Salt & Chocolate

Salt and chocolate is a beautiful combination that is all the rage in the artisan chocolate scene. We must talk it up a fair amount on our Chocolate Tours, because a customer recently asked me if I've had my blood pressure checked. (My acupuncturist continues to marvel at my low blood pressure, so there!) Salt enhances the flavor of most foods, but is a particularly nice match with milk chocolate - cutting some of the sweetness and adding complexity.

When I was growing up, the only salt my mom used was the blue Morton brand with the little blonde umbrella girl. Now the world of gourmet salt is vast and almost overwhelming. Using kosher salt in any good recipe is just about a given, even for my mom. Sea salt was the first artisan salt to capture the attention of American chefs, especially those with French training. Artisan sea salts are typically natural and organic, harvested from the sea with very little treatment or refining. The mineral content and quality of the water is what creates a fine salt. The most common salt added to chocolate is fleur de sel, a type of grey sea salt. It is harvested by hand by "paludiers" in France and named for the aroma of violets created when the salt dries. Like wine, different regions produce fleur de sel of varying styles. The best known are Britanny and the Camargue, where you can horseback ride through the salt flats.

Chocolatiers also experiment with pink salts. Michael Mischer uses a Murray River sea salt, whose pink flakes come from the largest river in Australia. And Katrina Markoff of Vosges likes pink Himalayan salt mined from the Himalayan mountains in Tibet. So enough of the history lesson...What are some of my favorite salty sweet chocolate creations?

1) Charles Chocolate Cashew Bar
I love filled chocolates from Charles, but his widely available bars have never made it into my shopping cart, until now. Chuck Siegel has developed a new "Emeryville Collection" of chocolate bars exclusive to Whole Foods. I guess if you don't live in the Bay Area, Emeryville sounds exotic. Each bar features organic Straus Family cream and butter, nuts and, of course, salt. My favorite is the Cashew Bar, a blend of roasted cashews, fleur de sel and 41% milk chocolate.

2) Domori Latte Sal
This bar has made me an unofficial member of the Domori "Cult Cacao." Domori is an Italian chocolate maker that actually owns their own plantations and focuses solely on the quality of cacao - without adding vanilla or even soy lecithin. At 44% cacao, its flavor is deep and rich. Like most of the bars listed here, the addition of salt (fleur de sel here) is not overpowering and makes the chocolate even more memorably satisfying.

3) Vosges Goji Exotic Candy Bar
This Vosges milk chocolate bar is a tribute to the Himalayas - with pink Himalayan salt and the goji berry, both harvested from the mountains of Tibet. A staple of health food stores, the goji berry (also known as the wolfberry) is believed to be full of astounding nutritional benefits. But whether or not the goji berry will make us live until 252, like a famous goji loving Chinese emperor, I'll still love this Vosges bar.

4) Rococo Dark Sea Salt Artisan Bar
I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I loved Rococo even before trying the chocolate because of its beautifully unique packaging. Chantal Coady is the woman behind this British chocolate company. She specializes in unique flavor combinations (like basil and persian lime), but this simple sea salt and milk chocolate is one of her best. The bar is 37% cacao, all organic. The plastic wrapping displays various antique French molds Coady uses for her bars, and as a bonus, is re-sealable.

5) Michael Mischer Milk Chocolate with Toffee and Murray River Sea Salt
When customers on our Chocolate Tours say they like toffee, I won't hesitate to direct them to this bar. Toffee and chocolate is quite sweet, and so the addition of salt just makes sense. The bar is 38% cacao milk chocolate, made by hand in his small Oakland kitchen. Like all Michael Mischer bars, the clear packaging showcases the beauty of the bar within.

6) Recchiuti Fleur de Sel Caramel
Nearly every modern chocolatier makes a fleur de sel piece. But there are many ways to do this. Some are just too heavy handed with the salt for my taste. Others are quite goopy, when I prefer a thicker ganache center. That is why the Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel is my first choice when I'm looking for a salty sweet filled chocolate. It's a pretty little piece, enrobed in bittersweet chocolate and marbleized with Venezuelan white chocolate.

Review: In Search of the Heart of Chocolate

Can you be a chocolate addict? Can chocolate enhance your love life? Are the regulars who shop at Chocolate Covered more than just a little bizarre? These are the questions Sarah Feinbloom begins to explore in her "chocumentary," In Search of the Heart of Chocolate. The film was perfectly timed to be released on Valentine's Day, with chocolate tastings and discussions at the San Francisco premiere. And although I was out of the country that week, Feinbloom was kind enough to send me a copy.

The film's luxurious subject and humorous tone is far removed from the subjects Feinbloom usually tackles in her documentaries (e.g., child trafficking, youth violence, religion). While she could have focused on plantation slave labor or the rise of organic chocolate, she sticks to a more complicated topic - what is it about chocolate that provokes such passion, such intensity, such love? And the results are a lot of fun to watch.

After making the acquaintance of Jack Epstein, the owner of Noe Valley's Chocolate Covered, Feinbloom is introduced to a number of San Francisco chocolate aficionados whose interviews appear in the film. She intersperses clips of these interviews with slices of her own chocolate past and a bit of information on chocolate history and production. Feinbloom confesses that she is a chocoholic (and why we would trust this kind of film made by anyone else!) and dramatizes one pivotal event from her chocolate-laden childhood; her mother wakes her late at night and they sit at the kitchen table surreptitiously eating chocolate sauce with a spoon right out of the jar.

But rather than lecture us on her own chocolate preferences and habits, Feinbloom keeps us laughing by showcasing the quirky Chocolate Covered customers who seem to live for chocolate. Epstein, who admits he prefers greasy and salty foods like potato chips to chocolate, actually offers his own kind of "therapy" for customers who can't deal with the guilt or have no understanding of moderation when it comes to consuming chocolate. And although he encounters plenty of SF locals who can't go a day without chocolate, he is opposed to using the word "addict." I've read the studies too that show chocolate cannot be addictive, but Feinbloom's interviews do make me think twice.

Feinbloom introduces us to the "100 percenter," otherwise known as Richard, an ex-hippie turned serious chocolate connoisseur who approaches tasting chocolate with an almost scary intensity. As he suckles his 100% Domori (an acquired taste, he admits), Richard clues Feinbloom into the psychoanalytic qualities of this chocolate. He insists that the colors in his garden become brighter and more intense, as Feinbloom zooms in to capture this effect. Much like an interview on The Daily Show, Feinbloom need do very little but let her subjects talk. What we get is pure entertainment.

And then there is Suzanne, whose chocolate routine consists of eating chocolate in the morning, in the afternoon and at night. She begins by asking Feinbloom to sample one of her favorite dark bars, but it doesn't take long before she is pointing out the chocolate colored paints she favors and a new chocolate colored sweater - both testament to her obsession. She fingers the delicate brown beading on the sweater with as much care as the chocolate bars she buys nearly every day from Chocolate Covered. At the end of the interview, she says "I could stop though," but we all know the truth.

I encounter a wide range of chocolate lovers and fanatics on my Chocolate Tours, but never anyone quite as interesting as Suzanne and Richard. This is the gritty, authentic (and foggy) world of chocolate - a long way from the slick downtown boutiques we visit on my tours. Chocolate Covered is actually on the basement level, lacking artfully designed window displays or tables for late-night drinking chocolate parties. I thank Sarah Feinbloom for bringing us this nugget of San Francisco chocolate life.

If you're interested in watching the film for yourself, it's available for purchase on her web site for $19.99, plus shipping and handling. The film is 25 minutes long.
It will also be screened at the San Francisco International Chocolate Salon on April 13th. Feinbloom and I will both be members of the "Tasting Panel," and I'm looking forward to meeting her.