Bittersweet
(2003)
Alice Medrich
378 pages, $35

Most cookbooks don’t have a new idea anywhere between their covers. That’s not a criticism. Between now and the end of time, there will be six kajillion more Italian cookbooks published, few of which will have anything resembling a new recipe, but many of them will be quite good, because they’ll entice a new generation of cooks to get into the kitchen and make polenta (or, in the future, space-polenta).

But _Bittersweet_ is something new, because it’s a cookbook all about how to use a new and delicious product–and new and delicious products are even rarer than original cookbooks.

The product is 70% chocolate, or other chocolates with a high percentage of cocoa solids. This was a niche item less than five years ago; now I get 70% Valrhona and Pound Plus bars at Trader Joe’s, and they sell 85% Lindt bars (as well as Scharffen-Berger) at the supermarket down my street.

I prefer a less-sweet chocolate bar, and using a high proportion of cocoa solids means you can’t cover up inferior chocolate. Even the Trader Joe’s 72% Pound Plus bar, which is about four bucks, is great eating chocolate. In my world, this is like Trader Joe’s illicitly importing Iranian caviar and selling it for six dollars a pound.

The trouble with 70% bars is that if you use them in recipes designed for Hershey’s, you’ll run into trouble–just as if you decided to add more chocolate to your cake and put in less sugar. So every single recipe in _Bittersweet_ has instructions for using regular chocolate, 60%-64% chocolate, or 66%-72% chocolate. As for the 85% Lindt bar, you’re on your own. And they’re Medrich’s usual brilliant recipes for ice creams, cakes, cookies, pies, and so on, along with a chapter of savory recipes with chocolate, such as roasted squash soup with cocoa bean cream.

Speaking of cream, try the recipe for Nibby Cream. Heat cocoa nibs (another up-and-coming gourmet chocolate variation) with cream, strain, then chill the cream and whip it for the most subtle and haunting chocolate flavor.

But there’s a much more important reason to buy this book. It brings back into print one of the world’s greatest recipes.

For some reason, probably involving the publishing industry and Satan, Medrich’s book _Cookies and Brownies_ is out of print and rare. In it is the most amazing fudgy brownie recipe of all time, “New Classic Brownies.” The secret is the Steve Ritual, invented by Medrich’s friend Steve Klein, wherein you remove the brownies from the hot oven and plunge the pan into a tray of ice water. Somehow this causes a crackly top and dense, chewy interior. And now the brownie recipe, ritual intact, has been reprinted in _Bittersweet._

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about cookbooks for the Seattle Times in which I mentioned the Steve Ritual. This occasioned an email from the *actual Steve.* This would be like if you bragged on your blog about finding the G-spot, and then got an email from Dr. Grafenberg saying, “You go!”

Naturally I asked Steve if he had any other great ideas to share, but all I got was his plan for Mideast peace. I wasn’t impressed. World-class brownies are a lot harder than that.