A Chocolate Battle

Today is Valentine’s Day, and if tradition holds, Italian television viewers will be treated to emotional discussions about why Italian chocolate is the best. On cooking segments of news shows. On a consumer affairs show. On the grandaddy of Italian cooking shows “La Prova del Cuoco” (“The Test of the Cook”).

It’s a ranting that has waged for ten years, but its seeds go back to the early 1970s. In 1973, Britain, Ireland, and Denmark produced chocolate using vegetable oils such as palm or karité instead of cocoa butter. Other countries in the European Union had the option of banning chocolate made without cocoa butter. Not only could countries such as France, Belgium, and Italy regulate how chocolate was made within their own borders, they could also ban imports that didn’t follow their rules.

Italy's favorite, gianduia

For 27 years, the European parliament tried to hammer out a compromise to please all 15 member nations. Two primary arguments emerged, economics vs. taste. The cost of cocoa butter continues to rise, argued those who favored economics, while vegetable fats allow manufactures to produce chocolate at a lower cost—a savings passed on to the consumer. But, counter the purists, chocolate made with cocoa butter simply tastes better.

The purists didn’t rely on emotional responses here; they had science on their side. Cocoa butter, it seems, has a melting point that is slightly lower than human body temperature. When chocolate made with cocoa butter goes into the mouth, it melts faster than chocolate made without it. Thus, there is an immediate burst of flavor.

Finally, in 2000, the European parliament voted to allow chocolate made with five percent vegetable oils to be sold across the union. This change in the law meant that Italy and other countries banning British, Irish, and Danish chocolate had to amend their own laws.

Italy and Spain held that chocolate without cocoa butter had to be labeled “substitute chocolate.” These regulations affected the importation of chocolates made in six of the 15 EU states. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against the southerners in 2003, saying that Italy and Spain, along with other EU members, had to accept chocolate made with other oils as “pure chocolate.”

Italy continued to rebel, requiring that chocolate sold within its borders could only be labeled “pure chocolate” if it contained cocoa butter. The EU court ruled against Italy in 2010, threatening the country with a fine if it didn’t permit chocolate with other oils to have that label.

Thus the annual rant. In Italy, where gusto, flavor or taste, is prized above most anything, we’ll hear about what makes chocolate taste good—that cocoa butter melting immediately in our mouths. I challenge you to a taste test.

An Award!

My pals at Novel Adventurers, a blog featuring four fearless travelers whose characters roam the globe solving mysteries, have presented me with The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award. All I have to do to accept is write five random facts about myself and pass the award on to five other blogs. http://noveladventurers.blogspot.com/


FIVE RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ME

• I have always hated petunias. REASON: My third grade teacher told my mother that I read too much, and they devised a plan to make me water petunias every day to keep me out of the house. I retaliated by moving covers from book to book to hide the number I actually read. 
• I don’t have a sweet tooth, except for chocolate. BUT: I can eat a can of Pringles or a bag of cashews in one sitting. When my sister introduced me to eating potato chips with Hershey bars, I found true joy.
• I held a White House press pass for a day. REASON: I wrote for a national publication interested in a particular press conference given by President Carter, so I asked for credentials.
• I love anchovies and often cook with them. CHALLENGE: You probably eat them more often than you know. Check the ingredients list of Worchestershire Sauce.
• I’m afraid of heights and bridges. BUT: I once walked across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with my heart beating my eardrums for all four and one-half miles.

FIVE BLOGS YOU MIGHT LIKE

• Letters from Earth http://kath-lettersfromearth.blogspot.com/ Kathleen Marsh records random thoughts about life in general and marriage in particular. Her husband, the Prince Consort, is a frequent participant. 
• Fiori di Zucca (Squash Blossoms) http://fiordizucca.blogspot.com/ This blog is in Italian, but it is full of authentic recipes for Italian food--all translated into English. To find the English version, click on any recipe under “Menu” then scroll down. The English version follows the Italian. 
• Mystery Lovers Kitchen http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com Eight mystery authors, who all write books about food, blog about it, too. Every day there’s a new recipe plus news about the books from these award-winning writers. 
• 2Friends4Cooking http://www.2friends4cooking.com/wordpress/ Ren Finch writes this small blog which offers information about unique events in Italy and great recipes. In the past, Ren has held cooking classes in her home near St. Peter’s. She has recently moved to Tuscany and will be offering cooking classes there very soon. This blog will tell when. 
• Diane Vallere http://dianevallere.blogspot.com/ Diane writes about shoes, clues, and clothes and other random thoughts.

If I have mentioned your blog, you can accept the award by passing it forward. Write five random facts about yourself and five short reviews of other blogs.

Brown Eggs Are Better When They're Chocolate

Chocolate Easter eggs are clogging the supermarket aisles in Italy these days. And the pastry shops and chocolate confectioners are overflowing with handmade treasures. These chocolate eggs are an old tradition here. Each hollow egg contains a surprise, and finding the surprise is half the fun.

The smallest eggs are about 10 inches high, made from about 500 grams of chocolate. The eggs can be as large as five kilos, which is a hefty amount of chocolate indeed.

Each egg is balanced on a little plastic cup to make it stand up straight. Then it’s placed on a square of colorful foil which is gathered up around the egg and fastened in a topknot, often with a ribbon.

The supermarket variety targets children. The foil wrapper hints to the prize inside, and children have their favorites. A quick stroll through my neighborhood supermarket revealed eggs featuring many cartoon character—T om and Jerry to Scooby Doo to the Roadrunner (known here as Willy Coyote and Beep Beep). Disney is well represented, too, with 1001 Dalmatians, Snow White and Peter Pan.

Some eggs contain prizes that are targeted for girls, others for boys. The eggs for girls are labeled “Bimba” in large letters while those for boys say “Bimbo.” This is diminutive for the word bambino, child, with the characteristic “a” ending for feminine words and “o” for masculine. It always makes me giggle since “bimbo” in American English usually means a ditzy female. I’m longing to call a male American friend Bimbo. But I digress.

Commercial eggs targeting adults use other ploys. Perugina, the manufacturer of Baci candies, makes an egg featuring the dark chocolate of their kisses; the prize inside these eggs is four Baci. Lindt, from neighboring Switzerland, gets in the act, too. Their elegant eggs are wrapped in red foil and topped with gold ribbon.

And the choices! One company produces a candy bar called Novi made from chocolate embedded with hazelnuts. Their egg is called “Noccciolato,” combining the Italian word nocciola (hazelnut) and cioccolato (chocolate). It’s the only egg I’ve seen that’s bumpy.
People stand in the aisles discussing the merits of milk chocolate vs. dark. They’re both available, but you have to read the label carefully.

The pastry shops and chocolate confectioners make the eggs by hand with elaborate decorations. The prizes inside these eggs tend to be more elegant, too. These shops are prepared to make eggs to order. You see chocolate egg halves awaiting a customer’s special prize. Engagement rings are frequently tucked into these.

The customary way to open a chocolate egg to get at the prize is to punch it with your fist. It seems crass, but that’s the custom. And you do get a little bit of joy at feeling the chocolate give way to your blow.

Billie Mochow's sugar egg

Billie Mochow, a renowned pastry chef in the U.S., asked me to look for egg molds last year, a month or so after Easter. She wanted to create for a confection, not chocolate, for this year. Now, Italy bends with the seasons. At that point, Easter was well behind us. There were no egg molds in cookware shops. I approached a couple of pastry shops to see if they could special order them, but I got a lukewarm reception.

The egg season was over. Billie found her own source and has produced an incredible work of art. And just as I expected, egg molds began appearing in upscale cookware shops a few weeks ago, but they’ll be gone soon.