As Americans we are privileged enough to have, among other things, a sickeningly varied cache of chocolates to choose from. High-quality artisan chocolatiers such as Scharfen-Berger, Vosges, and Green & Black’s have snuck their bars onto the shelves of supermarkets, cornershops, and department stores everywhere. As a chef with a chocolate-coated background, I’ve been even further spoiled by the boxed bounties of restaurant-industry standards such as Valrhona, El Rey, and Callebaut. I was therefore dumbstruck the first time I broke into the Taza chocolate stash at the Linkery.
Taza is a budding chocolate company, based in Somerville, MA, that bases their business around the Latin American roots of chocolate culture, all the while employing fair trade and ethical purchasing practices from their cacoa growers. I’ve sampled unique handmade chocolates from Chilapa and Oaxaca in Mexico with the cinnamon-sugary crunch characteristic of unconched Mexican chocolates, but the stone-ground organic stuff that Taza custom-makes for us is in a whole ‘nother league: unsweetened, pure chocolate liquor. The flavor is raw, floral, and utterly intense, approaching more roasted coffee notes than the European-style, refined dark chocolate flavor we’ve become accustomed to. This pure liquor, molded into gold bouillon-like bars, can require a bit more processing as opposed to the pre-tempered, premium chocolates that are typically brought to restaurant back doors.
Thus we’ve begun a whole new approach to chocolate work at the Linkery.
As a pure cooking ingredient, it simply rocks, providing the perfect lift to dark moles, chili, and certain sausages, which benefit from its bold punch. In terms of pastry work, things get a little more complicated. Since Taza’s chocolate liquor is unsweetened, unconched, and therefore quite a bit sharper than most of us are used to, we’ve experimented with less than traditional proportions of cocoa to cream when creating ganache, and often use local honey to tame the wild phenolic compounds and alkaloids in the chocolate. From truffles to tortes, chocolate “salami” to xocolatl-style hot cocoa, ice creams to chocolate layer cakes, it’s been an enjoyable challenge working with this cacoa wonder.
A recent challenge for us has been trying to conch/refine our own semisweet chocolate for use as chips. Somewhat ironically one of the most classic staples of the American dessert pantry has proved one of the most difficult for us to recreate with our meager conching setup. We’ve tried utilizing an ice cream machine minus the ice as well as various water-bath/mixer combinations to re-create the friction power of heated stones grinding together. This is probably not the type of thing you want to try at home unless you possess the same deranged combination of wonder and patience that most chefs and chocolatiers do. Currently, our experiments have resulted in kind of a hybrid of Mexican and refined, European-style chocolates. The friction process, as well as the addition of cocoa butter and raw organic sugar, noticeably mellows the flavor, creating a smoother, more familiar product, one that you’d want to say… toss into cookie dough with abandon.
I encourage anyone with a passion for chocolate to dig deeper on Taza’s website for a fuller picture of what goes on from their growers’ farms to their Somerville factory to help make amazing chocolate for the rest of us.
Wow nice article Joel. Is this your first post? I enjoyed reading it and seeing other people besides the usuals, posting on the blog.
Interesting info, as I am huge fan of chocolate!