Chocolate

I forgot to mention something particularly splendid. At the beginning of last week (aka la semana de las fiestas), we signed ourselves up for a Tuesday afternoon workshop at the Choco-museo, a small museum/kitchen/cafe dedicated to chocolate. Now, there's apparently no evidence that indigenous peoples of Peru (including the Inca) cultivated chocolate, and it was more the fare of Central American cultures such as the Maya and Inca. However, in recent times, given the problems with coca cultivation for the purposes of making cocaine, there has been an effort to shift towards cacao instead.Peruvian cacao is on the increase. Cacao trees are pretty short, and grow best in the shade of other trees. If I recall correctly, they can only be grown 20 degrees north and south of the equator. The cacao beans actually come from the center of a colorful fruit. Wildlife, such as monkeys (New World Monkeys, distinguished by their prehensile tails) consume the fruit, but leave the horridly bitter seeds. Indeed, there is a rather complex process that allows cacao to become delicious chocolate. First, the beans must be fermented in boxes lined with banana leaves. Though fermented, the husks can not even be separated from the useful chocolate material in the medullary aspect of the bean. So, the next step is to dry, and then roast the beans. This slightly mellows out the flavor, but the beans still taste extremely bitter and astringent, which lingers in your mouth. The roasting also allows for winnowing, the separation of the husks from the 'nibs'. The husks can be used to make a nice tea, with a light but noticeably chocolate flavor. Once you've got your nibs, you can grind them up into a chocolatey paste. Doing it the old fashioned way, a la mortar and pestle, is an energy intensive process due to having to apply sufficient friction to produce the paste rather than the more easily achievable powder. Once we got to this step in the workshop, we tried making some Mayan-style hot chocolate. This includes the paste, chili, and no sugar. To make it a little bit frothy (a somewhat difficult process, because it is water-based rather than the European milk-based formula), we poured the mix from one jug to another with increasing vertical distance, only spilling a little. It is a bitter but tasty beverage that the Maya held in high religious esteem. The next experiment we tried was with milk, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves. It was rich and tasty, a more fruity flavor than I'm used to. The next step is more mechanical, involving grinding , mixing, and refining. We didn't do that during the workshop, and only discussed it briefly. After that, some serious wizardry occurs via the tempering process. Again, we discussed rather that did, because it takes a while. Basically, chocolate has to be cooled down in a particular way and at a particular rate in order for it to have a shiny appearance, rather than a white, powdery marble color. You might have seen this in a chocolate bar you left in your hot car, for example, and then opened up later. We received pre-tempered dark chocolate to make our own chocolates out of, utilizing other ingredients such as Oreos, espresso beans, chili, nuts, and many other spices to make a wide palate of flavors. All in all, an extremely fun couple of hours.