|
Sweet
legacy
Potion
No. 9 will cast spell on chocolate lovers
Jan.
9, 2007
| If
You Go |
Name: Legacy Chocolates.
Owners: Mike and Cathy Roberts.
Address: 643 S. Broadway St., Menomonie.
Store hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday
through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
Telephone: (715) 231-2580.
Web sites: www.potionnumber9.com and
legacychocolates.com.
Wheelchair accessible: No.
Parking: On the street.
Prices: At the Legacy store in Menomonie,
8-ounce tubs of Potion No. 9 cost $4.95, and
14-ounce tubs, $7.50.
Extras: Legacy also makes fine truffles
and a hot cocoa mix and roasts exotic coffee
beans in small batches.
There’s also a Legacy store at 2042 Marshall
Ave., St. Paul; call (651) 646-0644.
Hahn’s Meat Market, 3045 N. Hastings
Way, Eau Claire, features a Legacy display
case and sells 8-ounce tubs of Potion No.
9 for $5.49. |
Imagine
the bliss of tasting 50 top-quality cocoas from
all over the world.
Imagine the delicious torment of choosing just one.
That’s what Mike and Cathy Roberts did to transform
Cathy’s treasured recipe for chocolate sauce
— which she had been making for family and
friends for 25 years — into Legacy Chocolates’
superb Potion No. 9.
The winner: a Dutch-process red cocoa from Belgium
with 28 percent cocoa butter. (Typical supermarket
cocoas rarely exceed 12 percent.)
For Potion No. 9, the Robertses combine this super-rich
cocoa with an astonishingly rich heavy cream —
fully 40 percent butterfat — made by Pride
of Main Street Dairy in Sauk Centre, Minn.
They also use unsalted butter made of slow-pasteurized
cream by the old-fashioned Hope Creamery in Hope,
Minn., and Wholesome Sweeteners’ fair trade
organic cane sugar.
Because Potion No. 9 has only four ingredients,
Mike Roberts explained on the telephone, they must
all be “of exceptional quality.”
The sauce is smoothly scoopable at refrigerator
temperature. Eating it thus turns a spoonful of
Potion No. 9 into one of the world’s best lollipops.
Let it warm slowly and dissolve on your tongue.
For an extraordinary chocolate pudding — like
fine French chocolate pots de crème —
try it at room temperature.
For topping ice cream or dipping fruit, microwave
it for 25 seconds, and then stir. Better yet: Melt
it slowly in a small, heavy pan over your lowest
flame. This suffuses the kitchen with the spicy
aromas of chocolate, slightly thickens the sauce
at the pan’s edges into lovely chewiness and
intensifies the flavor.
The Robertses’ recipe perfectly balances sweetness,
bitterness and richness. You won’t want more
— or less — of any one.
At all temperatures, Potion No. 9 has what the great
chef Thomas Keller calls “the texture of luxury.”
It is silken and lush, creamy-thick and pillowy,
elegant, sensual, soothing.
Main
Course, the Leader-Telegram’s restaurant
review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the
month. Diners’ Notebook, a sampling of favorite
restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of
the
month. |
