at the sign of The Pink Pig: Fear Of Melting: Scharffen Berger At The FCI

[Free stuff by Wilfrid: August 10, 2o09]

Someone out there has put me on a list of New York chocolate mavens. It's the only explanation.

First, the Bissinger's tasting, and now an invitation to sample the wares of Julia Child's favorite chocolate-maker, Scharffen Berger. I am starting to feel like Charlie with the golden ticket.

Honestly, I only eat so much chocolate, but after the discussions at these two events I certainly know a lot more about it. As you might have guessed, the pretext for this particular event is that Julia's taste for Scharffen Berger is paraded in the new movie, Julie and Julia, thus affording the company some prime brand placement. There was a contest to guess the cocoa and sugar contents, respectively, of four chocolates tasted - red carpet movie tickets to the winner.

No, I didn't win. I did get the cocoa content of each sample exactly right, but then forgot that there's a simple enough formula to calculate the sugar content from that... duh. The samples, by the way, ranged clockwise from a powerful, almost harsh 70% cocoa offering (bottom left) through two quite delicious bitter-sweet chocolates - one with a pronounced, and natural, cherry after-taste, to the company's only milk chocolate, which had started to sweat a bit and which I didn't really like.

Not only were we loaded with chocolate to take away - and it was a miracle I got it home without it melting - and this massive book which I have yet to open...

...we were also fed by the sprightly Jacques Pepin, reeling off Julia Child anecdotes while making crêpes by the dozen.

Yes, we were in one of the lecture theaters at the French Culinary Institute. Hence the overhead screen. Hence also the fantastically tight little chairs with fixed tablet arms on which we balanced notepads, chocolate samples and everything else. I would say that the audience was about eighty per cent slender young women, and even they were having trouble getting into the seats. After we started lunch, I began to feel I would never get out.

I wondered how the chef was going to prepare and serve the menu right before our eyes, but of course the dishes were prepared and plated elsewhere. Pepin did demonstrate some of them, and then turned his attention to making roses, with a flick of his knife, from a pat of rapidly melting butter.

I suppose you want to see the food. Each course had a chocolate element, as one might expect.

(Always true to you) faux gras (in) ma façon

Some regular duck liver in the pâté, then, not that naughty "force fed" stuff, with bitter cocoa powder and cognac, finished with some bits of pistachio.

Then some meat. A tri-tip roast with a rub detailed on the Scharffen Berger site. Fairly mildly flavored, considering that the recipe calls for red pepper flakes, chili powder and mustard, as well as cocoa nibs.

I was on the ropes at this point, and it was getting warm in that lecture theater. This finished me off. Chocolate cake which bursts with molten chocolate when cut, on an apricot-cognac sauce, crunchy bites of nuts and cornflakes dipped in ganache, and - the only thing which didn't appeal to me - a rather bitter gratin with raspberry.