Dunking Chocolate

Alex Rast said:

if anything, to
use compound coating rather than mixing any paraffin in.

I sometimes see it in recipes (home-cooking).

Quoted message said:

What this would be is the percentage of cocoa solids that was cocoa butter.
This would then roughly be an indication of how much extra cocoa butter
they needed to add in addition to that naturally present in the beans.
There is a very marginal benefit possible in couverture applications, and
it would be this: added cocoa butter can be more carefully standardised for
melting properties and viscosity. The exact composition and behaviour of
cocoa butter varies from bean to bean. But bulk cocoa butter has usually
been carefully homogenised to a specification and has very predictable
melting characteristics. So the more added cocoa butter you have, the more
you can expect your chocolate to behave consistently.

So maybe that is why the chef prefers it for coating.

Quoted message said:

This would be as ridiculous as, e.g. replacing a
Burgundy Pinot Noir with a Bordeaux Cabernet.

Not too bad a switch for my taste, though ;D
There are some Californian and Australian Pinot Noirs I love, though.

Quoted message said:

Now, Valrhona did recently introduce Palmira while dropping Chuao - because
Amedei has the Chuao supply now - but they didn't suggest it was a
replacement. Meanwhile they continue to produce Ampamakia and your store
needs to know that they're not serving customers well if they're
arbitrarily replacing one chocolate with a totally different one.

Well, I wont miss the Chuao 🙂

Quoted message said:

Chocolate has exploded onto the market-visibility stage - it was, I suppose
the next "big thing" once coffee had gotten itself established. You can
criticise Starbucks for much but one benefit they did bring is increase
public awareness of the possiblity that a common comestible can be had in
better than commodity quality. I mean this in the most general way - it
wasn't just coffee that they helped to spur forward, but in fact *any* food
where quality differences are real, because, now that people accepted that
in coffee it was possible to get better than the standard fare, they
started to ask if that was also true with other things.

I actually think Starbucks is OK. I'd go into Peet's if one is nearby,
but otherwise I wouldn't think twice to enter the Starbucks. By Danish
standards it is good. I do love a dark roast "BOLD" coffee 🙂 I don't
care for there "mild" types.
I do know that Peets and Starbucks started as the same, but the owner of
starbucks had bigger ambitions for expansion rather than coffee quality.
Ther's a Danish copy of that type of coffee shop called Barossa, but
they only have one Coffee of the Day, so I can't choose a Bold type.

Quoted message said:

The aged Sulawesis I've tried have been my favourite coffees of all - it
must be said that I prefer straight espresso, generally a pure double-shot.
Peet's as a brand isn't as good IMHO as some of the brands in Seattle - but
ironically the very best of them, Caffe D'Arte, doesn't do varietals. Aged
Sulawesi I would describe as "syrupy" - just what I hope for in a coffee.

The Yellow Catuai from Brazil has an aftertaste of dark chocolate, you
should try it out 🙂

Quoted message said:

Well there I'm not the expert. Fortunate thing too! Wine is one of the
quickest ways to break the budget...

My wine store has free tastings once a month, so that is excellent 🙂

Quoted message said:

Yes, I've seen his site and discussed chocolates with him a bit too. It's
easy to compare notes since we both live in Seattle. The ratings he has are
a bit dated now, but it's one of several useful sites. There are several
sites with ratings, with varying degrees of comprehensiveness, personal
bias, and detail.

I am making one with a bias towards complex fruitiness 🙂

http://www.sequoiagrove.dk/reviews.php?search=all&crit=any&cat=coffee%2C+chocolate%2C+or+wine

I use the same grading as we use for the students in Denmark, the "13
scale". 00,03, and 5 are flunk grades. 6,7,8,9,10,11,13 pass, 7-8 is
average, 9-10 good, 11 excellent independent performance, 13 is the
unique exceptional performance. (for some reason I tend to give grades
lower than 6, but I think I am often given the exams with "bad" students
because I am low in the hierarchy and people do not like to flunk people).

The tasting notes I added to the database yesterday were done very fast,
just to get something in it for my php code. the search criteria are not
finished either. It only works for criteria "any".

Quoted message said:

What I think he found in the US on Valrhona is a little different - his
problem is that the chocolate wasn't fresh. For some years, Valrhona was
one of a tiny number of high-end European manufacturers you could buy in
Seattle. However, the problem, back then, is that market visibility was
low, and so shelf lives were high. Bars sat gathering dust.

In Davis, CA (a university town) they had Valrhona and it was cheap (-er
than DK) and good. I bought the "noir amer 71%" a lot. They did not have
the single region stuff.
I'm not fond of Valrhona Jivara 40%. In milk chocolate there's not much
difference between cheap stuff and expensive stuff.

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"Alex Rast" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

at Sat, 27 May 2006 12:00:44 GMT in <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] (Dee Randall) wrote :

Quoted message said:

"Alex Rast" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

at Fri, 26 May 2006 16:23:41 GMT in
>What are your favorites to accompany red wine? A nice Bordeaux or
>pinot noir, say. -aem
>

... In that case you should make a very soupy warm
gruel out of coarse cornmeal (such as polenta or hominy grits) and
take sips between chocolates. It sounds wierd and off-putting but it's
classic and time-honoured. This is what the indigenous Mesoamericans
did long before the advent of Columbus.

--
Alex Rast

Interesting.

1. Are you saying that the Mesoamericans were tasting various chocolates
and used the gruel to cleanse their palate between tastes of various
chocolates?

2. Are you sayin that the Mesoamericans preferred to use gruel to
cleanse their palate between tastes of any one particular chocolate they
were eating.

3. Are you saying that the Mesoamericans preferrred to have gruel with
chocolate, just as some might prefer it with wine/port today?

4. Are you saying that the Mesoamericans preferrred to have gruel with
chocolate, just as some might prefer it with wine/port today, but that
it was later discovered that it cleansed the palate.

I don't think there's been much research into why this was done. The
arriving Spaniards observed the practice and weren't necessarily
interested
in the detailed theory, and today it's difficult to reassemble from
antique
texts and modern indigenous practice exactly what the theory might have
been. However, it does seem clear that the Mesoamericans of the period did
like to try different chocolates in a sitting. I don't think we can
assume,
necessarily, that they would have had the same motivations for doing so
that we might today, but what I do notice is an astounding ability in any
culinary tradition you care to name for identifying things that work and
things that don't. My point in bringing it up is to note that it's not
something that turns out disgusting.

--
Alex Rast

Alex, your information on chocolate has become a source of amazement to me.
I've saved all your postings under "Chocolate - about" but today I'm making
a new sub-folder under Chocolate About, entitled, "Alex Rast postings -
rfc."

Thanks for sharing your interest in chocolate with us.
Dee Dee

at Thu, 01 Jun 2006 09:43:40 GMT in
<[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
(Michael Archon Sequoia Nielsen) wrote :

Quoted message said:

Alex Rast said:

....

Quoted message said:

I do know that Peets and Starbucks started as the same, but the owner of
starbucks had bigger ambitions for expansion rather than coffee quality.
Ther's a Danish copy of that type of coffee shop called Barossa, but
they only have one Coffee of the Day, so I can't choose a Bold type.

*$ didn't have a connection to Peets, at least not AFAIK, except for,
perhaps, inspiration. *$ started in Seattle as an enterprise of a trio of
partners IIRC who wanted to have decent coffee in the city. They were a
bean seller primarily rather than a coffeehouse. Then one of the owners
decided that the espresso-bar concept was one that could really take off
and realigned the business along those lines. Later he also recognised the
franchising possibilities, and a star was born, so to speak. *$ really hit
the big time about 1995, when they decided to expand nationwide and from
there things have never been the same. BTW, you should see the density of
*$ in Seattle these days. We are getting to a point very similar to the
Shoe Event Horizon described in Douglas Adams' "Restaurant at the End of
the Universe" In this case, it would be the Coffee Event Horizon. We'll
rename Seattle Frogstarbucks.

....

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

There are several sites with ratings, with varying degrees of
comprehensiveness, personal bias, and detail.

I am making one with a bias towards complex fruitiness 🙂

Be sure on your site that you describe your personal preferences. That way
it makes it easier for someone to know where you're coming from on ratings.

Quoted message said:

I use the same grading as we use for the students in Denmark, the "13
scale". 00,03, and 5 are flunk grades. 6,7,8,9,10,11,13 pass, 7-8 is
average, 9-10 good, 11 excellent independent performance, 13 is the
unique exceptional performance.

That's a truly bizarre system. Why did they choose a prime numbering
system? And am I given to understand that the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 12 are
never used? What you end up with in that case is an effective 10-point
scale, which is much more rational. Intuitively most people think on a
broad 5-level scale and then on a more fine-tuned 10-point scale. the 5-
level scale is the one people think of when asked just to give a subjective
opinion - and it pretty much goes bad, mediocre, fair, good, great. (or any
combination of qualitatives embodying that sort of thinking). The 10-point
scale is the one people think of when asked for an objective rating.
Generally speaking this one is also thought of as having some Gaussian
distribution, so that a 10 is (essentially) never given, nor is a 0.

Actual grading/ranking/rating systems of course use an enormous variety of
descriptions, point systems, etc. but generally you can reduce them pretty
quickly to something similar to the 2 systems I just described.

Quoted message said:

(for some reason I tend to give grades
lower than 6, but I think I am often given the exams with "bad" students
because I am low in the hierarchy and people do not like to flunk
people).

Of course, don't overlook the possibility that you're more ready to be
critical. In some ways the comment "people do not like to flunk people"
says that. At least IMHO any grader should feel no hesitation about
assigning a failing grade if a failure is warranted. It's appropriate for
them to be *disappointed* when someone fails, and perhaps seeing this
person failing might spur the grader to offer assistance, but (and you'll
excuse me for being very blunt) assiging grades isn't a place to get
sentimental.

On the flip side of the coin is the perfectionist grader who expects far
more from people (or manufacturers, or whatever), than can realistically be
expected. One needs to have a firm grasp on what effort level is required
to reach what quality standard, and not be harsh on people if the quality
level that can be achieved with reasonable effort doesn't match up against
the quality level that can be achieved with Herculean effort.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

What I think he found in the US on Valrhona is a little different -
his problem is that the chocolate wasn't fresh....

Quoted message said:

In Davis, CA (a university town) they had Valrhona and it was cheap (-er
than DK) and good. I bought the "noir amer 71%" a lot. They did not have
the single region stuff.
I'm not fond of Valrhona Jivara 40%. In milk chocolate there's not much
difference between cheap stuff and expensive stuff.

No - it's quite possible to get excellent milk chocolate. Just like with
dark chocolate, however, the correlation between price and quality isn't
particularly strong, so it's equally easy to find bad expensive stuff as it
is bad cheap stuff. But there are milk chocolates highly worthy of
consideration.

First on the list should be Michel Cluizel's Mangaro Lait. Here is a first
- a single-estate milk chocolate. And he's done an outstanding job with it,
too, creating a great milk chocolate indeed. At 50% you can't argue with
the cocoa solids percentage either.

Guittard also has an origin milk chocolate - Cru Sauvage Lait. In spite of
the name this is *not* related to Felchlin's Cru Sauvage - a dark chocolate
produced from so-called wild cacao. The truth of that claim is hard to
judge, however, the quality of the chocolate is impossible to dispute. In
any case, back to Guittard's milk chocolate - it, too, has quality that's
impossible to dispute. A little lower percentage (45%) than the Cluizel but
still very good.

Bonnat makes a line of 65% milk chocolates. IMHO the winner among them is
the Asfarth which tastes remarkably similar to Cluizel's old Chocolat Grand
Lait Cacao Pur Ile de Java (now replaced by the even better Mangaro Lait).

Domori's LatteSal is very distinctive, and with a bit of salt has an
unusually addictive character. That's right - salt - it doesn't diminish
the flavour in the slightest. This one is 44%.

Scharffen Berger's milk chocolate may seem comparatively mild at 41% but
explodes with power - another excellent choice and surprisingly strong
overall.

Slitti makes the most intense milk chocolates - the Lattenero line, with
percentages of 45%, 51%, 62%, and 70%. Quality and flavour generally
improve as you step up in percentage in this line, just as you would
expect. In spite of the awesome percentage, the 70% isn't quite as good as
Cluizel's Mangaro, however, it definitely shows how strong you can go with
milk chocolate.

I don't know how many you will be able to find of these locally but they
should be available with a bit of determined searching.

--
Alex Rast
[email hidden]
(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Alex Rast said:

...

Quoted message said:

I do know that Peets and Starbucks started as the same, but the owner of
starbucks had bigger ambitions for expansion rather than coffee quality.
Ther's a Danish copy of that type of coffee shop called Barossa, but
they only have one Coffee of the Day, so I can't choose a Bold type.

*$ didn't have a connection to Peets,

The story I heard was that Peet's started in Berkeley (Christine Dabney
showed me the location). Then the owners of Peet's fought about the
future of Peet's and broke up. One owner continued Peet's with quality
in mind, while the other owner started Starbucks with the same basic
concept but with the ambition for world domination in mind, compromising
quality. Although, I think Starbucks is not as bad as its rep. If I
gave Peet's an 11 (on the 13 scale), Starbucks would get 9-10. Barossa
in DK would get 9 but that is because it feels kinda dirty.

I see on google, that Starbucks founders were just friends of Alfred
Peet, not co-owners and the link between Peets and Starbucks is that
Starbucks bought their coffee from Peets, hmm.

Quoted message said:

there things have never been the same. BTW, you should see the density of
*$ in Seattle these days. We are getting to a point very similar to the
Shoe Event Horizon described in Douglas Adams' "Restaurant at the End of
the Universe" In this case, it would be the Coffee Event Horizon. We'll
rename Seattle Frogstarbucks.

There's a joke about martians coming to earth and the first thing they
do is to look for the nearest starbucks 🙂

Quoted message said:

Be sure on your site that you describe your personal preferences. That way
it makes it easier for someone to know where you're coming from on ratings.

OK. I see in seventypercent that Hans Peter Rot's taste is very
different from mine.

Quoted message said:

That's a truly bizarre system. Why did they choose a prime numbering
system? And am I given to understand that the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 12 are
never used?

Yes, the gaps reflect a larger difference. I grew up with the system, so
it is quite intuitive to me.
en.wikipedia.orgGrade (education)Open ↗

The "new system" is truly strange...

Quoted message said:

Of course, don't overlook the possibility that you're more ready to be
critical. In some ways the comment "people do not like to flunk people"
says that. At least IMHO any grader should feel no hesitation about
assigning a failing grade if a failure is warranted. It's appropriate for
them to be *disappointed* when someone fails, and perhaps seeing this
person failing might spur the grader to offer assistance, but (and you'll
excuse me for being very blunt) assiging grades isn't a place to get
sentimental.

Some of them are - I've voted for flunk while the supervisor of the
group voted for a high grade, and we are talking about students who knew
nothing of the topics in the project or from the lectures. Even the
equations in the report they wrote were unknown to them. They couldn't
even explain the basic principles of the terms.

Quoted message said:

No - it's quite possible to get excellent milk chocolate. Just like with
dark chocolate, however, the correlation between price and quality isn't
particularly strong, so it's equally easy to find bad expensive stuff as it
is bad cheap stuff. But there are milk chocolates highly worthy of
consideration.
I don't know how many you will be able to find of these locally but they
should be available with a bit of determined searching.

The Mitchel Cluitzel might be available.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music, Recipes, Photos, and more:

http://www.sequoiagrove.dk

"You don´t frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons
of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and
all your silly English kaniggets. Thppppt!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex Rast said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> Neuhaus (Belgium) is boring to eat pure, but fine for cooking.
The new Neuhaus origin chocolates are in a completely different
stratum from their regular chocolates...

I've seen some new Neuhaus stuff at the wine store, I should give them a
try.

Be careful, it's only the origin bars, in distinctive wrappers that look a
lot like a sleeve for an airplane ticket, that are genuninely good.

Now I've reviewed them:

http://www.sequoiagrove.dk/reviews.php?search=neuhaus&crit=producer&cat=coffee%2C+chocolate%2C+or+wine

Name Grade
----------------------------------------
Madagascar Vanille Bourbon 32%: 10
Occumare Venezuela 71%: 11
Sao Tome 75%: 9
West Africa 73%: 13

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Music, Recipes, Photos, and more:

http://www.sequoiagrove.dk

"You don´t frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons
of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and
all your silly English kaniggets. Thppppt!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

jacqui{JB} said:

I haven't found Valrhona in large, cooking-sized bars here; I see the
occasional "eating" bar, but consider those to be too expensive to cook
with. I wish I could find the couverture.

I am going to censor some exams in copenhagen the 26th and 27th of June.
I might be able to bring some chocolate. valrhona vintage origin bars
are 29 kr for 80 gram, mitchel cruitzel is 12 kr for 30 gram, 1 kg of
valrhona cooking chocolate is 175 kr. Neuhaus origin bars are 35 kr for
75 gram.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music, Recipes, Photos, and more:

http://www.sequoiagrove.dk

"You don´t frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons
of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and
all your silly English kaniggets. Thppppt!"
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