Chocolate Heaven

he people who sell chocolate are not merely happy - I think of Jacques Torres, always smiling – they also seem wildly passionate and can be deeply poetic, if not mystical. Chana Krausz-Papp, who left selling wine to become the U.S. rep for Amadei chocolates, is no exception. Amadei is Tuscan chocolate, the most expensive chocolate in the world, she claims. It’s made in an area of Tuscany known as Chocolate Valley, near Pontedera. How often have I been to Tuscany? How many summers have we spent in Pietrasanta on the Tuscan seashore? No one ever mentioned Pontedera. No one ever spoke of Amadei.

Now I learn it is favored by the fussy patissier Pierre Hermé (over the snootiest French chocolate), the visionary Ferran Adria (surely there must be Spanish chocolate), Heston Blumenthal at Fat Duck (the English are notoriously chauvinistic about their chocolate too), and President Sarkozy, who mentioned it among his favorite Italian products. Closer to home, Per Se, Nobu, Fiamma, Daniel and Lever House are fans. Le Bernardin patissier Michael Liaskonis writes about it on his blog. And at Del Posto, they serve the chocolate in bar form, paring it with aged rums.

The Amadei story is romantic and dramatic. Brother and sister Cecilia and Alessio Tessieri, born into a family confectionary business, teethed on making pralines (what I call bon bons, or filled chocolates) and ultimately began producing their own chocolates from the bean itself. She trained to become one of the few women maitre chocolatiers in the world. He scours the globe in search of the best cacao beans, the best plantations in Central and South America and Madagascar, tying up an exclusive for Chuao cocoa from Venezuela.

In her enormous tote, Chana always has a stash of Amadei’s small 5 gram squares in assorted flavors, single origin crus, and of varying cacao pow, that she passes around after dinner. Hmmmm…Venezuela cru hits the spot after too much pizza, I promise you.

Source : articlesbase