Making Chocolate

Leslie found out ahead of time what the activities for our last week at Juan Sisay would be. We had already decided which activities we wanted to do and tried to plan or week accordingly. Then on Monday of this week when we were told the activities, several things were changed! Most importantly the trip to the chocolateria had been replaced with a trip to a local gradeschool... hardly an equitable trade I thought. Leslie and I still wanted to go and we asked about where the place was and if we could go ourselves. One of the teachers, Veronica, said that the tour wasn't that great, that they just showed a video now. She said we could, and it would be better to buy some cacao beans and we could make our own chocolaté (this refers to the Mayan drinking chocolate and is pronounced choke-oh-latté). This sounded excellent! But we still wanted to at least visit the chocolateria.

Dave and Michelle dropped by the school and we updated them on the cancellation of the trip to the chocolateria. (Dave wasn't attending class this week, they're planning on continuing on their way, but we'd mentioned the chocolateria to them this past weekend and they wanted to come along too) We all still wanted to go and learned where it was located. So we arranged with them to meet up after lunch and go check it out.

We walked over to Doña Pancha's Chocolateria at around 2, only to discover they don't do the tour until later in the day. We sample some chocolates; with cardamom, chile, pistacio and plain and decide to come back when Dave is done with a 'make-up' Spanish lesson around 5:30.

When we return we're led into a side room where we hang out and visit for a while. Then a chocolate fondue and a plate of fruit is brought in! Delicious! We're working on finishing off the fruit and chocolate when the doña comes in and welcomes us to her shop. Then she begins telling us the history of cacao and chocolaté. I had heard that in Mayan culture chocolaté was a drink of the wealthy, but seeing as it grows well down here I didn't understand till now why. Cacao beans were the currency of the Mayans, so only the wealthy could afford to consume their money! We also learn that the large-scale comercialization of chocolate begins in the States when they begin separating cacao butter from the cacao solids and replace it with other random vegetable oils to mass produce cheap chocolate and they sell the cacao butter for other uses; white chocolate, skin care, dietary supplements and tonics, etc. That is the main quality difference in flavor and texture between Hershey's, Cadbury and the like; and real, 'gourmet' brands of chocolate that are made with the whole cacao and don't have the cacao butter substituted with vegetable oils.

We were then given samples of chocolate with yogurt as the Doña told us about the process for making chocolaté. From how they have to pick the cacao pods carefully by hand so as not to damage the sites where the pods are produced. Cacao produces pods at the same sites on their trunk and large branches over and over rather than creating new buds each time. The cacao beans and fruit are then put into tubs or shallow vats to ferment for 2-3 days. Apparently if the cacao doesn't ferment before drying and roasting it won't have any of the rich and delicious flavors we associate with chocolate. After fermenting comes drying. Once the beams are dry they are roasted until their thin shells can be easily removed. Then you have dark brown to near black cacao beans with a flavor near baking chocolate and a texture similar to esspresso beans. The beans are ground several times to the desired consistency, more times for smoother chocolate, and sugar or other flavors are added.

After this the doña takes us into the front room of the store and shows us the video that tells us more of the Mayan history of cacao, while she prepares us each a mug of chocolaté puro, chocolaté with just water.

What a great evening! We purchase some chocolaté and two flavors of eating chocolate and head home, after nearly two hours full of lots of information from the very knowledgeable doña, who we find out is 5th generation chocolaté maker (her grandmother was the Doña Pancha), and three delicious preparations of chocolaté!

Tuesday morning Leslie and I, along with Erica and Sarah and all our teachers go on a short fieldtrip to purchase cacao beans. We buy 4lbs, which we take back to the school to let dry in the sun a bit longer. Thursday morning we roast the beans in pans on the stove and deshell them. Erica and Veronica pick up a pound of almonds which they roast to add to the cacao. We take the roasted cacao beans and almonds to the grinder.

We enter the incredible smelling and very noisy grinder and find two big grinders powered from a central driveshaft by large belts on big wheels. All of this open and unprotected. The man operating the grinder looks to be in his 70s and can't be more than 4'10". He stands on a box to operate the grinder and moves the belt to engage the grinder with a short and very worn stick. After the first grind our cacao comes oozing out as a dark brown chocolate goo. We add sugar, we ask to make our chocolaté a little less sweet than normal, by the time all is said and done we will have added nearly 9lbs of sugar to our cacao! Two more times through another grinder and our chocolate is
ready to dry.

We haul a warm and soft 13lb chocolate lump back to the school. While it is still malleable we form bars from the chocolate to dry. We end up with 25 bars; 5 each and 5 we will make into chocolaté tomorrow to try and to share with the other teachers and students.

We share a few bars, one for Dave and Michelle, one for Maria who raves its the best chocolaté she's had, and one for Terry, who is surprised to find out we've been making chocolaté and disappointed he missed it.

I've decided I want to have a cacao tree in my yard some day... as cacao doesn't grow ouside of certain areas I may have to live in the tropics:)