Meditations On Chocolate Part 1

It began innocently enough.

Forgotten, but not forsaken…

A couple of friends came to visit us in Vancouver at the time of the Olympics (2010 GAMES, Bitch!). On the way home from watching a very-expensive figure-skating practice (the actual, non-practice-figure skating event cost a jaw-dropping amount of money), we stopped for Thomas Haas chocolates. It was my husband’s idea because it was almost Valentine’s Day. You see, knowing that I sometimes like to have just a nibble of chocolate, he tries to ensure that I am equipped on major holidays with his own personal contribution of fine chocolates. While in the chocolate store, he also picked out some for our friends who were still in the blush of new-relationship romance. Unfortunately (for them), they left for home without their chocolates. I wrote them that evening and made promises to describe the experience of eating their left-behind chocolates, which I faithfully kept (the promise AND the chocolates). The email I sent to them is below:

“Michael and I shared your abandoned chocolates last night.  We are so sorry (sort of) that you forgot to take them with you, but I am happy to send along our impressions of what you missed:

Raspberry:  silky dark chocolate ganache paired with a thin layer of pure raspberry, topped with a hand painted chocolate plaquette: “Hello!”, whispered the red red red square crouched in the warm palm of my hand.  Its seductive posture was more than an invitation to bite: it was a command. Obeying happily, my compliance was rewarded with a flood of intense raspberry essence, attenuated by a buttery layering of chocolate flavor which harmonized perfectly with the fruitiness of the raspberry.  I am its slave.

Lime-Cachaca:  Silky dark chocolate ganache paired with a thin layer of lime and a hint of cachaca from Brasil [sic].   “WTF is Cachaca??!!” one may ask.  Part of the answer came quickly with the first bite into this chartreuse-topped Square of Joyfulness:  Cachaca is the perfect foil to the piquancy of lime that threatens to overwhelm anything that dares to cross its path.  Not content to be Lime’s Bitch, the spicy, sassy cachaca speaks up and takes no sh*t from no one (no one!) in the Citrus family (genus, to more exact).  (The other part of the answer is:  cachaca is a Brazilian liquor distilled from sugarcane.)  Cachaca invited Lime to party hard in Rio, and Lo! it’s Carnaval Time!  

Passion Fruit:  Silky dark chocolate ganache paired with a thin layer of passion fruit and Tahitian vanilla, topped with a hand-painted chocolate plaquette:  Where raspberry was The Seductress, passion fruit is the Harlot, flaunting her tartiness shamelessly — yea, proudly as she ‘mixes it up’ with Daddy Chocolate.  They tango, they rhumba, they step in perfect concert as the Darkness and the Flame spark in one’s mouth. Then, the Tahitian vanilla steps in for a timely threesome.  Saliva has never been so amply rewarded as Voyeur of any love affair — until now.

Caramel with fleur de sel:  A combination of bittersweet chocolate ganache and silky golden caramel with a sprinkle of fleur de sel. This square morsel of loveliness was a total surprise, and not just because the Thomas Haas picture guide pictured it as a round chocolate.  Caramel can be buttery, caramel can be rich, caramel can be hard (and not just on the fillings), but this SQUARE chocolate is justly serviced by the coating of confident and clean chocolate of Thomas Haas and its innards of richly burnt-sugary caramel.  Like some wrong first impressions (although, as clued-out as I am, I certainly wouldn’t feature a picture of one of my premium chocolates as ROUND if I planned on making it a goddamned SQUARE (!), believe you me!!!) (but that’s only the beginning of the wrong impression…), when I bit into this square, I forgot its shape and let the sensations of happily married caramel, chocolate and salt (it is an open marriage) take over my senses.  Damn! That is one fine piece of chocolate.

And that’s the way it was.”  

Our friends were suitably bummed at having missed out.