Today I went to a chocolate tasting with one of my friends. I had some ideas of what it would be like.
Someone presenting a couple of expensive chocolates and talk about the different tastes and how to best combine them with wine, beer or coffee.
It was nothing like that!
An enormously boring man in his late 60´s was going on and on about everything from how the beans are grown, it's history to the chemistry and mechanical details of how it's made in the chocolate factories (not a bit like Karl and the chocolate factory, I'm afraid).
The contents of the lecture was actually interesting, but the guy... come on! A recording would've been more fun, then you wouldn't feel obligated to try to look interested. Phew!
Anyhow. We got to taste a couple of different chocolates and pralines. I found a new favourite;
"Michel Cluizel - Vila Gracinda". It´s made of a bean called "Trinitario" and had a interesting, burnt/smoked taste that I really liked.
In my opinion chocolates should have little bit of character.
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| Cocoa fruit. |
Some chocolate facts:
The beans are actually the seeds of the cocoa fruit. The flowers grow straight from the stem, just as the fruits do later on, a bit different from our apples and pears.
When they are fully grown they are harvested and the beans and the meat is taken out and fermented for a couple of days, up to a week, depending on the climate. This makes the fruit meat around the beans to evaporate and the beans can then be dried for another couple of days, this is when they attain their brown color.
Most of the beans are grown in the African countries around the equator. The bean originates from South America, where the conquistadors "found it" and spread it over the world.
According to old scriptures the Indians in South America used it as a nutrient dense beverage and it was considered very valuable.
The beans are transported and sold to the different chocolate makers all over the world. There the beans are processed in different ways. The beans are grinded to get the cocoa mass. When the cocoa mass is pressurized the cocoa and the fat separates and you get cocoa powder and cocoa butter, which then can be used in different ways.
There are essentially three groups in which all cocoa beans are categorized into.
- Forastero - which is the most common one. It has a soft and a bit bitter taste with fruity, and acid tones.
- Criollo - considered a bit finer than the Forastero. It's taste is soft and balanced, with tones of tree, nuts and spices.
- Trinitario - which actually is a crossing of the two above, and it's originally from Trinidad, as the name suggests. It has a deep and complex aroma with some tones of exotic fruits, roasted coffee and tobacco.
- Dark chocolate is made of cocoa mass, has no milk in it, and can contain cocoa butter.
- Milk chocolate contains milk, cocoa butter, more sugar and less cocoa mass than dark chocolate.
- White chocolate consists of the cocoa butter and sugar, no cocoa mass.
The best part of chocolate is that it's really good for you!
It contains a lot of good fats, like stearic acid and oleic acid
, which both are good for raising your HDL (aka the good cholesterol) and lowering your LDL (aka the bad cholesterol) levels. It also contains antioxidants, copper, niacin (vitamin B3) and theobromine, which has similar effects as caffeine. (Don't eat chocolate to late in the evenings, LOL).
And it tastes good, of course.
I would recommend finding a dark chocolate with a high cocoa content and as little sugar as possible to get all the benefits from the cocoa, but not having to deal with all the effects of the sugar. I've found that you get used to the bitterness of the chocolate with time and after a while it's impossible to go back to the lighter ones with a higher sugar content, they get to sweet!
Here's a couple of suggestions:
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| Michel Cluizel - Vila Gracinda |
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| Zotter - Laboko 80 % |
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| One of my favourites from this maker! |
