Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond Page A
Authors: Steve Almond
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chocolate makes the most sense?” He reached for the Santo Domingo and popped a few pieces into his mouth. “This has such an intense, smoky flavor. It would be best for a pastry. And it would be wonderful with figs or a fruit like that. A brown fruit.”
It was now clear I was in the presence of freak genius. But Dave’s approach to chocolate was actually pretty low-key, in the context of the new foodie movement which has sprung up around fine chocolate. This movement has, alas, spawned its own insufferable rhetoric, such that, in reading over various high-end chocolate catalogs, you are likely to encounter descriptions of this ilk: A saucy single-bean, grown exclusively in the shady lowlands of Ghana and harvested on alternating Tuesdays, at dusk. Notes of cardamom and oak predominate, with an insouciant creosote finish . (Those familiar with other luxury foods—wine and coffee, for instance—are no doubt familiar with this process: the curdling of expertise into hauteur.) The new chocolate specialty products are equally pretentious. I ask you, does the world truly need a bar infused with hot masala? The latest rage, as of this writing, is superconcentrated chocolate, with a cocoa content in the 90 percent range, a trend that will, in due time, allow us to eat Baker’s Chocolate at ten bucks a square.
In some sense, though, this decadence is a return to the pre-Columbian days of cocoa, when the bean was viewed as a gift from the god Quetzalcoatl and considered the domain of royalty. Five hundred years later, Theobroma cacao (literally: food of the gods) remains the single most complex natural flavor in the world. Flavorists have been trying to reproduce the taste for decades—and they’re nowhere near doing so. This is because chocolate is made up of more than 1,200 chemical components, many of which give off distinct notes, of honey or roses or even spoiled fish. There’s even one chemical in chocolate that’s cyanide-based. This is to say nothing of chocolate’s oft-touted psychoactive ingredients, which include caffeine, theobromine (increases alertness), phenylalanine and phenylethylamine (both known to induce happiness), and anandamide, which is similar to THC (yes, stoners, that THC). In truth, most of the brouhaha over these chemicals is trumped up. They only occur in trace amounts. The main reason chocolate is the ultimate physiological freak is because it’s half sugar and half fat.
FEUILLETINE, REVEALED
Dave came to Lake Champlain fifteen years ago. At the time, he signed on as a part-time truffle maker to help out his friend, owner Jim Lampman, during the Christmas rush. But he fell in love with the manufacturing process. As the business grew, he agreed to become chief of new product development. This, of course, included the Five Star Bars, which have become the company’s signature product line.
“Those are all recipes we created,” Dave said. “The Caramel Bar took us two years to figure out how to produce. Now, the Fruit and Nut Bar came much faster. I know it sounds silly, but I literally dreamed that candy bar. I dreamed of putting those precise ingredients together and came into the lab and made the bar in one or two tries. I’d read about Janduja chocolate, which is a very soft chocolate, the ‘chocolate of love’ according to the Italians. I figured it would go well with dried fruit and nuts.”
When I told Dave that I’d never tried the Fruit and Nut Bar, he looked stricken and sent Chris to fetch one. With a delicacy any mohel would envy, he sliced the bar into thin slabs. The chocolate had a creaminess I associated with ganache, against which rose the chewier textures of raisins and pecans.
“The bar has a great finish,” Dave noted, “because the nuts and fruit last a little longer than the chocolate. They clean the palate.”
“What about the Hazelnut Bar?” I said.
Hazelnut, it turned out, had been especially tricky to devise. Dave spent months attempting to find
It was now clear I was in the presence of freak genius. But Dave’s approach to chocolate was actually pretty low-key, in the context of the new foodie movement which has sprung up around fine chocolate. This movement has, alas, spawned its own insufferable rhetoric, such that, in reading over various high-end chocolate catalogs, you are likely to encounter descriptions of this ilk: A saucy single-bean, grown exclusively in the shady lowlands of Ghana and harvested on alternating Tuesdays, at dusk. Notes of cardamom and oak predominate, with an insouciant creosote finish . (Those familiar with other luxury foods—wine and coffee, for instance—are no doubt familiar with this process: the curdling of expertise into hauteur.) The new chocolate specialty products are equally pretentious. I ask you, does the world truly need a bar infused with hot masala? The latest rage, as of this writing, is superconcentrated chocolate, with a cocoa content in the 90 percent range, a trend that will, in due time, allow us to eat Baker’s Chocolate at ten bucks a square.
In some sense, though, this decadence is a return to the pre-Columbian days of cocoa, when the bean was viewed as a gift from the god Quetzalcoatl and considered the domain of royalty. Five hundred years later, Theobroma cacao (literally: food of the gods) remains the single most complex natural flavor in the world. Flavorists have been trying to reproduce the taste for decades—and they’re nowhere near doing so. This is because chocolate is made up of more than 1,200 chemical components, many of which give off distinct notes, of honey or roses or even spoiled fish. There’s even one chemical in chocolate that’s cyanide-based. This is to say nothing of chocolate’s oft-touted psychoactive ingredients, which include caffeine, theobromine (increases alertness), phenylalanine and phenylethylamine (both known to induce happiness), and anandamide, which is similar to THC (yes, stoners, that THC). In truth, most of the brouhaha over these chemicals is trumped up. They only occur in trace amounts. The main reason chocolate is the ultimate physiological freak is because it’s half sugar and half fat.
FEUILLETINE, REVEALED
Dave came to Lake Champlain fifteen years ago. At the time, he signed on as a part-time truffle maker to help out his friend, owner Jim Lampman, during the Christmas rush. But he fell in love with the manufacturing process. As the business grew, he agreed to become chief of new product development. This, of course, included the Five Star Bars, which have become the company’s signature product line.
“Those are all recipes we created,” Dave said. “The Caramel Bar took us two years to figure out how to produce. Now, the Fruit and Nut Bar came much faster. I know it sounds silly, but I literally dreamed that candy bar. I dreamed of putting those precise ingredients together and came into the lab and made the bar in one or two tries. I’d read about Janduja chocolate, which is a very soft chocolate, the ‘chocolate of love’ according to the Italians. I figured it would go well with dried fruit and nuts.”
When I told Dave that I’d never tried the Fruit and Nut Bar, he looked stricken and sent Chris to fetch one. With a delicacy any mohel would envy, he sliced the bar into thin slabs. The chocolate had a creaminess I associated with ganache, against which rose the chewier textures of raisins and pecans.
“The bar has a great finish,” Dave noted, “because the nuts and fruit last a little longer than the chocolate. They clean the palate.”
“What about the Hazelnut Bar?” I said.
Hazelnut, it turned out, had been especially tricky to devise. Dave spent months attempting to find
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