Blue cheese and chocolate a match made in gastronomic heaven
Somewhere in the South Island, chocolate as we know it is getting a molecular make-over.
Commissioned by Italian icecream-maker Gianpaolo ‘‘Giapo’’ Grazioli, four Otago University food science students are incorporating live bacteria into chocolate – in the hopes of creating a new food.
The team is seeing if they can do to chocolate what bacteria and fungi did to blue vein cheese – that is, create an entirely new gastronomic experience.
‘‘It was quite a challenging brief, to be honest,’’ said team supervisor Phil Bremer, a food scientist.
‘‘What Giapo has envisioned for the project, and they have managed to do, is a little different.’’
But after nearly a year’s worth of experimentation, Bremer said some of the products tasted good and had great potential.
In the experiments, varying concentrations of live bacteria and fungi cultures were added to the chocolate recipe, with varying degrees of success.
‘‘They’ve tried putting probiotic bacteria into chocolate – the sort of stuff you put into yoghurt. That doesn’t impact upon the flavour at all but the problem is, bacteria won’t grow in chocolate.’’
It would survive but chocolate does not contain enough free moisture to encourage growth.
In another experiment, the team combined blue vein cheese and chocolate, with pleasant results.
‘‘They’ve taken blue vein cheese, freeze dried that, ground it to a powder and put that back into the chocolate – it’s quite a nice product actually, very nice,’’ Bremer said.
And from its molecular pairing in the lab, to its complementary pairing in commercial kitchens, blue cheese and chocolate is a ‘‘match made in heaven’’.
Auckland’s Molten restaurant head chef Alex Aitken combines the flavours to delicately complement his venison tartare.
‘‘The rich, dark Valrhona chocolate and the distinct saltiness of the blue cheese brings out that raw venison flavour like nothing else,’’ he said.
That taste nuance is just as important to the chef as it is to Bremer, who is something of the laboratory’s guinea pig, having tried all the products.
He said some of the chocolate creations had market potential, but a lot of work remained.
‘‘I think flavour-wise and texturewise, they’ve got a good product, the economics just have to be sorted out now.’’
The university’s practice of pairing small groups of food product development students with company mentors presented Auckland icecream maker Grazioli with an ideal opportunity.
‘‘The idea was to experiment to hopefully create something new for the sake of innovation,’’ he said.
‘‘I work a lot with chocolate with what I do, and I wanted to know whether bacteria would make the taste of the chocolate change.’’
Foods rich in probiotics, such as yoghurt, have long been recognised as beneficial for the body’s natural digestion and immune system.
But apart than the potential commercial value of a chocolate that actually helps gut function, Grazioli hopes it will have a ‘‘gastronomic value’’.
‘‘We hope to create something tasteful, with a different texture – that will give a new experience to the person eating it.’’