If you do, you might want to click this link todayish:
Me, I like the extra noir stuff—77% cacao or so. Do they even make that in the USA?
Just for fun, here are some very old chocolate recipes, courtesy of the chocolate museum in Bruges. I’m afraid it would be pretty tough to recreate some of them, like the recipe Cortez brought back in 1528, or the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s famous jasmine chocolate. They both call for “grey amber”; i.e., ambergris.
I believe they do make it in this country; Dagoba, my favorite chocolate company, makes it in Oregon, I believe. I’m looking at one of their eclipse 87% bars and see no indication that it’s made overseas. (Their xocolatl 74% also kicks ass, real bits of cacao nibs & hot chilies inside, and if you don’t mind downshifting a bit, I suspect you might enjoy their lavender 59% as well.)
Also, I think Ghirardelli produces in the USA, and they have a 100% bar intended for baking. I have one on top of the fridge for emergency consumption if things ever come to that.
Yeah, after posting that, I went into the kitchen and spotted a teensy square of Ghirardelli 72%. But somehow I doubt the folks we’re talking about are likely to substitute oil for cocoa butter.
I had to check my del.icio.us links to see if you were talking about a company I bookmarked some time ago, but it wasn’t Dagoba, it was Vosges. They’re based in Chicago, it turns out. I may have to get some weird chocolate bars at some point.
Dagoba’s stocked in Whole Foods and Wild Oats here, plus the Harvest Co-Op, so you should be able to find them at, say, Strawberry Fields. Or you can actually order them from Amazon’s gourmet foods section, but you have to get them in 12-packs. Not that that’s actually a problem or anything. :-D