March 3, 2011

Salon du Chocolat


Last weekend, Bologna lived up to its reputation of being the culinary capital with hosting the "Salon du Chocolat",  before the event will move on to Paris. Since I love Chocolate, I already know a lot about it and was quite surprised, that there is still a lot to learn. There was for example the very detailed talk with the chocolate producers from Modica (Sicily), where they still work the chocolate "cold" like  the Aztecs did at the time of the Spanish conquistadors.
That means, the cocoa is not going through the phase of conching: cocoa mass is processed at 40 ° with added sugar,  that gives  its characteristic appearance, the grainy texture. 
Another highlight were  the cooking presentations of well known Michelin-star chefs, who would explain the preparation of non-sweet-chocolate dishes and - this made it very special - would let us taste. After eating all that chocolate (every producer was handing out little incentives) we needed something more nutritious and we went to the Restaurant for a fabulous lunch - every dish was an innovative  way to cook with - guess what - Chocolate!

1 comment:

Maribel said...

Great post on the Salon! I agree that it was a very tasty and interesting event. I never thought I would say "No, thank you" to the large-sized chocolate giveaways.

I had some of the most wonderful choc there is to find in Europe, wonderful choc from France, Modica and naturally many from Piedmont!!