Cocoa Addiction

ALLERGIC TO CRACK? There's still chocolate. Strictly social users, we normally limit our habit to Debauve and Gallais (priced about the same as high-grade Peruvian rock, and at least as addictive). In this lifetime, you have to see Paris in the springtime, eat one meal at Per Se, catch at least one trophy fish, and have a D&G chocolate (www.debauveandgallais.com). Try the crÃ¨me brulÃ©e truffle or the dark chocolate pistole. D&G been the house chocolate for French royalty since 1830. But it's been available in New York for less than a year-flown in chilled, not frozen.

Okay, we've dabbled in Jacques Torres from time to time (www.mrchocolate.com). That passion goes back to his days at Le Cirque. It grew when he first opened at ABC Carpet with former Le Cirque super-chef Sottha Kuhn working the counter, offering the world's loveliest champagne truffles. If you haven't pressed your nose to the glass of his new Tribeca factory, do it before Willy Wonka comes out when every newspaper and magazine in town will send the throngs there.

Enter a new chocolate. Scharffen Berger (www.scharffenberger.com). While it's not D&G and it's not Torres, you also don't to finance a box. We could go on about its cute "chocolate folio" with its Crain's stationery feel, and the spicy dark-chocolate ginger nuggets, but our new obsession is its cacao nibs.

Cacao nibs? Maybe the rest of the world's been eating these forever, and we just discovered them (like when we started watching The Sopranos two seasons into it). But these are wild. The mylar bag inside the cream-toned Scharffen box looked like something coffee would come in. The nibs look like barely ground coffee.

As it says on the box: Cacao nibs are roasted cacao beans separated from their husks and broken into small bits.

So this is the real thing? The root? The zen of chocolate? The nibs' slightly bitter foretaste and rough texture made me think I'd bitten into a coffee bean. But then the taste of pure chocolate-without sweetness or creaminess-was undeniable.

I can't wait to try cooking with them. If I don't finish the box before I get there, I want to pair the tamarind-glazed ribs Lotus's chef Tyson Ophaso serves, with these cacao nibs over a bowl of rice vermicelli with sprouts and basil. Call it Choco Bo.

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The Shaken Not Stirred Blog

Friday, May 13, 2005

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