Food Stuff; Exceptional Chocolate, Neither Swiss Nor Smooth

( The New York Times – 2006 – Florence Fabricant )

The finest chocolate, as we know it, dates from 1879. That was when Rudolph Lindt, a Swiss chocolatier, invented the conching machine, which made it easier to knead a mass of warm chocolate to a satin-smooth texture. The longer the chocolate is conched, the finer the texture. Chocolate that is worked by hand will never achieve that finesse.
But a bite of a bar of Don Puglisi chocolate proves that there is merit in old-fashioned chocolate that is dull, not shiny, and has a pleasingly crunchy texture. This artisanal chocolate from Modica, a baroque hill town in southeast Sicily, is made from the finest criollo beans and is worked without heating, on a machine that is similar to a metate, a Mexican-style mortar, so that the sugar crystals retain their integrity.

The chocolate comes in 3.5-ounce bars, plain dark or vanilla, chili, ginger, cinnamon, bergamot and coffee. The bars are sold at Bedford Cheese Shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for $5, and at Fairway for $3.99.