Home Grown: A celebration of local culinary enterprise

Debra Music, Theo Chocolate

Things to get out of the way: the name Theo, for starters. Not Teddy, not Vincent's brother, nothing to do with the Deity, nope. It's a small tree, Theobroma cacao, native to the deep tropics of Central and South America, whose seeds (called cacao beans) are used to make chocolate. Moving on. Ten years ago, a novel food company based in Fremont burst onto the scene, promising something unheard of and thought to be unattainable: the nation's first bean-to-bar chocolate. The company was called Theo. Its founders were Joe Whinney and Debra Music, and the early press enthusiasm for their products pushed their personal stories aside. Now, with the publication of a handsome Theo Chocolate cookbook, their remarkable tale is being told again.

Over the years, we've heard regularly about Joe Whinney, the environmentalist and activist for sustainable agriculture whose sympathy for the plight of the cacao farmers turned from idealism to advocacy to commercial success. Less about his co-founder, Debra Music, the marketing maven who created Theo as a consumer brand. But we're getting ahead of the story. Whinney and Music married, set up house in Massachusetts, had a son, divorced, but-despite their separate careers-remained close as their son, Henry, grew up. Henry was ten when Whinney convinced a Seattle-based investor to underwrite his dream of creating a sustainable chocolate business; he asked Music to join him in the move to Seattle.

Theo Chocolate opened a year later in an old trolley barn in Fremont. Originally viewed as a novelty, the chocolate bars, in a variety of unusual flavors, caught on, helped by a terrific logo by a local design firm called Kittenchops.com. Food Network named Theo one of the hottest chocolate companies in the US; WebMD named it the nation's outstanding dark chocolate; Oprah declared her love on TV. Integral to the concept are the one-hour public tours ($10) which explain every step of the chocolate process, literally from bean to bar.

And now there's the book, filled with 75 recipes along with innumerable articles about the bean's transition to chocolate. A procession of A-list chefs contribute recipes (Tom Douglas: roast chicken and wild mushroom bread salad with cocoa nibs; Maria Hines: lamb sugo over tagliatelle infused with cocoa nibs). Cocoa's not just for breakfast anymore.

Madeline Puckette, Sommelier

There's a fascinating new wine guide from the duo behind the website WineFolly.com, Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack. The book, whose official title is Wine Folly: the Essential Guide to Wine, contains 230 pages of maps, infographics, and helpful insights into the <strike>obscure</strike> <strike>mysterious</strike> <strike>mystifying</strike> <strike>virtually impenetrable</strike> <strike>quasi-impenetrable</strike> subject of wine, that will teach you what you need to know so that the sommelier doesn't take you for a rube and your dinner date doesn't take you for a pretentious asshat.

A sommelier herself (certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers, no less), Puckette won the "wine blogger of the year" title at the International Wine & Spirits Competition in 2013. She's also a graphic designer who brings a welcome intellectual rigor to her presentations. And if you find the editorial restraints of the book a bit limiting, just go online. Now, we don't all absorb information in the same way, so this book isn't going to make you an instant wine expert, but it will help you take a big step in the right direction: practical information (maps, serving tips) that could help your confidence in the wine shop or at the dinner table.

Many things to admire here, not the least of which is that Puckette organizes the book by grape variety (not "varietal") rather than by growing region (not "terroir"). So the next time you see a wine made from unfamiliar grapes (like Torrontes, like Mencia), just flip open this book and you'll get a crash course.

Paul Clarke, Cocktail Enthusiast

Ten years ago, nobody knew who Paul Clarke was. Hell, Paul Clarke barely knew. Bored, slightly buzzed, "On May 16, 2005, instead of putting on a movie or goofing around online or frittering away my time in some other unproductive way, I decided on a different alternative."

And here's where it led. Earlier this summer, by now Seattle's best-known writer about spirits, Paul Clarke, published a weighty volume called Cocktail Chronicles. Clarke too is an award-winning blogger (2014 Best Cocktail & Spirits Writer); his book is an approachable guide to the cocktail renaissance. "It's not," he insists, "a lab manual for taking the cocktail experience to a molecular level." Nor is it an historical monograph tracing the details of our forebears as they developed and mixed the drinks we enjoy today.

Instead, The Cocktail Chronicles is a collection of approachable, and easily replicable drinks that all share the same thing: a common deliciousness. Clarke's motto: "Cocktails should be fun."

And he enjoys Negronis! The beauty of bitter! No fewer than 11 recipes, from the straight gin+Campari+vermouth to variations with Suze or Prosecco, Aperol or Cynar in the place of Campari. I'm a traditionalist myself, but have no problem if a duly licensed mixologist decides to issue a license to an Agavoni (reposada tequila) or a Kingston (rum). It's not the mixologist's job to pass moral judgment.

Ronald Holden is a Seattle-based journalist who specializes in food, wine and travel. He has worked for KING TV, Seattle Weekly, and Chateau Ste. Michelle. His blog is www.Cornichon.org, and he has published a new book "Home Grown Seattle: 101 True Tales of Local Food & Drink."

October 2015