A very happy medium
BY DAVID
HINCKLEY
Monday, December 1st, 2003
To Sid Chidiac, chocolate is a dessert option and a painting medium.
Chidiac - who was born in Australia, grew up in Lebanon and traveled
the world before moving to New York a year ago is an artist trained in
portraiture with traditional painting materials, like oils.
But he feels especially warm toward New Yorkers, he says, so he decided
they deserve a warmer medium.
That would be Callebaut W2 White Chocolate, made in Belgium and sold in
bite-size drops.
It turns out that this particular chocolate, a relatively rich blend
that contains 36% cocoa butter, lends itself nicely to portrait painting.
So that's how Chidiac came to be standing behind a table recently at a
place that, frankly, doesn't draw all that many painters: the city's
annual Chocolate Show.
He was ringed on the surrounding walls by portraits he had painted in
Callebaut W2, meaning that if someone said one of his pictures looked good
enough to eat, it was - though even by the standards of premium chocolate,
this would have been an expensive snack.
Purely from the artistic side, Chidiac says, painting in chocolate
isn't quite as easy as it might sound.
"It's not like oil," he says. "When you paint in chocolate, you have to
work fast because it dries so quickly. I try to do a whole portrait in one
sitting, usually about seven to eight hours."
The color mixes also require some experimentation, he says, though once
he gets the texture right, the tones and hues aren't that difficult to
develop.
Chidiac probably offered the most creative way to play with your food
at this year's Chocolate Show, though the Chocolate Spa was in the running
with a 10-minute chocolate hand massage for $15.
Most exhibitors, however, seemed to be working on the reasonable
premise that even if you like your chocolate presented as an artistic
statement, in the end you will probably want to eat it, not just admire it
on the wall as a good likeness of Aunt Helen.
Danielle Rogers of Danielle's Chocolatier in MountKisco displays much
of her chocolate in elaborate sculptures - from such seasonal selections
as Santas and reindeer to a chocolate carriage pulled by chocolate horses.
This catchy item is about 8 inches high and a few feet long, depending
on how many horses you want and whether or not you want a mix of white and
dark chocolates.
The basic two-horse model, using one kind of chocolate, starts at $310
and, as with full-size transportation vehicles, the cost goes up as you
accessorize. The Cinderella Coach, for instance, costs $450. But Rogers
says price seems to be no object for those who admire this kind of
artistic statement.
"They're very popular for Sweet 16 parties," she says. "And some people
like them so much that they just leave it there. Six months later, they're
still looking at it."
But most of the horses, she suspects, are eventually consumed - and if
that's going to be their fate, she recommends doing it within about two
months.
"Good chocolate will keep pretty well as long as it has the right
temperature and not too much moisture," she says. "Solid chocolate will
keep longer than the kind that has filling. But it won't keep its quality
forever."
The proper interim care is to keep it under 70 degrees. But wait - that
does not mean stashing it in the refrigerator.
It's not that chocolate goes bad in the fridge, Rogers says. It's not
like, say, bananas. But refrigeration does hasten the "bloom," that
whitish coating that forms on the outside. It's not bad for you. It just
diminishes the artistic appeal. Which in chocolate, as in small speedy
foreign automobiles, is part of the game.
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