It was a close encounter of the dark kind. A highly excitable friend, in one of her spurts of enthusiasms, bought Lindt’s 99 per cent cacao bar. And despite our most sincere efforts (which rapidly turned bitter once the price came into view), not a morsel could go in. And we were proclaimed chocoholics! The accursed bar finally met its end in a rather exotic fashion — we melted it and used it as face packs.
Dark chocolate is not usually treated with such disdain today in our diet-obsessed world. It’s got the rare honour of being delicious as well as ‘healthy’ even though the health benefits are still being debated about. Dark chocolate is said to contain flavonoids, which act as anti-oxidants that are believed to protect our body.
That’s well, the necessary but boring part. What’s sizzlingly interesting about this kind of chocolate is how sexy it actually is — it is unfussily smooth and likes to be aloof (unlike your milk versions that happily turn crunchy, gooey and biscuity at the first opportunity); it never ever turns flaky; and its taste starts a good 30 seconds after you bite into it. Unless you are eating terribly bad quality dark chocolate (which is a rarity), when you first bite the chocolate, it appears hard and unyielding. A second later, it softens in your mouth. Do not expect sweetness; instead you get dark chocolate flavoured sometimes with bitter orange, sometimes with coffee and if you are very lucky, with wood. And look out for the overwhelming scent. It is intense and draws you in. And if you are not very careful, might even give you a headache.
There was a time when dark chocolate, for Indians, was a distant fantasy (or nightmare). No longer. According to Chef Mickael Besse of Ecstasy, a popular dessert hang-out, Indians are slowly getting addicted to the darker versions of chocolate.
“'The level of consumer interest in dark chocolate has taken us completely by surprise. Indians were never known to be great fans of dark chocolate but they now seem ready for it,” he says.
That might be because of the kind of chocolates we got to eat earlier. Until the last few years, anything beyond Cadbury’s and Nestle were hard to find in Indian supermarkets. Maximum you could do was have an uncle in the UK or the US who could come back with a few Hershey’s kisses, a Mars or a Snicker bar. But today, fine chocolate like Valrhona from France and Lindt from Switzerland are increasingly easy to find.
They are still highly priced but chocoholics have no second thoughts about why they are worth it. What they unanimously agree to is this — dark chocolate might be acquired taste but once you’ve acquired it, you have had it.
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