artisanal thinking

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).

In this post we continue the exciting (and very late, sorry!) story of my recent chocolate tasting and learning experiences in the fine city of Seattle. Note: I didn’t bring a camera, so pictures of the factory have been scoured from google images, I take no credit for them.

A Tour and Personal Connection at Theo Chocolate

While visiting Seattle, my prescient sister reserved a spot for me on a tour of local medium size chocolate makers, Theo Chocolate. Theo said that last year they went through 300k pounds of cacao, which according to some of their peers, disqualifies them from being ’small,’ but they are using mostly traditional equipment and traditional techniques, they are artisans, and they definitely have not forgotten that individual humans should be treated as such (whereas to Hershey’s ‘individuals’ are corporations, groups of humans). So on July 28th, 2009, I turned my nose up at the once-in-a-lifetime heat wave, biked across Seattle, over the sizable and steep hill of Queen Anne and after cleaning up with ice water, coffee and a French Shower at Fremont Coffee Company, stumbled into Theo’s factory at 3400 Phinney.

I walked into a pretty space, open, climate-controlled, with lots of windows and natural light (in contrast to Blommer’s in Chicago, where the ‘retail outlet’ was more like a cave for interrogating political dissidents). There were seven or eight tables loaded with displays of bars, each with a pile of samples on little rough-edged marble slabs, a fireplace in the back (just for looks, of course), and a few books on chocolate/cacao history scattered about. Not only was I there to compare notes on technique and taste, but I was on a mission to secure for my sister’s wedding some poundage of delectable, (fair!-trade! organic!) chocolate to serve for dessert (they ran out of budget, then told the caterers to nix dessert the night of her ceremony!). Before the tour started and I was just checking in, I asked one of the (very pretty!) ladies behind the counter whether Theo had any giant blocks of chocolate that they sold to chocolatiers, or something that I could buy in somewhat bulk form for the wedding. She told me that they just had bars, but to go on the tour, enjoy myself, and we could chat about possibilities later—an encouraging sign!

A Peek Behind the Chocolate Curtain

Looking sharp with my meshy blue hairnet I set off with about 20 other folks on the tour. We descended from street level a half flight of stairs and ended up in a room where we would spend the next 40 minutes. Seating us in 2 rows of a semi-circle, our tour guide, Becca, spun for us the story of Cacao. Its ancient history in the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, Montezuma’s 40 daily cups of xocolātl, the spicy-bitter fertility/virility drink, described lovingly thus by Jesuit, José de Acosta:

Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant taste. Yet it is a drink very much esteemed among the Indians, where with they feast noble men who pass through their country. The Spaniards, both men and women that are accustomed to the country are very greedy of this Chocolate. They say they make diverse sorts of it, some hot, some cold, and some temperate, and put therein much of that “chili”; yea, they make paste thereof, the which they say is good for the stomach and against the catarrh.

Yea indeed, José, the Aztecs so loved Cacao, they actually used its beans as a form of currency, with a turkey selling for the princely sum of 100 beans, an avocado, however, a lowly three beans. Therefore to drink xocolātl one literally had to be rich enough to eat one’s own money!

We discussed the fermenting and drying processes of Cacao, I learned that only the tropical regions where it grows (± 20 degrees latitude) even have the microbes which ferment Cacao. So this must be done in the tropics before the beans are sent to us, it is impossible for me to get and make chocolate from ‘green beans’ (in contrast to the situation with coffee). Becca told us about fair-trade and organic beans, the world price of which is $3-4/lb (right now, I’m paying about $9/lb), compared with what Hershey’s pays for Cacao from the Ivory Coast and Ghana, $1/lb (we can talk about Cacao economics later…). We sampled chocolate! Instructions were given on how to mindfully eat a piece of chocolate, letting it melt on your tongue, swirling it around, coating your palate with melted chocolate, then, inhaling deeply, trying to complete momentary circuits from your nose, picking up smells, to your brain, identifying those smells, to your mouth, articulating those flavors. Most people are not accustomed to this process with chocolate, and for wine, with which we are familiar with gourmands raving about its undertones of ‘freshly mown grass’, it takes practice to identify such flavors, but oddly enough, it is children who can be best at this game! We were given two kinds, both from their ‘origin collection’ of single origin, terroir heavy bars. First the robust, nutty and earthy Forastero Cacao from the Ivory Coast, followed by the tart, fruity-cranberry-raisin, wine scented, but with some caramel, overall highly complex and oh! gods, my gods, coy and alluring 74% dark chocolate from (Sambirano Valley of…?) Madagascar. I later bought two pounds of this chocolate.

We entered the factory floor, proper. Immediately we were confronted with a long line of 6 foot high stainless steel boxes, connected to each other, end to end. This entrance to the factory is the end of the chocolate making process, these boxes formed the cooling tunnel, where eventually, polycarbonate molds of 85F tempered chocolate will be allowed to chill and crystals will get to link arms. To our right were even taller stainless steel cylinders, chocolate holding tanks, purgatory. Behind them were conches painted in shades of lime green, where refined, melted chocolate spends hours to days being mixed so that each particle of cocoa mass is coated by butter, smooth butter, baby, and bitter flavor compounds are slowly heated away. Next to those, two mills stood, the numero uno, an ‘impact mill’ which crushes nibs into a coarse liqueur by slamming them against stainless steel pins, and the finisher, a ‘ball mill’ where in a cylinder clamped tightly shut, little ball bearings mingle like protons after the big bang, their shear against each other further reducing the size of cacao particles to 12 microns in size, about three times the size of your cheek cells. The reason I said above that they only mostly use traditional equipment, is that I think it is more traditional to use a large granite stone melangeur for grinding nibs than this combination of mills.

Continuing further back into the factory and process, there was another room with just two machines (pictured at the top of the post), Theo’s ball roaster and their winnower. I was especially interested in hearing about how they roast. They claimed to start with a seemingly insufficient roast of just 5-10 minutes of the whole beans. Next to the roaster, I saw a white jug with sprayer hose labeled “WATER!” and knowing of water’s injurious effects on cacao, I was confused. But Becca said they had recently begun experimenting with spraying a little mist in during the initial whole bean roast, this helped to pull the husk away from the bean…or something. After this roast, the beans have dried enough that they can put them in the winnowing machine, where they are first slammed against a steel plate to crack the beans and separate the husk, then they are jiggled around, traveling through variously sized meshes, and through an air stream that blows the husk away from the recently smashed nibs. Then they take the cleaned nibs and put them back in the roast to develop the flavor. I guess that roasting just the nibs allows for a more even heat distribution, since they are smaller and the heat doesn’t have to travel through any husk. I forget for how long (although certainly it depends on different parameters) they do the post-winnow nib-roast, and I’m not sure they told me the target internal temperature of the beans, but nevertheless, this portion of the tour was especially instructive.

Sweet Talkin’ My Way Into Nine lbs of Premium Chocolate

The tour completed, I was very satisfied with the experience, and my peers even gave me some post-tour complements on my questions, which delved more into the “biochemistry side of things.” I started cruising around the tasting tables, filling my stomach with nibs, nib-brittle, and an interesting 91% dark bar from Venezuela (can you say Criollo?), I was waiting for the room to clear out a bit so I could spend more time presenting my case to the ladies to try to get some bulk chocolate. Then our guide, Becca, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Okay, so what is your background?” I explained to her that I was an aspiring chocolate maker, we talked shop about roasting and tempering, she told me about a cool visit she had taken to the Mast Brothers in Brooklyn and when she couldn’t elaborate more on the specifics of their roasting procedure, she gave me the email of one of their main roasters, sweet!

Sensing the rapport, I told her my situation with the wedding, and asked if we could figure out a way to get me some bulk chocolate at a good price (if you just bought bars at the retail price, it would be around $20-25 a pound). Becca mentioned they might have some ’scrap’ chocolate of different varieties around, but usually they are limited in what kind of stuff like this they have. At first she checked into how much it would cost to get 10 lbs at the ‘friends and family’ price, but after talking with some of the other folks and calling her boss, it was settled that I could get the employee discount. I ended up buying nine lbs, consisting of two lbs of orange, two of cherry&almond, two of french bread chocolate (another sweet/salty, sans creamy, combination), two of Madacascar, and one pound of Venezuelan 91%! The Madagascar I got was of their previous formulation which is 65% dark, they recently upgraded it to 74%, but Becca claimed to like this sweetness level better .

Overall, I achieved precisely what I came in wanting, a bunch of great chocolate at a great deal. But, my main purpose isn’t to brag about that, but to exhibit a great situation where, unlike a lot of companies, Theo recognized me as an individual with individual circumstances, then did their best to fit what they do with what I wanted. Currently I think corporations, which are simply collections of humans, almost universally refuse to deal with individual humans as such, and only recognize bargaining power in other corporations or other mass groups of individuals. But then who are we serving? I exist on a human level, I want to increase the happiness of humans and help preserve their existence, I feel no desire to, like a social insect, sacrifice myself so that some larger genetic unit, some colony can reproduce. In addition to their sense of fun embodied in the chocolate buddha heads and chocolate hammers they had lying around, I think this quality, a collection of humans serving individual humans is what makes Theo anomalously awesome artisans.

Coda: Transporting Meltable Goods Back Through Seattle

So I returned from whence I came, into the anomalously extreme 95F Seattle heat, now with a full bag of chocolate in hand, and although concern was expressed for my idea of a 4.5 mile bike race back to my sister’s, including a 400′ elevation gain at the end, I made it back alive, barely, my chocolate had only very minimal melting at the edges, and after stowing the precious chocolate in the basement (a ‘chocolate celler’ ?), a cold shower, more ice water, and still sweating for another half hour, I look back on the adventure with particular fondness.