Book review: Bittersweet

Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate, Alice Medrich. Artisan, 2003. (Amazon)

I picked this book up several years ago, and I read it then. It's a cookbook, devoted entirely to chocolate: truffles, cakes, brownies, and some savory dishes. Yet it's also a memoir, with stories about Medrich's experiences with chocolate: eating it, learning to cook with it, and teaching others to cook with it.

There are also notes about equipment, terminology, and a convenient conversion guide - if you use 75% chocolate, you'll need to change the sugar by X and the butter by Y to get the same results as with 55% chocolate.

I had a hankering for brownies recently, and I saw this book languishing on my shelf. I thought, "I bet there's a really good brownie recipe in here." Indeed, there is. I need to make more of the recipes in here. The wild mushroom ragout with cacao nibs sounds *divine*, except Ben won't eat mushrooms, so it's a bit of a waste.

I discovered that I'd bookmarked a chestnut torte recipe, and I vaguely recall making it. I have 2 lbs of chestnuts in my fridge; perhaps I'll make it again.