Chocolate

Notes from the Frontera pastry meeting- In custards, creams, mousses, and souffles egg white provides structure while yolk brings richness and mouthfeel. Flan which cooks in a ceramic mold that holds its shape doesn’t need a lot of egg whites but yolks will give it richer deeper flavor. Mexico introduced chocolate to the world, traditionally and contemporarily primarily for drinking. Cortez group loved chocolate and brought it to Spain, monks in southern Europe added sugar and some guy in England cut it with dairy to make it less expensive.

Chocolate pods grow like red / yellow / orange footballs from the trunk and when ripe they fall to the ground. Broken up, they’re white fleshy fruit with black seeds. The seeds go onto straw mats in the shade to ferment, which cuts down on acidity and matures flavor. The seeds are moved to full sun to dry completely. At XOCO we get the cocoa beans dried and roast them ourselves, low and slow at 270F to 300F, browning them to bring forward flavors. Winnow means chafe / skin separated from cocoa mass. Mexican chocolate is cocoa mass ground for about an hour with equal weight in sugar.