Modica is proud of its Baroque as well as of its chocolate, a local delicacy with a long history. It is still homemade following a thousand-year old and easy recipe that the Spanish took from the Aztecs in the 18th century and gave to the Modica’s pastry-chefs.
Modica chocolate is world-renowned for being cold-worked: cocoa beans are roasted and ground at temperatures between 95° and 104° F, so that the sugar crystals, to be added later, only partially melt. Spices such as cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, orange or lemon peel, chili pepper are added during cooking so that the chocolate will gently sparkle on your palate when you eat it.
In spite of these ingredients, Modica chocolate has still a high cocoa percentage: the classic version usually has a 65% cocoa content, but you can also find some 90% cocoa bars.
This chocolate has a dark black color with uneven hints of brown, but its distinguishing features are a “rough” look and a sandy and grainy texture.
Its pure flavor and its peculiar texture seduced Sicilians, tourists, foreigners and even artists such as the writer Leonardo Sciascia, who, in 1983, in a detailed monograph on “La Contea di Modica” (“The County of Modica), wrote: “It is a plain chocolate of which two kinds are made – with vanilla and cinnamon – to be eaten in pieces or to melt and be drunk: with such an unimaginable flavor that the person who tastes it feels that he has found the archetype, the absolute, and that the chocolate produced elsewhere – even the most celebrated – is but adulteration, corruption.”.
During your tour of the town of Modica, walking through its Baroque streets, treat yourself to this local specialty: here, at the Dimora Edel, we offer you the unique opportunity to taste the chocolate made by the best artisan chocolate makers in Modica, so that you can explore the art hidden in each bar.
An overindulgence might reveal a five-century-long history and the intriguing Sicilian soul, soft and coarse at the same time, old but timeless.
