few weeks ago, Seventy% was invited to Nicaragua to give two Slow Chocolate workshops to a group of farmers, producers and other representatives from the cacao world.  We had the great pleasure in meeting Carlos Mann, founder of Momotombo Chocolate and one of the most promising artisan chocolate makers in Central America.

Carlos Mann at the Momotombo factory store

“Our first recipe was a simple roasted peanut chocolate. And, the first one that made me proud was our cashew and aged rum variety,” says Carlos Mann passionately, admitting that making chocolate had not been his ambition in the first place. So, how did his journey begin?

Fresh mango

It started years ago, during his days in California. As a former illustrator, who spent some time in San Francisco working at a video game studio, he quickly became a foodie just by living in the Mission District, searching every corner of the neighbourhood for tasty bites.

The Mission is the old Mexican quarter of the city where almost every Latin American country has some culinary representation. Mexican, Brazilian, Cuban, Peruvian, Salvadorian, Argentinean food and even Nicaraguan food is available and that was something that strongly inspired Carlos. ‘I started cooking some of the food I tasted in the streets and restaurants all around the city. For the first time in my life, I also went to museums, taking in the so-called fine art of the world and getting tuned in to the underground art scene of San Francisco,” he explains.

Food and art. The perfect combination Carlos needed in order to evolve and found Momotombo Chocolates some years later.

The flavours of Nicaraguan food

Making traditional chocolate drinks

The food and smell of his childhood are still fresh in his mind. He recalls what a superb cook his grandmother was and what a sugar freak he was. “I had seven cavities by the time I was six. All from stealing and eating her cakes, pies and sweets.”

What was your favourite dish she prepared for you?

“Farmer’s lasagna (lasagna campesina) made with tortillas instead of pasta, cream infused with green chiles (instead of tomatoes) and shredded white wine chicken. She also cooked amazing soups, such as our speciality soup in Nicaragua, “sopa criolla.”

However, Carlos tells us a story that could be seen as a premonition of Momotombo Chocolate.

In the 1920’s, his great grandfather arrived from Italy to open the first candy and chocolate factory in Nicaragua. “In a typical Nicaraguan drama, he fathered my grandfather Octavio out of wedlock with a native woman.  He did not recognise him formally as his son. So our family did not carry on a relationship with him or his other children. I don’t know much about him, but it’s my understanding that none of his legitimate children had interest in the trade and that his candy business eventually shut down,” he says.

Momotombo fresh chocolates

After years living in California and spending a year in India, Carlos decided to go back to Nicaragua. Perhaps, the craving for his grandmother’s dishes and the link to his Italian ancestry were too intrinsically linked. Intuitively, he needed to continue his culinary journey back in his native country.

“I started having extremely vivid dreams of cacao”

Carlos with Martin Christy – two fellow cacao worshipers attached to a tree

“I think chocolate began to work its effect on me. In late 2004, I was bombarded by images of cacao. Every book I looked at seemed to have references of cacao. Traveling around Nicaragua I came across artisan chocolates that amazed me.  I started having extremely vivid dreams of cacao.

I went to the market, bought myself a Clay Comal (for toasting cacao) and ten pounds of unfermented market cacao. I roasted it and started eating cacao.”

Carlos started writing down many recipes that he wanted to try. With the help of his friend Sonia, he began in earnest.

Evolution from fresh to refined chocolate

His recipes were coming along nicely and he now had some guidelines for an original recipe. It required minimal processing and could be produced in any farm or home in Nicaragua with locally available technology. It had to be fresh and un-tempered. And finally, Carlos needed to use natural local ingredients for flavouring: fruits, nuts, spices, herbs, seeds and flowers.

He would go to the market and stand in line with all the ladies waiting to hire the corn mill to make dough for “tortillas”. When his turn came, he and Sonia washed the mill before running his cacao through it. “That is how we got our cacao liquor for the first 18 months we made chocolate,” he explains.

At that time, he stubbornly decided that if he couldn’t figure out how to make good chocolate with the unfermented cacao from the market, he wouldn’t even bother trying to get hold of -fermented cacao. So for the first year and half, he only made chocolate with unfermented cacao. “I just didn’t worry about it. All our recipes had to be designed to tame that wild flavour.”

After a couple months, he made a chocolate that fit the image of what he had in mind. They called it fresh chocolate. “It is essentially an un-tempered dark milk chocolate. It is full of moisture and so mixes well with fresh ingredients such as fruits,” he adds.

About three years ago, the Nicaragua government recognized it as a new form of chocolate by including it in the national food codex as “Fresh Chocolate” (Chocolate Fresco).

Momotombo fresh chocolate selection

Nowadays, Momotombo produces eight varieties of refined bars, from dark milk to 70% dark chocolate. Some of them contain hand peeled cacao beans, others contain cashew nuts, coconut, sesame seeds, peanuts or dried banana (all endemic products of Nicaragua). The company also produces 70% baking chocolate blocks.

“The flavour of our chocolate bars really change constantly all year round. We produce micro batches and we produce varieties on a whim or according to the seasons. We simply buy what’s interesting or seems appropriate at the time. Sometimes we make bars that are fruity, sometimes nutty, sometimes something else. It’s just like buying good ingredients for a great meal,” explains Carlos.

Nicaraguan cacao has delicate hazelnut, tobacco, rum and coffee notes. Carlos buys directly from farms that have a high overall level of criollo flavours in their cacao as well as from some than have more acidic fruity flavours derived from wilder varietals.

In 2006, he founded Momotombo Chocolate. Its name comes from the volcano that stands on the shore of Lake Managua. Thirteen women work at the chocolate factory that has become an icon of artisan chocolatiers in Nicaragua. Momotombo has three shops in Managua and periodically ships its truffles to Palo Alto and Brooklyn.

Most of Momotombo's team are women

Carlos explains that even though it is a challenge making chocolate in Managua, due to the tropical heat, a limited supply of chocolate equipment and petty corruption, it is still incredibly interesting and exciting making chocolate in Nicaragua. “The ingredients available here are any chef’s dream!”

And what is your dream?

I want to bring back the old, almost-forgotten recipes and techniques of cacao transformation and production used in Nicaragua.

And I want to see my country harness the power of cacao to transform itself into a nation of chocolate makers and expert cacao cultivators. Chocolate is a fitting, proper means of reversing poverty.

The post Chocolates made in Nicaragua appeared first on Seventy%.

Maricel Presilla shows her James Beard award at her Zafra restaurant

aricel Presilla (born Santiago de Cuba) is truly versatile. As a chef, she has cooked for President Obama at the White House. Her two restaurants, Cucharamama and Zafra, and food store and bakery Ultramarinos, embody the spirit of Latin America in the New York area as a result of her constant exploration for the best Latin American food in its country of origin. (For Maricel, a tapado soup in Rio Blanco, Guatemala, could be as inspiring as a rabbit terrine served near Notre Dame in Paris.)

As a cacao expert, she likes to get her hands dirty by visiting cacao plantations in Central and South America, not only to speak to the farmers, but to examine the pod colours and shape, open them up, bite into the seeds and taste them,  in order to determine the best cacao varietal.

As a writer and medievalist, she has written the ‘New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes’ and is about to publish a bible on ‘Gran Cocina Latina’, (WW Norton), where every little region has an extraordinary secret to share.

And if that is not enough, last week, the James Beard Foundation awarded her the Best Chef Mid-Atlantic prize – an Oscar in terms of food – at the Lincoln Center in New York City.

Seventy% had the pleasure and honour of speaking to her.

What was your earliest dream?

To explore the world.

What was your very first job?

Selling lemonade at a Cuban political rally when I was a child, but that lasted only one hour until I was told by a soldier to close shop because private vendors should not be making a profit in a socialist country.

Who was your mentor?

For cooking, I trained with the late Peruvian chef Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, the first to introduce the concept of tapas to the Unites States. He was the long-time assistant of James Beard.

As a graduate student of medieval history, my mentor was the famous medievalist and prolific author Norman F. Cantor. He had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

For cacao, I learned a lot with Venezuelan cacao agronomist the late Humberto Reyes and his wife Lilian, a cacao pathologist.

Did you ever consider another career apart from being a chef or food writer?

I had been programmed (genetically, I believe) to be a history or literature professor, or an anthropologist. But I would have loved to have been a geographer or an archaeologist.

You have travelled throughout Latin America in search of the best food. Where did you find it?

I always find good food, even in the most improbable places. Mexico has an embarrassment of culinary riches, but Peru and Ecuador, in South America, have wonderful regional cuisines. I am currently smitten with Ecuadorian food and obsessed with Nacional cacao.

As a chocolate expert, what are the main signs of good chocolate?

Maricel Presilla doing research at the San Joaquin farm in the plains of Venezuela in the late 1990′s. Once owned by Chocolates El Rey, the farm no longer exists as it was occupied by squatters with the support of the current government of President Hugo Chávez.

I have always looked for round chocolates that tickle my palate with a variety of sensory experiences, that linger in my mouth for a long time. I appreciate the combination of complementary flavour notes: the lush acidity of dark fruit, the soothing calm of nuts, the complex sweetness of brown loaf sugar, and the subtle jolt of spice.

But I am learning to appreciate more dominant single notes of wood and herbs, or the assertive floral aromas that are characteristic of some rare Ecuadorian cacaos with strong Nacional blood.

What varietal flavours make a perfect chocolate?

I have always been partial to nutty Venezuelan criollos like Porcelana or Guasare or more complex trinitarios with a strong criollo blood and round dark fruit from places like Barlovento, Cuyagua or Chuao, but now my palate is more refined and I appreciate the inherent quality of other Latin American cacaos.

I now enjoy the black olive notes of a Nicaraguan cacao (as in Duffy’s  Nicaragua Nicaliso) or the deeply herbal nature of a Pacari Raw Ecuadorian cacao from Los Ríos.

Who would you invite to your ideal dinner party?

Twelve is the magic number of guests for me because they will fit snugly around my 18^th century Filipino table.

I would invite people of all ages (dead or alive) and from different walks of life to keep the conversation lively. I would invite James Beard for obvious reasons. Anton Mosimann, a refined Swiss chef with a restaurant in London (a true gourmand who enjoys my food and my restaurants), Prince Charles (because I like the way he thinks and writes about organic food and sustainability), and Oliver Sacks, a famous neuroscientist who adores Latin American food. Hoping that he would play the saxophone after dinner, I would ask my Cuban friend, Paquito de Rivera, a fantastic jazz musician, to join us.

Of course, I would include some of my chocolate friends. Santiago Peralta of Pacari Chocolate is one of the best dining companions I know.

Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate would fly from Utah to New Jersey to eat anything I cook for him and would bring his delicious chocolates.

Paul A Young would sit by my side and keep me entertained telling me about his latest flavour experiments, and Martin Christy, who has a discriminating palate, would be at the head of the table talking about his latest chocolate and cacao adventures. He would be pleased with the certainty that I would go out of my way to prepare special vegetarian Latin American dishes just for him.

Susana Cárdenas Overstall and Monica Meschini would also be at the table. Susana will cheer when I serve roasted ripe plantain with a peanut condiment from her home region, and Monica, who is very choosy and opinionated, will test my culinary abilities and keep my use of cilantro to a discreet minimum.

What would you serve?

I would start with my Caribbean squash soup laced with cacao and a small torchon of foie gras (for the non-vegetarians) and a spoonful of Ecuadorian mantequilla blanca (a type of crème fraîche) from Manabí.

I will follow with my Cuban-style fresh corn polenta topped with shrimp in vanilla and chipotle sauce and a touch of chocolate and cacao.

As a main course, it would be a contest. My Cuban-style roast pork with a side of mote (Ecuadorian hominy) and roasted oca, an Andean tuber, and rice and vegetarian Cuban black beans. This is always a hit. But I also enjoy a pan-roasted breast of duck with crispy skin, thinly sliced and served over a tamarillo (tree tomato) mole sauce laced with chocolate flavored with Andean mortiño and a side of Manabí-style roasted ripe plantain with the peanut condiment called salprieta.

For dessert, expect something creamy and delicious made with chocolate, but also a tasting of at least a dozen chocolates made with Latin American cacaos paired with special after dinner drinks.

What is your biggest extravagance?

Buying a very expensive and huge Spanish Renaissance wooden door (from a palace no less) in New York and shipping it to my house in Spain and paying a special import sales tax for it.

What is your greatest disappointment?

Not to be able to help the cacao farmers of Cuba’s Jauco region, including my own family. While I have been able to commercialise the cacao of small farms in countries like Venezuela, the state-controlled cacao industry of Cuba does not allow anyone to deal directly with Cuban farmers.

And your greatest achievement?

Three milestones come to mind. My cacao and chocolate books The New Taste of Chocolate for Ten Speed Press (2001 and 2009), the chocolate bars I was able to create with the late Robert Steinberg with cacao from my favorite farm in Venezuela, and my most recent award for Outstanding Best-Chef Mid-Atlantic given to me by the prestigious James Beard Foundation on May 7, 2012.

Maricel Presilla is the first Latin American woman and the third woman in history to win this award. She is a member of the Grand Jury for the International Chocolate Awards taking place in London from 28 May – 3 June.

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The International Chocolate Awards are an independent organisation, partnering with fine chocolate experts and organisations in different countries with independent verification and oversight.

The first year’s Awards will run in 2012 in Italy, the UK and the USA with other countries in progress. The first Grand Final will be held in Chocolate Week, 8-14 October, in the London. In future years the final will rotate around different locations.

The International Chocolate Awards are completely independent of any other fine chocolate organisation, but will work with associations and other partners in each particpating country. The Awards are overseen by an International Advisory Committee, an Entrants committee and the judging is overseen by an independent, international Grand Jury. For full details and our committment to fairness and transparency, see the awards website at www.internationalchocolateawards.com.

European Semi-final, London, 28 May 2012

The European Semi-final of the International Chocolate Awards will take place 28 May – 1 June in London. Judging will be in all categories, including origin and plain dark chocolate bars.

If you are a chocolate company, details of how to enter are at www.internationalchocolateawards.com/entry-forms.

The Americas Semi-final will be held in New York in September. Details of the dates and how to enter for US, Canadian, Latin American and Caribbean companies will be available soon.

Italian National Competitions – results

On 14 April, Seventy% and Chocolate Week packed their suitcases and took off for Tuscany to organise the Italian National Chocolate Awards with Italian chocolate expert, Monica Meschini.

Over 100 chocolate products were entered from all over Italy, with judges from Florence, Milan, Rome and London gathering in the Medici’s villa in Artimino for a non-stop contest lasting three days.

Some of the Judging team at Artimino

The winners of 12 categories were announced last week. Highlights included a gold for ‘Lattesal’ from Domori and Slitti’s ‘Riccosa’ , which took Gold in milk chocolate spreads.

The winners will compete alongside the best of the European and Americas semi-finals (London, May 2012 & New York, Sept 2012). Tthe Grand Final will take place during Chocolate Week in London, 8-14 October.

The post International Chocolate Awards‏‏ appeared first on Seventy%.

The aroma is clean sweet tobacco and red fruits, with a little greenness and sulphur.

The flavour travels from tobacco/fruit, then into polenta, then rising prune notes, into ginger, fading into ginger biscuit. Light fruit and spice afterwards. Certainly strong and punchy, with a sharp almost leather spike at it’s peak. This really hits you, but is quite typical of the bean source. All this is probably helped by the Cuban raw cacao, which will have it’s own presence, adding molasses and fruit.

Texture is thick fudge, which comes from Willie’s ‘minimum meddling’ approach. (Though a lighter roast could take this a step further).

There’s a digestive biscuit / shortbread note in the after taste, which I often associate with over-stirring, making the fat (the cocoa butter) too ‘short’. I could be wrong though. Otherwise the after taste is pleasant if strong and not too tannic. There are slight metallic hints and a little waxiness towards the end, but the flavour gets you past these.

For me, this is the surprise star of Willie’s range, quite eatable despite the spikey leather/fruit punch and delivering notes true to the bean source.

The post Willie’s Delectable Cacao – Indonesian 69 – Review appeared first on Seventy%.

Well moulded, capped off smoothly on the bottoms

Firm ganache

Local cream, enrobing matches filling

Dos Rios Palet D’Or

About 5 seconds in the full flavour of Amano’s Dos Rios hits the tongue, delicate rose water, lavender, a hint of mint, then the cream comes in, warming up the flavours with a dusty chocolate effect while hitting some top notes of lime. The ending is delicate tea – less tannic than in the bar, followed by a hint of salt.

I’ve always been a fan of Dos Rios (having had some involvement in its origin), but have found it be more of an ‘interesting’ chocolate rather than a bar to sit down and eat. I suspected though that the strength of Dos Rios would really show when it’s worked with, and this ganache really proves that.

Or put more simply, I could happily eat a box of these!

Guayas Palet D’Or

On first smelling the palet, there’s a chocolatey, ginger aroma. When cut, a more delicate cream cheese comes out.

On biting, a pleasant crunch from the shell combines well with the ganache – which as mentioned before is not at all runny.

The flavour is quite strong, with spicy raisin flavour, running into honey and cream and getting more delicate as we go – back to biscuit and ginger towards the end, with a warm spicy after-taste. After eating, the feeling is of having had a well made hot chocolate.

A nice journey and quite satisfying. This one went down very well.

Ocumare Palet D’Or

It’s not that often that the aroma of a bonbon is a significant factor, but as the featured origin palets are also enrobed in the chosen chocolate, then sniffing the bonbon is just as relevant as when trying a bar. In this case, it’s strong, full, wood, current, a little spice and tobacco and dark fruits – all the elements we’d expect from a chocolate made with Ocumare cacao.

The mould is a ‘double reverse wedge’ shape, so splitting the chocolate in half with a knife gives you two nicely shareable pieces. More fruit comes out of the aroma of the ganache, a little more of a fermented head.

Once on the tongue, the flavour simply pours out, like an Islay whisky, peaty and toppy, until the cream kicks in and we’re into a pleasant black forest gateau – full forest fruits and cream.

The after flavour is very correct – chocolate and fruit, no deviations. Actually makes you want to sit and enjoy even just a small piece for several minutes.

Not sure if there’s something genetic here, but Ocumare always makes me happy. This ganache does it in spades. Eat it slow for maximum effect!

(A side note here – eat chocolate too fast, and it will generally seem more tannic if it is a tannic bean. This is something we’ve discovered from our ‘melt or munch’ test, as featured in our workshops. Let this ganache melt slowly and you will be rewarded with a creamy chocolate fruit hit at the end. Go too fast, and while it will still be good, it will appear tannic at the end. Definitely ‘melt only’ for Ocumare!)

Yemeni Sidr Honey with Guayas chocolate

This honey ganache comes in a lightly sprayed polygonal mould. Inside is a light ganache combined with one of the world’s most expensive honeys. (Not even sure it can be bought in the UK, but would fetch about £130/kilo!)

On cutting, there’s a good, sweet spice golden treacle aroma. Floral honey is a typical note of Nacional – the heritage Ecuador cacao variety, so Guayas makes an interesting base that should support and emphasise the honey.

The first taste is dominated by the chocolate. The honey is rather delicate at the beginning, combining with the chocolate to create some spice, then rising in a gentle golden syrup note, which takes over the palate but is never strident.

The flavour is beautiful and long lasting, the chocolate ultimately acting as a great carrier for the honey. This is honey at its best, without being too sweet or too overpowering.

Key Lime with Guayas chocolate

One of the most striking in appearance of the Amano collection, sprayed in green and dashed in white. This really says ‘lime’, but personally I’m not keen on food colourings used in chocolates – perhaps a necessary evil to attract attention, but when you already have the best of ingredients, flavour should be enough.

Even the uncut chocolate has a lime note, which is pungent and stronger when cut. The flavour is violet/lime cream, with the bitterness expected from key limes coming at the end with a creamy pudding end.

If you like key limes, this will surely appeal, but personally I’m a fan of the green Persian type that has a citrus zing and makes a great mojito.

Yuzu white chocolate ganache

This is a first – white chocolate made by Amano, never before tasted as it’s not something they produce as a retail bar. (Made though with bought-in cocoa butter, as is the case with almost all chocolate makers, though perhaps this might change in the future.)

Fans of William Curley in the UK will be familiar with this Japanese citrus, yuzu, which has a delicate flavour somewhat like grapefruit, but more intense and without the bitterness.

Trying the chocolate, the aroma comes mostly from the milk powder in the white chocolate, with only a hint of the yuzu.

On tasting, the ganache does not feel too sweet, considering it’s made with white chocolate. At first the creamy white milk really dominates, but just when you think the yuzu will only remain a faint background note, it springs through and gradually rises, dominating by the end. The finish is a really fresh, bursting but subtle citrus with spice and apricot hints. A surprisingly light success for a recipe that could have been cloyingly sweet. Not unlike a whipped dessert.

Raspberry ganache with Guayas chocolate

The Californian raspberry ganache is merely enrobed in white chocolate, and beautifully sprayed with a red top. The ganache is again Guayas – the origin of choice it seems for ganaches in the Amano collection.

The aroma is sweet raspberry milk chocolate, suggesting something mild and sweet. A few moments in though, there’s an almost shocking hit of pure raspberry, which quickly turns into the exact flavour of a good vanilla ice cream dribbled with a raspberry coulis sauce – an impressive effect!

The after taste is to die for and carries on forever. Forget eating a tub of Häagen-Dazs, just eat half of one of these!

Cinnamon Ganache with candied pecans

The candied pecans in this case are on the top of the palet and are rather excellent, but you need to make sure you get some of these when you bite into the ganache, to get the full effect of the combination.

The ganache itself is a good, clean, cinnamon with cream coming towards the end. Worthy, but no fireworks on its own. With the crunch and flavour of the pecans though, the experience is very moreish, not too sweet and creating something of an upmarket candy bar feel. After taste is long-lasting and appropriately chocolate and nut. Does what it says on the label, and does it very well.

Cardamon and pepper ganache with Dos Rios chocolate

Dos Rios is a very distinctively flavoured chocolate in its own right – orange flower water, lavender, rose, green tea are just some of the typical notes.

That’s an interesting, yet challenging starting point for a flavoured ganache. Fruit flavours are likely to get lost or confused with the natural notes of the chocolate. Something in opposition and complimentary is required. Spices like cardamom and pepper seem a pretty good choice.

The aroma is surprisingly cheesy, with just a little orange. This is all the more of a surprise as there’s no cheese hint once you taste the chocolate. The flavour, which is overwhelmingly the Dos Rios notes, with the spices kicking subtly in after a few seconds.

This is pretty much a Dos Rios ganache ‘plus’. The cardamom and pepper adding just a touch of complexity and drying out the fruitiness a little. Equally as enjoyable as the plain version, this is perhaps a little more approachable and balanced than the more exotic unflavoured Dos Rios, unlikely as that sounds.

Tangerine ganache with Ocumare milk chocolate

For the only milk chocolate based ganache of the collection, the aroma of the uncut chocolate is actually quite spicy with no hint of sweetness. When cut we get warm tangerine and milk chocolate, which floods the mouth with flavour on eating.

As well as the tangerine, there’s a wine or whisky note going on, generated I would say by the fruit interacting with the milk and those spicy Ocumare beans.

If you had to use one (or two) words to sum up this collection, it would be after-taste. The length is generally fantastic – clean and pure, maintaining the flavour notes found during eating. This is particularly true of the Dos Rio Palate d’Or, the Yemeni Sidr honey and the Raspberry ganache.

and just goes to show that ingredient selection (chocolate

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On the nose this bar is quite beautiful.  It is a little reserved at first with pronounced touches of vanilla and a certain grassy edge before lovely stone fruits reminiscent of nectarine, and red berries emerge.  There is also an interestingly sweet and slightly spicy back note adding depth and balance.

Even with such an evocative aroma, it is on the palette that this bar really shines and from the outset the flavour sets out to mirror the nose. The initial delivery is rich in a mix of ripe, sweet nectarine, apricot and red fruit notes that seem to drift between glacé cherry and, in time, slightly acidulous currants. The tannins are quite firm here which helps to stop the whole becoming too sweetly fruity or cloying. We begin to see some cedary qualities heading into the finish, in which the stone fruit returns alongside the tannins.  The melt is good, quite silky with few sandy or fudgy qualities to speak of.

This is a highly accomplished and rather fruity outing from Amano and there are few criticisms one could raise here, aside from the vanilla being a little unnecessary given the bean’s naturally charming and complex character. The ideal roasting point seems to have been found and the beans allowed to express themselves freely with minimal detractions. In short this is a beautiful and rather individual Venezuelan, highly recommended.

The post Amano Montanya 70% appeared first on Seventy%.

On the nose there is an instant spicy and slightly woody impression alongside fresh tobacco leaf and a little anise; quite unusual and while not particularly exuberant, it is certainly intriguing.

In the mouth this bar is near perfect in texture which only adds to the delivery of a wonderfully balanced range of flavours. Initial sweetness drifts into blackcurrant before a deep and tobacco rich profile emerges. There are hints of anise and dry spices adding complexity and interest before the cedar wood notes from the nose lead into an even, slightly drying finish.

This was the first of the Friis Holm bars I tasted and is still the one I enjoy the most. A rather unusual and highly limited origin has been handled with great skill and care and while there isn’t a huge range of flavours here, there is certainly a real depth of intensity to the profile.  With that in mind, this bar serves as a remarkable example of how to deliver richness of flavour whilst making few textural sacrifices

The post Friis Holm Chuno 70% appeared first on Seventy%.

A number of interpretations of the classic Chuao origin have come to the market recently which is surely a good thing for lovers of fine chocolate. This allows us all to see how the beans react to a variety of different stylistic treatments and here with Pralus we are of course dealing with, among other things, a very dark roast indeed.

The colour is instantly of note; the usual redish brown you might expect from this great origin makes way for the darker tones indicative of more extreme treatment in the roaster than is usually practiced by other producers. The finish in general is good with minimal defects outside of scuffs and blemishes due to transit.

On the nose this bar is very interesting.  There is little of the usual blueberry, plumb and red fruits you might expect but instead it is a great deal more earthy, woody and neutral, showing all the hallmarks of the distinctly dark roast on offer here.

Moving onto the palette we start to see more of what Chuao has to offer. While the earthy, deeply roasted coffee elements persist there are now suggestions of blueberry and damp tobacco, each taking turns in the length. The finish is woody, earthy and faintly tannic with only suggestions of the intense fruitiness these beans can offer. The melt however is quite fantastic; silky smooth and not at all cloying.

There are some interesting and ultimately enjoyable flavours on offer in this take on Chuao and in the end it is all going to come down to taste. Here we have an example of the origin taken as close to the edge as it can go and as such we see more of the Pralus house style than we do the intrinsic qualities of the bean. If you favour a dark roast this is impressively handled and may well be the Chuao for you.

As an additional note I should add that there seems to be considerable difference between batches with this bar. The bar reviewed here has a best before date of 22/11/2011. The latest editions seem to be more notably fruity and of a lower roast. I will post a review of a later release when possible.

The post Pralus Chuao 75% appeared first on Seventy%.

New dessert launches at William Curley

Long time member of Seventypercent’s community online Per Liss has been coming to Chocolate Week every year since the annual celebration of fine chocolate in the UK first began in 2003.

Per, better know as Masur in our forum, is also Seventypercent’s Links manager, responsible for maintaining our list of chocolate companies, makers and resources, and for weeding out some of the whackier link requests we sometimes receive from inappropriate candy companies.

He’s become something of an institution and Chocolate week wouldn’t be the same without his annual visit to London.

His trips are also a great chance for us to catch up on chocolate gossip.

Per was over for a conference on Friday and is back off to Sweden tomorrow, so we took the chance of a Saturday pre Chocolate Week trip round a few chocolatiers to get in an early taster of the week.

After quick stops at Paul A Young in Angel and Artisan du Chocolate, we made our way to Pimlico Green for some high-end chocolate desserts.

New patisserie tasting at William Curley’s

So here we find our selves in William Curley’s Belgravia store, sitting down surrounded by some of William’s latest patisserie offerings, accompanied by hot chocolate and cold water.

Per Liss in William Curley's Belgravia shop

Chocolate Macaroon

We started with a plain chocolate macaroon – a full sized model rather than the popular French bite size style favoured by Pierre Herme. The macaroon was soft and cut easily in half. Definitely a real chocolate taste and ‘sweet but not that overwhelmingly sweet’ according to Per.

Certainly good flavours, but neither of us are huge macaroon fanatics, so our pleasure level was merely at ‘normal’. The combination of textures worked well, without any sugary crispness, and the after taste was very clean.

Chocolate macaroon

Pistachio macaroon

Hazelnut bouchee

Pistachio Macaroon

While on a macaroon roll, we thought’s we go for the pistachio – a light crumbly macaroon flavoured with roasted pistachios and a chocolate ganache filling. This was sweeter without the chocolate, and hence had more crunch.

The pistachio flavour was very light, it came through more as a pistachio marzipan effect towards the end, rather than a nutty burst at the beginning.

Hazelnut Bouchee

This is so new it’s not even on the menu yet and a description had to be whisked up from the kitchen. Smelling the bouchee there’s right away a good buttery, chocolate, hazelnut aroma. Biting let our teeth loose on the sweet, crunchy hazelnut base.

I tried the base on it’s own without the ganache topping, and the flavour just goes on and on. The layer had a really good crispiness as well, which combined nicely with the ganache toppiong and chocolate coating. I am slightly reminded of a Toffee Crisp, and I’m beginning to suspect William is on some kind of 1970s chocolate confectionery recreation trip.

‘Jaffa cake’

'Jaffa cake'

Not sure about the legality of this, but sticking with the ‘recreation’ theme, next up was a high end fine, turbo charged Jaffa Cake. For those of you not living in the UK, Jaffa Cakes are a McVities biscuit/cake product, consisting of a small biscuit size sponge cake, with a dollop of orange jam type stuff on the top, which is then covered with – let’s be generous – ‘chocolate’.

My main memory of these is a rather dry, sweet sponge and of course fatty, sweet low grade chocolate. Probably tasted quite artificial though.  They were never my favourite.

The Curley version is a totally different experience of course. Fully covered with – in this case Amedei – chocolate. The orange flavour is amazingly fresh and full and lingering, the sponge light and melting.

I don’t remember having this kind of taste journey when I sat down to watch telly after coming home from school and was let loose on afternoon snacks – back in the day.

Hazlenut and almond sables

Hazlenut almond sable

After a short break tasting some esoteric chocolate samples (two choc nerds in the same choc shop, what do you expect?) we took a break from the dark stuff by sampling a Curley biscuit – not a new product, but a nice interlude none-the-less.

Simple and straightforward, a good biscuit recipe, made with good ingredients, very light and loads of butter. The flavours hang on the tongue and really develops after eating, with good nut flavour and light spice.

Yuzu Cake

We finished off with an oval chocolate cake with yuzu flavoured ganache centre – yuzu being a Japanese citrus fruit. Per thought the cake might have been on the dry side, it was the ganache centre that really brought it alive though. The yuzu flavour was outstanding and really lingered.

Yuzu ganache cake

Basil infused ice cream with blackcurrant compote

Ok, no more chocolate, but one more taster, this time from the new dessert bar menu. This dish is the starter, and we thought it would be a good way to lighten up our palates after all that chocolate.

Basil ice cream is a strange beast, and at first I thought I was eating pesto, until the blackcurrant compote kicks and puts you back in dessert land, making a sweet, savoury combination. An interesting taste journey and it must of worked as we cleaned our plates.

As ever, all the dishes were up to the usual Curley standard and you could say we were just a little chocolated out by the end of it all.

All in all a great start to Chocolate Week and great to catch up with an old friend in such pleasant surroundings. Let’s hope it’s less than a year before we meet again!

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Amano mystery beans

Amano have asked us to pass on news of their new competition – with the prize a chance to win one year’s supply of Amano chocolate. (Which, apparently, is 10 bars a month.)

Amano have a growing range of origin fine chocolate bars and seem to be heading for one of the widest ranges of origins on the market.

The fledgling Utah chocolate maker are certainly excited about the new chocolate, Art Pollard, founder and chocolate maker of Amano told us.

“I’m passionate about the incredible array of flavors that are to be found in cocoa. Each time I taste a new cocoa bean, I ask myself ‘What can I do with these beans? What flavors can I bring out?’

Then I rush home and make a test batch. Such was the case with these beans and I believe this will be one of our most flavorful chocolates yet.”

For full details of the competition and terms and conditions, visit Amano’s website here. (Valid though in certain countries only, better check the list before you enter!)

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