Chocolate’s Darker Side
While almost always popular with guests, chocolate desserts in the hands of some pastry chefs are taking thought-provoking risks.
By Kate Leahy, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 1/4/2008
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At Bank Lane Bistro in Lake Forest, Ill., Executive Chef John des Rosiers is on a mission. He wants to make a chocolate dessert that preserves the nuance found in the block of chocolate made with some of Madagascar’s best cocoa beans.
“It’s kind of like a single vineyard wine, but instead it’s chocolate. We’re trying to show the pure essence of chocolate from this part of the world,” des Rosiers explains.
He will not serve a piece of the chocolate, unadorned, on a plate. That would be too simple. He also eschews cream, sugar, spices and other niceties, which may mask or mellow the chocolate’s character.
So instead of making a cream- and egg-based mousse, he melts the chocolate, blends it with a little skim milk, stirs in gelatin and pours the mixture into a 3-inch-tall cylinder, which he promptly refrigerates. To serve, the chocolate tower is removed from the mold, garnished with pink Australian sea salt and pecan dust, and served with a citrus granita on the side.
“You’re getting a massively intense dose of chocolate,” he says. “When it hits your mouth, it turns to liquid.”
When it comes to preparing chocolate desserts, many chefs seek a road less traveled, looking for ways to highlight the darker, bitter, and more savory sides of chocolate. The reasons for doing so come in part from the challenge to differentiate oneself from the fray.
“Everyone does chocolate desserts,” explains des Rosiers. “It’s easy to put a lot of chocolate into a dessert. It’s an easy thing to make it taste good. It’s harder to make it innovative and unique.”
In San Francisco, Pastry Chef Jane Tseng features a chocolate sandwich made with caramelized milk, pears, shaved chocolate and sea salt at recently opened SPQR. Meanwhile, across the country in Miami, Hedy Goldsmith, pastry chef at Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, serves a milk-chocolate mousse garnished with olive oil, sea salt, and toasted sourdough bread (> Recipe). In New York City, Executive Pastry Chef Gustavo Tzoc serves a chocolate caramel mousse with salty caramel, peanuts and coconut sorbet on devil’s food cake at davidburke & donnatella.
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Savory flavors with chocolate, particularly sea salt Chocolate country of origin and brand names singled out on menus More tea and herbs infused into chocolate |
The rise of serious chocolate desserts also is a result of consumer demand. With more chocolate bars retailing at premium prices, chocolate fans are making discerning choices between imported chocolate bars spiced with chiles or sea salt, or that contain more than 70% cacao.
“I would get a lot of requests – it wasn’t from the same server, it came from different servers. They would say that their table wanted just a little piece of bittersweet chocolate for dessert,” says Suzanne Imaz, executive pastry chef for the Chicago-based Cornerstone Restaurant Group and who develops the desserts for one sixtyblue, also in Chicago.
Frédéric Robert, executive pastry chef at Wynn Las Vegas, says the number of people who request specialty bittersweet chocolates with high percentages of cacao is small. But though the majority of diners prefer milk chocolate, he explains, the very idea that some consumers are seeking out specialty chocolates is an example of growing culinary knowledge. “I’m very surprised,” he says. “People want to discover something very different.”
At Boka in Chicago, Executive Pastry Chef Elizabeth Dahl enjoys working with dark chocolate, which, she says, lends itself to more challenging compositions than does milk chocolate.
“I love dark chocolate because it is bitter,” Dahl claims. “I like to put it with savory pairings.” She pairs dark chocolate with rich flavors such as coffee, black cardamom (smokier than the more common green cardamom), and grilled mission figs. Bittersweet chocolate also creates a counterbalance to sweeter, tropical flavors. Dahl’s bittersweet chocolate waffles accompanies coconut sorbet and a passion fruit caramel sauce.
Yet while she doesn’t deny chocolate’s popularity on a dessert menu (“If we have a two-top, we have at least one chocolate dessert on the ticket,” she says), Dahl admits that the milk chocolate desserts often sell better than her dark chocolate creations, something she attributes to their accessible flavors.
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11 Rank of the United States in per-capita chocolate consumption (12.3 pounds) in 2005. Germany’s 24.5 pounds tops the list; Belgium in No. 2 (24.3 pounds), Switzerland is No. 3 (23.6 pounds). (The International Cocoa Organization) |
The reverse also can be true. A dark-chocolate and ginger soufflé paired with lemon verbena ice cream and chocolate shavings has been a popular fixture on one sixtyblue’s dessert menu.
But Imaz admittedly is more drawn to the subtle use of milk chocolate in a banana and mascarpone cannelloni. A thin milk chocolate cremeux (a pudding-like mousse made with crème anglaise) anchors a square phyllo crisp topped with a roll of banana gelee filled with mascarpone cream. Sautéed bananas spiced with cardamom finished the dessert. “It’s a different presentation with familiar flavors,” she explains.
No matter its pull, simply adding chocolate – dark, milk, or white – to a dessert isn’t enough to make it popular. Varied texture and flavor also are important factors in making a dessert work. Patrick Sigaud, executive pastry chef of Heaven Sent Desserts in San Diego, had some trouble with a chocolate cake coated with ganache. The cake was too dry, so he cut some of the dark chocolate with white chocolate and added hazelnuts. “It now has white chocolate mousse, dark chocolate mousse, and the crunch from hazelnuts,” Sigaud says, explaining that he now finishes the sauce with lingonberry compote in addition to the dark chocolate ganache.
Yet many chefs and consumers alike still harbor an attachment to simple milk chocolate. Even through Robert, who always notes the source of cocoa beans of the chocolate he buys, admits: “I like milk chocolate. You have a taste memory for the chocolate.&rdquo
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