[Sca-cooks] Pepper in chocolate

[Christiane]

Suey wrote:
>
>    As a rule I never respond to anything outside my period (I "die" in 
>1474) but curiosity is killing the cat on this item. A French friend 
>visited us last year. We threw a dinner party and lots of Chileans 
>brought lovely chocolates. I rarely try them, I suppose cause they did 
>not exist in "my time" but when house guest and spouse were gobbling up 
>the leftovers next day she came upon a Chilean brand of chocolates with 
>pepper and spit hers out in the most ladylike way possible. It was so 
>horrible for her Belgic taste. After she explained that to me and 
>henceforth I carefully placed the peppered chocolates in a bowl where he 
>normally sits and the other ones near her and everyone was happy.
>    Does that mean that we have from Aztecs to the Mapuches (Chilean 
>native Indians) adding pepper to chocolate? Do we have chocolate with 
>pepper in the northern hemisphere too? It sounds really odd to me.
>Suey

Right now it seems to be an artisan flavor. I have found brands of organic, fair trade chocolate in Whole Foods, a Philadelphia natural foods store, that feature chiles. I forget the brand. I bought a bar and gave it to a friend who loves chocolate and hot things. I tried it myself, and it was ... unusual. I liked it, but the flavor was rather intense. Oddly enough, the chile bite helped bring out the flavor of the chocolate (it was a dark chocolate, bittersweet bar, something like 75% cacao). The Modican chocolate with chile I tried was even more intense, but between the pepper flakes and the crystallized sugar, it made for an extremely gritty bar.

This flavoring definitely would not work in milk chocolate, but the more bitter the bar, the better the chile sets it off, it seems.

Gianotta