The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes

Lick your lips, don your apron and settle your specs as the book for serious chocoholics make its cultural, historical and culinary debut - Beautifully produced hardback with full-colour illustrations - Includes 25 mouth-watering recipes from Internationally known pastry chefs and chocolatiers:no chocolate lover could - or should - withstand - Instructs the true would-be chocolate connoisseur 'how to taste' the heavenly food, offers a cultural history of chocolate for the intellectually inclined cognoscenti, and identifies the Cacao bean for the hopeful chocolate specialist - A flavoursome rich, smooth, indulgent chocolate opus ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: We've learned to taste the difference between great and good wines, wonderful and not-so-wonderful breads and heavenly and marginal cheeses. Now chocoalte, the world's most coveted indulgence for over 4000 years get its turn. Cacao importer and chocolate expert Maricell Presilla takes chocoholics to new territory - to the almost primeval plantations of Latin America, where the world's first and finest cacaos are grown. With 25 recipes, and directions for making chocolate at home, Presilla elevates our taste for the food of the gods to a whole new levels

The first time Maricel Presilla tasted cocoa from her grandmother's farm in eastern Cuba, she expected the papaya-looking fruit to be full of Hershey kisses. Instead she saw lumpy, tan-colored seeds in a sticky, sweet-tart ivory pulp that reminded her of lychees, and it didn't even smell like chocolate. In The New Taste of Chocolate, Presilla follows the life of a cocoa pod from a sapling through harvest, fermentation, roasting, and production to arrive at what we all recognize as chocolate. Formally trained in cultural anthropology, Presilla relates the history of chocolate from even before the Aztecs. With attention to detail, she gives an overview of cocoa plantations and their farming practices and the different strains of true cocoa, Theobroma cacao. About two dozen unusual, interesting recipes follow, each by a different chef or pastry chef. Wayne Brachman's Pecan-Guaranda Chocolate Tart with Mango and Papaya reminds us of cocoa's tropical roots, while Pierre Hermé's Chocolate Croquettes with Coconut, Pistachio, and Pearl Tapioca Sauce are pure elegance. You'll never look at chocolate the same way again. --Leora Y. Bloom