Found Chocolaterie Castelain
in Chateauneuf du Pape, deep in the heart of Provence, France. Ok, I lied a little, but doesn’t
everybody. Not about the Provence part,
but the finding it part. Actually, a
friend found it and managed to sober up a group of choco-holics enough to get
us to chocolate land.
Came as a surprise. Not the sobering up part. Unintended, but it happens.
The chocolate and France part.
After all, where do you think of when you think of chocolate? Belgium?
Yes. Switzerland? Yes.
Germany? Of course. Which country produces the most
chocolate? Pennsylvanians know the
answer and I can explain it with one word: Hersey.
But France? Mais oui!
A chocolate paradise in Provence.
Should have expected it in this bastion of creativity. Van Gogh country. Cézanne country. A wonderland of olives and cheeses and
especially wines. What? You don’t count making cheeses and wine
creative? Every wine and cheese is
different, with different flavors. Or olives?
Just try curing them yourself without swearing and smashing crockery on
the kitchen wall.
Chocolate is just one more
form of creativity, with endless variations.
It’s one of the most complicated of foods. Start with the Cocoa beans, most of which are
grown in West Africa. Picture men and
women hacking pods off trees with machetes.
Picture people barely making a living….wait a sec. A large Swiss corporation, Nestle formed the
World Cocoa Foundation to see that farmers get properly paid for their labor and
to ensure healthy farming practices that mean your grandchildren will still be
biting into chocolate bars. Next time you take a bite, give Nestle a shout out.
Ok, you’re saying, but what’s
the big deal? The cocoa beans are
squashed and then you have chocolate, right?
Think so? Check my simple (I know
my readers) synopsis of the bean to bar process:
Pods are harvested with
machetes sharp enough to shave your beard, and the beans and pulp are scooped
out. Just as with wine, climate and soil have a lot to do with the flavor of
the final product.
Beans and pulp are put in a
vat to ferment. (with lots of hands-on help from the farmers)
Next step is drying, then
roasting.
Winnowing separates the beans
from their shells.
After fine grinding and conching (surface scraping and coco-butter separation) you get chocolate liquor, with the solids being chocolate and the liquid being
cocoa butter. Here’s where the quality
comes in. First class producers will add
some cocoa butter back into their chocolate to smooth it out. Eat some Belgian chocolate and you’ll see
what I mean about smooth. Cheap producers will add lesser oils. Hint:
read the list of ingredients.
Now that you’re an expert on
Chocolate, let’s head to a fabulous chocolate maker in Provence. You’ll learn all I’ve written and more importantly,
get to make your own, plus gobble chocolate until your blood sugar level goes
in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The chef and his assistant led
us down the chocolate road. First thing
to remember is there are essentially three types of chocolate: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white
chocolate, the latter being only coco butter, milk and sugar. So is white chocolate really chocolate? The other two
you can figure out yourself. Dark chocolate has a million variations, depending
on where the beans came from and how much sugar is added. The most chocolate of chocolates is 99%
chocolate, with the percentage printed on the wrapper displaying how much coco bean (by weight) is in the bar. As the percentage of chocolate decreases, of course the amount of sugar and coco butter increases.
There’s nothing like hands-on
to teach you how difficult a skill…any skill…is. We poured chocolate into molds to create
hollow hearts, plastic pastry bags to make chocolate drops, and dipped fruits
and caramels. The chef made it look
exceedingly easy and I suppose if you make it your life’s work to get good at
something it does get easy. For me it was messy work, but we had a great
instructor and came away with bags of chocolate.
Here’s a pairing tip for
you: Dark chocolate goes well with
Guinness. I know that will come in
handy. It did for me, as I reconciled alcohol
and gluttony.
Tip number two: If you bring bags of chocolate home, you will
eat them, especially if they come from Chocolaterie Cstalain.. Be warned and stand by to loosen your belt,
or just switch to the chocolate- Guinness fitness diet.
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