Chocolate
Mort Rosenblum
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 North Point Press
ISBN: 0865476357

A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light.

Most everyone has tasted chocolate whether in a candy bar, or out of mouth-watering boxes of various nibbles, or drinking it hot with milk or dribbled cold over icecream. Ever wondered where it came from & how it is made?

Acclaimed foodie Mort Rosenblum did & set out on a delectable journey into the world of chocolate -- from manufacturing to marketing, French boutiques to American multi-nationals -- & harvested a fabulous history.

Science, over recent years, has confirmed what chocolate lovers have always known: the stuff is good for you. It's the Valentine's Day drug of choice, has more antioxidants than red wine, & triggers the same brain responses as falling in love. Nothing, in the end, can stand up to chocolate as a basic fundament to human life.

Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light delves into the complex world of beans & secrets: from mole poblano -- chile-laced chicken with chocolate -- of ancient Mexico to the contemporary French chocolatiers, fonduers & MOFs (meilleur ouvrier de France) who produce the fabled palets d'or -- bite-sized, gold-flecked bricks of dark chocolate, as well as works of exquisite art that are almost, I repeat almost, a crime to eat -- to the vast empires of Nestle, Hershey, Cadbury, Godiva, & Valrhona, et al.

Mort Rosenblum follows the chocolate trail from hundreds of years before Cortes down through the ages to cacao plantations big & small all around the Equator to meet with growers, buyers, makers, & tasters, as well as tells the stories of the darker side of the chocolate trade.

While Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light is a fascinating offering into the world of this “food of the gods” Theobrama cacao & it's alchemists, I really missed a glossary & an index.

More from Mort Rosenblum:
Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit
A Goose in Toulouse and other Culinary Adventures in France
The Secret Life of the Seine
At Home in Asia: Expatriates in Southeast Asia and Their Stories with Harold Stephens, & more.
(02/13/05)

Rebecca