Tuesday, August 2, 2011

ChocolateBet: August 2, 2011

 Chocolate of the Day:

.3 oz. piece
Olive and Sinclair Chocolate Co.
Sea Salt (bar)
Good +
Weight: .3 oz. (9.3 g.) / 2.75 oz. (78 g.) total bar
Calories: 43 calories (estimate)
Cost: $8.00
Purchased from: The Chocolate Garage, Palo Alto, CA

Today was Day #8 of Chocolate and Tout Sweetener Theme Week, and Day #3 of Chocolate and Sea Salt Theme Week. I've overlapped the former theme week one more day, so that I could include this Olive and Sinclair (Nashville, TN) bar that uses brown sugar in addition to Sea Salt.

Olive and Sinclair makes a variety of "Southern Artisan Chocolate," stone ground bars in small batches; in fact my bar (label) was hand-stamped: "Batch #102810." This dark chocolate, Sea Salt bar was created from cacao beans from the Dominican Republic, and the texture was very smooth and pleasing for stone ground.

The chocolate itself was very rich, and relatively acidic. The salt may have contributed to, or sharpened this tart flavor. I like salt with chocolate, but there was a tiny bit too much in the small piece I sampled. To be fair, I also could have just bitten into a piece that was more heavily sea salted than the rest of the bar. I had this bar very early in the morning, and it may be that this rich bar is more of an evening bar, or better when accompanied with food. It might be an interesting bar to pair with whiskey; a grilled sandwich; jambalaya or a rich stew; or lemon. I find a lemon peel sometimes helps (surprisingly) neutralize the acidity in espresso, so I'll have to experiment with this later, to see if the same thing holds true here.


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