Chocolate in Context

Moving

2015-12-31T05:32:00.003-05:00

Chocolate in Context has moved!

Please follow me to http://www.chocolateincontext.com. You can still find the archives here at http://www.chocolateincontext.blogspot.com.

Brooklyn Chocolate in Shoreditch, and Other UK Detours

2015-03-20T07:50:00.001-05:00

The Sunday paper selection at my Earl's Court hotel looked meager last weekend, so I made a detour to the corner store to pick up a copy of the Guardian. The Guardian on Sunday, though, becomes the Observer, a transformation I didn't know about but pieced together quickly enough to ensure the leisurely thoughtful morning I had in mind and to avoid spending hours with some irksome conservative rag. So while I'd missed the weekly food section that gets shuffled into the fat Saturday Guardian, I'd luckily walked off with the latest Observer Food Monthly. I was on holiday with my significant other, on a holiday package even, our city break consistent with the statistically probable choices of other tourists in ways they usually aren't. Instead of staying at a boutique hotel or swapping our home for someone else's while stopping here on the way from one place and to another, this was a simple round-trip affair with a standard double room in a standard hotel with a daily buffet breakfast folded into the price. And this is how we found ourselves in guidebook-sanitized West London. And since Nick was working a lot, I was the one left to the leisurely breakfasts and the Sunday papers.

And it was here that I read, in item 41 of the "3rd Annual OFM [Observer Food Monthly] 50," that "Iowan brothers Rick and Michael Mast just opened an impressive new premises on Redchurch Street in East London, their first outside Brooklyn." Wait a minute. Something was familiar here. Redchurch Street? That's the little laneway off Shoreditch High Street, domicile of the no-corporiate-attire-dress-code Soho House-outpost known rather logically as the Shoreditch House, where Nick and I had stayed during our somewhat more characteristically eccentric trip to London this past January. We were then less than 30 days and 100 yards from the Mast's Valentine's Day opening and I'd had no idea. After discovering this item in the Observer, I did some more research. A January article in the London Evening Standard, mentioning the Mast's initial foray into the neighborhood with a pop-up shop at the Ace Hotel last year was only one of many to hoist the signal for a seasoned new crop of London chocolate shops, already a generation ahead of the living-room tasting clubs that eschewed rose and violet cremes in favor of novel high-cacao-percentage chocolates. So, had they been popping up during the first months of the Ace's Shoreditch operation in the winter of 2014, when Nick and I had been wandering around there, too, our first trip to London after we'd met a few months before, together taking an accidental tour through the hotel's unlocked back office in search of the basement sauna, returning to the front desk to ask if we might change to a room with its own turntable?

This was not my first or even second missed connection with the brothers Mast. New entrepreneurs, they'd contacted me in 2007 to sample their Williamsburg-based artisan chocolate. But I was in graduate school in Pittsburgh then and my life felt much blunter than it has at other times before and after, not hip ironically or otherwise. The holiday package we'd booked through British airways this time just briefly set off to a turbulent start. Our flight out of Newark was cancelled, we went to JFK instead, to find that we'd been bumped off a second flight. But four of us were the first to step up to be rescheduled, and that move landed me and Nick, along with Londoners Kai and Louise, in the British Airways Galleries Lounge, a few hours out from the late-night all-business-class flight to London City Airport. Polishing off a bottle of champagne with our friends, we remembered that indulgent winter holiday in east London. Shoreditch is just too much, the Londoners told us, so self-conscious, so branded. Sounds like Williamsburg, I said. I hate Williamsburg. But it's fun for a holiday, our friends confessed. We laughed. Our preferences home and away have something in common, but they're not the same.

I made it to the latest judging session of the UK-based International Chocolate Awards in a nondescript office building behind King's Cross Station on this trip, but not to the Mast Brothers' newly composed Shoreditch outpost. This itinerary had more to do with timing and the geography of London than it did with a discriminating palate. I've said this before: increased interest in and production of small batch-chocolate means that quite good chocolate is so much more easily accessible than it used to be even if the exceptional talents are still as few as they once were. I'm newly curious about the Mast Brothers' florentine-paper-wrapped bean-to-bar bars and about what they do and don't do with the the historic fruit-juice flavors of Central American cacao beans which are increasingly in circulation. I'll pick one up today, but I'm already home so my supplier is likely to be the Brooklyn Larder, a nice walk from my apartment at the south end of Prospect Park, even in the snow.

Stories that Could Be Written about Chocolate in Barcelona, Montreal, and Elsewhere

2014-09-16T12:07:00.000-05:00

Really? Wait, what? Yes, I'm still here. You might not be. Last time I checked in here, I was driving around England in a 1967 E-type Jaguar. That was about a year after Martin Christy generously introduced me to the haltingly precise chocolate craftsmanship of William Curley on a chocolate tour of London. Nearly another year has gone by, and, after taking the same E-type Jaguar through Spain and France over the summer, I just made another stop in England with my significant other (the very same significant other who drives the E-type Jaguar) to find that Curley now has a counter in the magnificently tiled Harrod's Food Hall, and that such expansion has made his exquisite confections much more accessible if just a touch less precise.

It's been a busy year--a new teaching job, a new partner, and a return to New York that's given me the time, money, and space to reshuffle some of my commitments, focusing a bit more on my person and a bit less on my persona these days. Before I go any further, I'll remind myself to point out that this blog is as much about chocolate as it is about me. So why haven't I written about chocolate at all since the beginning of 2014? Why is that app project stalled and that twitter feed on near hiatus too? Don't I have a professional debt to pay to Brad Kintzer and Zohara Mapes of Tcho for their lively dinner table conversation, to Nat Bledder of Madre Chocolate and chocolate elder statesman Steve De Vries, both of whom invited me to crash on their couches during chocolate trade events in recent years? Isn't there a story waiting to be written about the global chocolate bars arranged on narrow wooden shelves bolted into the exposed brick walls at the new La Tablette de Miss Choco boutique in Montreal?

Oh, yes, of course. Yes, to all of it. There is no lack of material. Quite the opposite. For an up-to-date report on the thriving global artisan chocolate industry written with an appropriate degree of enthusiasm, I direct your attention immediately to Sunita de Tourreil of the Chocolate Garage in the Bay Area. But in keeping with my own odd brand of benevolent antiestablishmentism, the ongoing serge in chocolate quality and information has caused in me, ironically, less and less of a sense of urgency. If I can now find a feature-worthy chocolatier in every small and large city, buy truly wonderful products at Trader Joe's and Marks & Spencer, and easily flip through the channels and watch French TV shows about Vietnamese bean-to-bar chocolate makers--or Vietnamese TV shows about French bean-to-bar chocolate makers--then I'm content with that and I can quiet the search for a while.

Don't worry, I'll be back. And I certainly hope you will be, too. Chocolate in Context has always been flexible and it's sticking around. I'll stop by with recommendations when I have them (though Cacao Sampaka was closed for summer holidays when I passed through Barcelona last month) and recipes I invent with my bulk shipment of a custom chocolate blend from my friend Fernando in Guatemala.

Let's get back to it, then.

Ghanian Chocolate and Scottish Scallops

2014-01-22T10:19:00.002-05:00

Gosh, where was I? Those homemade confections were six months ago. Since then, a Tuscany-owned Amedei boutique has opened in New York, a Ghanian chocolate shop has been growing on Brick Lane in London (proudly the only black-owned business on the street, though they're going though the common wobbles of "making" their own chocolate by grinding up a tiny batch of cacao beans in the basement while using a supply from the Callebaut conglomerate for nearly everything that they actually sell in the shop), and the unlikely Missouri-based everyman hero of the craft chocolate industry Shawn Askinosie picked up yet more awards this month during the annual food trade frenzy in San Francisco.

If you expected me to be in the middle of it all this past year, interviewing the ever higher profile chocolate entrepreneurs and whisking up subtly superior chocolate cakes, I did too. But I'm going to tell you two secrets about this blog. First, when things are looking up I do prefer my private life to my public persona. And second, I'm a better cook than a baker.

I'll leave it at that except to suggest that if you too find yourself driving around the English countryside in a vintage convertible with the top down on a sunny winter's day while New York is about to be enveloped by the biggest snow storm of the season, then you might want to stop at the Borough Market when you make it back to London to buy a wedge of manchego cheese with a sliver of membrillo from Brindisa, a kilo of scallops and a side of salmon from Furness Fish and Game (pay for the Scottish fish and seafood and keep the little arcs of roe attached to each scallop--they taste great), and handfuls of fresh herbs and Thai chili peppers from the slightly cheaper (than inside the market) veg stalls along Stoney Street.

That was our view, and this was the menu:
Cheese, salumi, and olives
Scallops in Yellow Curry with Spicy Grapefruit Salad
Canal House Teriyaki Salmon with lentils and brown rice
A Selection of chocolates from the best purveyors in town

Fall Chocolate Festivals and Other Back-to-School Activities

2013-09-28T11:30:00.002-05:00

Expedition in Oahu with Madre

If this post were a magazine article, I might call it "Falling into Chocolate." Or, more accurately, "Falling behind on Chocolate." But in what I can more or less identify as my adult life, there has always been a (productive) tension between writing that occupies a commercial space, intended to get people to do something or eat something or buy something, and writing that seems to occupy no space other than one in which a reader might find it interesting. Early this year, I was (pleasantly) surprised to find myself back in academia, teaching writing to the freshmen as they begin to negotiate what they might choose to call their own adult lives. And since then I have been dwelling in the latter space a bit more than the former.

So I missed this month's Northwest Chocolate Festival, though Sunita de Tourreil of the Chocolate Garage referred to the event as the "best (dare I call it ‘Happy’?) Chocolate Festival of the year, there is no other like it." The annual UK Chocolate Week starts October 14 in London, but I think I'll have to postpone my inaugural trip until next year. And though I'm very eager to get to Hawaii and see (and taste) what the volcanic soil is doing to the optimistic immigrant cacao trees, I won't be at Nat Bletter's Oahu Cacao Bootcamp in October either--though he does have another camp lined up for spring 2014 already.

At least while classes are in session, I'm sticking around in New York. Luckily, as has also been the case in London, chocolate has been at the forefront of the rather alarming surge in this urban area's local artisanal foods. I'm gladly resigning myself to the glut of Brooklyn bean-to-bar makers along with indulgent distractions such as the new Liddabit Sweets shop in the Chelsea Market.

Sunday Afternoon Domori Chocolate Truffles

2013-07-14T17:35:00.001-05:00

Three sources are responsible for this momentary indulgence: A recipe from Food52 that I've been meaning to make since February, the imaginative fancies of Italian chocolate maker Gianluca Franzoni, and some very wise words from San Francisco chocolatier Kathy Wiley.

Let's start with Kathy. She's the founder of the Poco Dolce brand and owner of the Dogpatch factory store that goes by the same name. Like the buyers for the Williams Sonoma catalog, Murray's cheese and various other upscale outlets that carry her squares of toffee draped in a subtle blend of dark chocolate in a half-utilitarian decision and half-understated-elegance wrapper, I like Kathy's work and so I stopped by her shop in San Francisco one Sunday afternoon to say so in person. But it was closed that day. I asked her, the next time I saw her, why. "Oh," she said. "We don't work on weekends." Why not? I asked. She answered--and this is what makes Kathy such a cool person--with utterly relaxed conviction--"Quality of life."

Yep. I'll second that. So on this Sunday afternoon, my plan was to do a little bit of work, make some good food, and then be out the door by 6:15 so that I can catch the all-female performance of Julius Caesar in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens tonight. That gives me fourteen minutes to finish explaining to you how those hand-rolled Domori confections with the buttery sheen ended up in my freezer.

You see, I had that Food52 recipe, plus some almond butter from the Brooklyn Larder, some New England maple syrup, some shredded coconut, a tin of cocoa powder that I wish had been one notch higher in quality, no sea salt, alas (where's Mark Bitterman when you need him), and these four 25-gram bars of Domori chocolate: 100% Criollo, Javagrey, Porcelana, and Teyuna. Each bar, lighter in weight than a pack of dental floss, retails for somewhere near ten bucks--and in a book that's half blind passion and half valuable instruction titled In Search of the Lost Cocoa Domori founder Franzoni tells all about the genetic origins of these couverture chocolates and the rich, fruity, earthy, and roast-ready flavors the beans produce. But on a Sunday afternoon, you can blend all of those flavors together, and I can tell you it's money well spent.

Here's what you do:

In a small pot combine any four 0.88-oz/25-g bars (all the same origin or a variety) of Domori chocolate (broken into quarters) with 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut, 1/4 cup almond butter, 3 tablespoons maple syrup, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste. Stir over low heat until everything is slick and combined. Turn off heat immediately. A minute later, start ladling out spoonfuls of the mixture and mold them into truffle-like balls with your hands. Drop a few flecks of coconut on top of each ball. If you have pink sea salt, use some of that here, too. Refrigerate or freeze for at least twenty minutes and then eat.

Quality of life, man.

Baltimore Chocolate BBQ: Good Uses for Bad Wine

2013-06-30T10:15:00.003-05:00

On the eve of July, at the height of the summer, during these relatively early morning hours, I'm thinking a lot about planning. I'm coming up with a plan to keep all my chocolate bars in temper in my un-air-conditioned kitchen through the summer (I reckon Steve DeVries or Chloe Doutre-Roussel, in town for the Fancy Food Show, might have a solution). I have changes planned for this blog, which will be eight years old in November. I'm planning events for Slow Food NYC, the global grassroots organization's local chapter, of which I'm now proudly a board member. I signed up for the Creative Capital/Lower Manhattan Cultural Council course in financial and business planning for artists (applications accepted through July 2). I have my own lesson plans sketched out, for my online travel writing class (registration is open through July 1), for a pre-college program for outrageously motivated kids in the city, and for the new job at NYU at that I couldn't be more delighted about beginning in September.

Time may pass us by. We may hear the dinner gong of the first day of summer ring one day, only to turn around and see the sun setting on the summer solstice behind us. But I'm embracing the optimism that accompanies organization and planning ahead. For those of you who would like to join me, particularly by planning the menu for the 4th of July, I present you with a recipe for what one of its originators described as "an innovative use of chocolate zinfandel in a reduction barbecue sauce that a chef de cuisine of Bolton Street came up with--that’s some fancy-ass Baltimore shit."

I will, though, look back just long enough to provide the ever-lingering context to this story.

First, a while back: When I was in California this winter to work on my chocolate app project, I was waiting for a train one evening when I met two young guys who were on their way home from a ball game of some kind or other. They seemed contented with life in the way that makes being the most interesting people in the world (they were not) unimportant, and they offered me a beer, flirted with me, talked about sports, and told me about their jobs. One of these guys was the marketing manager for a winery and a proponent of their "chocolate zinfandel." Google it and you'll find several versions of this concoction. I can't remember the name of the company this guy worked for, which is probably a good thing because I'd rather remember how sweet it was of him to drive out to the suburbs to leave an entire case of the stuff on my friend Barbara's doorstep rather than to pollute the image of this, um, blend, by mentioning it by name while also pointing out that we left every bottle unopened and decided that Barbara would hold onto the stock and give away the chocolate zin as an occasional gag gift.

Second, going back just several weeks ago to the epic Memorial Day barbecue of the above-invoked chef de cuisine of Bolton Street, Baltimore: I made the trip out to the home of The Wire specifically to partake in the annual gastronomic debauchery hosted by this man and his wife, and along the way I discovered the John Waters-ready Ma Petite Shoe footwear-and-chocolate boutique, which is the exclusive carrier of the quite marvelous sea-salt-caramel brownies made by the local blogger at Charm City Cook.) It would appear that someone had given our host a bottle of just such a chocolate zin, not as a gag but in earnest. A couple of days into the trimming, rubbing, and brining of meat acquired from the best butchers within a 50-mile radius and once belonging to pigs, antelope, kangaroos, and guinea fowl, it become clear that the chocolate zinfandel could redeem itself as ingredient in a distinctive, earthy, blended glaze for one or another gamey meat. Our unfailing host will not be named in the hopes that he will not be incriminated for this repurposing of the schlocky wine gift and that the giver will not recognize himself in these paragraphs and be saddened and offended. But our chef-de-cuisine's partner in grilling and recipe development, Jasmine of the Drunken Fig blog, has no such need to protect her identify and graciously replicated the glazed wild boar recipe for me and whichever readers would like to use it for their upcoming holiday plans.

Rack of Wild Boar with Chocolate Zinfandel Glaze

This dish was prepared over the course of four days by no less than three cooks. In addition to the bottle of Chocolate Zinfandel that went into the glaze, several bottles of wine went into those doing the cooking. This is all to say that the recipe may not be so exact. But it will be tasty.

1. Procure a rack of wild boar. I recently interviewed the proprietor of a New Orleans restaurant who told me that a guy periodically shows up at their back door with a whole wild boar. But those of us who don’t own a hot new restaurant—heck, I don’t even own a back door—might be waiting a while. You could check with your local butcher, who may be able to special order it, or engage in a little e-commerce at D’Artagnan.

2. Marinate it. Like most wild animals, boar is lean. Marinating the meat will help it to retain moisture while cooking. It’s also a chance to give it some extra flavor. Our boar spent the night alongside several racks of spare ribs in a cooler filled with cranberry juice, cider vinegar, plenty of salt, miscellaneous spices, and ice.

3. Give it a rub. You can buy all kinds of pre-made rubs, but this is your chance to take those old spices cluttering your kitchen cabinets for a spin. Toast whole spices over medium-low heat in a cast iron skillet. We used cumin, fennel, coriander, black and green peppercorns, chipotles, and some mystery peppers that turned out to be quite spicy. Be sure to stir frequently to avoid burning. When the seeds are fragrant and starting to pop, take them off the heat and grind them with a mortar and pestle or in an electric coffee grinder. At this point, you can add whatever you want, but lots of salt and a little brown sugar are important. Other things we remember adding include paprika, kaffir lime leaves, and—to give it that Brooklyn comes to Baltimore touch—some finely ground Gorilla Coffee. Massage the rub into the meat and let it sit for at least a few hours and ideally overnight.

4. Make the glaze. A while back, a Baltimore house guest had left a bottle of Chocolate Zinfandel that nobody seemed to be drinking. We poured this into a pot along with a few chiles from last year’s community garden harvest and brought it to a simmer over medium-low heat. We let this reduce down while we tended to other meat. At some point, we tasted it and determined that we should add some vinegar to balance out the sweetness. In went some sherry vinegar infused with African bird peppers. The goal here is a syrup-like consistency, which can take a while, but it doesn’t need much tending.

5. Cook the meat. Given the leanness and surprisingly petite size of a rack of wild boar, the technique is somewhere between grilling and barbecuing. You’ll want to do this via indirect heat over charcoal with some nice fragrant wood, maintaining a medium temperature. It should cook for 45 minutes to an hour. If you want to get precise about things, you’re aiming for an internal temperature of about 145. We weren’t so precise.

6. Let the meat rest for a bit, carve, drizzle with the glaze, and serve.

Remembering Mott Green: A Loss for Grenada and Worldwide Chocolate

2013-06-08T23:38:00.000-05:00

Mott Green in Amsterdam in 2012

I learned a few things at the screening of the documentary Nothing Like Chocolate at the Cinema De Uitkijk in Amsterdam during the Origin Chocolate Event in October of 2012.

I knew that the Grenada Chocolate Company--a cooperative project distinct from some of its more highly publicized counterparts like Divine in both its primary commitment to producing cacao-based products for the local market and its genuine ability to produce world-class chocolate--had "made it" almost as soon as they made their first chocolate bar, when Chantal Coady of Rococo, Britain's grand dame of all things cocoa, championed the company in 2002. What I didn't know--the thing that I learned--was how hard founder Mott Green worked every day, on individual cocoa farms and in his factory, to make good on that accomplishment and to ensure that it would continue. Already an award winning chocolate maker, already a respected innovator in his field, in some ways already a legend, he struggled--the film showed--to control quality and cash flow even as (and sometimes because) production and orders increased. He persevered and he succeeded because the life that surrounded this chocolate--on a small island so different from the world he came from in Manhattan--intrinsically made so much sense to him. I learned from this honest portrait that both success and change should be measured over the long term.

I was also surprised to learn that Mott originally had a partner in the Grenada Chocolate Company, equally a maverick, named Doug Browne, but Doug had died of cancer as a very young man in 2008. I was touched to see how much Doug's life had meant to Mott and how he carried its impact with him over the great expanse of time.

The final thing that I learned about was the genuine opportunity (no guarantee, no sign-up sheet) for connection to this fascinating guy. After the film was over, I fumbled to the front of a frenzied crowd to introduce Mott to my friend Bette, another longtime expat resident of the tropical band of the Americas, because I saw the same expansiveness and curiosity in both of them. Mott, from what I saw on screen and in person, was a quiet and very definitely private person. He was also modest, patient, and generous. "Come visit me," he said to Bette as we were leaving, and she repeated the invitation to me on the bus ride home, thinking about when and how she might, perhaps even stowing away with the three Dutch sailors who carried Mott's chocolate across the Atlantic in a motorless boat.

Bette and many others will not be able to learn directly from Mott in Grenada because he died in a work-related accident last week. There is not much in the news about this sudden and very poignant loss, though I have found obituaries on an arts and culture site from the Caribbean and in an Israeli newspaper. Remembrances of a private and very effective man.

The Taza Tour: Mexican Chocolate in Boston

2013-05-25T12:12:00.002-05:00

About a month ago, after the AWP conference was over, I drove from one suburb of Boston to another with a fiction writer, a journalist, and a roboticist to visit the Taza factory. We were late, so we made a little bit of a scene when we arrived, but tour guide Caroline made space for all four of us despite the fact that the tour was already full. I'd done this once before, but without a tour guide. There was no official tour in 2008--Taza was newish and the company was still growing into the former commercial laundry facility that is their factory. They were also teaching themselves how to make chocolate, which has largely been an improvisational, frontiersman/woman-type activity over the past twenty-five years, though the Craft Chocolate Makers Association (which Alex Whitmore of Taza helped to create) may change that a bit.

"We're one out of twenty bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the US," Caroline told us. "I think that number is growing very rapidly--but we're one of the only ones making Mexican-style chocolate." If Taza has its own story--or its own chapter in the narrative of how unwieldy pods plucked from sweaty trees in the middle of the jungle yield the familiar indulgence known as chocolate (a process both accurately and charmingly illustrated in murals running all along the wall of the Taza factory)--then that's it. Since 2006, they have been using stone mills to process cacao beans into chocolate that is noticeably grittier and slightly more crumbly than what most card-carrying CCMA members are producing. Alex actually cuts the grindstones himself, a craft he learned during an apprenticeship in Oaxaca, where this kind of chocolate, conventionally blended with water or milk to make hot drinks, is as standard as maple syrup in New England. Taza's chocolate is distinctive because their classic Mexican methods are unique in the US while their sommelier-like selection of beans and their blend that's high on cacao and low on sugar is unique in Mexico.

A make-believe version of one of Taza's hand-carved granite grinding stones

What else can I add? Well, the four of us--the blogger, the journalist, the novelist, and the roboticist--did spent a few hours there, inquiring into how things worked, chatting, taking pictures, taking notes. And if conventional wisdom has it that three monkeys given infinite access to a typewriter will ultimately come up with Hamlet, then it would stand to reason that our little group was certainly qualified to come up with some story or other. Here are some possible conclusions:

Taza is loyal: Today, they continue to work with the same cooperative of cacao growers in the Dominican Republic that they started out with in 2006.

Taza is focused: All of their cacao beans come from Latin America. Though none (to my knowledge) actually come from Mexico, they're working closer and closer to chocolate's Mesoamerican roots through a partnership with Maya Mountain Cacao in Belize (expect to see special edition Belize chocolate disks soon).

Taza is expanding: In 2013, you can buy Taza chocolate in Australia, as well as in most of the American states of the union.

Taza is crafty: Their roasting machine is an antique German piece of equipment unearthed and purchased a few years ago in Italy. The disks actually come out of what used to be a commercial donut maker. "We do a lot of repurposing here," Caroline told us.

That, and, in the right hands (like those of the factory store's assistant manager Josh), the Taza disks do indeed yield an unimpeachable hot chocolate.

Interim Chocolate Update: Reading, Writing, and Eating in New York

2013-05-05T10:04:00.002-05:00

Where was I? I have a batch of scones in the oven and I'm on my way to the Food Book Fair. I'm also fantasizing about a couple of non-food events coming up in New York: the 80s Altman series at the New York Public Library and summer hours at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.

I suppose they're not really fantasies because I'm here in the city, in proximity to all these resources. And if I can help it, I'm going to stick around for a while. It can be hard to keep up in New York if your objective is to slow down. That been a conundrum for me while working with Slow Food NYC this year. I suppose in other moments this too-much-pleasure-to-enjoy predicament would lead to neuroses. But for the moment--spring on the East Coast finally, finally, finally about to emerge from the depths of climate change--I'll sanguinely take the conundrums as they come.

A little spring-time advice to myself: If you're a writer who doesn't have time to write, be content to read, which Roland Barthes will tell you is another version of the same thing. If you're a chocolate blogger who doesn't have time to blog about chocolate, remember to enjoy eating the stuff (that's why you started doing this anyway). And be practical about publishing and take a few minutes to write about your fantasies once in a while. A couple of confections I envision tasting when my grand tour continues: Xocolat in Vienna and Cocoa Atelier in Dublin.

San Francisco Chocolate in an iPhone Context: A Post-Valentine's Day, Post-Easter Preview

2013-04-01T21:52:00.006-05:00

If you're on your way to the razzle-dazzle International Association of Culinary Professionals Conference in the Bay Area this weekend, you should download my new app: San Francisco Chocolate in Context. You should, but it doesn't exist yet.

My tireless editor on this project, a prescient person who recently jumped out of the soon-to-be crumbled-up pages of guidebooks and into a partnership with awesomely relevant Sutro Media, suggested that I could finish this project in two weeks. That's when I was in Amsterdam, on hiatus from Portugal, still detoxing from China, just a few months out from my lovely summer in London, and just about to begin that oh-so-difficult "reentry" process at home here in New York. (This is the kind of itinerant narrative that would always appear in drafts of stories I submitted to my nonfiction writing workshops in Pittsburgh and to which I would inevitably receive the response that the narrative wasn't believable. And, to that, all I want to say right now is "Pittsburgh, there's an entire world out there just waiting for you to expand your imagination!"). I digress. But that's exactly the point--I'm a digressive person. Two weeks to finish my guide to the globe's ultimate chocolate city? More like six months.

We're nearly there now. If my palm-sized anecdotes--about the latest antics at the Tcho factory next door to the new Exploratorium museum on the Embarcadero (the California chocolate people are smart, smart with the venture capital money) and the utopian Guittard compound in Burlingame where even the BART station smells like chocolate--weren't ready for Valentine's Day and Easter this year, they'll be around (with regular, instant updates) for the same holidays next year and for the oddly rainy and chilly upcoming Bay Area summer months, perfectly suited to artisan hot chocolate.

In the meantime, if you could download the app today, you might see something like this:

Alegio Chocolate
Ghetto Fabulous

The tastes are catholic, the selection is limited, and the aesthetic is upscale cosmopolitan. Opened in 2006 and repurposed in 2012 as a satellite boutique for Sao Tome-based Italian tree-to-bar chocolate maker Claudio Corallo (the rustic subject of a chapter in Mort Rosenblum's Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light), Alegio has since become an East Bay outlet for several global chocolate brands that don't show up too frequently on the west coast of the US, including the sculpted creations of Catalan chocolatier Enric Rovira. Located in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto, a few doors down from Chez Panisse, the shop hosts a regular influx of foodie tourist walk-ins as well as dedicated members of their chocolate of the month club.

Casa de Chocolates
Latin Love of the East Bay

Owners Arcelia Gallardo and Amelia Gonzalez have taken a microbusiness that grew inside La Cocina's incubator kitchen turned it into a powerhouse that's won quick attention from locals, the press, and the Latin American business community. The base chocolate for the Casa confections comes from Bay Area mainstay Guittard, though the beans were sourced in Central and South American countries. And the bon bons are infused either with precolumbian ingredients like pumpkin and chile or today's identifiably Latin flavors like Mexican cajeta and Guatemalan coffee.

Bi-Rite Creamery
Get in Line

The proliferating ice cream and gelato institutions (like Xanath and Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous) in northern California need their own app. But the Bi-Rite businesses are grandfathered in. The creamery, across the street from the original grocery store, always features a couple of chocolate flavors made with local ingredients, along with chocolate pudding, chocolate brownies, and sinful combinations of the above in sundae form. If you're coming on a weekend or a holiday, it will be a long wait--bring a book. The Divasadero branch of the grocery store, open since March of 2013, has more shelf space for international, American, and local artisan chocolate and a separate entrance for Bi-Rite Creamery customers craving salted-caramel chocolate pots de creme and dark chocolate mint-chip ice cream sandwiches.

Back to Chocolate: The Maury Rubin Interview, Part 2

2013-03-20T19:38:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I cornered Maury Rubin, owner of the City Bakery and the half dozen Birdbath locations in New York City, in his "chocolate room." We were interrupted a few times by customers, employees, and even a poet named Kyle Erickson (to whom I described Maury as "a businessman baker and a gentleman farmer). But Maury did return, and we talked about what food-informed New Yorkers knew about chocolate a decade ago, and what they know today.

Port Hot Chocolate--2013 festival finale

Emily: I’m going to turn the tape recorder on again and ask Maury about… this Chocolate Room. What did your customers know about chocolate in 2001 when they first laid eyes on this spot?

Maury: There was a very different basis of knowledge in 2001, for chocolate. “Semi-sweet,” for example, was a very commonly used phrase. Fast-forward 10-12 years. I’m not sure that that phrase even exists anymore in New York City, or that it's not a misdemeanor charge to actually use it in public. The notion of 60%, 65%, bitter chocolate: that was not anything anybody really talked about. It's like the difference between Ernest and Julio Gallo wine and a specific vintage from Chateaux Margaux. Chocolate was chocolate, and it was essentially a commodity, and there wasn’t anything about its pedigree that people broke down and analyzed or preferred.

E: So what were you selling at the time?

M: I was using Valrhona, and I was using a range of different blends of Valrhona. We were serving great stuff, both in baked goods and as our hot chocolate.

And then in here, you sold…

Well the Chocolate Room was always a collection of, you know, other people who made packaged chocolates, truffles, or bar chocolates. It’s a little bit of an accident relative to the total City Bakery experience, more than it’s an integral part.

So why bring in the artisans that nobody had heard of?

Well, we want to keep up. I think that what City Bakery has done since it started was to be on the curve, on the edge of the curve. What’s new in a category like chocolate is certainly relevant to what we do at City Bakery.

So what’s new right now in the chocolate closet is Fruition, which is from upstate New York. For a long time you've carried Chocolat Moderne, which is down the street.

She came to me and she said—her name is Joan Coukos—she was thinking about opening up a chocolate company and could I talk to her about the business. And a couple of months later she brought me some chocolates that I thought were off-the-charts fabulous. And that’s a good example of how there was talent out there lying in wait and…

So it’s a community thing.

Partially, yeah.

Alright. And the rest of this closet is Askinosie and Nuno from Brooklyn, and Taza, a company sort of going back to chocolate’s roots. But why chocolate? You could have a cheese closet.

That’s true, but I’m a baker.

Maury Rubin

You’re also a macaroni and cheese maker. We haven't even talked about when you started doing the mac and cheese but…

2001.

Ok, so when you moved here. I'm going to make one of those James Lipton sycophantic comments—it’s sort of phenomenal, right? The idea that you take this familiar food and you use artisan products to make it. It’s probably smart in a whole bunch of ways, but it was definitely new, definitely beyond the mozzarella-and-tomato and tuna salad, moving into this hearty, wholesome, artisanal comfort food. Now, fast-forward 12 years and there’s a proliferation of shops that are dedicated to either hot chocolate or mac and cheese in this city. So, as a member of the mac-and-cheese and hot chocolate community, tell me, what do you think they're doing right and what are they doing wrong?

(Clears his throat.) You ask the tough ones, Emily Stone. You know what, probably half of them are doing a bunch of things really right, and half of them not so much. On the chocolate side, on the hot chocolate side, I’ve actually been amazed at how much terrible hot chocolate there remains, from a great number of people, because that just seems to me sort of incomprehensible.

And what makes it terrible?

You should ask them. There’s a thousand ways, there are just people who…

But it’s not hard to make good hot chocolate…

Well, clearly it is… It should not be hard to make great hot chocolate and the number of… the odds that you walk into a place in New York City and get a pedestrian--or less than pedestrian--cup of hot chocolate remain way too high.

I guess it's also not hard to make bad hot chocolate. But yours is a little bit different from what might be the standard two-ingredient hot chocolate. It’s thicker. And it’s a little bit on the sweet side. But what makes it thick?

Chocolate. Mostly chocolate.

About how many ingredients are in the recipe?

It’s a secret.

Is it more than three?

It’s a secret.

You can’t tell me if it’s more than three ingredients?

(Shakes his head.)

You give tough answers. We’re about to finish up and you’re going to get back to what you were doing when I came in. Earlier, you asked me to ask you what you're doing today, so what are you doing today?

What am I doing today? A little bit of everything. I just keep the place on its toes. The kitchen, the counter, and running the company at the same time...

Which now includes about six sort of, well, the Birdbath is something else. How is a Birdbath different from City Bakery?

Birdbath is different from City Bakery foremost because it’s a tiny, tiny version physically. The City Bakery is nearly 4000 square feet of counters and food and people and tables and chairs. Birdbath is literally 10% of that, so 400 square feet is the average size. It’s just a tiny version of City Bakery and just everything scales down from there. The menu options are much fewer. And everything about it’s operation, everything about the way it functions, from how we build it, what it looks like, how we get the food there, how we heat and cool it, how we throw the garbage away--everything about what makes it run every day is conceived through the lens of what’s sustainable.

So in this instance, Birdbath is more of a response to the greening of American food than an instigator?

No, it’s somewhere in between. Birdbath wants to be an instigator of a new business model. I like that word--thank you very much.

You’re very welcome.

Literary Chocolate Hiatus: Boston

2013-03-10T11:20:00.003-05:00

My dear friend Paige--fellow itinerant, former roommate on Semester at Sea, and proponent of the Tote Coat--was trying to figure out yesterday when I had last been in Boston. The blog archive suggests four years ago. Since then, Paige has married a lovely man and had a beautiful baby, Lee Napoli of ChocoLee Chocolates down the street from Paige in the South End now has her sights on a new cafe across town (Bread and Butter, to open this spring), and I'll find out about the bountiful expansion of Taza on their factory tour later today.

My focus on this trip was books, not chocolate. I came to Boston in the middle of a blizzard for the AWP conference, an annual event where gray-haired tenured professor-types reminisce about the days before the proliferation of MFA programs when the meeting was a small gathering of university writing-workshop participants rather than 10,000 people descending space-colony-like upon mega-convention-center-shopping-complexes. Now it's all going all the time--panels about translation, packed poetry readings, lit mags soliciting submissions and occasionally giving away shots of whiskey. There is some chocolate, too. Booths at the book fair are littered with giveaway trick-or-treat-sized morsels of the variety that exhibitors can afford on their adjunct salaries or the profits of their not-for-profit businesses.

Most memorable among the swag (in addition to the sea salt caramels from Salt Press) were the Gone & Gone chocolate bars at the Red Hen Press booth (publishers of things worldly and weird), the wrappers condensed versions of the cover of the poetry book of the same name, designed, it would seem, by publisher Mark Cull.

I bought the book. I opened it and read this: "Just the impertinent reptiles,/ scissored glances with nothing exchanged/ & rain promised for the end of the holiday." A few pages before that, the poet Rodney Wittwer wrote "For Emily--Thanks for the support and enjoy the chocolate!"

Thank you, Rodney!

Bakery Intervention: The Maury Rubin Interview, Part 1

2013-03-04T21:20:00.000-05:00

Now that the Hot Chocolate Festival is over, you might think that City Bakery's owner Maury Rubin would have some time to waste. What he has instead are five micro-bakeries--the Birdbaths--to attend to now, in addition to the mother ship on 18th Street near Union Square in Manhattan. I cornered him in a closet--a chocolate closet--and we talked for about ten minutes before an urgent bakery matter came up. I learned that he doesn't like the word foodie. He prefers food-informed citizen.

Port Hot Chocolate--2013 festival finale

Emily: I could start by asking you when you opened this place—about 20 years ago?

Maury: December 8, 1990. Where were you that day?

E: I was in grade school, on the Upper Eastside, I think. Unless it was on the Upper Westside. Where were you that day?

M: I was at City Bakery.

Right. And what were you doing?

That first day, a little bit of everything. And ask me what I’m doing today.

I will. But what I actually want to ask you is…

Alright, go ahead, your interview, I’m sorry..

No, it’s ok. I do want to know what you’re doing today. But I also want to know what was going on around here on December whatever in 1990. What was happening in the food scene back then? Were there foodies?

The use of the term foodie came to be the blight on society that it is, I’d say, not in significant number prior to 1993-4-5, somewhere in there.

So what was the relationship between the average New Yorker and food at the time that you opened this bakery?

Well, to stick to my little piece of real estate in New York city in answer to that question: Greenmarket, which today is a multi-million-dollar enterprise, a four-day-a-week activity, and a verifiable New York thing to do... Greenmarket was a day-two-a-week thing, roughly a dozen farmers, nobody had ever heard the word “heirloom” in front of anything, let along tomato or potato. Greenmarket was a sort of curiosity in the neighborhood. It had not yet found its trajectory. The food business in NYC was a very different creature because Greenmarket wasn't what Greenmarket has become--in the way that it plugs into so much of the restaurant and retail food business in New York. And I’d say that New Yorkers then were their fabulous food-informed selves, but to be a food-informed New Yorker in 1990, pre- ... basically pre-internet, pre-food-blogosphere, pre-Food Network, was a very different level of being a food-informed citizen.

And so what did you offer that was part of that education?

A lot.

What were you doing that first day so that people walked by and said “I’ve never seen that before”?

That’s true, that’s actually exactly what happened. In one way, physically. Because 17^th Street was the ugly duckling street of Union Square, it was the last street to really turn as Union Square was becoming the sort of powerhouse valuable destination in New York City that it is. It wasn’t even, it wasn’t really a restaurant neighborhood yet. It wasn’t a fabulous sort of professionally creative neighborhood yet. In Union Square in 1990, there were two professions that filled up this entire neighborhood: architecture and photography. Because the buildings were big old early-1900s buildings and they had big floor plates and it was cheap space and architects needed cheap space and photographers needed cheap space. Now, all those people have moved on and moved out. But what City Bakery did that was a sort of moment in food time was it put in place a new model of what a neighborhood bakery might be. We had lunch. As simple as that might sound, or as obvious as that might sound today, bakeries did not routinely have sandwiches and salad and soup. City Bakery had a little tiny lunch menu. It was a five-foot table, 30 inches deep. We had a tuna salad sandwich, mozzarella and tomato sandwich on focaccia, we had two homemade pizzas, two salads, and one soup—tomato soup. And that was it, that was our entire lunch menu. And that lunch menu, modest as that sounds, was a sort of bakery intervention. So that became the start of what I would say is now the de facto model.

Maury Rubin

You've done a lot of things that changed the picture since 1990.

Yeah, that’s just one of them. The day that City Bakery opened, it was the last breath of many generations of family ethnic neighborhood bakeries that were becoming extinct. So German, Italian, French, Jewish, all of those bakeries were on their last legs, and they really had been making the same baked goods for probably 50, 75, in some cases longer, that many years. One way to describe what they did was they worked out of cans. If you went into a bakery in 1940 or 50 or 60 or 70 or even 80 and you bought a fruit tart, the chances were really incredibly good that that fruit came out of a can. So one of the things that City Bakery did is it changed forever the idea that a bakery should work with canned fruit. And we went to Greenmarket and we got whatever was in town that day. That’s what we could use, that’s what we made, and that was our menu. And what wasn’t in town was food that we didn’t have. So if you came in, and you had a strawberry tart and it was the end of July and you loved it, and you came back three weeks later and you said “where are those strawberry tarts?”, we might say strawberry season’s done, but we’ll see you in May.

And as the business grew, you grew into the space, too...

Well we weren’t here on 18th Street. We were…

On 17^th Street. In a similar post-industrial space?

Is this post-industrial?

I would say so. Exposed pipelines...

Um, it was a little similar. It was a little starker, actually. It was a little more minimal.

It sounds like. I mean, I’m going to skip ahead a few chapters. It sounds like the business grew, the space grew, real estate became more expensive, the products became more expensive. And that was in large part because of what you instigated. But then you also changed with it, and you have a more high-end business now, more space, more customers, more competition, and the cycle just keeps moving. You’re introducing more and more things. And one of the things that you introduced was… This place where we’re standing right now is called The Chocolate Room. And it was called that before there was a business of the same name in Brooklyn, right?

Better for me not to comment about that. But, yeah.

When did this closet open?

I started the Chocolate Room actually, literally, in a closet on 17^th Street. It was a little experiment. And then when we moved to 18^th Street, which was April of 2001, I built this. I treated myself to the add-on den which is the Chocolate Room.

So this all started when I was in college and just moved to this neighborhood. How would you describe the chocolate knowledge of New Yorkers in general in 2001?

Um. The Chocolate knowledge… can we, can we take a break, is that ok?

And with that, Maury was off to take care of a bike-messenger-baked-goods situation. He did, though, come back to the closet, to finish the interview. Stay tuned for Part 2...

Elemental Chocolate: Fika's Earth, Wind, Fire, Water

2013-02-22T08:19:00.002-05:00

Don't call too early in the morning, he had told me. It was going to be a late night.

Actually, that was yesterday. The party was two nights ago. But here I am, up early, a day behind, trying to catch up before the sun comes up. So I won't bother Håkan Mårtensson, Culinary Olympian and colleague of Patrick Roger in chocolate sculpting. Instead, I'll recreate the experience from memory. It was freezing, the ice core of the New York winter, and I walked through the glass doors of the newest Fika at 450 Washington Street in Tribeca to find the crowd sipping from champagne flutes, warm and aglow. "I write about chocolate," I said to Mårtensson. "Come with me." More a Hunter S. Thompson-invented candyman than a Muppets character, this particular Swedish Chef has taken what began as a Northern European espresso bar and turned it into one of the most memorable chocolate--to use his word--experiences in New York.

The four elements. This is Mårtensson experiential creation. I wasn't supposed to know what I was eating. I was supposed to follow instructions, give in to sensations. Earth: put the bon bon in your mouth, don't do anything, the tempered chocolate resists any change at first and then starts to melt away, a gravelly hazelnut praline takes over. Wind: I was supposed to crush the bon bon with my teeth and let the flavors fly past me--I did, I can't remember what I was tasting. Fire: Chew, wait, the chile volcano burns down your throat. Water: the prettiest one, white chocolate with waves of blue, coquettishly pastel or dangerously incandescent, it's hard to tell--sea-salt caramel with more honest taste of the sea than you expect, you just approach it with your tongue and the tsunami hits you.

Things I Love: Brooklyn Chocolate, Slow Food, Great Writing, Good Governance, Pudding

2013-02-13T02:44:00.000-05:00

Come love children, gather 'round. Lots to be passionate about this week. Your Valentine's cards should be piling up on your desks by now, your FedEx packages full of chocolate downstairs in the lobby, your dinner reservations confirmed. I will likely be staying in this Valentine's Day, finding the most comfortable spot on the temporary furniture in my new permanent home, reading either The Introvert's Advantage or Salary Tutor.

Meanwhile, before the holiday gets started, let me share the love. Herein, a litany of lovely things:

I would say that I love Brooklyn, but apparently Brooklyn is already over, the death knell of gentrification already sounded. I'm too late, my story of reverse migration too obvious. When I was a twenty-something Manhattanite, I was met by the most incomprehensible rage and terror from my grandmother when I called to say that my cousin and I were staying in Brooklyn later than planned one night. She was convinced we'd be killed or brainwashed or turned into zombies. "But you're from Brooklyn," I remember professing into my pre-smart phone mobile device, to no avail. Of course, many of these neighborhoods went through some unambiguously bad times, a mix of economic decline, racism, and misguided intentions chronicled with great insight by novelist Jonathan Lethem. But I'm telling you, the passage in Fortress of Solitude about recording "'(Did You Press Your) Bump Suit' by Doofus Funkstrong" is just beautifully accurate and absurd. The thing is that my great-grandfather who immigrated from the Ukraine owned this building where I live tucked behind an unnamed corner of Prospect Park, and then my uncle, and now my cousins. We've all got it there somewhere. Family. Continuity.

And I love Brooklyn chocolate: there's Cacao Prieto, there's Tumbador, there's Nunu, and there's lots more where that came from.

I love smart chocolate, and smart food. I'm delighted to join Slow Food NYC as a new member of the board in 2013, and I hope I'll have a chance to do something unexpected and exciting with programs like Slow U while raising money for local school gardens. I'm all abuzz from the remarkably productive chatter at the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference last weekend, a sort of blizzard-inundated SXSW of food writing where academics and entrepreneurs, self-publishers and 21st-century mega-agents spoke together on the same panels and drank the same Spanish wine in the bar downstairs.

I love lists of favorite things, reverent or irreverent, all the better with pretty pictures. Along with newsletters from Anthropologie, the model I hold up is Heidi Swanson and the simple grace of the favorites lists on 101 Cookbooks. I love the boundlessness of food blogging. Thanks to Chocolate and Zucchini and David Lebovitz and Smitten Kitchen and The Wednesday Chef for pioneering and professionalizing the project, for being good foodie business people and good blogging citizens.

I love democracy even if I don't love everything about my country. Yes, gun control, immigration reform, living wages, equal pay for women, equal rights for gay families--get it done!

And I love pudding! Along with the rest of the media and the crowds trolling the East Village, I've discovered Puddin' by Clio on St. Marks Place. I'm there about twice a week, and Clio is very accommodating. She makes lemonade for neighborhood kids, and answers any questions no matter how busy she is. Last time I walked in, she was making the lewdish little icing hearts pictured above, and she generously agreed to share a prized recipe with me.

Puddin' Chocolate Pudding:

2 Tbsp cocoa powder
2 Tbsp corn starch
2/3 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup heavy cream
3 egg yolks
2 cups whole milk

5 oz Noi Sirius or other "chocolaty" (not "fruity") 70% dark chocolate

Combine the cocoa powder, corn starch, sugar, salt, cream, egg yolks, and milk in a 3-quart saucepan and whisk thoroughly.

Place over medium heat and whisk constantly.

Once the mixture starts to get hot, add the chocolate and continue whisking for 10-12 minutes, until the pudding is thick and starts to bubble.

Strain into a bowl, cool to room temperature for 10 minutes, then chill for 2 hours. And enjoy!

Serves a few, or one indulgently.

New York Winter Dessert: Dark Chocolate Clafouti

2013-02-09T06:38:00.000-05:00

A snow day, a simple recipe:

Deep Bittersweet Clafouti

1 2-ounce TchoIntense Dark Chocolate 99% bar

1 or 2 apples

1 or 2 peaches

(use any combination of stone fruits and pome fruits)

3 eggs

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups cream

Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Butter a round cake, casserole, or pie dish, 8 or 9 inches (about 20 centimeters) in diameter.

Place the chocolate bar in a metal bowl and rest the bowl above a pot of gently simmering water. The bar is thin enough that the whole thing will melt without you having to do anything. This chocolate has no sugar but has an incredibly complex, almost citrusy flavor. The dry tannic quality matches well with the creaminess of this comforting custard dessert.

Meanwhile, thinly slice the fruit (slices that are too thick won't cook through by the time the cake-like custard is done). Spread the slices out on the bottom of the pan.

Whisk together the eggs and sugar. Add the flour, then the vanilla, then the cream. Your only job is to make sure the ingredients are combined. You don't have to fuss too much--this combination will always taste fantastic. Add the melted chocolate and mix or whisk until incorporated.

Pour the chocolaty custard over the fruit, place the pan in the oven, and bake for about 35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean and the texture is somewhere between creme brulee and bread pudding.

Serve with Greek-style yogurt. Or, to be extra decadent, pour a little bit of extra cream over the top.

Hot Chocolate Festivals Here and There: New York, Vancouver, Oaxaca

2013-02-01T10:47:00.000-05:00

Remember Festivus? Or maybe I'm dating myself. Seinfeld took place a long time ago, arguably in another era. An arbitrary era of peacetime irreverence and irrelevance. An era that gave us Reality Bites and all of the related musings about Generation X's distinctly American form of self loathing, a sort of post Portnoy's Complaint woe-is-me refrain in which the country's newest batch of adults invited themselves to mope about not doing quite as well as their parents. In the 21st century, though we haven't yet come to a consensus about terrorism being only the latest bugaboo to replace communism, we're perhaps realizing with newfound gravity that manifest destiny really is a myth, as we contend with a collapsing planet, collapsing economies, and the perfectly ok reality that the United States doesn't print its own license to be at the center of world affairs.

But, still, we're not without motivation to celebrate ourselves and convene for feasts of one kind or another. And if the word "festival" was once reserved for village- or county-wide affairs of universal gravity, it can now refer to niche events of any kind. In fact, participants in modern American festivals need not convene at all. Rather, they can pour in, in a steady stream, as has been the case every February for the past 20 years at the City Bakery in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, host of the Hot Chocolate Festival. There's no critical mass, no oratory at this convention, just nineteen different flavors of thicker-than-life-blood hot chocolate served in rotation throughout the month. This year's liquid chocolate celebration opens with the clean citrus sting of fresh lemon juice suspended in rich, cocoa-buttery chocolate and goes on to champion other flavors both comforting and startling such as caramel and "ode to the polar bear."

New Yorkers and their countrymen are not alone in this celebratory hot chocolate endeavor. We're joined by our Good Neighbors to the North and the land South of the Border. In Canada, Vancouver is staging a parallel Hot Chocolate Festival, which runs through Valentine's Day and features as many varieties as City Bakery at about as many different venues. And since I haven't yet found a Mexican fiesta de chocolate dedicated specifically to the drinking variety (the only variety known in Mesoamerica before chocolate became a colonial product), I'm declaring every day in Oaxaca--home to Chocolate Mayordomo--a festival day.

Chocolate Doppelgangers: Emily Stone Meets Emily Stone

2013-01-26T00:22:00.001-05:00

This was a week of immersion in chocolate. I learned that Dandelion, in its newly minted cafe, serves cacao-fruit smoothies. I learned from Brad Kintzer that Tcho indeed does their own roasting, though they travel from the Bay Area to the countries of origin instead of bringing the dried fermented beans to their factory on the Embarcadero (any questions? call up and ask. and let me know what you find out.) And I had the pleasure of talking about family businesses while munching on a cookie-dough-textured chocolate-milk-sugar mixture straight from the refiner with Gary Guittard at his factory in Burlingame just after meeting the company's fifth-generation employee, Amy Guittard.

But the highlight of my sojourn in San Francisco was meeting "the other Emily Stone," a savvy kindred spirit who combines development work with developed-world marketing as a cacao bean broker for Maya Mountain Cacao in Belize.

Big thanks to Alex Whitmore from Taza Chocolate for moderating the first in-person Emily Stone on Emily Stone meeting.

Alex Whitmore, Taza: So, who are you guys? What does Emily Stone mean? What’s the history of the Stone clan?

Emily Stone, Maya Mountain Cacao: Well, what’s actually funny is that Stone was a name that was given to my family at Ellis Island. When my ancestors from Poland immigrated to the United States, the name that they arrived to the country with was Stern, but the immigration officials couldn’t spell it, so they decided to just write Stone, and so the family became Stone.

Emily Stone, Chocolate in Context: That’s really frightening because my family name was previously something Russian, because we were Eastern European Jews who came around the turn of the century...

Emily Stone: Oh my god, right!

Emily Stone: But that name, at Ellis Island, was changed to Stern.

Emily: Go on…

Emily: And our family name was Stern. I still have cousins named Stern. There’s no one directly related to me—except maybe this woman right here—other than my father and my mother named Stone. Because it was my grandfather who changed the name after the Second World War because he thought it would be more of a… well… sort of… neutral name.

Alex Whitmore: Fascinating.

Emily: And Emily means “industrious,” according to a baby-name book that I once had.

Alex: Alright. Well, I think we’re off to a good start here. So which of you became Emily Stone first?

Emily: 1978

Emily: 1985

Alex: What are the most fundamental characteristics that make Emily Stone ... Emily Stone? Go deep here.

Emily: I think being Emily Stone involves a drive to discover new things that comes out of a curiosity and intelligence blended together and that has produced an urge to travel and an interest in reading and literature, and through some of those interests discovering chocolate has become part of the story.

Alex: What are some adjectives that describe the essence of Emily Stone?

Emily: Other than industrious? Curious, inquisitive, sui generis, possibly eccentric.

Emily: E form Emily, E for Eccentric. I would agree with that. We have so much in common. It’s really amazing. One of the reasons that I like the name Emily Stone and that I think it’s a pretty solid reflection of my personality. Emily is pretty much a girly name, it’s got that feminine ring to it: I remember I had a little stool when I was a young girl with pink cursive lettering on it that said Emily. I always hated it because I was a big tomboy when I was younger. Now, I think there is a real femininity to the name Emily and kind of a delicateness to it. But at the same time, with a last name like Stone, there's that combination of a feminine mystique and tough-as-nails industriousness.

Emily: It’s definitely a powerhouse name.

Emily: Yeah, I get that comment a lot. Like, wow, that’s a great name! You know, there’s an actress named Emily Stone.

Emily: There’s a really prominent Ob-Gyn named Emily Stone. There’s a math professor. And there’s a woman who must have been pretty famous a long, long time ago because you find her obituary every time you google the name.

Alex: That’s a perfect segue into my next question…

Emily: What’s going to be in my obituary?

Alex: If you could not be Emily Stone, who would you be?

Emily: I would be Caroline, which is my second name. And I was named for my “godmother,” who recently passed away, so I would honor that name, for sure.

Emily: Part of going along with my dislike of the name Emily when I was younger, because I was such a tomboy, I always wanted to be named Alexandra and called Alex. I really liked girls' names that could also be guys' names. Like Sam and Chris and Alex…

Emily: Which are also good at the Fancy Food Show, because then you can bring all kinds of people in with the same badges and just swap them out, if you want to bring a big staff and save money.

Emily: Very true—we should have done that.

Emily: But speaking of versions of the name, what do people call you when you’re in Spanish-speaking countries or other foreign places?

Emily: Emilia, I get a lot of that.

Emily: What about EH-mily? That was me in Guatemala.

Emily: Yeah. I get a lot of Melanie, too. There are a couple store keepers in Punta Gorda who call me Melanie.

Emily: Any other names that you’ve taken on in Belize? How does the name manifest?

Emily: So in Belize they speak Mayan languages. There’s Kekchi Mayan and Mopan Mayan. And it’s funny because one of the leaders in the cacao industry in Belize has the last name Pek, a great guy, and that name actually means Stone in Kekchi. And the translation of Stone in Mopan is Tunich, so some of the staff call me Tunich as a nickname. What about in New York?

Emily: Oh, nothing as exciting.

Alex: So, we have to get to the question that I think we’re all wondering about.

Emily: Which is…

Alex: Who is the real Emily Stone? Who is more authentic?

Emily: I think there might be a showdown during Chocolate Week in Belize. I think we’re going to be put through some trials of identity.

Alex: How long can you keep this up for?

Emily: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful thing.

Emily: Yeah, I think this is a really harmonious coexistence.

Emily: Absolutely.

Emily: What about cases of mistaken identity?

Alex: That happened a lot on Saturday.

Emily: Actually, I think when we first found out about each other was when I had a friend who wrote a comment on your blog…

Emily: And wanted to meet up…

Emily: In Merida.

Emily: Yes!

Alex: If you were crossing over the Golden Gate Bridge and something magical happened and the next morning you woke up and you were in each other’s bodies, what would you do?

Emily: Oh. I would … I’m trying to picture your location … I think what I would do is get into a kayak. Would that be possible?

Emily: That’s possible.

Emily: So I would definitely get into a kayak and I would have some early morning outside time. And then I would survey a … possibly a warehouse?

Emily: Mm-hm.

Emily: This is kind of what I end up doing all the time anyway. To simultaneously pretend that I knew what I was doing and honor the job with 100% legitimacy, I would talk to people and find out what was going on. And I would figure out what I had to do next.

Alex: So you would gladly live that life?

Emily: Yeah, I would be there.

Emily: Come down any time!

Alex: What would you do, Emily?

Emily: Let’s see. I would read the New York Times. Do you get the New York Times?

Emily: Online.

Emily: Ok. I’d read the Times. And then I’d go through your chocolate samples and pick out some of the best. And at some point I’d drink some red wine, too—we don’t get much of that in Belize.

Emily: And if there were something you wanted to try in the chocolate world, you could probably get someone to send it over for delivery the next afternoon, so what would you request?

Emily: Well, I had one of Alan McClure’s bars recently, one of the special versions he made for the Chocolate Garage, which is one of the best chocolate bars I’ve ever had in my life. Incredible. So I’d put in an urgent call for a case of that.

Emily: When it arrives, I’ll just pack it up and bring it down with me to Belize.

Emily: Perfect, we’ll go out in a kayak and eat it.

Alex: This has been tremendously revealing.

Talking Chocolate in San Francisco

2013-01-17T12:53:00.001-05:00

Last week I spelled out some memorable names in the San Francisco chocolate industry. This weekend, I'll get to see the various people to whom those names are attached and also get a chance to do some hands-on research into other local names like Flying Noir, Sôcôla, and Casa de Chocolates. At the beginning of every year, the entire food industry descends on the San Francisco Bay Area, turning this fertile crescent into a kind of foodie general assembly. If you're looking for me (or your local cacao grower, chocolate maker, or confectioner) in the next week, try one of these events:

Fancy Food Show: Wholesalers and buyers come together to make deals and keep the food economy going while journalists look on, sampling cheese, pickles, artisan balsamic vinegar, high-end packaged cakes and cake mixes, and anything else that qualifies as "fancy." NewTree inevitably gets up to something during the show (this year, the once Europe-based company is securing its American roots by opening a new chocolate cafe in the Bay Area), Endangered Species Chocolate is promoting its new sustainable flavors, and Shawn Askinosie wins a Business Leadership Award.

Fine Chocolate Industry Association Meeting: Membership of this chocolate organization lingers in the low hundreds and I hear the conversations sometimes take on the overseriousness of an academic conference. But chocolate is a smart topic and the meeting brings together members of the maverick, intellectually-minded, sustainably-oriented "fine chocolate" community (rather than the more hype-driven "luxury" or "gourmet" chocolate worlds). Gail Ambrosius will speak and Martin Christy will hold a ceremony to personally congratulate winners of the International Chocolate Awards.

Good Food Awards: The categories are: beer, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, coffee, confections, pickles, preserves, and spirits. And the winners are: Well, if you want to be the first to find out you have to shell out $95 for a ticket to the awards gala tomorrow night. Or you can join the crowds at the Good Food marketplace at the Ferry Building on Saturday, where Amano, Madre, the brand new Bar au Chocolate, Lillie Belle Farms, and Feve Artisan Chocolatier will be in attendance no matter who wins.

Women Chefs and Restaurateurs Conference: They've been going for twenty years and they'll be talking organics with Nell Newman, transforming cookbooks into apps, and testing their excellence in a competition judged by former Citizen Caker and new Brooklynite Elizabeth Falkner.

Looking West: A San Francisco Chocolate Update

2013-01-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

"As we reflect on the accomplishments of the past years, we're setting new goals for 2013, ready to transcend the limits of our creativity and growth for you," wrote Michael and Jacky Recchiuti in an email to customers yesterday. And the couple has accomplished a staggering amount at the unassumingly exquisite Recchiuti Confections in the last twelve months. But the facts of their statement and the justifiably optimistic sentiment could apply just as well to the entire Bay Area chocolate industry. As the plugged-in chocolate makers at TCHO on the Embarcadero just posted on Twitter (in response to some online brouhaha about Belgium losing its place in the chocolate kingdom), "Where in the world... should the new #chocolate capitol be?? (ahem, #SanFrancisco, ahem!?)"

Chocolate has as much history as gold in San Francisco, and the local trade in confections has long outlasted that in malleable metals. Gold Rush era chocolate makers included the European immigrants Domenico Ghirardelli and Etienne Guittard. In the 20th century Alice Medrich (maybe you could call her the Alice Waters of the chocolate world) and John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg continued the process of adapting old world traditions to these more lush, wilder, western surroundings. In 2013, firmly entrenched in the 21st century of the Georgian calendar and at the beginning of a new Mayan calendar cycle, North Americans have become some of the world's leading artisan chocolatiers and chocolate makers--and the Bay Area is the best place to celebrate their work.

Recchiuti Confections: Michael and Jacky Recchiuti have been Dogpatch residents for over 15 years. They brought their shared passions for travel, fine food, pastry, independent music, and independent businesses to this former industrial neighborhood when they started Recchiuti Confections. Friends and lucky journalists sometimes stopped by the company's factory space, entertained by a drum set in one corner, an espresso machine outfitted for Blue Bottle coffee in another, rooms full of perfectly tempered chocolates and precisely chilled ganache. But only the occasional customer who signed up for a workshop on, say, salt and chocolate pairings, ever got to ride the freight elevator into the production space. Fans could visit the Recchiuti retail outpost at the Ferry Building foodie mecca and sometimes even find Michael and Jacky there among the dragees, C3 triple caramel boxes, and little black boxes of bon bons (transcendent, yes). But it wasn't until they started playing with the Little Nib concept around Valentine's Day of last year, eventually opening a permanent shop at 807 22nd Street, that the nationally renowned Recchiuti Confections became the neighborhood business that the owners had always envisioned. And a few months ago, they recruited the local artists and designers Eric Heid, Flora Grubb, and Nate Watson to help them outfit yet another neighborhood space for a Recchiuti project--the Chocolate Lab "sweet and savory" cafe. "Jacky and I live across from the cafe, which allows us to support both the chocolate biz and cafe with no commute issues," Michael told me recently. "I think the Chocolate Lab will remain a destination place in Dogpatch. We would like to keep this place special and local."

Dandelion Chocolate: Set out from the Dogpatch, walk up and over Potrero Hill, and you're in the Mission. Valencia Street circa 2013 is an all-American story of revitalization, oversaturation, diversity, gentrification, and above all else foodie-ism. Among the new neighbors are Cameron, Todd, and Alice from Dandelion Chocolate. "Cameron and I starting making chocolate in a garage in early 2010. Originally we were just experimenting with beans, roasts, making machines, and learning about chocolate," former techie Todd Masonis just told me over email. "We think that San Francisco truly is the chocolate city and has a long history of chocolate makers and chocolatiers. We felt that the loss of Scharffen Berger left a huge void and gave us something to aspire to. Eventually, after countless tests and roasts, we shared our chocolate with friends and family and were overwhelmed with the response. We decided to take our chocolate to the Underground Market and were surprised at how many people liked it. From there we decided to turn it into a business." And the business is growing. They've been nominated for a Good Food Award, they're on the shelves at Bi-Rite markets and Fog City News, and they're adored by the kids at 826 Valencia. They have a cafe in the works, too, which with any luck will be open by this year's Saint Valentine's Day.

Charles Chocolates: You might not have heard this name too often in recent months. That's because the company that started across the San Francisco Bay in Emeryville in 2004 and relocated to prime real estate in the Westfield Centre in SoMa a handful of years later unexpectedly filed for bankcruptcy in 2011. Charles, or Chuck, Siegel is the playful purveyor of Chocolate Butterflies, the Asiaphile who introduced a line of delicately bold Chinese tea-infused candies, and an avid supporter of bloggers and other upstarts. (I learned most of what I needed to know about chocolate during a layover in 2006 when he invited me into his East Bay kitchen). A shrewd executive, Chuck's planning a comeback this season, also in the Mission. If we're all lucky the master chocolatier will be working with couverture supplied by Dandelion and other American micro chocolate makers. I had a chance to talk to emeritus Bay Area chocolatier Alice Medrich about Chuck once and she told me that he has "this enthusiasm and passion and lack of attitude and just this real... what’s the word? He wasn’t and isn’t... What am I trying to say? He has a good and sophisticated palate but he isn’t snobby in any way. He makes delicious things, he’s uncompromising about his quality, and now that I see him back in his business it just seems like it was always meant to be."

New York, New York Chocolate: A Two-Beans Homecoming

2012-12-31T17:25:00.000-05:00

Let's say you woke up one morning in a small town in the American interior, or in a small city in the European Union, or for that matter on a small island in the middle of the Pacific, and you decided it was time to come home. And let's just say that home for you is a city of 8 million people with 22 subway lines and three airports that service a hundred million passengers a year, well established as the second most expensive American housing market after San Francisco but home to the cheapest and best pizza and quickie manicures in the land, and currently host to the Under the Radar theater festival and High Line art. And let's say that a train journey were part of your homecoming. Then New York's Grand Central Terminal would be your point of entry.

And you would be very lucky, because about 250 feet from Grand Central's Main Concourse, just one block away, is the month-old 2 Beans. The double-doored shop (go right and you're at the coffee counter, break left and you find yourself in front of floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with chocolate bars from Akesson's, Amano, Amedei, and onward through the alphabet. "We have partnered with Illy Coffee because we feel their product is superior to the rest--they provide the high quality and the coffee business knowledge we were looking for," says Steve Kravets (whose title is Director of Procurement). "But we source chocolate from all over the world because we feel that people are getting more educated and are looking to explore more." Together with 2 Beans' CEO Hans Heer, who previously worked with the Food Emporium supermarket to create Manhattan's first artisan chocolate boutique, and a management team composed of veterans of acronymed grocery businesses (A&P, C&S), Steve has curated a chocolate collection that includes at least five brands not available anywhere else in the city. His exclusive supply includes Vietnamese Marou, which landed on my own chocolate map earlier this year, as well as foreign-to-me names like Spagnvola and Beschle, for which I can only hope an invitation to taste is forthcoming in 2013.

New York is a story like so many that I've worked on--I get compelled by the details and immersed in the narrative, and then I put the draft down only to discover it again later with surprise and fascination. If you've been following my wandering on Chocolate in Context over the last months--or years--you'll know that I'm a proud New Yorker who's been living just about everywhere else. But the little allegory in the first paragraph of this blog post is a thinly veiled autobiography. In other words, I couldn't be happier that Manhattan finally has a fully stocked artisan chocolate boutique and cafe in 2 Beans, because I'm back in town and planning to stay.

Chocolate Pairing Perfection: Smokey Blue Truffles and LBV Port

2012-12-23T17:29:00.002-05:00

Last year at this time, I was riding the "through train" south from Mainland China into Hong Kong to meet an Englishman of roughly Ecuadoran extraction whom I referred to affectionately as my "gentleman friend." This Christmas I'm staying a little closer to home and the aforementioned fellow no longer occupies the same position, though he is still a gentleman and a friend, and I would still refer to him affectionately as each of those things. He's also responsible for introducing me to one of the great symbols of British holiday spirit (and of one of the world's first modern bilateral trade agreements): Port and Stilton.

I'm inclined to repeat the experiment. But this year, I'm shifting my focus away from the catch-all emporium of Anglo items known as the Marks and Spencer food store (a haven during my expatriate days in Asia) and toward artisan products with which I've been lucky to become familiar. That means an American blue cheese and a bottle of famous fortified wine from one of the distilleries along the Douro in Oporto (or more accurately in Vila Nova de Gaia, just across the river from the city that gives the wine its name). And -- because I'm the one writing the story -- the tasting also includes an inventive addition of chocolate.

I'm talking about the bizarre, sultry, palate-mesmerizing Smokey Blue truffles made with a blend of west-coast blue-veined goodness and Costa Rican couverture by the charming, long-haired Jeff Shepherd of Lillie Belle Farms in Oregon. And my glass of choice is a late-bottled vintage from the Sandeman Cellers, since I'm lured in by the brand's 85-year-old silhouetted caped crusader (an image that adorns every bottle).

The hints of cherry and raspberry in a ruby port make that young version of the Portuguese dessert wine the first choice for chocolate pairings. But many a sommelier will steer you closer to a stronger, taller, and nuttier tawny port when it comes to blue cheese. The LBV I settled on -- a slightly older and wiser wine that takes on the characteristics of dried fruits and even chocolate itself, lingering longer after the first sip -- can suit both the chocolate and the cheese.

Perfect matches take work. It's worthwhile to ask for a little help. In Oporto, you could turn to the wine book at the stately Yeatman Hotel or to the extraordinarily delightful family owners of O Arco da Ribeira at the river's edge ("you're traveling alone?" they said to me when I visited, "sit down for a glass of wine and some roast chicken"). I worked closer in this weekend and called Eric at the Winery on 116th and Broadway in Manhattan.

Looking East: Chocolate and the Former Soviet Bloc

2012-12-17T00:02:00.000-05:00

The farthest east I've ever been in Europe is Vienna, home of the Hotel Sacher and its namesake Sacher Torte. But I come from a family of Eastern European Jews, who came from the various places that were variously parts of Russia and the Soviet Union in the 20th century. A Ukrainian baker I know, in a gracious gesture toward our shared heritage, recently went home for vacation and returned with a bar of something called either "Climor" or "Cbimor." The wrapper I'm sure identified the bar as a Nestle brand but the unmemorable chocolate appears to be impossible to track online using the Latin alphabet.

It wasn't until I was browsing the shelves at Chocolátl in Amsterdam, though, that the Lithuanian-made Naive chocolate (also available at Fernandez and Wells in England but nowhere particular in the US yet) tipped me off about a burgeoning artisan chocolate scene within the borders of the Warsaw Pact. A. Korkunov produces chocolate in Russia and provides extensive information online and in Russian. Academy of Chocolate award winner Rózsavölgyi in Hungary has a bilingual website, an extensive product line that includes Porcelana origin bars and hazelnut dragees. Polish Manufaktura Czekolady (also known as Chris and Tom) has equally impressive packaging and ingredients, with a website that prompts enrollment in a immersion class.

Yet another trip to add to the wish list.

Basic Belgian: Chocolate Speculoos Pie

2012-12-09T20:38:00.000-05:00

Three weeks ago, my friend the artist Luc Vandervelde told me that "You missed the best city in Europe. You eat better than in Paris. Better art than in Berlin. More relaxed than Lisbon. Only it rains a lot." Brussels.

I had been in Paris. Paris to Belgium is a quick trip on the TGV for the professional classes and a cheap one for the student set on the international budget zeitgeist Megabus. But Paris was the quick trip from Lisbon, which was itself undertaken as a quick trip from London, a move I made from New York because the whole thing was so much quicker and easier than anything I had up to that point undertaken in China. I dwell in Possibility. All of life is possibly a quick trip from one place to another place. But to my knowledge you can still only be on one trip at a time. You can't take every turn.

Belgium remains a page unturned for me. But I know some of the basic joys of the Belgian kitchen, including the chocolate, of course, and the weird and incredible combination of crushed cinnamon cookies with peanut-butter-like preparation known as speculoos. And I know from experience that you can find these things as easily in your local Trader Joe's as in the capital of the European Union, and that they can be the sources of both a very basic pie and a very basic pleasure.

Recipe:

Chocolate Speculoos Pie

Pie dough, prepared by you or someone else

1/2 cup hazelnuts, with the skin removed

1 cup heavy cream

7oz/200g Belgian dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces

1 tablespoon butter

pinch of salt

1/2 cup speculoos (don't refrigerate it)

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.

Spread the hazelnuts out on a baking tray and place them in the oven for about ten minutes, shaking the tray once or twice to move them around, until they are browned but not burnt.

If someone hasn't already done this for you. Roll out the dough and fit it into a pie dish or aluminum pie pan. Bake the crust for about 30 minutes, or until it's golden brown all over. Remove the crust from the oven and allow it to cool completely. You can turn the oven off--you're done with the baking.

Meanwhile, bring the cream to a simmer over medium-low heat, and then switch off the heat right away. Add the chocolate and whisk while the chocolate melts. Add the butter and continue to whisk until everything is melted and combined. Allow this ganache to cool to room temperature, too, whisking once or twice.

When everything's ready. Use a rubber spatula to spread an even layer of speculoos above the pie crust to create the bottom layer of your pie (be careful not to spread too vigorously or you'll dig up the crust). Pour the ganache on top of the speculoos until the pie crust is full but not overflowing (you'll likely have a little bit extra--you'll find a use for it very easily).

Refrigerate the pie for an hour and then gently press the hazelnuts into the top of the pie in a ring around the inside of the crust. Eat the pie right away or keep it refrigerated until you do.

Note:

You can save all the leftovers (and bake small circles of extra rolled out pie dough) to make quick chocolate speculoos sandwich cookies.