Once, shopping for chocolate meant choosing between plain and almond. These days, even Safeway regularly stocks a dozen or more types. And when you venutre into true shrines to cacao, the options only multiply. Fog City News stocks more than 235 bars on the shelves, and at Bittersweet, a chocolate café with locations in Oakland and San Francisco, you can pick from over 120.
Here, nuts and nougat are old hat. Now you can choose between curry and cumin in your milk chocolate. Ask for a recommendation, and you're likely to hear about one bar's "warm tannins and black cherry" and another's "bright berries and red fruit." It's enough to make you wonder if you've wandered into a wine shop by mistake.
The Bay Area is at the forefront of this choclate renaissance, with major producers including Guittard, Scharffen Berger, and Ghirardelli, as well as artisan outfits such as Recchiuti, XOX Truffles, Oakland's Michael Mischer, and the Napa-based Woodhouse Chocolates—even See's has its corporate headquarters in South San Francisco. Chocolate lovers around the region are reveling in the goodness.
ON THE LABEL
Unsweetened chocolate is made from ground cocoa beans. Its two key components are cocoa butter and dry cocoa solids. Also known as chocolate liquor, it's the basis for all chocolate products.
Cocoa powder is essentially a concentrated form of cocoa bean made by extracting the dry solids from chocolate liquor. Unprocessed cocoa is labeled natural. Dutch cocoa has chemical alkalies added to make it taste less bitter.
Bittersweet and semisweet chocolates have a minimum of 35 percent chocolate liquor.
White chocolate is cocoa butter with all of the nonfat solids removed.
Single-origin varietal chocolate is made from beans from one geographical region rather than a blend. These chocolates have distinctive flavor profiles and are often quite fruity and spicy.
ON THE MENU
At Aziza (5800 Geary Blvd., S.F., 415-752-2222), Janet Rikala Dalton serves a dark choclate custard with cayenne and a cup of hot chocolate topped with a black pepper marshmallow. "I was thinking about hot chocolate and wanted ot make chocolate that's hot in a different way," she says.
Some pastry chefs might be stymied by the request to come up with a dessert for a menu that promises black truffles with every course, but not the Ritz Carlton's (600 Stockton St., S.F., 415-296-7465) Alexander Espiritu. His vanilla tapioca with milk chocolate ice cream topped with shaved black truffle is, he claims, a natural pairing.
At Coco500 (500 Brannan St., S.F., 415-543-2222), Loretta Keller plays it straight by offering diners a simple two-ounce piece of El Rey's Bucare, a bittersweet from Venezuela. "Sometimes all you want for dessert is a piece of chocolate," says Keller. "It's the kind of thing I do at home, so why not in a restaurant?"
IN THE KITCHEN
Anne Walker, a long-time Bay Area pastry chef, has been making her signature pot de crème for close to a decade, first at the Slow Club, then at the now-defunct 42°, and for the past three and a half years at Bi-Rite Market (3639 18th St., S.F., 415-241-9760), where she sells nearly 100 of her rich custards every week.
Anne's Chocolate Pot de Crème
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 cups heavy cream
1¼ cups half-and-half
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
pinch of salt
9 egg yolks
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Put chocolate in a large bowl. In a heavy-bottom pan combine cream, half-and-half, ¼ cup sugar, and salt over medium heat. In another bowl, whisk egg yolks and remaining sugar. Just as the cream reaches a boil, add about ¼ cup of it into the yolks, whisking all the while. Whisk this yolk mixture back into the remaining cream. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is quite thick, taking care not to overcook. Pour the cream-and-egg-yolk mixture over the chocolate and whisk gently until the chocolate has melted. Add the vanilla and pour through a fine strainer. Pour into ramekins and let cool completely. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Top with whipped cream before serving.