Sybaritic Diversions

Chocolate is one of the few things that a person can actually bring along straight on into maturity.  Indeed, a person’s love of chocolate grows along with him/her over the passage of time.  It makes the transition from a love of everything sweet to a hankering for chunky additions like crisped rice and nuts to a craving for more intense, deeper, darker flavor experiences. 

I’d like to think of this concept as going through a sequence that can be phrased as: Choc-Nut => Butterfinger => Hershey bars => Cadbury bars => Godiva => Valrhona.  Of course, some people grow up without ever losing their love of Choc-Nut.  Some will eventually grow up with specific favorites. 

Cases in point: my sister and I are mad for darker chocolates, the ones that are more bitter than sweet.  Mom will go for anything with nuts and Dad has a pronounced fondness for raisins in his confections.  Nicquee, one of my younger colleagues, has a hankering for white chocolate every once so often.  Jenny, the JICA officemate who used to raid my candy jar, sticks to sweet milk chocs; we even had another collegue who was a real monster but turned into a regular lamb when offered Hershey’s Kisses.  Takafumi can pretty much subsist on KitKat bars alone, but hand him a stick of bittersweet chocolate (specifically: Valrhona Caraibe) and you can see the faint blush in his cheeks and sheer bliss in his sleepy eyes.  And there are people - like my brother and my friends Cristina, Nix, and Peaches - who will demand chocolate in virtually any edible form.

There are some chocolates, however, that are more appreciated by adults than by children.  Chocolate liqueurs, for instance.  Valrhona Guanaja - 70% cocoa solids - and Baci di Perugina (so rich, it has to be evil) fall into the same category. 

Then, there are the utterly superb chocolate-covered dried fruits purveyed by Dilettante, a family-owned corporation run by the descendants of the confectioners commissioned by the czars of Imperial Russia.  Definitely rich, definitely sublime, and definitely not for children.  You’re not supposed to suck the chocolate off the morsels of their amazing Fruit Medley (shown above left) ; you’re supposed to bite into each succulent dragee.  You don’t scarf them by the scad - you savor them bite by bite, morsel by delectable morsel.  Apricots, blueberries, cherries, and strawberries in dark chocolate and dipped into color-coordinated white couverture are all there to be savored slowly, lingeringly.

Now, if only I could find a store that sells these chocolate baubles here in the Philippines, then I should be in a state of sheer bliss…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 at 8:12 am and is filed under Food and Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.