A couple weeks back, I mentioned in a post how I’m quite the chocolate snob. I love dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. A reader “found that humorous” that I’d refer to myself as a snob since “white chocolate is technically not chocolate”. I just had to shake my head and feel sorry for him. Neverminding the fact that white chocolate cannot be made without cacao beans or that fine whites actually contain more cacao butter than many inferior milk chocolates contain cacao mass & butter combined, did he know what he was missing? The sublime joys of Amedei’s Toscano Bianco, Vestri’s Bianco Pistacchi, or Valrhona’s Ivoire are not to be missed. Would he also thumb his nose at Porcelana since it comes from albino white pods?

Fortunately, Pierre Hermé embraces any & all chocolates and so much more. He had certainly amused and delighted yours truly many times over, before I ever experienced his chocolate tarte. The Tarte Céleste, Tarte Vanille, Croissant Ispahan, Gourmandises Constellation and more were all stellar pieces. After running through his full lineup of goodies, one day I looked down in the case and noticed a very special qualifier in the tarte’s name: Porcelana. “Interesting,” I thought to myself. “Very interesting!” I was going to need one of these. And so it was that Monsieur Hermé’s Tarte Fine Porcelana came home with me.

So what is Porcelana? It’s an extremely rare “heirloom” variety of albino cacao. Literally white beans in translucent white pods (sometimes purple), it was originally rediscovered in Venezuela, after being considered extinct. Other small wild crops have since been found in Peru and Mexico, in just the last 6 years or so. While cultivation is beginning to bring the price down, there are still only a few thousand kilos made every year; it shouldn’t be a shocker that it commands around $200/kg. And it’s not just the rarity and price that make it so cool. No, the flavor is truly special. Granted, it ranges, depending on producer and origin, from something like Original Beans’ fairly tame Peruvian version all the way up to Domori’s Venezuelan spin, which – between notes of strawberry and butter – seems to grab your tongue and beat it into submission while screaming “PORCELANA!” There’s literally no mistaking what it is. Eat it once, and you’ll never forget it. I wish I could have Monsieur Hermé tarte in front of me this second, to confirm, but I’m 99% sure he uses a Venezuelan, likely Valrhona’s El Pedregal.

The tempered sliver of chocolate atop the tarte is quite a delight, but let’s just get into the ganache, which I’m almost at a loss to describe, unless you know Porcelanas. It’s at once powerful and yet very subtle. Initially, it’s more of a sensation than a flavor, very similar to what you’d get with an Ecuadorian Arriba. Monsieur Hermé has left it quite lightly sugared and virtually undiluted, so the subtle power of the bean rings through. There’s this very pleasant musky bitterness that gives way a more pronounced fruitiness and acidity. Smooth, so smooth. And then you get to the little crushed cacao nibs just below the ganache and above the crust. As you chew them, there’s a potent bitter earthiness that comes through, and the nibs feel like they skip across your teeth. It’s perhaps the most pleasant unpleasant sensation, and I love it. These feelings and flavors then begin to marry with the grit of the cornmeal that underlies it all – yes, cornmeal. Had someone told me they’d be mixing Porcelana and cornmeal, I’d have thought they were insane, but it comes off here not so much as something delicious as much as something genius-level delicious. To me, there’s no other piece that better explains why Pierre Hermé deserves respect and admiration for what he’s capable of in the realm of flavors and textures.

I’m hoping pieces like this start to change other chefs’ attitudes toward chocolate. For such an important part of so many pastries, there’s seemingly little attention paid to sourcing the best. Even my favorite chef (regular readers know who), uses only Valrhona. To me, that’s like only dating redheads and refusing brunettes and blondes. It’s ridiculously limiting. Others, like Hugues Pouget at Hugo & Victor, actually do make use of a wide range of producers and their single origins. But, aside from Monsieur Hermé here, no one takes the time to list either their cacao’s country of origin or variety.

This ****** attitude keeps the masses from having a chance to develop an understanding of what they’re eating. Hopefully there will be a day when specifying “Ghanan Forastero 75%”, “Jamaican Trinitario 72%”, or “Bolivian Criollo 70%” is a normal part of the routine. They don’t need to give away the name of the supplier/producer, but at least having the origin, variety and percentage listed would help advance chocolate’s cause.

Another reason I wanted to highlight this piece today is that I’ll finally be publishing my hot chocolate recipe here on Wednesday! It, as you might expect, involves Porcelana, as well as some swanky chocolates of Congolese and Papua New Guinean origin. I’m even going to specify the chocolate down to the exact bars, so unlike even the great pastry chefs who write their chocolate recipes with useless ******** instructions to use a 70% or 80%, you’ll know exactly how to recreate a cup of the magic.

It’s also paired with a 2,500 word essay, where I explain how – with rare exception – most of the famous chocolats chauds of Paris are mishandled, damanged or are just inherently inferior. So, especially if you’re an Angelina lover, get ready to have your blood boil as I **** all over them.

So, yes, absolutely get yourself a Pierre Hermé Tarte Fine Porcelana. Not only is it his finest work of chocolate, but it’s among the finest chocolate pastries in all of Paris. I even put it ahead of Jacques Genin’s Tarte au Chocolat in my Top 38 Best Pastries in Paris list, so you know it has to be something special. And should you want to recreate any of Pierre Herme’s chocolate magic, make sure to check out his Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé book . . . and then send me samples of your work for taste-test purposes

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