friends, lovers, chocolate (well, two out of three isn't bad, right?)

when i lived in london i had an editor named neil who was obsessed with food. he wrote practically lyrical restaurant reviews and appreciated a good meal probably more than anyone i have ever met. his gustatory judgement was meted out particularly often, and harshly, when it came to chocolate. i distinctly remember a less than flattering comparison of the "american abomination" that is hershey's and its far superior british counterpart, cadbury's.

i, myself, am not too picky about food. i don't like to eat things that are gross, of course (and i put tomatoes very squarely in this category), but i am, by no means, a food snob. i'll eat and enjoy a fancy meal (especially if my dad is paying), but i am usually just as happy with a hot dog on a stick, or maybe something from the dollar menu at wendy's (and i see nothing wrong with hershey's). i have to eat food to stay alive, and that's about as far as my thinking goes.

but, as i am always up for something new, i found myself in a chocolate tasting class last night, organized by dallas and taught by matt caputo, owner of a really delicious deli downtown. let me just say, up front, that chocolate tasting class is not about sitting around and gorging yourself on delicious treats (oh, how i wish!). at least this class wasn't. this was serious business. matt caputo actually used the phrase, "i just got back from a chocolate pilgrimage." we learned all about the types of beans, the scientific chocolate-making process (which includes a step called "conking." i can't remember what it means, but the word makes me giggle), and long-standing european feuds over chocolate dominance. we took notes, people.

three important things i learned:

1. not all chocolate is created equal, and not all fancy chocolate is delicious.
there are three types of beans used mainly in chocolate production. the chocolate we eat the most, what matt calls "grocery store," uses, unsurprisingly, the lowest quality beans. they are bitter and sort of nasty-tasting, so the chocolate we eat is filled with all sorts of other things-- sugar, cocoa butter, and an acid with the same taste as vomit (so says matt)-- to mask the low quality of the bean. we think this chocolate tastes good because our palettes don't know any better. we've been duped by slick packaging and aggressive advertising and a lack of exposure. i have to say though, some of the "fine" chocolate we tried was downright gross. here are some phrases i do not want to hear when i am about to put a piece of chocolate in my mouth: "other things you should notice in this are smoke and leather." or, "this chocolate is known for its distinctive flavor, including traces of blue cheese and petrol." yes, petrol. and it was true. yuck. about half-way through the class, matt sent around a plate of "grocery store" chocolate, so we could taste our own enlightenment. well, frankly, i thought it tasted pretty good, and i wasn't the only one. (rob: "i like it!" tracy: "it tastes like christmas.") maybe our palettes just need some more work, but i didn't leave convinced that fine chocolate = better chocolate every time. if i wanted to taste petrol i would drink gas. you know?

2. genetics are everything, even in chocolate.
the winner for the most unexpected phrase uttered in a chocolate tasting class is: "this chocolate brings a dramatic level of genetic diversity to flavor." hmmm. as it turns out, the genetic make-up of a cocoa bean-- where it came from, where it was grown, who its parents are-- is just as important as it is for people in dating relationships. a company called domori actually mapped the genome of an ideal heirloom specimen of a bean that was nearing extinction, and grafted the resulting bean into a new tree, creating the "first resurrected type" in the world of chocolate. (the consciousness of cylons being downloaded and reborn in new bodies doesn't sound so crazy now, does it?) according to matt, this particular company has "a few others in their line that they've genetically resurrected." yes, you could be eating genetically resurrected chocolate. think on that for a minute. it all seemed pretty "mad scientist" to me, but my patent attorney friend heather tells me plant patents of this type are fairly common. who knew?

3. the french are going down.
allow me to share the story of the amedei brothers, amenable italians who were in, if memory serves me, the candy-making business. (or something like that.) through a series of events i don't remember, they approached a french chocolate company that, at the time, controlled the world's supply of the best cocoa bean in the universe, the chuao bean, which is only grown in the chuao valley in venezuela. natch. the amedei brothers were interested in breaking into the chocolate market, and asked this french company if they might use some of the company's fancy beans. the response? "italians are not evolved enough as a race to appreciate it." ouch. so, like any rational aspiring chocolatier would, the amedei brothers secretly liquidated all their family's assets, and approached the cooperative of farmers growing these coveted beans. they offered three times more than the french were paying for the product, and promised to pay off the cooperative's debt and build an agronomy university where every cooperative farmer who wanted to could study for free. as i think you can imagine, it was too good an offer for the farmers to turn down, and 2003 marked the debut of amedei chuao, currently accepted as the finest chocolate in all the land. sorry, france. the company can only make 20,000 bars a year, as the beans are tempermental and slowly regenerating, so retailers are carefully screened. caputo's is the only place in utah where the chocolate is sold, and matt said he had to apply five times, and had to send pictures of his deli and store more than once. we don't screen child-care professionals so closely. i'm just saying...

all in all, a delightful way to spend an evening, though i don't think it made a chocolate snob out of me. maybe my palette needs more work. or maybe i am just not meant to be a foodie. perhaps sensing my unrepentant and continuing love of bad chocolate matt ended the class with, "it's not the end of the world if you don't appreciate it, but..." i am pretty sure he kept going, but i was too busy wondering if we had any leftover easter chocolate to notice...