Book Review - The Fruit Hunters

It was with a mixture of joy, surprise and growing interest, and occasional anger, that I read Adam Leith Gollner's book "The Fruit Hunters". Joy because I enjoy fruit, and have some wonderful experiences eating fruit, climbing a peach tree as a teenager and eating a sun-warmed large juicy peach, the best I've eaten; picking wild blueberries in early August along the rail tracks north-east of Espanola, Ontario, they tasted tart and sweet; canoeing across Cuttle Lake near Fort Frances to again pick wild blueberries. Suprise because I found out about different varieties of fruit available, different heirloom apples with amazing tastes, red and white durians, the miracle fruit (eat it and sour things taste sweet) and its story of intrigue and big business, the lady fruit (looks like a lady's, er, private parts). Growing interest, because I have a desire to taste the fruits I have read about, where they are grown at the time they ripen, rather than waiting for the few picked-too-early-and-not-properly-ripe, crunchy or crisp rather than juicy, fruits we can only buy in supermarkets, and the hundreds of vastly superior in taste varieties of fruit available around the world. And occasional anger, at the bureaucracy that decides which fruits we can and can not have, the banning by the Government of imports of certain fruits for what I can see is little or no good reason, the decision to allow fake chemical potentially-cancer-causing sweeteners to be sold rather than natural alternatives like miraculin (what makes miracle fruit so interesting). Read this book if you are interested in fruit in any way, it will open your eyes to the world of tasty fruit and the activity of fruit hunters, who search the world for exotic and interesting and tasty fruits before they are lost. Fascinating. Intoxicating. Delicious.

Book Review - The Chocolate Connoisseur

Having read about her in Mort Rosenblum's book Chocolate, and having seen her in the documentary Chocolate Confidential on TV, I was intrigued by the person described as having the finest palate for chocolate, Chloe Doutre-Roussel, and whether her wide experience could be translated well into book form. Unlike Rosenblum's book, which deals with the history and stories behind chocolate, this book deals with the way to become more knowledgeable about chocolate, thus raising your ability to distinguish between good and bad chocolate, and thus be able to enjoy chocolate more. To become, as the title suggests, a Connoisseur of Chocolate.

The book opens with a chapter on Chloe's passion for chocolate, acquired and cultivated from a young age, and what she does to maintain that passion. This is followed by a chapter on the history of chocolate, past and present, where we learn such interesting facts, that the top 10 chocolate bars sold, do not contain more than 20% chocolate, in a thin layer (Mars and Twix and Snickers the top 3); what good chocolate is - high quality ingredients, good production methods, and good level of cocoa content, and who you possibly could obtain it from (Amedei, Bonnat, Chocovic, Michel Cluizel, El Rey, Felchlin, Guittard, Pralus, Scharffen Berger or Valrhona are just some of the names to look for); and what kind of chocolate is favoured in each country. The next chapter gives detailed instructions on how to build your Chocolate Profile, by examining the kinds of chocolate you eat now (so that you can find other better chocolate similar to it); determining how much and when you eat chocolate, what it does for you; and how to eat chocolate and make notes about each new chocolate to build your own chocolate database, where to find it or clubs to join. This is followed by a detailed journey of cacao, from the trees where it grows to the harvested beans, to the fermented, dried and roasted cocoa, to making it into cocoa liquor, conching (which makes it smooth), tempering (heating and cooling rapidly, to crystallize the cocoa butter into a stable form), and finally to moulding. The next chapter details how one can taste chocolate, similar to how one tastes wine, how to use all of your senses to experience chocolate (look at it; touch it to see how it feels; hear how it breaks; smell it; and finally taste it), how to recognize the various and sometimes subtle flavours in different cacao beans, not only sour, sweet, bitter, acid or salty, but flavours in categories like spicy or fruity or flowery, and how you can change your own tastes, to develop your own chocolate palate. This is followed by a short chapter on sharing chocolate, through parties and games, and by cooking or baking with chocolate. Next is a chapter on how to distinguish the best of chocolate, what to look for, how to read the ingredient listings to determine how good a bar it is, and whether organic is worth it or even tasty. The seventh chapter deals with types of chocolates, bars and bonbons, what goes into these and what is good, and not so good. If you ever wondered whether chocolate is good for you, what effect it might have on your health, the next chapter deals on this subject, where we find out about chocolate and the heart, chocolate and obesity, chocolate and acne, chocolate as an aphrodisiac, chocolate and caffeine, and the myths and truths behind these. The second to last chapter deals with becoming a connoisseur, what it entails, what Chloe does in order to fulfill her passion. The last chapter deals with the future of chocolate, how good quality chocolate is finding its way to the consumer because they are beginning to demand it.

Did this help me become a Chocolate Connoisseur? I can say that I had already begun travelling down that particular path already, this just coalesced some of the ideas that I had been forming from information I had read here and there, and chocolate I had found and tasted and liked, or disliked. The journey continues.

Book Review - Chocolate by Mort Rosenblum

I picked up this book, Chocolate - A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light, the other week, having read about it in this review about books concerning chocolate, and I was eager to read it. Mort Rosenblum did not start out as an expert on chocolate and write a book, he was a complete novice, and learned about chocolate in his travels, from experts and individuals, exposing truths and fictions about this wonderful food we so love. In that, he mirrors my quest to find great tasting chocolate. Not that I would travel the whole world, as he has done, well, perhaps a few places, but my expectations of what chocolate is has changed, having myself grown up on sweet milk chocolate and candy bars, and only in the last few years, have seriously discovered and enjoyed dark chocolate, and have come to dislike milk chocolate, and have quite frankly turned into a 'chocolate snob'. I am eager to learn more, what to look for, how to tell if something is potentially good, or bad, how to find chocolate I really like and continue to like. I like the colour of the book binding, a medium-brown chocolate.

The meat of the book concerns chocolate, certainly, it starts out with a chapter on how cacao was discovered, how it was brought to the world, from the Ancient to the Young. Then it goes on with a chapter on how chocolate has influenced the world, what it means to people, followed by a chapter on the different species of cacao, and how they differ, where they are grown and what is better. There is a chapter on mole sauce, in which I found out that traditionally there are 27 ingredients, one of them being chocolate, and that the meat traditionally served with this sauce is not chicken, but turkey. A chapter on Hershey, so beloved by the American public, so despised by Europeans. Another on the Ivory Coast in Africa, where 50% of most cacao comes from, and most of it does not rank among the good stuff. Chapters follow on Valrhona; chocolate in France (are they the best makers of chocolate); chocolate in Belgium (are they better than the French); Godiva chocolate; chocolate in England (in which we learn about using different fats to replace cocoa butter); chocolate in Switzerland (where all chocolate seems to be uniform in taste and well loved - the Swiss eat the most chocolate per capita); Nutella (a wonderful product, how could I not like hazelnuts and chocolate together in the same product); chocolate for the body and soul (is it an aphrodisiac, is it good for your health); and chocolate in America (where we find makers of excellent dark chocolate). Each chapter is interesting and well written. Here, too, I have discovered the person with the best palate for chocolate, Chloe Doutre-Roussel, she has her own book, in which she reveals the secrets to enjoying good chocolate.

The lesson that I have taken from this book, is that chocolate is an individual thing, it is not a matter of facts and logic, but of opinion, and that what is good and tasty for one, might be horrible for another. Too, each cacao bean is unique in its taste, and how it is prepared can make it shine or fail, that one needs good cacao to make good chocolate, but you could just as easily make bad chocolate from those same beans. Finally, there is a whole world of chocolate to explore, and I am just beginning my adventure.