I will start this post on chocolate by coining a term, “chocolate culture”. This is so because I am quite confident of the current chocolate revolution. Chocolate industry has expanded its domain and the day is not far, when Chocolates will elevate to the level of ‘food culture’. Yea I am talking of the different experiments that chocolate giants are undertaking to give chocolate an entirely new definition. All the chocolate giants have started exploring all the possibilities of chocolate making this holiday season as this is the right time for it and believe me chocolate industry is creating sensations and a single post is not enough to cover it. Briefly, chocolates have been conceptualized from its very origin – cocoa. They are smeared with herbs; the cocoa beans are blended with flavors, beautifully packaged and have been given a status by bringing esteemed chefs to design the collection.
A series of chocolate series can be given but my favorite is the queen of chocolate Alice Medrich. Medrich is a three-time winner of cookbook of the year awards from both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Alice has started with beans and she finds pleasure in pounding them up to season sauteed chicken…call it what you like, but I find it a lover’s obsession with chocolate. Medrich was the one who started the bittersweet chocolate trend, with more percentage of cocoa, less sugar and stronger flavors. Medrich does a lots of things with the cocoa beans she uses them roasted, broken, hulled to make cookies and she also sprinkles them on salads. The chocolate giants like Guittard, Valrhona, Lindt and Scharffen Berger have all started adhering to the bittersweet trend. Milk Chocolates are still a craze, but the sales of dark chocolate is rising.
Apart from Medrich, other chocolate giants are doing great with cocoa. The Scharffen Berger Company has a dark chocolate bar of his own which sells everything from chocolates to beans and the recent dark chocolate gourmet of the Hershey’s chocolate is acquired from Scharffen Berger and Joseph Schmidt Confections. Godiva chocolates had commissioned reputed chef Norman Love has designed a G Collection of artful bonbons, a 48-piece pound box that goes for $125. Fran Bigelow, founder of Fran’s Chocolates in Seattle, sprinkled smoked sea salt on her milk chocolate-wrapped caramels and took home the gold trophy for the 2005 outstanding confection in the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade competition in New York. In the year, 2006 chocolates will be paired in specialty cocktails, cheese-chocolate-port menus, more exotic flavor combinations such as chili-spiked chocolate, chocolate-covered corn and balsamic vinegar chocolate. This is the prediction of Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co. and this is going to rock the chocolate lounges and restaurants in New York in 2006.
So here is dark cocoa beans standing nude for the Chocolate industry, it depends on Medrich on how much she is going to reap from the cocoa harvest. Chocolates are not only coming up with new trends but also moving towards a convergence with the health sector, for their flavanols and antioxidant capacities.
Huh! The chocolate flood has come…if you want to save yourself, plant some cocoa beans to wrap it over.
New chocolate trends at: Journal
