The Essence of Chocolate

"I was good friends with both of the authors when they started their now famous chocolate company. I tasted the first chocolate they made, and I remember thinking that it was a bad idea. Then it went on to be very successful, and everyone in America was eating their chocolate. Because no one had done it before, so I said, “Well who is going to buy this chocolate?” But in retrospect I am glad to be proven wrong, because they taught a lot of people in America what chocolate actually is and how it is made. It was initially supposed to be for pastry chefs. But they actually found out that their audience was home cooks, because it is very hard to get pastry chefs to change their chocolate. Right now I use various kinds of chocolate. I might use Cacao Barry or Valrhona in France, and in America I will use Guittard or one of the bean-to-bar artisan chocolates from various makers. It sort of depends. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Yes, but the book isn’t just a cook book. It is also about how they built the company, and what goes into starting this bean-to-bar company. In America there were only nine companies that make chocolate – like Hershey’s and Nestlé, which are big business. Then these guys came along and said, “We are going to buy beans and make and blend chocolate like people make wine.” John had started a successful sparkling wine company and Robert was a doctor. Together they had this idea, and their chocolate became very popular in America. The book is great because it has recipes, but it also talks about what chocolate is and how various cultures use it. People think about chocolate in terms of a bar of chocolate when actually it is this very complex thing. The book makes it all very easy to understand and is completely approachable, which is why I like it so much."