C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E

[lsanderson]

Dark May Be King, but Milk Chocolate Makes a Move
By JULIA MOSKIN

CHOCOLATE’S dark mood is lightening at last.

Until recently, midnight-black, bittersweet bars with punishing percentages of cacao were, like coffee and wine, on a quest for brooding intensity. Milk chocolate was left behind, dismissed as child’s play, an indulgence in sweetness and nostalgia.

Chloé Doutre-Roussel, a Paris-based expert and former chocolate buyer for Fortnum & Mason in London, says that in a snobbish phase of her youth, she even turned down milk chocolate made by the legendary Robert Linxe of La Maison du Chocolat. “I was in his shop in Paris,” she recalled, “and he offered me a taste of anything, and I put my nose in the air and said, ‘Of course, I only eat dark.’ And he said: ‘Really? Why?’ And I had no idea.” Ms. Doutre-Roussel said that she, like other purists, believed that the lean amalgamation of cacao and sugar that is dark chocolate did not need the addition of a fatty, bland element like milk. More

A Good Appetite
From Paris, With Hustle
By MELISSA CLARK

WHEN I was young and studying in Paris I had a friend, Stéphanie, who helped demystify some of the more intimate aspects of French culture. A chic gamine, she taught me the delights of forthright flirting, the art of knotting a silk scarf just so and perhaps most important, how to make a sublime dinner-party dessert in five minutes flat.

Stéphanie lived in a tiny seventh-floor walk-up with a cold water tap and a hot plate for a kitchen. Naturally, this didn’t stop her from giving dinner parties. Several times a month, she’d nonchalantly cook up exotic dishes (exotic to me, at that time) like chickpea tagine and ratatouille. And for dessert, she always served meringues à la crème. More

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The article on milk chocolate was interesting, describing as it does yet another cult of popularity to which I have never subscribed. Authoritatively playing the numbers game is oh so appealing, whether describing percentages of cacao or thread counts in bed sheets. And in neither case do the numbers tell you anything meaningful about the most important quality of the product.

K.