Chocolate in Provence

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.

https://www.chocolat-castelain.fr/

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.

Two Weeks In Provence

  

Think of bright blue skies, wispy curls of white clouds, a blinding white sun, all while residing in an historic castle with beautiful women, and placidly enjoying two weeks of never having a zero blood alcohol level.  I did what I could to give my liver a rest, but when the corks start popping, I’m akin to one of Ivan Pavlov’s slobbering canines.

I know you don’t believe me about the constantly sunny, blue skies.  Or the beautiful women of the castle.  Don’t blame you, especially you poor souls stuck in Cleveland or Rapid City, South Dakota. I say, sit and suffer, or pack your bags.

The natives weren’t bad either. A lot of women around the world envy their French sisters.  Slim, slinky, piercing your American soul with a single glance, saying Zis and Zat, with pouty lips.  Age?  Doesn’t really matter.  I saw 75 year old French women who could lead me home by the nose…I mean of course if I weren’t married, or if my wife weren’t watching.  French women are ever and always aware of their bodies.  Even when they smooth their skirt, shivers race down your spine and you suddenly need to chew your nails.

Ok, ok, let’s meander back toward the wonders of southern France.  What comes to mind?  You better say rolling countryside with endless stripes of green vineyards, stunted sliver leaved olive trees, tiny stone villages crawling with vined flowers, old ceramic tiled roofs, and sprawling cites like the ancient seaport of Marseille and the walled city of Avignon, sidewalk cafés that are meant for artists and writers, philosophers and spirited flaunters of convention.  This is artist country, once roamed by originals like van Gogh, and Cézanne.  Just glance in any direction and you’re looking through their eyes and seeing the colors they saw.  Golden, wind swept fields, silver-green leaves and twisted bark of ancient olive trees, blackened nights with a spray of stars, cafés that spread to the streets and swirl with conversation.

Olive Trees

 

Old Harbor, Marseille

Buy espadrilles at any market.

Did I embrace this sunny life of wonders?  Whadda ya think?  Complete with espadrilles on my feet and a Gallic sneer on my lips, I bonjour-ed my way from town to happy town and adventure to adventure.

You’re buying all this, certainement!  Bien sûr!

Well, other than enjoying the weather, ogling, and popping corks, did I do anything? Mais, oui!  There were wonderful town markets, strolls down cobblestoned streets, visits to a huge chocolate factory, a winery tour, an ochre mine, a stroll through the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy, where van Gogh spent some time refreshing and painting, Roman aqueducts and bridges, to name only a few.  Restaurants?  Oh, my goodness!  Simple, but heavenly palaces of edible delights.

Our Chocolate Chef and teacher at Chocolaterie Castelain

Endless casks at Chateau La Nerthe

van Gogh's bedroom at the Saint Paul Asylum

But, you know, with me, it’s always the people I meet that mean the most and offer the most indelible memories.  The smiles and conversations, not only with the natives, but also with the diverse fellow travelers whose lives I brush through.  After all, most travel is about people.  The famous and infamous, the towering geniuses, the footsteps of conquers, but most of all, the kind and happy words and touches and grins of satisfaction that warm us and unite us with the rest of humanity.  Of course, there’s a chance it was just the wine.

Provence is like that.  A paradise of sunny days, sunny dispositions, and shared pleasures.  With a glass held high, I offer this French toast that says it all:  A votre santé!  Cheers!

Ratatouille My Way

I’m on a tear, cooking something new and special everyday, as my devoted readers have no doubt noticed.  My usual modus operandi is to spice things up with a hop-skip-and-jump blend of travel, book reviews, food and the occasional short fiction.  But, travel won’t start in earnest for another week or so, and I’m between books.  But, still I sally forth to entertain.

You’ll notice my recipes of late have spanned the great divide between healthy low carb entrées and devil-may-care carb-gorging.  Well, today it’s back to low carb and for a couple of very special reasons.

When possible, I like to cook something on Sunday that will fill lunch pails for the rest of the week, which brings me to reason two.  Wives can be very demanding and one thing they demand is variety.  Did I really say ‘can be very demanding?'  I meant viciously demanding. And leave the can out.

What is so delicious that it satisfies a schizophrenic wife…whoops, now I’m being redundant… five days in a row? 

I’ve got a one-word answer:  Ratatouille.  The first thing to learn is how to pronounce it.  The A-mur-i-kin version sounds more like Rata-twooy, to rhyme with dewey.  The much more sophisticated French on the other hand…and after all they own the word… say Rata-tu-ee.  Purse your lips when you say the tu part, then soften and slightly lengthen the double e like a French mouse who just learned the disadvantage of being the first one to the cheese.

With a cooking time of four to five hours, this dish screams for a slow cooker, but since I don’t have one, I settled for a conventional oven set at 275ºF (135ºC)

Ratatouille My Way

There is no ONE recipe for ratatouille.  My guess is, every wife and scullery maid in Provence has a slightly different approach. So, rather than insisting on just one way to peel a potato, I humbly title this version Ratatouille My Way.

2 Medium unpeeled eggplants cut in a medium to small dice

3 Medium zucchini, halved lengthwise, then thinly sliced

2 Medium onions, halved and thinly sliced

8 Cloves of garlic, peeled, thinly sliced, then roughly chopped

1 Large red bell pepper, medium dice

1 28oz can tomatoes (I use whole tomatoes and crush them by hand)

1/3 Cup olive oil

¼ Cup Balsamic vinegar

2 Tablespoons dried oregano

1 Tablespoon dried coriander

A fist full of fresh basil leaves, removed from the stalks and roughly chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil on medium to low. Add the onion and garlic.  Cook and stir until they are limp and barely golden.  Careful not to burn them!

Add the diced eggplant, bell pepper, and sliced zucchini and mix well.  Stir frequently.

When the vegetables have cooked down a bit and are looking limp, add the hand-crushed, undrained tomatoes, Balsamic vinegar and herbs.  Stir well.

At this point there will be a lot of liquid in the bottom of the pot.  Bring to a boil.

Cover and put the pot in the pre-heated oven.  Cook for four to five hours.  The vegetables should be very soft, but there will still be a lot of liquid.

Put the pot back on the stovetop and bring to a boil.  Stir occasionally and cook until the liquid is greatly reduced.  You’re not making soup!  This is a hearty, filling blend of sumptuous vegetables that can stand up to a hearty meat dish, and demanding wife.

Voilà!  C’est magnifique!  But, don’t forget the wine!  And tell your wife, of course I didn’t mean her!