Bitter Chocolates?
By sandra. Filed in Belgium, Chocolate |
Laurent Gerbaud, Belgian chocolatier, was so good that he was sent to Shanghai for the World Expo to show off the sweet talents of his country. However, when he got there he soured on chocolates. Gerbaud discovered that the Chinese were not used to so much sugar so making use of his creative skills he revised his recipes and started to work on tart and bitter tastes.
He searches purveyors for ingredients such as South African Barrrydale apricots, Persian cranberries, Turkish figs, pepper, spicy ginger and orange peel, and mixes them with his dark dark 70 % chocolate recipe using chocolate from Madagascar and Ecuador. The Turkish figs are crunchy, chewy and just slightly sweet. One with Greek pistachios blends salt, sweet (milk chocolate) and nut crunch. There’s a salute to Belgians love for specoloos (gingerbread) by rolling a truffle in the crumbs.
Gerbaud is really a chocolate pusher because once you get addicted to his intense flavor combos, it is very hard to go back to sweetened chocolate.
Tags: apricot, Barrydale, Belgian, bitter, Chinese, Chocolate, cranberries, dark chocolate, fig, ginger, gingerbread, Greek, Laurent Berbaud, milk chocolate, nut, orange, peel, pepper, Persian, pistachio, Shanghai, South Africa, specoloos, tart, truffle