Don't Forget To Put Chocolate On Your Toast!

Woodblock Chocolate

I am on track to eat more than 70 lbs of chocolate this year. That is 6 times more than Joe Bag-a-Donuts according to the International Cacao Consumption Association.

Bribri Indian showing us his cacao.

I have entered the transitional furnichocular period of my career.  Two very exciting things in one week.

I couldn't make the Armory show to see those bad benches because I was busy studying cacao with Steve Devries in Costa Rica.  

Now I know a lot better what I don't know about cacao. I had very high expectations for this trip and it surpassed my hopes.  I was not only surrounded by but steeped in knowledge of cacao. I am too intimidated by the depth of what I learned to try to detail it here. What I can say is that we will be making better chocolate because of it.  

Maker or Works?

If I was going to start a Bean to Bar chocolate factory with my wife, we would have to name it.  Pretend that every name in the universe was already taken with the exception of the following two, which one do you like better?

PORTLAND CHOCOLATE MAKER
PORTLAND CHOCOLATE WORKS

Note: A chocolate maker is someone who roasts cocao beans and grinds them into chocolate. A chocolatier is someone who uses chocolate to make truffles and bon bons and whatnot.

There are but a handful of bean to bar houses in the US.  I am new to the scene but I have to say that chocolate is way more complex and dynamic than Hershy's would have you think.  I am loving the research.

My favorite bar, right this second, is the Amano Dos Rios bar.  Beans from the Dominican republic.  I can't f#$king believe that this bar is only beans and sugar.  It is so dynamic and the flavors are so distinctive.  I like to eat it in front of my spice rack and point to what I am tasting as the complex flavors eel through the canyons of my pallet.  The best way for me to describe it is to ask you to substitute the word CHOCOLATE wherever you see the word GUM, in the exchange below.  Except for the very first GUM.

Willy Wonka: Don't you know what this is?
Violet Beauregarde: By gum, it's gum.
Willy Wonka: [happily, but sarcastically] Wrong! It's the most amazing, fabulous, sensational gum in the whole world.
Violet Beauregarde: What's so fab about it?
Willy Wonka: This little piece of gum is a three-course dinner.
Mr. Salt: Bull.
Willy Wonka: No, roast beef. But I haven't got it quite right yet. 

Giant Chocolate Roommate

We have a new roommate.  A 70 Kilo sack of Rio Caribe, '10!  Trinitario cacao beans from Venezuela!  Fermented for 5-6 days and dried in the South American sun.  Our house smells like a yummy plummy vinegar.  I am looking forward to the explosive aromas we will be releasing when we roast these puppies and crunch them up.

My mind is working like a taffy machine in some silly town as my schemes drift from the MOGmobile  to my chocolate fantasy to my burgeoning baseball buddy (Leo) and back.  I have been gobbling more chocolate than ever before, drawing pictures and making models of the MOGmobile components, and playing baseball with my kids on the grassy school yard at the end of our block. On top of it all, it has been a beautiful Springtime here in Portland.  I hope I didn't jinx it.  Has there been any research into the potential jinx effect of blog content? If the jinx effect is valid, can it be manipulated or tricked?  I better turn the old taffy machine off now.

Poor Me

You try sitting next to this bowl all day.  My wife and I have decided to take our chocolate lust to the next level.  It happens to coincide with my knee surgery recovery and I am just fine with that.  Research, research, research!

Chocoloflop

Sometimes having a bad temper can produce some nice results. At least, that was the case today when my beautiful wife and I attempted to temper 2 kilos of chocolate. Although our efforts yielded undesirable returns as far as well tempered chocolate goes, the medium has grabbed us both by the short hairs.

Woofing down chocolate has been a passion of ours for-almost-ever, so we decided to take the plunge and learn more about it. Chocolate is like firefighters, you just can't say anything bad about em.

Below are some pictures from the day. Don't be fooled. We totally flopped. Ironically, when we figure out how to do it right, the pictures will probably become more boring. Hopefully there will be a long drawn out learning curve.