In Rococo Real Chocolate Chantal Coady, proprietor of London's exquisite Rococo Chocolates in King's Road presents over 50 groundbreaking and highly unusual recipes that anyone can make at home. Painstakingly tested and illustrated with beautiful, easy-to-follow, step-by-step photographs, the book makes the mysterious art of chocolate accessible to the amateur home enthusiast. Coady is an ardent proponent of what she calls "Real Chocolate" and explains the difference between excellent natural ingredients - the only used in Rococo recipes - and the over-sweetened, fat and additive-laden confections most widely marketed in the world today. Simply put, "Real Chocolate" is chocolate made with only the very finest all-natural ingredients. Fun to make and divine to taste! Recipes will include basics like plain and flavoured ganaches and truffles, decorative chocolate leaves and curls; unusual offerings like chocolate tempura and white chocolate and cardamom pannacotta, and savory recipes like black beans with ginger and cocoa, and chocolate tapenade. The book is also filled with amazing chocolate lore from irrefutable evidence of chocolate's physical and mental health benefits, to the fact that white chocolate is the closest thing found in nature to human breast milk!
If you're looking for a quick summary of this book, even more revealing than the jacket copy is the little note tucked away with the catalog info even before the table of contents: "Throughout the book, whenever recipes call for 'real chocolate,' what is meant is best-quality bittersweet chocolate with minimum 60 percent cocoa liquor..."You see, this book is about a lot more than recipes and attractive photography of tempting delights -- packed though it is with both of those things. Chantal Coady is a crusader, and her cause is summed up in the name of the organization she formed, the Campaign for Real Chocolate. Not for her is the mass-market, fast food-style chocolate consumed (and enjoyed) by so many British and Americans. She is passionate about *real* chocolate, as defined above.It's certainly true that anyone who has tasted real, high-quality chocolate finds it hard to get excited about the mass-produced vegetable-fat chocolates in the supermarket checkout lines. What you will get excited about, though, are the recipes and ideas in this book. The author takes us far, far beyond cookies and cakes, presenting intriguing ideas for incorporating chocolate into appetizers, entrees (including meat and pasta dishes), martinis, even sushi and tempura ... plus, of course, cookies and cakes.There are a *lot* of books about chocolate out there, and it's hard for one really to stand out from another. If this one does stand out, it's due as much to the author's campaigning fire as it is to her obvious passion for preparing great chocolate dishes. I admire people who take their work seriously and are very good at what they do, and Chantal Coady hits the mark on both scores.
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Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This is a wonderful book to give as a gift. It is even better to buy for yourself! The pictures are incredible and make you want to dive into the receipes. Some of the ingredients called for are not all that easy to locate but the effort is worth while. This is a yummy great book.
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