocoa bean, as I did in Indonesia late last year, and you’ll find it hard to believe this pale little kernel bears any relation to the stuff you buy in bars at the local supermarket.

This is because it takes careful roasting to bring out the full flavour of the cocoa beans. Liberated from their shells and roasted, the beans – now called nibs – are crushed down into a fatty, dark brown paste known as cocoa liquor, or mass.

This mass is made up of two basic components: the brown stuff we buy in packets as cocoa, and around 56% cocoa butter – a fairly tasteless, off-white fat which, conveniently, melts at exactly the same temperature as the inside of your lip, and is responsible for the luxuriant melt-in-the-mouth unctuousness of good chocolate.

Once the cocoa mass has been conched it is known as couverture, from the French for “cover” or “coating”. In Europe, couverture is the technical name given to the best-quality cooking chocolate, which must contain a minimum of 31% cocoa butter and is hence thinner and easier to handle when melted. But these days, in Australia and elsewhere, the word has evolved into a generic term meaning any good quality chocolate.

Peter Wilson is the man behind Kennedy & Wilson, and one of this country’s most acclaimed chocolate companies. Wilson has championed the cause of artisan chocolate-making in Australia, sourcing fine cocoa liquors from around the world to make his own couverture, and supplying filled chocolates from his factory in the Yarra Valley to Qantas First Class. He says that the term couverture doesn’t really mean anything. “I take it to mean any chocolate with a high cocoa butter content, but really it’s just a way of saying the stuff’s good.“

Tempering is the last process in the chocolate-making game. A fairly complex heating, cooling and mixing process, it ensures the couverture develops the satisfying “snap” and inviting gloss so imperative in the highly competitive – highly sensual – world of chocolate.

This very final stage of the long-winded and painstaking process we call chocolate-making is usually the only bit you’ll get to see if you visit a boutique chocolate factory in Western Australia.

When buying chocolate, look on the wrapper for the amount of cocoa solids. This won’t, of course, tell you if the cocoa used is any good, but the better chocolates tend to have more cocoa solids, and some contain an extra thing called “cocoa solids, non-fat” which just means extra cocoa mass minus the cocoa butter. Look, too, for whether there’s any added fat other than extra cocoa butter, and at where sugar rates in the pecking order of ingredients.

The ultimate cooking chocolate
Australian chocolate must contain at least 20% cocoa solids, but several manufacturers make a chocolate bar so full of cocoa there’s room for very little else. The two bitter, sultry beauties I found locally – Kennedy & Wilson’s 99% Couverture (available at The Grocer in Nedlands) and Lindt 99% Cocoa (only from Chokeby Road’s city and Subiaco stores) are not your average eating chocolate.

The 99%, however, is absolutely perfect for adding intense, rich chocolatey notes to food. It would, for instance, make the basis of a marvellous chocolate mousse – you’d just need to add the requisite amount of sugar.

Better still, it can be used to flavour savoury fare, such as the Spanish-Indian molés of Mexico, or the Sicilian dish caponata, which traditionally contains bitter chocolate.

Unsweetened chocolate works particularly well with game and other strongly-flavoured meats. Try using it as you might a good olive oil or fine butter – to emulsify with cooking juices near the end of cooking, thus enriching and adding texture to the finished dish.

The ultimate chocolate tasting
Our tasting panel worked its way through more than 30 bars of chocolate, ranging in cocoa solids content from a modest 26% in Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to the 70% found in the dark, sophisticated, single-region chocolates produced by the likes of Lindt and Valrhona and Australia’s two most renowned chocolatiers, Kennedy & Wilson and Haighs. In between were an intimidating range of alternatives for the panel to sample, including sugar-free chocolate, soya-milk chocolate and a range of interesting organic chocolates I found at Earth Market in Subiaco.

What we liked

Dark:
Lindt Madagascar
Cocoa origin: Um, Madagascar
Cocoa solids: 70%
Comments: This divided the panel but I liked it, so it’s in. “Rich and aromatic with licorice and honied notes”.
Available: Only from Chokeby Road’s city and Subiaco stores
Price: $5.65 for 100 grams ($56/kg)

Valrhona Chuao
Cocoa origin: Plantation Chuao, Aragua, Venezuela
Cocoa solids: 65%
Flavour characteristics: Mild and creamy with a velvety mouth-feel and some nice orange notes. “In a word, yum.”
Available: Various gourmet outlets
Price: $10.75 for 75g ($143/kg)

Valrhona Gran Couva
Cocoa origin: Trinidad
Cocoa solids: 64%
Comments: This, the most expensive chocolate tasted by the panel, was Valrhona’s first single-plantation chocolate and is still something of an icon among chocolate purists. “Mild but full-flavoured with a long finish and hints of sultana and honey.”
Available: Various gourmet outlets
Price: $11.55 for 75g ($154/kg)

Haigh’s Premium Dark Chocolate
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 51%
Comments: Haigh’s is the only company in Australia importing raw cocoa beans and doing the whole chocolate-making thing from scratch, so it’s worth seeking out their products. “Dark and fairly sweet with a rich chocolateyness that lingers.”
Available: By mail order through the Haigh’s website: www.haighschocolates.com.
Price: $5.80 for 100g ($58/kg)

Dove Dark Origins
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 45%
Comments: We thought this was the best of the mass-produced commercial dark chocolates. “Buttery, nice back-palate of bitterness and very smooth.”
Available: At your local supermarket
Price: $3.38 for 200g ($16.90/g)

Kaoka organic Fair Trade chocolate
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 70%
Comments: An intensely-flavoured semi-bitter organic French dark chocolate made with Fair Trade cocoa which, like Fair Trade coffee, is purchased by bypassing the brokers and going direct to the growers, thus giving them a better deal.
Available: At Earth Market, Subiaco
Price: $ 4.95 for $100g ($49/kg)

Milk:
Lindt Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 30%
Comments: Rich and smooth with beautifully integrated flavours. “Delicious. Tastes like a fancy version of Cadburys Dairy Milk.”
Available: From supermarkets and all Chokeby Road stores.
Price: $4.30 for 100g ($43/kg)

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
Cocoa origin: Various

Cocoa solids: 26%
Comments: Australia’s top selling chocolate bar. “Mild, sweet and beautifully-integrated flavours with a rich, fudgy mouth-feel. Still the benchmark for milk chocolate. Amazing for the price”.
Available: Everywhere in the known universe.
Price: $2.79 for 250g ($11/kg)

White:
Valrhona Blanc Gastronomie
Cocoa butter origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 35%, all of them cocoa butter.
Comments. The only white chocolate we deemed fit to taste. “Fudgy and fantastic. Completely lacking in that awful dried milk flavour you find in so many commercial white chocolates.”
Available: Various gourmet outlets.
Price: $20.35 for 200g ($102/kg)

Simon Johnson is the national distributor for Valrhona products and carries Australia’s biggest range. Chokeby Road is the WA distributor for Lindt.

How to taste chocolate
Even really good couverture can be a disappointment if you chomp it up too quickly and don’t allow all that cocoa butter to melt and do its silky-mouthfeel thing. So, to get the most out of your chocolate, place a small piece on your tongue and leave it there, undisturbed, for a full five seconds until the cocoa butter comes up to body temperature – a challenge, I know, but you can do it. Then, using the flat of your tongue, manoeuvre the chocolate slowly against your top palate, enjoying how it melts and oozes into the crevices of your mouth. Cocoa, particularly the fancier stuff, has nuances of fruit, tobacco, honey and other flavours, so probe the chocolate with the tip of your tongue, moving it about to make sure all your tastebuds get into the act.

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