artisanal thinking

Recently, when I haven’t been thinking cacao, I’ve been drinking it. I’ve been steeping myself in two new beverages, cacao tea and chocolate milk. Very appropriate, this, since the practice of drinking chocolate predates the eating of same by a couple millenia! Before reporting my own beverage machinations, I’ll relate some of the interesting history I’ve drunk from my recent reading, The True History of Chocolate by Sophie & Michael Coe (thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for this!).

Theobroma cacao, the tree from which the cacao bean comes, is thought to be native to the Amazon Basin—spread throughout Central and Meso-America by early humans. We can trace the cultures that used cacao by testing ancient pottery for the presence of Theobromine, an alkaloid found in cacao. This alkaloid has been detected in delicate drinking vessels, dating to before 1400 BC, of the pre-Olmec civilization known as the “Barra”, located on the Pacific coast of Chiapas in Mexico and neighboring Guatemala. The picture at right shows another early American vessel, holding not hot chocolate, and these Cornell researchers think possibly not even the cold cacao froth popular with later American, Montezuma, but perhaps an alcoholic drink from the fermented fruit pulp of the cacao tree!

Ritualized cacao drinking among the elite classes of early American society unites the civilizations of the Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs. Mayan pottery, such as the piece at left, dated to about 500AD, found in the tomb of an aristocrat at Mayan site, Río Azul, contains the two instances of Mayan Glyph for cacao, and has tested positive for theobromine. Another, known as ‘the Princeton Vase‘, dated to around 750 AD, depicts a woman pouring, from a height, a cacao drink from one vessel to another—the earliest depiction of this method of raising foam in drinking chocolate.

In addition to pictorial evidence, texts, such as the Popol Vuh, a Mayan creation myth, reinforce cacao as a fixture in early American culture. In particular, it references cacao as among the food stuffs found by certain gods used to create the body of man. No specific Mayan recipes for cacao based drinks survive, but it is likely that they combined ground cacao with ground Maize to make a gruel, and with any number of spices and flowers used as flavorings.

It was the Maya, at Guanaja, who introduced Europeans, through Columbus, on his fourth voyage, to cacao beans. Ol’ Chris may have brought some of these ‘almonds’ back to Spain, but they were initially disliked and forgotten. In America, the Aztec civilization both carried on the Mayan customs of drinking cacao and finally fixed cacao in the minds of Old World denizens. The Mayans may have drank cacao as both a hot and cold beverage, but the Aztecs were firmly cool imbibers. They too valued most the heady foam that could be produced by alternate pourings from distant vessels. Similar flavorings were used—Maize for lower class chocolate, for the lords, honey, peppery annatto, dried ground flowers and chilis, a prized flower known as hueinacaztli (I can’t find much info on this, besides what is repeated from the book I’m repeating from!), vanilla flowers, and spices similar to black pepper or anise. Much of what we know about the Aztec cacao rituals comes from Spanish observers, primarily the writings of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, but also from an unknown soldier of Hernán Cortés, who remarks of chocolate:

This drink is the healthiest thing, and the greatest sustenance of anything you could drink in the world, because he who drinks a cup of this liquid, no matter how far he walks, can go a whole day without eating anything else.

True enough, as anyone whose made hot chocolate made with actual bars of chocolate or ground cacao beans, rather than partially de-fatted cocoa powder, knows that it is an incredibly rich, almost syrupy thing, owing to the balance of fat and solids in the cacao bean. One must show temperance and take care not to drink large quantities at once, lord knows how Montezuma reportedly drank 50 cups of cacao per day(!), or feel regret later when walking all day, trying to work off the calories and indigestion from this energy a-bomb.

Garden Mulch or…

From the New World, cacao was eventually adopted, sweetened and loved in the Old. For some time it was primarily a food that was drunk, until the process of refining it into bars was perfected, but let us toss inhibition, return to that ancient tradition and experience different methods of imbibition. As I may have mentioned previously, the cacao husks that are winnowed from the nib are not used, due to their poor flavor and texture, in making chocolate, but either discarded, composted, or sold as mulch (ed: from linked website—Q: Why is cacao husk better than other types of mulch? A: Smells better!). Or…it can be made into tea!

I think I first heard the idea when seeing a bag of some Yogi tea advertising chocolate and cacao husks listed as an ingredient. Ha! that’s a byproduct, I thought, and…something I should try. I now see that other gourmet tea manufacturers use husk, and one, MEM tea is even partnering with Taza chocolate to use their husk.

So now after winnowing, I’ve been filtering out the big husk pieces with a wire mesh, and saving them in large bags to replace my afternoon Irish Breakfast. As would be expected from something that is purposefully removed because of its lack of flavor contribution, cacao tea is a fairly timid, mild beast. The flavor is reminiscent of chocolate, but it is not overpowering in any sense. Aroma, however, is where this tea is really interesting. It gives of a heady scent of the ‘baking brownies’ smell, that one gets when roasting cacao. Half the pleasure of drinking this tea is the inhale before the sip. I enjoy it in English style, sweetened with just milk and seek it when something light and thin is preferred, in contrast to the following cacao beverage (or meal!).

Thick Chocolate

About a month ago, I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was into espresso equipment, making coffee under proscribed rules in an attempt to perfect the cup and had made a pact with myself to someday get a lever-press espresso machine. Then, lo and behold! a beautiful 20-year old espresso machine was bestowed upon me, a gift from this friend who had recently upgraded his equipment. I’ve since been enjoying a cappuccino every morning, perfecting my milk foaming technique to make the perfect thick hot chocolate, feeling inspired by a recent resurgence in interest in ‘traditional’ hot chocolate, notably that coming from Bittersweet Cafe. Over in Oakland, they are making small cups of rich chocolate, from what I remember (it was three years ago that I went there), using an espresso grinder’s doser to measure cocoa powder into water or milk, a milkshake blender to stir and homogenize the slurry, then the steam wand of an espresso machine to heat and foam.

More recently, yesterday, I did have the chance to do more research and stopped into Chicago restaurant, Xoco, where I didn’t get a chance to sample their food, but did drink their chocolate. They are using similar equipment and processes to me to craft ‘bean-to-cup’ chocolate, again attempting to rediscover Mesoamerican past in thick chocolate blended with water and spice. Mine was thick, with jewels of fat on top to prove that their actual chocolate—ground cacao, rather than powder was the ingredient, but I did notice it lacking the characteristic head that our Aztec woman pictured near the top is taking such care to form.

I of course am questing to make this, and with my new espresso machine, all I needed was some chocolate and milk (I’m trying milk for now, taking the final plunge to water sometime in the future). In the past, I would clean the cacao grinder by first heating milk and running it in the mill, to loosen and dissolve the final residue of chocolate that is impossible to scrape out. Then I would pour out this authentic thick chocolate and finish cleaning it with hot water. Of course, I can’t drink the whole cup in one day, and so in my fridge I found some saved chocolate, milk with 100% Madagascar. I also sacrificed authenticity by adding a teaspoon of sugar, not sure that I wanted the straight bitter beverage. With the chocolate already in solution, I foamed the whole mixture with the steam wand of the espresso machine, and coming to 160F, had a nice thick head of foam.

I didn’t use any flavorings like chili or cinnamon, but this chocolate was delicious. Due to its percentage, the chocolate is available to taste, and due to the head, it was their to feel as well, this truly is hot chocolate, not just heated milk, as I sometimes think of thinner beverages. I did drink this in one sitting, and wanting to prolong the experience, even refilled half the cup with milk and foamed again. I think I found the perfect dish to make with extra 100% chocolate, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with water, spices, even smaller amounts of thicker chocolate, and maybe ditching the espresso machine altogether, finding a large vessel to go at it with my molinillo or find another and pour it between two, like apparently even Moroccans do with tea, to create something more than a drink, evocative of food, and good food this is, hot chocolate with head!

Beneath the city din and adjacent to hasidic curls, a craft food community is encircling the mainstream. Characterized by Einstein’s three qualities above, this informally-organized posse of brothers & sisters have been media darlings as of late; fodder enough for a self-analytical magazine. Concerns over the possibility of this popular interest being nothing more than the passionate intensity of the worst have been raised by our own sultan of speck. But fine, let them gush if they will—disregarding attitudes, let’s look at, then, goddammit, taste the substance of what these Brooklyners are making! I think one will find an underlying current, maybe even a currant, worth noting.

Therefore, after landing at JFK on Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Manhattan, I took the scenic route through that borough-beginning-with-a-B, to taste the local food indus… artistry. As to the Dome of the Rock, a pious foodie must take a pilgrimage to the two-block stretch of Broadway, not a stone’s throw from the Williamsburg Bridge and the East River, that houses a trinity—in contrast to the overtly named restaurant Diner and its attached ’sister’ deli-pantry Marlow & Sons, yes, opposite Berry Street resides the true soraral operation: the contrarily titled butcher-shop Marlow & Daughters.

What does one find in this triad beginning with whole animals, and ending with whole meals? In Marlow & Daughters—unobstructed and in plain view—in the front of the back end of the shop, is a table surrounded by several laborers, various knives, and an unapologetic display of, on the day I came in, hunks of beef being carved into cubelets. In the glass deli case which doubled as a counter, pieces of pig freely-ranging from ‘lardo,’ ie: fatback, to ham in the form of life-sized whole thighs, to ‘trotters’, legs (with feet!), streching even to eerily uncurled piggy tails. In a cooler opposite, I was intrigued by bottles of Mother in Law’s Kimchi, instantly endearing its creator, fermentation enthusiast, Lauryn Chun, to me—live, craft fermented cabbage, of course, being one of the tunnels to my heart. Unfortunately perhaps, I didn’t leave the shop any trottier and my tail remained solely vestigial, but after befriending a bearded chap on the other side of the counter and discussing chocolate, charcuterie, and communal food, I followed his recommendation and netted myself a chunk of fennel Sopressata from Manhattan’s Salumeria Biellese.

Wending our way back to cacao, the siblings at Marlow & Sons, in addition to other fine goods, brought a fine selection of chocolate to the pantry, including: Patric Chocolate Nibs, Sun to Bar Manufacturer, Grenada Chocolate, Askinosie Chocolate… And chocolatiers including fellow salted caramel lover, Nunu and finally, an uncooked foodist! fine & raw.

The craft does not stop there! The parade of fermented vegetables does not cease yet! In Brooklyn one can also pucker at pickle and mustard maker, McClure’s Pickles, or if they don’t suit your fancy, not to worry! There are options in your local pickle provider, with Wheelhouse Pickles taking back the ferment and offering a true fermented sour pickle! It is nearly unfathomable, but at its core—fundamentally silly and even heartwarming that young people are living by Sandor Katz’s edict that ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved’!

Still! The craft does not end there! There are yet food-related-but-not-edible-food artisans in Brooklyn! Most notable there are artisan kitchen knife makers producing knives with the individual character of this bounteous borough. My last stop in the whirlwind tour was to supply-shop The Brooklyn Kitchen where I was seeking the knives of Cut Brooklyn who grinds and polishes knives in a studio here. O, how bittersweet!—They are so popular that I didn’t get to test one, since because of Cut’s 10-month backlog, they cannot even spare one knife! Clearly, even the capitalists among us must admit that what is being produced in Williamsburg is of obvious value—this is an enclave of celebrated high-quality goods and the marketplace is demanding more quantity be devoted to the production of quality! O, how joyous!

The Trip’s True Purpose

From the roughly unbounded number of artisans, the diamonds that I most wanted to see were the Chocolate Makers of Williamsburg, NY. They are two brothers named Mast, NYCs sole conductors of the alchemical transformation from bean to bar, coddling their cacao on 3rd St., two and a half blocks from the river. The Masts were of course the primary motivation for my jaunt to Brooklyn, and preparing myself for the possibility that they were too busy to take time for me, I came in with no expectations but to buy a bar of chocolate. But the warm reception, tour, exchange of knowledge and chocolate, and even camaraderie tasted almost as good as the duo’s Madagascar 72%.

After landing at JFK and meeting my friend Cyrus, our first stop was here, so we timidly strolled into their factory and piled our luggage next to the piles of cacao beans seen at left. The initial sensation upon entering the industrial-chic shop is an encompassing aroma of cacao. The scent wafts from the burlap sacks stacked on every surface, the raw beans on which their bars are displayed, the oven behind the counter that toasts the cacao, and on a work table adjacent, the nibs that were being cracked, using the same crankandstein roller mill that I have at home. Unlike the iron bridges in Chicago that smell like identically boxed brownies, this aroma was fierce and piquant, a sign of the unique acidity of Malagasy cacao and indicative of the individual attention given by the Bros.

I introduced myself to whom I recognized as Rick Mast,
one half the duo, and began to offer him and his employees samples of Dark Milk Panamanian and Peruvian Pure Dark Chocolate. Having thus established that I was indeed a member of the fraternal order of chocolate makers, we set out on a tour of their rooms with a young man named Ardo. In Urbana currently, my partner and I are mulling some purchases of equipment to scale up our operation from nano-scale to somewhere between that and micro-level, so what I was most interested in on our tour was finding out as many details as possible about the machines they employ. Cyrus was snapping pictures on his iPhone and I was trying to extract details about times, temperatures, voltages and pressures. The main room of the Mast factory is split by a sound-isolating glass wall into two halves—the front housing the oven, work tables and shop, the back containing several grinders and pictured at right, their new prototype shop-vac-powered winnower, an interaction with an aerospace engineer. From what I’ve read, the Masts used to winnow on the sidewalk, utilizing two buckets and dropping their mixture of nib+husk in front of a carefully placed box fan. Everybody grows up at some point, and this simple but clever machine works by inhaling nib/husk through a hose, moving it to a conical chamber where it turns and turns in a narrowing gyre until the nibs fall down the bottom and the husk separates through the top to a second similar chamber where it in turn is deposited in a collection bucket or sucked into the shop-vac.

Most interestingly, along the brick wall next to the winnower were four stone and steel grinders, each capable, over the course of three to six (!) days, of grinding 50 lbs of nibs into a paste palatable as chocolate. Seeing this quad justified the entire trip, since my partner and I are planning to scale up our capabilities with one of these exact grinders. That it comes with the Masts’ approval gives me confidence in the investment. One quirk is that these beasties take 220V, three-phase power, and as will I, the Masts had to modify the electrical capabilities of the building to accommodate them.

Because of their size and power, these grinders run hotter than what I currently use. Desirous not of mellowing, but for the complexities or their Madagascar chocolate to last, the Masts, astute students of Lou Reed that they are, don’t want it so fast, and employ a constantly running fan next to each grinder to cool it down. Later Rick Mast told me that left alone, they equilibrate at about 170F. While in the back room, I got Ardo to pull out his infrared thermometer, and we got a reading of about 135F, similar to me!

After the chocolate’s stead in the grinder, the Masts pour out their untempered 45lbs into a large metal chafing dish, wrap it with plastic, label and date it, then let it age for a bit while waiting for the pipeline to get around to tempering and molding. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve heard that it is common among craft chocolate makers to let their chocolate age while the flavors complete their development and mellow slightly. From my experience it is true that chocolate right out of the mold tastes much different (and in the case of Papua New Guinea, almost scarily unpalatable) from several weeks old chocolate—Because of brisk demand, I don’t have any data on anything more mature! Apparently the Masts have the same problem, since unlike Patric Chocolate’s schedule of a several months rest, the most elderly chocolate I could find was just one and a half weeks young.

When its time finally comes, a block of Mast chocolate will be taken from its rack to the final two rooms of the factory where it is tempered, measured and well…squirted in three rapid spurts into a tray of molds. Then using the machine’s built-in vibrating table, the pile of chocolate is evenly spread out and air bubbles removed. The tray of molds is passed to a second employee who sprinkles whatever inclusions will be used into the back of the bar, and once four trays fill a baking sheet, 12 bars will be set to cool and crystallize in the under-counter fridge. Following this, the Masts hand-wrap their bars in gold-and-silver foil, beautiful Florentine paper, and attach a sticker with their logo and holding the paper together on the back, another sticker with the bar info.

When I finished touring the factory’s four rooms with Ardo, I excitedly finagled Rick into showing me their specific wrapping technique, as I am a little dissatisfied with some of my chocolate origami. He illuminated the one fold equaling the difference between our two styles, and I should be able to make my bars look even more spectacular now. I just returned to Urbana, so I haven’t yet unleashed the new methodology, but in the sequel, I’ll post some before/after wrapping photos.

Finally, the Masts and I performed a craft-exchange, of course I got the better deal, leaving their building finally with Pure Dark Madagascar and Experimental Brazilian Chocolate, plus a Madagascar chocolate with maple syrup glazed pecans. I felt bad leaving them with just some Dark Milk Salted Caramel and Ivory Coast chocolate. Entering their factory nervous and expectant, I returned to the world of fur hats and peahs transformed by the Mast hospitality and willingness to share knowledge and…chocolate!

…and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses. I agree, Lenin. And recently, due to the publicly printed word, the rallying cry of the people has been to shout from the prairie-tops, “Death to Bad Chocolate!” For, avocational artisan food was thrust into the limelight with Wednesday’s front page (…of the D section) introduction to the Chocolate Maker of Urbana, IL!

No doubt that the fallout from this momentous occasion has already become common knowledge. For instance, there was fellow culinary blogger, Jason Brechin’s post extolling, to food, of the importance of being honest. There were repercussions in the twitter-sphere, culminating in RTs by academics, Champaign’s first lady of food and even Massachutsian chocolate maker, Taza.

Of course there was also the reaction among Computer Scientists, which was slightly more skeptical. My advisor, Leonardo, in response to my statement, “grad school can be a depressing kind of place,” chided me for falling trap to the old journalist habit of casting quotes out of context in a sensational light. Apropos of same, my lab mate, Maji, laughed that I could have avoided redundancy by just saying, “grad school.”

The Century-Defining Event

If you’ve seen me around town recently, then surely you have heard me spiel about what I was referring to as the greatest event ever to be held in Urbana history. And no lie, that, for with my great friend and fellow grad student and fellow underground food artisan, Christopher, we unleashed upon the populace no fewer than six hand brewed beers, five hand made chocolates, one craft sour beer and two craft chocolates. Though their numbers matched I’m not sure we exactly paired one beer with one chocolate—being the laissez-faire-minded individuals we are. However, we did specifically get the sour-fermented de Rodenbach variëteiten van bier to pair with ‘the Men’s Club,’ Papua New Guinean chocolate named such because of its intense sour, vinegary and stale smoke notes.

Specifically for this party, Chris brewed an American Stout (technically, a hybrid of American & Oatmeal) that went well with my 85% Panamanian, mixing the roastiness of the beer with the savoriness of the chocolate. This was his first time brewing that style, but he was so pleased with it he told me he will fit it into his regular fermentation schedule. However, to really make this party and this beer special, after an initial fermentation of two weeks, Chris imparted even more chocolate flavor and aroma to his stout by letting 3oz of Panamanian nibs steep in the brew. It takes a devotion bordering on obsession, but the result this artisanal collaboration showcased was intrigue singularly achievable through the means of craft underground food.

As I’ve mentioned previously, this party also gave me the excuse to experiment with different origins, which led, thankfully, to cacao from Côte d’Ivoire. Last time I was raving about the toasted biscuity flavor of these nibs, but finally tasting the bars, I was overjoyed to discover an earthiness I had not yet known. This ‘taste of the soil,’ this terroir, was not a dry—almost chalky—dirt-iness—what I previously thought of as ‘earthy,’ rather there is a rich, full, even moist taste of decomposing wood! Though I still have not gotten anyone else to agree or maybe just admit to it, I primarily thought of something deeply mushroom-like coming from this chocolate. Whatever it is, I think my next bag of cacao may find its way to Urbana, IL via the Ivory Coast.

The Salt of the Earth

I left it out of the last post, but on the left is not a work of modern art, though the orange squares of our slightly salty caramel do make a nice portrait against the background of dark chocolate…no, this is the most popular chocolate bar I’ve made yet! The caramel is, of course, made by my partner Bill, who is a genius chocolatier in addition to being a research scientist in the atmospheric sciences department. As a result of not being as young and possibly with ‘it’ as my generation, Bill was a little conservative (in my opinion) with the salt in his salted caramel. Like a good Gouda, I wanted to occasionally crunch into a grain of salt which would release all the smoky chewy flavors his caramel had to offer. A permeating whisper of salt was there, but I’d like to occasionally hear it’s solo. Well, for the next batch of caramel, Bill heard my chorus, and doubled the salt content! I’m venturing out of my realm of expertise, but interestingly enough, Bill claims that the additional salt is affecting the way that the caramel crystallizes, and he’ll have to do some experiments to get the super-salty caramel to be chewy like normal. Sorry to those readers who crave long-winded scientific explanations, I’ll do some research and leave that to a later post.

However, the really interesting things are the amazing caramel filled chocolate truffles that Bill made with his caramel and my Panamanian chocolate. Complete with another dollop of chocolate and salt on top, we can set our sights no lower than to give Fran a run for her money as the unofficial chocolatier to President Obama. But we will have the advantage, because we have what she does not, artisan chocolate to empower artisan chocolatiers. I would rave about the complexities of these truffles for hours more, but words would be wasted, since what limited supply I had two days ago, has already been reserved or eaten up! The best I can do is leave you with another view what’s been blowing in on the winds from the West—which if you inhale deep enough, as I did on Sunday, yield hints of ginger, cloves and excitement wafting off the first experimental pumpkin truffles in Mahomet, with no end in sight (or smell).