Dreaming of Chocolate

I love chocolate. And yes, there is a big difference between “ours” and “theirs”. We celebrate chocolate. Thinking about the gigantic red hearts filled with bite-sized confections in their pleated brown nests, the foil-wrapped eggs in Easter baskets, the Hershey bars we drop into Trick-or Treater’s bags and the chocolate coins and Santas we stuff in our little one’s Christmas stockings.

Everyone knows how beautifully the Swiss craft their chocolate masterpieces but why is “theirs” so much more delicious? The answer is a combination of recipe and chemistry. Swiss chocolate is famous for its beautiful combination of milk and cocoa. They use pure Alpine cow milk and high-quality cocoa beans to produce award-winning chocolates. Switzerland is renowned for milk chocolate which contains cocoa butter that melts quickly at body temperature. Note that it will also melt or at least soften into a soft mess very quickly inside of your purse, your carry-on or your backpack. Rudolph Lindt, the founder of Lindt Chocolate, implemented the process of ‘conching’. Conching means to warm the chocolate as you grind it in between different rolling pins. The outcome is a smoother, sweeter and creamier treat. So there’s that. Living in Switzerland for awhile made me a big fan of the Swiss brands, many of which are grocery store staples here in the US. But after visiting Belgium, I have to choose Belgian chocolate over the iconic Swiss brands and one in particular has my chocolate loving heart. Neuhaus. Here’s why.

In their own words, “Jean Neuhaus was a Swiss with Italian roots. When he arrived in Switzerland, Jean’s family changed its name from “Casanova” to “Neuhaus”. He wanted to become a doctor to help people and so he went to study medicine in Grenoble. He failed twice, mainly because he could not bear the sight of blood. He then moved and settled in Brussels in 1857. In the same year he opened a pharmacy in the prestigious Queen’s Gallery. To delight his customers, Jean Neuhaus covered his medicines with a fine layer of chocolate.” And voila!

That’s how it all started. This gentleman is the original creator of the “praline”, a hand folded chocolate miracle with an endless variety of fantasy fillings made only in their atelier in Brussels by the Neuhaus chocolate maestros.

They even have a collection especially suited for wine pairing and to make sure their offerings were perfectly paired with the best possible combination of flavors, the Neuhaus folks joined with Belgian wine experts and a world-renowned sommelier to create three pralines that pair perfectly with red and three more to be enjoyed with white wines. Just another amazing cultural tidbit from the Broad traveling Abroad…