REVIEWS

A Chocolate Lover’s Must-read

The Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Cooking with Fine Chocolate by: Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger Hyperion, 2006 ISBN#: 1401302386

Founded in 1996 Scharffen Berger Chocolate has won fans from the home cooking sector to food pros. The Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Cooking with Fine Chocolate is the brainchild of Scharffen Berger founders, Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger. Theirs is a gorgeous collaboration that is bound to leave readers breathless! Fortunately, just reading this book will force anyone to count calories!

Robert Steinberg is a graduate of Harvard college and the University of Connecticut Medical School. He did his residency at UCSF and had been practicing medicine for twenty years when he traveled to France in 1994 to study chocolate making. Robert returned to his own kitchen and crafted the original recipes for what later become Scharffen Berger Chocolate. He now lives in San Francisco.

John Scharffenberger is a graduate of the University of California at Bereley and the founder of Scharffenberger Cellars which is one of the premier sparkling wine houses in the United States. Today, wine is a thing of his past and chocolate is his primary focus.

Essence of Chocolate has been named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2006 by the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today. The book is overflowing with recipes, kitchen tips, beautifully written and insightful essays, and gorgeous photographs that delight the mind, tempt the palate, and allow the imagination to fly.

The recipe section is divided into three parts, according to the intensity of chocolate used in them: intensely chocolate, essentially chocolate, and a hint of chocolate.

Since chocolate is enjoyed all over the world, it is interesting to note that most chocolate lovers do not know about chocolate's flavor components and their origins. Most people do not know that chocolate is a natural food made primarily from a simple staple plant, cacao.

For lovers of books and food, Essence of Chocolate will find an immediate place in your heart. Buy it for yourself or better still purchase it for someone you love. They will be mesmerized and amazed by this immediate cooking classic.