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Writing
"About Azurelise", I realized the extent to which certain childhood
experiences prepared me to make and sell chocolate
truffles for a living.
The
experiences involved Mrs. Ethel Hartman. Mrs.
Hartman. with her husband Ray, owned and operated Ray's Fruit Baskets
on 16th and West Walnut Street in Milwaukee. The Hartmans, German immigrants, lived in the flat above their shop and rented the
house behind it to my family. Mrs. Hartman made chocolate truffles for Ray's
and would share them with me whenever - it seemed - she saw me.
Sometimes
Mrs. Hartman would ask me "Reginald, whose chocolate truffles are
your favorite chocolate truffles above all others?" She never
asked me what the "best" chocolate truffles were, only what my
favorite chocolate truffles were. I would tell her the truth:
"Yours are, Mrs. Hartman." My proof for this was that,
from time to time, Mrs. Hartman would offer me other chocolate truffles.
In some way or another, they always disappointed me and I would
never finish eating them. By doing this Mrs. Hartman instilled in
my uncorrupted palate a very clear idea of what chocolate
truffles ought to taste like for me. That's all I really
needed to know about making Azurelise chocolate truffles.
When
I decided to start a chocolate truffle company in 2002, my very vivid
memories of Mrs. Hartman and The Golden Rule
guided me to a simple core resolution: "I will not put a
chocolate truffle on the market unless I can honestly say it is my
favorite above all others." I was confident that if I
were serious enough I could make a chocolate truffle that not only was
my favorite but also the favorite of enough other people to make my
chocolate truffle business a success.
Reginald
O. Savage
Making
Chocolate Truffles: Part 2
"Say
your lover has a chocolate fetish? Then
get thee to Azurelise...These
are not your typical prettified
confections with icing squiggles and
candied flowers on top, mind you.
They're truffles for the purist,
unadorned squares of chocolate that let
their flavor do the talking."
Mr. Greg
Cox, senior food editor and critic for
Raleigh, North Carolina's News &
Observer newspaper wrote the remarks
I quote above in his food column on February 7,
2007. Mr.
Cox is North Carolina's most widely read
and influential food critic. It is
especially important, therefore, that I
respond to his statement that Azurelise chocolate truffles
are "truffles for the purist".
I
concur with Mr. Cox's statement
that
my chocolate truffles are
"unadorned" and, by most
accounts, they let their "flavor do
the talking". I also acknowledge that
these are two traits chocolate truffle purists
value highly. However, these admissions do not entail,
as some of Mr. Cox's readers might take
them to entail, that I make Azurelise
chocolate truffles for the purist because
I am a
chocolate truffle elitist. There is another
explanation and this is it.
As
a child I developed a certain distrust of
pretty chocolate truffles with exotic
names. I expected them to taste weird because they almost always did. Plain
looking chocolate truffles with plain
names, like those Mrs. Hartman made, usually tasted at least
OK.
Naturally, I wondered why there
should be
such a regular correspondence between how
chocolate truffles look and are named
and how they taste. I
eventually framed this two part
hypothesis: (A) People who prettify chocolate truffles
do not
know how to make them taste good, and
(B) People who make good tasting
chocolate truffles do not know how to
prettify them. Later
life experiences confirmed my precocious
hypothesis. Therefore, when I decided
to start making chocolate truffles I
took it as a good sign that I had no
skill whatsoever decorating things. I
knew that any chocolate truffles I made
would turn out at best plain looking and
that this meant they probably would
taste at least OK, so long as I was
careful how I named them.
I
was right. Here is how one Azurelise
chocolate truffle aficionado recently described what happens
for her when she eats an Azurelise
chocolate truffle:
"The
crisp chocolate shell melts slowly and
lusciously; the creamy
smooth filling presents a medley of
intense flavors that deepen and heighten
the lingering impression the shell
makes; the shell and filling
flavors blend to yield a perfectly harmonized,
remarkably long lasting and deeply
satisfying chocolate taste
experience."
That
testimony should make it clear that Azurelise chocolate truffles
are for
the lovers Mr. Cox mentions in the first
line of his review, even if purists also
are enamored of their plain looks. And, as I have
said, their plain looks are due to my having no skill
whatsoever at making
"prettified" chocolate
truffles, not to my being an
elitist.
Reginald O. Savage
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