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Gourmet Chocolate: An Epicurean Dream
Gourmet Chocolate: An Epicurean Dream
May 19 2004 |
By Jeffrey Herms
What makes a gourmet? Great food of course. Gourmet can mean different things to different people, especially those from different cultures. In the epicurean tradition of France, gourmet has a lot to do with wine and cheese. In Russia, gourmets drink the rarest vodkas and dine on caviars that are rarer still. Shark fin soup is a gourmet Chinese delicacy, and rich Japanese people love their Abalone, the mollusk which can fetch over a thousand American dollars per pound. A true gourmet however, is a person who seeks to taste the finest of every food there is. In this article we will explore a relatively new niche item among epicures, that of gourmet chocolate.
Since the year 2000, in New York City alone over a dozen specialty chocolate boutique stores have sprung up, and they are thriving. Considering the cost of rent in New York, this is a testament to their product, selections of gourmet chocolate. More and more, people come into these boutiques not only to buy chocolate, but to question the chocolatier on how they might improve or alter their homemade couvertures.
Couverture is a term for the fine baking chocolate used by chocolatiers and pastry chefs. Couvertures vary widely depending on the specific ingredients used in each, including the variety of cocoa bean and location in the world from which it was harvested. Much like an experienced wine connoisseur can while blindfolded identify the grape variety and location where the wine he drinks was made, so too can an experienced chocolate connoisseur tell you immediately from where the cocoa beans used to make the chocolate he eats came.
Any chocolate gourmet will tell you that cocoa beans from Venezuela are analogous to grape from Bourdeaux, but thankfully for aspiring chocophiles the price of gourmet chocolate does not come close to what one might spend on a vintage wine.
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