Chocolate goes pop

From the rich mole to pink raspberry hue, here’s how chocolate continues to hold our fascination in its various avatars, writes Madhulika Dash

Circa 2018: A new kind of cocoa makes its debut in the premium chocolate market in India. Rose-coloured with a fruity aroma. The ruby-hued cocoa version takes the market instantly by storm.

Chocolate, which till then was known for its four versions — bitter-dark, dark, semi-sweet and milk — now had a fifth member, and it was pink.

Surf & Turf

The new chocolate proved to be the tipping point for chocolate lovers and makers who made it a part of voracious experimentation ranging from the glossy pralines to hand-crafted bars, sweet-savoury desserts and even experiential that could showcase the different facets of the new chocolate, transforming the once strictly dessert element into a versatile kitchen ingredient. Chocolate, suddenly, wasn’t just sweet anymore.

Incidentally, it wasn’t the first time that the Mayan discovery had been in the culinary limelight, it had been a regular with chocolate in the past few years. Or since, good quality couverture chocolates became an easy find in the country. With the right quality of chocolate available, chefs turned the king ingredient into one of the finest canvases of creativity — not only for desserts but storytelling as well. And that meant making it a part of a savoury dish too.

A case in point is Chef Abhijit Saha’s Imitation Mushroom Garden. Created using chocolates in different ways to add textures that resemble a real mushroom patch in a forest, Chef Saha recalls how he used the different variants of chocolate to give it the right look and feel. “While the soil and crumble are made of dark chocolate, the mushroom is a fine wedding between coconut and white chocolate,” he says about his creation.

The brilliance of this dessert, says the award-winning chef, “is that in spite of the amount of chocolate used, there is a fascinating melange of different flavours and tasting notes that isn’t all sweet.” A storyline that can be seen in the culinary legend’s Chocolate Signature as well. Crafted as a sweet-sour indulgence, this dessert uses thyme to bring forth the wine-like notes of dark chocolate that is paired with strawberry to give it that palate contrast.

Chocolate Mole

Fortunately, Chef Saha isn’t the only chef whose experiments with chocolate go beyond the conventional ‘sweet nothings’.Few, like seasoned pastry Chef Anurag Barthwal, have been playing with the chocolate and cocoa butter for almost a decade now. He calls it, “one of the extremely versatile but moody character of the pastry world.”

The thing about chocolate, Chef Barthwal says, “is that while it is counted amongst the ingredients with a strong flavour profile, it can be really guile when you start working with it. Simple things like how fast you have melted your chocolate, the shape of the chocolate and even the time and temperature in which new flavourants are added can make a lot of difference to the chocolate. And the tricky part is it is unforgiving. Even the wrong style of tempering will end as a bubble on the final product.”

That aspect, says the pastry expert, “while makes working with chocolate hugely challenging, it also opens up a new world of possibility.” Chef Barthwal is among the few frontrunners who used the technique of water and chocolate to create mousse, thus breaking the long-held conception that cream is necessary for creating desserts with chocolate. His creations like the Hampi Terrain, where
he uses the different facet of chocolate and cocoa butter to recreate stories on the plate while demonstrating the many moods of chocolate, stand testimony to this.

In his other work called The Bitter and The Sweet, Chef Barthwal uses 70% Guanaja chocolate rock and a piece of organic honeycomb served together simply on a plate representing the concept of yin & yang.

Another chef driving the changing perception of chocolate is dessert wizard Chef Avijit Ghosh. Real chocolate, says the seasoned pastry chef, “is like a well-aged spirit. On the one hand, it has this weave of complex flavours that range from smoky to bitter to hint of sweet and even fruity (like in ruby chocolate) and on the other, this amazing ability to turn into a base that can take on contrasting flavours really well like sea salt, chillies, tomatoes and even a plethora of other herbs and spices. And that is the quality that has enabled it to outgrow its ‘sweet’ tag so quickly.” A fact that is displayed in Chef Ghosh’s recently created Red Fruit Yule Log, where he has played with a lot of savoury flavours to bring a new side to sweet cakes. “It isn’t your conventional sweet but a bevy of flavouring notes that makes a bite, rich, sweet and delicious.”

Mexican cuisine specialist Chef Vikas Seth, whose take on chocolate is inspired by the iconic chocolate “mole” elaborates that, “even though most find the chocolate mole to be an acquired taste, it is by far one of the finest manifestations of how beautifully cocoa can take on new flavours. Take the case of the Mexican dish, which uses a variety of chillies and Indian spices like clove in it. And even when it is cooked for a good four-hour-plus, you can still find the notes on a taste. In fact, chocolate here plays not only the role of an arbitrator between the chillies and the warm spices, the cocoa butter in it ensures that the pungency is enjoyable.”

Chef Seth, in fact, uses chocolate’s honeycomb base to create some of his famous desserts that are not only great on the eye but palate too.

An excellent example is his dark chocolate guacamole mousse, where he uses the fat content of an avocado and salt to create this lusciously rich dessert with that unmistakable hint of savouriness.

No wonder, chocolate is called the poster boy of Neurogastronomy as it is one ingredient that has changed perceptions effectively, or as the Spanish Conquistador, Hernán Cortés had called it, “the most magical deception.”