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by Carole S. Kotkin

 There can't be too much of a good thing, if the good thing is chocolate.  There are few other foods that evoke the sort of response chocolate does. It is often the stuff memories are made of-a heart-shaped box of chocolate candies for Valentine's Day, a comforting cup of steaming hot chocolate on a cold winter night, a frosted chocolate cupcake and a glass of milk after school, the joy of  a large scoop of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge sauce dripping down its sides. Sometimes subtle, sometimes bold, always enticingly smooth and gratifying, chocolate is America's favorite flavor. Americans eat about five billion dollars' worth of chocolate each year (about 11 lbs per person)  making us the world's eighth largest consumer at about half the level of the world's leading chocolate-lovers, the Swiss.

It's hard to believe that chocolate as we know it has been around for less than two centuries. The cacoa bean, whose botonical name, Theobroma, is Greek for "food of the gods" was probably transformed into chocolate by the Olmec people of  Mexico as early as 400 B.C.  By A.D. 250 the Mayans were planting cacoa crops. To the Aztecs, consuming chocolate was a privilege  reserved for  their "gods".  Legend tells us the Aztec emperor Montezuma drank 50 cups of chocolate a day, making him the greatest chocoholic of all time. The conquering Spaniards changed the name of Montezuma's cacahuatl to chocolatl-and that's where we get our English name. Cacao played an important role in the lives of the Aztecs, serving both the base of a drink and as a unit of currency.  The gold hungry conquistador Hernado Cortes thought little of the drink, but brought the cacao bean back to Spain in 1528 to be used as a form of payment.  This was really a case of money growing on trees.  Columbus had actually discovered cacao beans first, but he was too busy looking for the ocean route to India to pay any attention to chocolate. Or, perhaps he disliked the taste, for according to Maricel Presilla,  food historian and consultant to Chocolates El Rey , the Venezuelan chocolate company, the beverage was thick and bitter and was flavored with cornmeal, chilies, achiote and hallucinogenic mushrooms.  The Spaniards transformed the Mexican concoction with the addition of sugar, vanilla and water.  Spain soon planted cacao trees in its overseas possession, and a prosperous business was created. Spain apparently managed to keep this treasure of the New World, a secret from the rest of Europe for nearly 100 years. But once word was out, chocolate houses spread throughout Europe and chocolate became the drink of choice in the royal courts of Europe.  It was thought to energize, act as an aphrodisiac and to cure all ills. Cacao beans made their way back to North America just before the Revolutionary war as a medicine.  In 1765, Dr. James Baker opened a chocolate factory in New England to manufacture the "prescription."  Recently researchers at the University of California at Davis have found that chocolate and red wine both carry the same chemicals that may lower the risk of heart disease.

We have the New World to thank for chocolate, but in the hands of the English, Swiss,  Dutch, and French it became the raw material for hundreds of tantalizing new uses. In 1828 a Dutch chemist named Van Houten devised a press to extract cocoa butter from the mass of roasted ground beans. Soon other Dutch chemists learned that by alkalizing cocoa beans, they could reduce their characteristic bitterness.  A rough-textured  candy bar was created In England during the 19th century by Cadbury's.  Soon the Swiss entered the field, inventing machinery to knead the chocolate paste until its flavor was intense and its texture silky. The first Swiss chocolate factory was built in a former mill near Vevy, on the shores of Lake Geneva, by Francois-Louis Cailler, who had learned chocolatemaking in Italy.  In 1879 another Swiss, Rodolphe Lindt developed the chocolate kneading technique known as conching, which produces a smooth-textured solid eating chocolate.  Henri Nestle, a Swiss baby food manufacturer, developed a way to incorporate condensed milk into the candy, creating milk chocolate and Switzerland's place as the chocolate capital of the world. At the same time in the United States, Milton Hershey substituted fresh whole milk for the condensed milk  and the Hershey Bar was born. The rest is history.

Much like wine production, high quality chocolate depends on a number of factors:  the quality and degree of acidity of the beans, the proper fermentation, the manufacturer's proprietary blend of beans, and the roasting and refining process.

Chocolate is a natural product made from the bean of the cacao tree.  Cacao is thought to have originated in Brazil's Amazon basin, but it grows today in equatorial climates all over the world-Venezuela,  neighboring South American countries, Central America, the Caribbean, Indonesia, West Africa and Hawaii. Cacao beans are found in the fruit or pods of the cacao trees; each nine-inch pod contains 20 to 50 beans. The average yield per tree is between 20 and thirty fruits. Trees begin producing when about eight years old and can be maintained for forty years.(Perhaps unnecessary: Mature trees can reach up to 60 feet in the wild, but they are topped off at 15 feet to make harvesting easier. The pods grow attached to the trunk and thicker branches of the tree.  When they are ripe they turn  bright red, orange or yellow.)  Once harvested, the pods are split open to reveal beans encased in a white pulp. The beans are removed and fermented on the ground for several weeks.  Then they are dried in the  sun for about a week, during which time they begin to develop flavor.  The dried beans are classified, then packed into burlap sacks and shipped to manufacturers in Europe and the United States  where they are cleaned, selected, blended, roasted and ground, determining much of the chocolate's final character in the process.

Like wine grapes, cacao beans develop different characteristics in different regions.

The most prized chocolate comes from Criollo cacao trees, grown mainly in the humid soil of  Central and South America.  The Criollo gives chocolate a complex fragrant and nutty flavor. The trees are fragile and outside of Venezuela there have been virtually no new plantings for the past 50 years. A third variety, Trinitario is a cross between Forastero and Criollo.  It is prolific and sturdy with flavorful beans.  But Criollo and Trinitario, mainly from Venezuela and Ecuador,  make up only about 10% of the world's production.  The easier-to-grow Forastero cocoa bean is far more abundant, and accounts for about 90 percent of the world's production and is the source for most commercial chocolate. This bean lacks the aroma and delicacy of the Criollo.

Next the beans are roasted at low heat in a large rotary cylinder for 30 minutes to two hours.  As with coffee beans, it is during roasting that the characteristic aroma, flavor and rich brown color develop.

After roasting, the outer shells of the beans are removed, and the beans are cracked into small pieces known as nibs.  These nibs are then heated and ground into a fine paste.  When the nibs are crushed they yield two main substances:  cocoa butter and chocolate liquor.  Cocoa butter is the nibs' fat, which with the addition of milk solids, sugar and vanilla, can be made into white chocolate (really not chocolate at all since it contains no chocolate liquor). Chocolate liquor is a paste containing the nonfat solids from the nibs as well as some of the remaining cocoa butter.

Chocolate liquor remains solid at normal room temperatures, yet liquefies at around 92 degrees -about the temperature of the human tongue-and is the secret behind chocolate's cherished melting powers. The chocolate liquor must be finely ground in order to give the "mouth smoothness"  of the finished product, and cocoa butter is often put back into the liquor along with sugar and other ingredients such as milk, vanilla, or lecithin. The additions determine chocolate flavor and type.

When pure chocolate liquor is poured into molds, cooled and hardened, it becomes what we know as unsweetned chocolate.  If chocolate liquor is pulverized,  it becomes unsweetened cocoa powder, which may be "dutched" (alkalized to neutralize acidity) for a milder taste and darker color. For all dark sweet chocolate, chocolate liquor is blended with cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin and vanilla or vanillin.  For milk chocolate, dried milk solids are added to the mix as well.

The blended mixtures are kneaded in large, heavy machines that agitate and aerate the chocolate to create a smooth texture and well-rounded flavor. This process, called "conching", can take as long as 6 days.  Invented more than a century ago, conching helps reduce acid levels allowing good flavors to develop.  Finally the chocolate is poured into molds and carefully cooled, packaged and shipped.

Swiss chocolate has preserved its world fame for excellence because it has maintained and keeps improving its chocolate technology.  For example, one of the firms has developed a microfine structure in the chocolate after setting, increasing aroma and sheen and virtually eliminating the white coating (bloom) that sometimes appears on chocolate due to wide temperature fluctuations. The Swiss chocolate industry operates without any "corner-cutting," using the best raw materials, which are necessary for flavor and aroma .

Switzerland is a dangerous place for a chocoholic on the wagon. There are about twenty chocolate manufactures operating in Switzerland today. The top four according to volume are Nestle, Tobler, Suchard and Lindt.  Forty tons of chocolate products are produced each day by Lindt.  There are about twenty chocolatier shops in Geneva alone.  In the Lake Geneva Region,  Confiserie Zurcher in Montreaux is considered the number one place on the rue du Casino for people watching while sipping hot chocolate and enjoying a splendid view of the lake.  The Zurcher family were among the pioneers in the Swiss chocolate industry, who more than 100 years ago created a chocolate empire in this country so far from where cocoa beans are grown.  Everything for sale is handmade in the upstairs kitchen, including the classic Zurcher chocolate truffle in all of its variations. Besides its fame as a chocolatier,  Zurcher also produces cakes, cookies and pastries and their street-front store serves as a neighborhood bakery, pastry shop and tea room.  Chocolate master Max Muller, went through a classic Continental apprenticeship, a system still very much alive in Switzerland. At about fourteen or fifteen a young man combines his schooling with work and after three years has an excellent knowledge of his trade. At Zurcher for most of his career, he says,  "We buy the best ingredients in small quantities so they stay fresh:  rich Suchard chocolate, heavy cream and butter, the finest fruits and nuts and no preservatives.  No tub of margarine has ever invaded these premises." Carefully packaged,  the truffles and other chocolate candies are sent all over Europe, America and, especially to Japan. The very first Zurcher establishment opened its doors in 1879 in the Hotel de Montreux. Arnold Zurcher, the founder, retired after 53 years at the helm of this family business.  Four generations later, Zurcher is now managed by Antoinette Zurcher, and Zurcher chocolates are still considered world class.  Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mocha truffles, champagne filled truffles, cherries dipped in chocolate, almonds dipped in chocolate-there is something for everyone's tastes. The slim Muller , who admits to eating 15 to 20 chocolates a day, notes, "Chocolates are a happy product.  As everyone knows, eating something chocolate always makes you feel better!" Although it was milk chocolate that made Swiss chocolate famous, the "black" chocolate (bittersweet) is now the most popular.

In the 17th century,  Venezuelan cacoa displaced Mexico as the principal exporter of cacoa and by 1810 it was producing half the world's cacoa. With the coffee boom in America displacing cocoa and a war with Spain, its main trading partner, Venezuela's cacao trade went into a decline. With the discovery of petroleum at the beginning of the 20th century,  cacao plantations languished and growers shifted their attention to the more profitable oil industry.  Now cacao farming is making a comeback.  "That's good news," says Maricel Presilla of Chocolates El Rey,  "The cacao plantation is a wonderfully sound ecological system.  Cacao grows well with many other crops-coffee is often grown underneath the towering cacao trees. Even small cacao farms can provide a respectable living.  This has meant the farmer has stayed on the land instead of going to the slums of Caracas. Where you see cacao, you see life." Maybe too much information: ( Between 1975 and 1989 the Venezuelan government held a monopoly on cacao, and bought beans from growers for a set price, regardless of quality.  As a result, the quality of the cacao crop declined. In 1989 the government endeavored to reorient the country towards a market economy by eliminating previous market distortions and creating a more free internal business environment.) Jorge Redmond Schlageter, a third generation Venezuelan and the president of Chocolates El Rey, a major Venezuelan chocolate producer, is working with farms to develop cultivation programs for criollo and trintario beans. For more than 400 years Venezuela sent most of its cacao to Europe for processing, but in 1995 El Rey became the first Venezuelan firm to export its own premium chocolate. "The world's best chocolates have always depended on Venezuelan cacao beans to impart that extra touch of fragrance and aroma.  Yet, due to the fact  that so little Venezuelan cacao has been traditionally available on the world market, no major company was producing chocolate using 100% of this prized raw material," remarks Mr. Schlageter. "I see good times ahead in the renewal process of a world class agricultural business" he continues. To this end, El Rey has established an agricultural division to grow cacao with the most modern techniques available and to serve as a model for other cacao growers, so that top-quality beans will always be available in the future. "Chocolate is the original comfort food-after mother's milk, it's the taste children love the best," he says. Chefs and consumers now have greater choices with single source and chocolate blends. Mr. Schlageter cautions, "don't think in terms of "the best chocolate", but use different chocolates in different recipes.  There are different styles and flavors just as with Burgundy, Bordeaux or Zinfandel."

Chocolate seems to have maintained its exotic, even romantic, image throughout the centuries and shows no sign of declining. Our selection features sinfully rich treats to make for your favorite valentine.

Chocolate Truffles

Makes about 60

This chocolate confection get its name because the rather misshapen cocoa-coated chocolate resembled the famous and rare fungus of the same name.

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1-1/4 cups heavy cream
Optional:  1 teaspoon light or dark rum, or Cognac
Unsweetened cocoa

Chop chocolate in food processor until very fine.  Heat cream to boiling and pour into the processor with the motor running. Add optional rum or Cognac. Blend until smooth; cool and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.  Line a baking sheet with wax paper and either pipe 1-inch balls of ganache onto the baking sheet or use a spoon or melon baller.  Refrigerate again until firm. Strain some cocoa onto a piece of wax paper.  Have another wax paper lined baking sheet ready for the finished truffles. Coat your hands lightly with cocoa.  Roll each truffle into an uneven ball, then roll it around in the cocoa.  Place it on the reserved baking sheet.  Store in the refrigerator.

Chocolate Souffle

There's no great mystery involved in making a souffle at home; it's simply a combination of beaten egg whites and a flavored sauce. If you want to do most of the work in advance, prepare the chocolate sauce, press plastic wrap tightly against the surface, and refigerate for up to two days.  Rewarm in a double boiler. All that's left to do is to beat and fold in the egg whites.

softened butter for dish
5 tablespoons granulated sugar, plus more for the dish
1 ounce baking (unsweetened) chocolate
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
1/2 cup milk
4 large eggs, separated
2 egg whites
confectioners' sugar for dusting

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 400 degrees. Butter the insides of a 6 cup souffle dish well. Coat with sugar and tap out excess. Chill in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave oven.  Combine the chocolate and milk.  When the mixture is smooth, add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating them in with a whisk. At this point, the chocolate sauce can be refrigerated and the recipe completed later. Using electric mixer, beat whites until soft, then add the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar.  Beat until stiff, but not dry.  Fold 1/3 of whites into the souffle base to lighten.  Gradually fold souffle base back into remaining whites. Don't worry if some streaks remain. Transfer to prepared dish. Place  on a baking sheet in the middle of the preheated oven.  Turn down the heat to 375 degrees. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until nicely puffed up. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar and serve immediately.  Serves 4 to 6.

CHOCOLATE SOUR CREAM CAKE

Nothing can beat the romance of an old-fashioned chocolate cake--and this one is quick and easy to prepare.  Serve this as your Mom did, with a cold glass of milk.

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup (2 sticks)unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup sour cream
1 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly grease and flour a 10" tube pan.  Sift the flour, baking soda, and cocoa together onto a large piece of waxed paper.  In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the butter until it is pale yellow and fluffy.  Add the sugar and continue mixing until light.  Add the eggs one at a time, and mix until they are thoroughly incorporated.  Add the vanilla and mix well.  Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture in thirds, alternating with the sour cream and the hot water, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.  Bake in the center of the oven until cake is puffed and springs back when lightly touched, about 1 hour. Cool in pan on wire rack 10 minutes.  Invert onto rack; turn right side up and cool completely. Pour glaze over top. Makes 12 servings.

Glaze:

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
6 tablespoons butter
a few drops of lemon juice

Melt chocolate and butter in a small heavy saucepan, stirring until smooth. Set aside until thickened slightly.  Pour the glaze onto the top of the cake, tilting the cake so the glaze runs down the sides.

This was adapted from an article printed in February/March issue of Wine News magazine.

Cocoa Beans photo courtesy of El Rey Chocolates

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