We discovered Valrhona chocolate while reading the 'Le Bec-Fin' cookbook. Chef Georges Perrier's book is excellent, by the way, and unlike many celebrity 5-Star Chef books, includes recipes with ingredients that you're likely to be able to get at the Piggly Wiggly or Winn-Dixie, rather than having to order from distant continents or go off on your own expedition to the Alps or Himalayas. (I can't WAIT to eat at Chef Thomas Keller's French Laundry, but his book includes difficult to impossible to acquire for the average person ingredients in every single recipe.
But I digress.
Chef Perrier's book includes a to-die-for chocolate cake recipe. The recipe specifies using Valrhona bittersweet chocolate. The Mrs. (a Cordon Bleu Chef - lucky me!) made the recipe using plain old Ghirardelli. It was the best chocolate cake either of us had ever tasted which immediately made us wonder "how much better could it have been with Valrhona chocolate?"
Valrhona is a French chocolatier, and a bar of baking chocolate goes for nearly $20 in the U.S.
We were curious, so we ordered some for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast. How good was it? Good. Real good. Best chocolate ever. Was it twice as good as Ghirardelli or other excellent chocolate? Hard to say. The flavor was as rich and chocolaty as the chocolatiest thing you could imagine - but about the same taste as other premium chocolates. It was the texture - the mouth feel - of the stuff that made it head and shoulders above every other chocolate we had experienced. The texture is like silk for your tongue, as different in texture compared to Hershey's as fine silk is to a burlap bag for your fingers. No - that's an exaggeration, but it IS silky! I'm just not certain it's so much better that it justifies paying so much more for it when there ARE other excellent chocolates around. I'd say "special occasions only".
Get more detail about Valrhona Araguani 72% Dark Chocolate by ChefShop.
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