There have been a lot of bland, uninteresting fair trade & organic chocolates going around, so Kallari (kahl-YA-di) chose the perfect time to send me the three bars in their range, which is anything but boring.
Besides the USDA Organic mark, Kallari is stamped as Rain Forest Alliance Certified. The company is beyond even Fair Trade, being “the only farmers’ cooperative in the world that harvests, markets, and enjoys all the profits from its own line of organic chocolate.” 850 Kichwa families produce the chocolate, which is mainly Cacao Nacional, but also has Criollo, Trinitario, Venezuelan, and Blonde Cacao beans. The black box folds out to tell this story, or you can read about it at their website (which also has some great photography.) “Sustainable pleasure for palate and planet,” as their slogan says. Besides online, you can find them at Whole Foods Market.
Kallari calls its chocolate “intensely flavorful and delicate.” Gentle I can imagine, but delicate? Especially along with “intense,” I was wondering how they got that. But it’s the perfect word for these eighteen leaf-marked pieces. They have a deep chocolatey aroma, while still reminiscing of an endearing confectionery. Just. . . awesome. The taste starts out in a deep purpley, moves onto the lightest of fruits, and ends with a strongly flavorful vanilla that still flows on one level. Not harsh of striking. Only delicate, especially considering that it’s a 70%. Like a delicate porcelain figurine, “delicate” doesn’t mean that it can’t have exquisite and thrilling details, though. It melts delicately, too. It’s calm enough that you hardly seem to notice, yet there’s enough of a gentle effect for it to be a delight in itself.
I think no matter who gets a hold of this, milk or dark lovers, they’re all going to attack it. There’s already very little left in my hands.
It’s time for another in our Chocophile series – where we drag interesting people off the streets and interrogate them about their chocolate-eating habits.
This week we’ve collared XFM DJ Eddy Temple-Morris….
Chocophile:
Eddy Temple-Morris
- Occupation:
- DJ, producer
- Web Site:
- Facebook / Myspace
Interrogation Begins:
- Milk, dark or white:
- When the chips are down, dark. Although sometimes only milk will do. If I’m honest, I think the best tasing chocolate is a very dark milk, or a very milky dark one.
- Favourite childhood chocolate:
- Remember Cadbury ‘Country Style’? In a distinctive red chequered wrapper, with barn-dancing-hoe-down ads. Nice and simple, milk chocolate, with crunchy biscuit pieces.
- Fruit or nut:
- There is a time for fruit and there is a time for nut, and in my view anytime is the time for Fruit & Nut.
- Crunchy or chewy:
- Crunchy. I’ve always loved the texture of a good crunch as a foil to milk chocolate. The best example, and possibly my favourite ‘normal’ chocolate is Crunchy Pieces. They always have them in the vending machines at Heathrow Airport station (The Express not the tube). I can never resist treating myself to a bag on my way home from Ibiza or barcelona or somewhere like that. I buy them with the intention of making them last, and giving some to my little boy later, but the awful truth is they’re usually all gone by the time the train pulls in at Paddington, 15 minutes later.
- Your guilty chocolate secret:
- I boycotted Nestlé decades ago, but once in a blue moon I have to guiltily have a Kit Kat Dark, usually at a random petrol station on my way home from a gig in a random city… when nobody is looking.
- Average chocolate consumption:
- I try to treat myself to a bit of chocolate every day. Obviously that spikes at Christmas and Persian New Year, when we all give each other chocolate to ensure the rest of the year is sweet.
- Give or receive:
- What a question to ask a chocoholic! I wish i could say ‘give’ but I’d be lying.
- Least favourite chocolate:
- Kinder chocolate, anything with coffee in it, and most American chocolate, with the exception of Reeses Peanute Butter Cups which are so wrong but so right. I remember your amazing scientific dissection of them on Chocablog.
- Top Chocolate Tip:
- Put 2-4 (depending on size) cubes of really dark chocolate into your coq-au-vin, or your beef stew, or chile con carne, right at the end – just as french chefs put in a knob of butter – to glaze it. It gives the dishes a gorgeous depth of flavour, without actually tasting of chocolate.
This interrogation was far more fruitful than that of our first subject. So successful in fact, that we couldn’t shut him up and he ended up answering questions we hadn’t even asked. We eventually had to sedate him and drag him back into the street.
Our analysis has concluded that this excessive verbosity probably means the subject is hiding something… or maybe it’s just because talking is what he does for a living.
I’ve been aware of these bars for quite a while but working through a pile of wild ‘n’ wacky chocolate meant I didn’t pick them up until recently.
Prestat is one of London’s oldest chocolate houses, and has quite a history. Aside from a Royal warrant (granted in 1975) it was also a favourite of Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory of course. Perhaps better known for their (very posh) boxes of hand made chocolates, these bars are certainly the more ‘modern’ face of Prestat.
Prestat market these bars with the slogan ‘positive indulgence’, the reason being that the way they process the cocoa retains a lot of antioxidants. A ten gram piece of the Dark chocolate or a twenty five gram piece of the milk will provide enough antioxidants to help combat free radicals – so the packet informs me.
The milk chocolate is a 38% cocoa blend. It’s bursting with robust, rich cocoa flavours with a classic Criollo flavour. Quick to melt in the mouth, the cocoa is well rounded, with a good soft mouthfeel and a clean finish. It’s a top quality bit of milk chocolate, and I found myself eating much more than I anticipated. It leaves the mouth clean and ready for a second (or third – or fourth) piece.
Having enjoyed the milk version so much, I had high hopes for the dark bar. At 63.5% cocoa it wasn’t as ‘dark’ as I’d expected but as you can see, it has all the physical characteristics of a good dark chocolate – glossy and smooth with a very citrussy aroma.
Prestat have very kindly embossed each square with a 5g mark, so you can work out how much to ‘take’ at a time. When snapped this chocolate is sharp, clean and consistent. On the tongue it delivers a slightly citrussy start which blossoms out into slightly bitter, not too sweet woody, deep bottom end flavours. The finish is both clean and light, and left me wanting another piece, just like the milk bar had done previously.
I was impressed with these bars and would recommend them to anyone who loves their chocolate. They’re a little pricier than ‘ordinary’ chocolate but the tasting justifies the price, and with all of those extra antioxidants this stuff might well help balance out some of one’s other little indulgences.
I’ve been quite impressed with Thorntons latetely, so I decided to pick up another couple of their little bars to try. This one is the bar version of their individual viennese truffles.
According to the wrapper, it’s a “special blend of white and milk chocolate with a layered centre of feather-light chocolate mousse and truffle, finished with a sprinkle of sugar”.
And that’s a fairly accurate description of this sweet and creamy bar.
At first glance, it does look a bit odd though. That blend of white and milk chocolate has an unusual light-beige colour that I’m not used to, and to be frank it’s not the most appetising-looking bar of chocolate I’ve ever seen. It’s also covered in fine sugar which improves the looks somewhat, but also makes it very, very sweet.
The filling is soft, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “feather light”, and there’s a bit of an artificial flavour to it, which I put down to the sorbitol which is listed in the ingredients.
The overall effect was nice enough, but with a few tweaks (a little more creaminess, a little less sweetness) it could have been delicious.
