It's easy to say chocolate

It's hard to look at a chocolate bar and not stop to think about the rumors that soon we can no longer eat because cocoa is ending. Well, despite the alarmist, it is not so. True, demand for cocoa is rising, especially in countries like China and India, where so far the chocolate was considered a luxury, but with good cultivation practices and the reduction of waste, already implemented by many companies

like Lindt, will continue to there be for all. In short, it's just one of the false myths about chocolate, many of which have to do with its composition.

WHAT IS DONE. Since it has spread the habit of tasting chocolate high percentage of cocoa, for example, it is easy to find a well marked on the label, but few know what this figure really indicates. The cocoa comes from the processing of the cotyledon, the edible part of the cocoa bean, which is transformed into cocoa powder (reduced-fat), cocoa butter (the fat part) or cocoa mass (the set of two ): the percentage shown is the sum of these three elements, different depending on the recipe. And, more importantly, for the same percentage of cocoa can be aromatic and very different consistencies intensity, depending on how these three elements were assayed.

WHITE, MILK OR DARK? The chocolate is, by definition, the product of the sum of cocoa and sugar, although the latter is certainly not the predominant ingredient and at a flux at 99% is less than 1%. However, if realizzassimo a tablet with 100% cocoa, we could not call it chocolate, but only "Cocoa." What differentiates one from the other chocolate? Let's start with the white and milk chocolate: given that sugar and milk, in different proportions, in common in the first only uses cocoa butter, which gives it the typical white-yellow color, while in the latter there is also the cocoa paste. More intuitive to understand what distinguishes the milk chocolate from melting: the milk, in fact, that in the second there. They also change the percentages of cocoa (the sum of cocoa paste and cocoa butter), which increase up to a statutory minimum of 43% for the dark.

ORANGE AND WASABI. About aromas, the molecular composition of cocoa makes it one of the most open food with unusual combinations. Because, beyond the culinary traditions, science has discovered that when two ingredients share one or more molecules, can produce a pleasing combination. It is thanks to this that the marriage of cocoa and vanilla, one of the basic ingredients of dark chocolate tablets, works perfectly, as well as those now well-known with hazelnuts (Excellence uses the IGP Piedmont), with the chili (because of tannins) and coffee (which brings with it the least known with chicory), or the berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries but also), or even with oranges and apples, these now little used in the tablets after breaking being one of the first fruits to get into it. Some more surprising juxtaposition, to be missed? Those with salted caramel and pistachio, or directly salt, and the one with the wasabi.