Dallas Food - Raising the Bar: Chocolate

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Raising the Bar: Chocolate
Posted on Sunday, March 09 @ 21:46:48 PDT
Topic: Froufrou

Just a brief item to publicly thank two pastry chefs who, in recent weeks, have seriously upped the ante for chocolate desserts in Dallas: Shannon Swindle (Craft Dallas) and Rhonda Ruckman (Doughmonkey). On to the food...

Let's face it: this isn't a chocolate town. Inexpensive, industrial chocolate still dominates the market. Up until recently, bars of fine chocolate could scarcely be found on local shelves. As I've said before, in Dallas a chocolate lover's best friend is his mailbox.

The upper tier fine dining restaurants usually have the self-respect to use Valrhona, which does qualify as a fine chocolate. Though they seldom employ Valrhona's better and more interesting chocolates (relying more on the basic blends), the same can be said of most fine dining restaurants in larger restaurant markets. It's rare to see a restaurant anywhere use truly artisanal chocolate.

Yet here, in Dallas, two pastry chefs have been doing just that in recent weeks.

Though the local outpost of Craft has generally stuck with Valrhona, Shannon Swindle recently added an interesting and brilliant dessert using Amedei. If you're unfamiliar with this small Italian maker, start by reading Pete Wells's Food & Wine article, "The World's Best Chocolate." Then go buy some bars (available locally at Neiman Marcus and Doughmonkey).

Swindle's creation is an Amedei mousse, served over olive oil whipped cream and garnished with fleur de sel, bits of candied orange zest, and caramelized brioche croutons. The concept is similar to "Sam's sundae" at San Francisco's Bi-Rite Creamery (i.e., chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, bergamot olive oil, and Maldon sea salt), which you can see here; but Swindle's dessert is infinitely more refined.

Though there's a lot going on in the bowl, everything is in balance. Bursts of sweetness from the orange and saltiness from the fleur de sel, a subtle savory undercurrent in the olive oil, successful textural contrast between the smooth mousse and the crunchy, buttery croutons...truly a remarkable dessert. When the waiter saw that I had finished it and asked if I wanted anything else, I was tempted to reply, "Two more of these, please." It's that good.

While I hope to see Swindle do something in the future that more directly and simply showcases the quality of that Amedei (which, though I didn't ask, I suspect was one of the Toscano Dark line), my hat is off to him for having the nerve to use a world-class artisanal chocolate, even though he surely knows that most of the customers that pass through the door won't even recognize how well they're being served by the kitchen.

When Doughmonkey recently resumed sales to the public from their Snider Plaza shop, Rhonda Ruckman threw down the gauntlet with a Patric chocolate cake. Patric Chocolate is among the best of the recent flurry of American bean-to-bar chocolate makers. (For an interesting two-part interview with Patric's founder, Alan McClure, see here and here.)

As you can see from the cut piece above, Ruckman's cake consists of more dark chocolate ganache, by volume, than actual "cake." When the ganache is made with Patric's extraordinary Madagascan 70%, this is definitely not a bad thing. There are no frills or adornments--nothing to distract from the chocolate's intensity.

And what a chocolate! Most pastry chefs regard Valrhona Manjari as the gold standard for Madagascar. Patric is platinum. It's more fragrant. More powerful, with the characteristic notes of red fruit and citrus. Cleaner tasting, due to a lack of vanilla. Try the bars side by side and there's no comparison. The excellence of Patric's chocolate really shines in Ruckman's ganache. (Be sure to allow it to rise to room temperature, though, or the cold will stiffen the texture of the ganache and mute its flavor and aroma.)

Ruckman has used Patric's Madagascar in other desserts, including a fantastic parfait of chocolate pot-de-crème, caramelized peanuts, a light peanut butter mousse, fleur de sel, DeVries cacao nibs (!), and a chip of gently spiced peanut brittle. Ruckman rotates much of the menu weekly. Knowing the parfait was probably not going to return the following Tuesday, I went through three of them in a row one Friday morning. Though the parfait didn't highlight the quality of the chocolate as well as the cake does, it was still a brilliant little dessert.

Kudos to Rhonda Ruckman for blowing all expectations of a pastry shop out of the water. Though the array of thoughtfully utilized Valrhona chocolates that appear in the Doughmonkey cases is impressive, she raises the bar by giving Dallas some desserts with Patric's world-class chocolate.

A parting observation. Despite the fact that Swindle and Ruckman are, with these desserts, using chocolate that skunks anything else currently being used in Dallas, they're not charging an arm and a leg for them. Swindle's Amedei coupe can be had for $10 at dinner and $7 at lunch. Ruckman's Patric chocolate cake is a steal at $5.50.