Episode Transcript
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(00:11):
Welcome to Trivia Tangents. The podcast will return Everyday
Passions into surprising trivia deep dives.
I'm your host, Lena, and each week I quiz a friend or family
member on something they know way too much about, turning
Everyday Passions into trivia gold.
We all know that on trivia night, the bigger the team, the
better you'll play. That's why I bring the team
(00:33):
together here on Trivia tangents.
Today's guest is my dad, who's here to talk all about
chocolate, so get ready for somefun facts you'll definitely want
for your next trivia night. Hi, Dad, welcome to the podcast.
(00:53):
Hi, Lena. It's great to be here.
Good to see you. Where in the world are you
today? I'm in Brazil, in Rio de
Janeiro, OH. My gosh.
And we're recording 2:00 PM Pacific.
What time is it there? It is 6:15 PM.
Oh my. Gosh, wow.
And is that an Airbnb you're in?Yeah, this is an Airbnb Cool
(01:15):
near the Copacabana beach. There's two big two big beaches
here, That's awesome. Yeah.
So my dad, just to do a little introduction for those listening
who probably don't know my dad, he's currently doing like AI
don't know like digital nomad adventure.
So the last year he's been in Latin America basically, right?
(01:40):
Yeah, mostly in Latin America, alittle bit of Europe for work.
So a little bit more of an introduction.
My dad is a software engineer, entrepreneur, world traveler,
fluent in Spanish and currently learning Mandarin.
Right. Yeah.
And then I also know Portuguese,which is useful here in Rio.
He is a chocolate maker and of course my dad.
(02:01):
So today we are discussing all things chocolate.
It was quite hard to narrow it down to three specific sections
since there's so much history and science within the topic of
chocolate itself. But today I have three sections.
So one ancient chocolate origins, 2 chocolate surprising
(02:23):
health benefits, and three from bean to bar the chocolate making
process. So I'm really excited.
Are you excited? Yeah, I've been waiting for
years to talk to you in depth about chocolate.
You're like anyone who will listen, ready to talk about the
chocolate. OK.
Are you ready for question one? Yeah, let's go.
(02:51):
Section 1 Ancient Chocolate Origins Trivia Question One
Which ancient civilization is believed to have been the first
to cultivate and consume cacao Athe Mayans, B the Aztecs, C the
Olmecs, or D the Incas. It's definitely the Olmecs in
(03:13):
Mesoamerica, and then it spread to the Mayans and Aztecs and
later to the Incas, which are inSouth America.
Wow, good job. You're correct, obviously.
Which is interesting because thethe cacao itself originally came
from Brazil. Oh, really?
Yeah, but they didn't figure outa make anything useful with it
(03:34):
until it reached up into CentralAmerica, where the Olmecs were.
My gosh, see, I didn't even knowanything about the Olmecs until
I was writing this outline. And I was like, what are the
Olmecs? So, yeah, clearly, you know,
good job, one for one, to give the listeners a little bit of a
deep dive, mini deep dive here. The Olmecs, who lived in what is
(03:55):
now southern Mexico from around 1500 BCE to 400 BCE, are thought
to be the first civilization to domesticate the cacao tree.
Archaeologists have found tracesof the alkaloid chemical
theobromine, which is present inchocolate in Olmec pottery,
indicating they were brewing cacao based drinks thousands of
(04:17):
years before the Aztecs and Mayans popularized it.
Am I right? So far you're nodding your head.
That sounds correct. That sounds like everything that
I've read. I mean, there is a lot of
questions about it, but that's like the the main story arc that
everybody talks about. OK, good, good to know I'm
correct. So far my resource is the
(04:38):
Internet. So while Mayans and Aztecs both
revered cacao, using it in ceremonial drinks and even as
currency, it's fascinating to consider that the Olmecs may
have paved the way for these later civilizations cacao
obsessions. OK, cool.
So now that we know a little bitmore about the Olmecs, Dad, I
have a few questions for you here.
(04:58):
What do you think the earliest chocolate drinks would have
tasted like compared to our modern hot chocolate?
Like licking the ground like mud?
Yeah, in fact, some of when it started to become
commercialized, they would cut it with dirt in certain places
because you couldn't notice the difference.
(05:19):
When you say cut it, do you meanlike mixing in dirt?
That's what I read. Yeah.
And bread or bread crumbs or other things to dilute it
because the cacao solids themselves were the most
valuable part of it. And it wasn't until it reached
Europe they figured out that if you put sugar in it, it tastes
(05:43):
really wonderful. So the original cacao drinks in
Mesoamerica had things like Chile Chiles to make it spicy,
or they would mix it with different thickeners like corn
meals and that kind of thing. So not sweet and probably more
savory and earthy tasting. Very earthy.
(06:06):
Yikes. OK, so since you've traveled a
lot, a lot, a lot, have you comeacross different uses of
chocolate in various different cultures?
Yeah, I've seen chocolate use inin different ways besides just
the the candy bars that we like in Mexico.
They have the molay sauce, whichyou could have like on an
(06:27):
enchilada. Let's see.
And another surprising one was in Brazil where there's a very
common pizza with chocolate. It's like a dessert pizza.
So that's that's kind of strange.
So those are a couple of the theweird things I've seen done
with. Interesting, I've seen a dessert
(06:48):
pizza too, I think it was with Nutella.
I haven't tried it though because I was a little scared of
it. OK another question for you.
So since you've travelled so much, and how many languages can
you say chocolate? Well, I personally can say it
may be 5-5 different languages. Can you, can you say it for us?
(07:10):
OK, well, we have English chocolate, then we have Spanish
chocolate. Portuguese would be chocolate,
chi, in Thai it would be chocolate, and then in Chinese I
think it's chocolate, chocolate,something like that.
I can't do the tunes yet, the tones.
(07:32):
Yeah. What's interesting about the
word chocolate is that in almostevery language, it's got a clear
lineage back to the they believeit came from Na Waddle, one of
the languages spoken in Mesoamerica.
(07:52):
The only language that I've everfound that has it kind of
different is Finnish. So in Finnish it's pronounced
something like stoukla, which you can kind of feel that it had
some, it had some of the same consonants, but it's pretty
different. So it's an interesting word
where it's very universal, like the word mom, Mama is almost
(08:16):
every language has that same word and same as same as
chocolate. Yeah, that's so cool.
I know I'm taking Italian right now and I know Italian is
chocolate though. Yeah.
Awesome. Well, I know in the little deep
dive I mentioned theobromine. Does that ring a bell to you?
You're like, yeah, I know what that is.
(08:37):
OK. Yeah, for sure.
The fruit of the Gods. Oh my gosh, fruit of the gods.
So how does the presence of theobromine influence the
chocolate making process and flavor balancing?
You got me a little bit stumped there.
I mean, it's when I'm making chocolate, I'm not necessarily
into the chemistry like an electron microscope thinking
(09:00):
about how, you know, the theobromine is influenced.
I mean, the only chemical thing that I think about when I'm
making chocolate is overheating it to destroy the antioxidants.
But the theobrim, Well, the other thing is that chocolate
has something like 1000 different chemical compounds
(09:23):
that actually give it its flavor, which as compared to the
flavor of cherry, apparently it's just one chemical compound.
You know, I didn't get very far in chemistry, so I don't know if
those are all factually correct,but those are some of the things
I remember reading about the chemistry of of chocolate.
From what I've seen on the Internet, from my very very
(09:44):
limited research here, it seems like theobromine gives a sort of
bitter taste. So I guess have you experimented
with like adjusting sort of bitter notes in your own
homemade chocolate? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of
different flavors you can get. And you're reminding me of one
(10:05):
of the things that I used to teach in my little chocolate
workshop before the pandemic, the difference between
bitterness, acidity and astringency, because these are
three important flavor profiles in chocolate.
A good way to remember these three differences is that
bitterness is like grapefruit, acidity would be like lemon, and
(10:28):
astringency would be like unripebanana.
You know, like when you bite into a banana and it makes you
want to go like this, this soundwith your tongue.
Yeah, it's like a dry sort of feeling.
Yeah, astringency. So those are three words that
are helpful in talking about dark chocolate because different
(10:50):
beans from different parts of the world, different varieties,
depending on how it's grown, they're all going to exhibit
different elements of bitterness, acidity and
astringency. And it's kind of hard to
remember the difference. So just think grapefruit, lemon
and unripe banana. Yeah, that's so hard to
(11:10):
remember. And then I got all confused
because like there's a fruit called a pomelo, which is a
grapefruit mixed with an orange.So it's like the acidity and the
other thing that you just mentioned.
Bitterness. Yeah, bitterness and acidity.
ANYWAYS, little tangent there, but welcome to trivia tangents.
(11:33):
So yeah, you mentioned in that little discussion something
about health benefits, so that'sactually a great segue into
Section 2. Section 2, Chocolate surprising
health benefits Trivia Question 2.
(11:56):
Dark chocolate is known to have health benefits thanks to which
group of compounds, A anthocyanins, B saponins, C
carotenoids or D flavonoids? Yeah, so it's definitely
flavonoids which are antioxidants.
(12:17):
And don't ask me which ones because apparently there are
several different kinds of flavonoids.
But yeah, that is one of the. That is what I do remember.
Wow, good job. Thank you.
And we can also talk a little bit about how antioxidants work.
So feel free to double click on that if you're interested, OK?
(12:40):
Cool. Well let me maybe I can get
through my little deep dive and then if I miss anything, you can
definitely touch up on it. So a little deep dive here on
flavonoids. So flavonoids are an antioxidant
rich compound found in cacao. They're known for their
potential heart health benefits,according to Abby Langer, which
(13:02):
is a nutritionist in Toronto. Quote.
These compounds have been shown to have health promoting
properties such as lowering the risk of cognitive decline,
protecting cardiovascular healthand lowering levels of
inflammation. End Quote.
However, most of these benefits are tied to dark chocolate, so
with at least 70% cacao because milk chocolate has much less
(13:26):
cacao and then therefore fewer flavonoids.
This also makes for a great argument for why the darker the
better, quote UN quote when it comes to chocolates nutritional
perks, according to the Chocolate Professor, which is a
blog all about chocolate and I'll definitely link it below
because it's very interesting. These are the bars that they
(13:46):
recommend for the combination ofFlavanol Bang and their flavor
profile. So very antioxidant rich and
also quite tasty. They recommend these two bars.
Hopefully I'm pronouncing it right.
Hinde and Vera pair of Ecuador 100% Black bar, which is Arriba
Cacao from Hacienda Victoria Estate, and then two Avana
(14:12):
Chocolate's 90% Polo Chic Dark Chocolate, which is cacao from
Guatemala's Polo Chic Valley. Hopefully I've pronounced all
that right. Correct me if I'm wrong.
To wrap up that little deep divethere, the way I remember
flavonoids is because it kind ofhas that word flavor.
And, you know, chocolate is veryflavorful.
So it's like, OK, I don't think I'll ever forget this trivia
(14:33):
question because chocolate flavor, flavonoids, antioxidant.
There you go. So was there anything from that
that I missed? Like anything else with
antioxidants that you want to sprinkle in there.
Yeah, the antioxidant stuff was was kind of interesting when I
learned about it, one of the ways I learned about it was with
Chat GPTI asked it for a description that Richard Feynman
(14:59):
would give. Richard Feynman is a very famous
physicist from Caltech who was famous for his ability to
explain things very, very clearly.
And when I read it, it was it just all made sense.
So this is what I learned about how antioxidants help your body.
We all know that our cells need oxygen.
(15:20):
And sometimes when they're processing the oxygen to make
energy, there's some kind of like you call it misfires, some
exhaust, and some of the oxygenslose an electron.
Then they become what's known asfree radicals.
And I don't want to get too far off topic, but another tangent
we could get into is we could get into the etymology of the
(15:44):
word radical, which is kind of interesting.
But let's just say that we have oxygen, oxygen bulls that are
missing an electron, dioxygen 2 oxygen.
So they're unstable. They want to go find an
electron. They go around in your body and
(16:05):
you know, if they hit one of theimportant cells in your body,
they'll just go ahead and steal an electron from it.
And that's where you start to get deterioration.
And particularly in your heart, you know, it could start to
allow plaque to build up from calcium deposits or fat and that
(16:25):
sort of thing. So antioxidants come to the
rescue. And what antioxidants do is they
willingly give an electron to the free radical.
But what's really unique about antioxidants is that even though
the antioxidants lost an electron, they don't become
(16:46):
unstable. And I dug into a little bit
more. I thought, well, is that just
because they have an extra electron to spare?
And it's not because of that, It's because of their structure.
They do lose an electron. Unlike other molecules, they
just don't become unstable. And the reason for that is
because their structures often involve rings.
(17:07):
And somehow that allows the lossof the electron to sort of just
very naturally balance itself out.
Even though it's missing an electron, it's able to withstand
that and not become a free radical itself, and it
neutralizes the whole thing. So the more antioxidants you
(17:28):
have in there, the more free radicals you can neutralize,
preventing those free radicals from damaging your tissues.
Yeah. That's what I learned.
Wow. Wow, that's a lot.
And you just said you are not didn't get that far in
chemistry, but it seems like very chemical there.
Thanks to Richard Feynman's ChatGPT rendition of What are
(17:51):
Free Radicals? Wow, very cool.
And I guess, yeah, chocolate hasantioxidants, blueberries,
matcha, what else? Those are the three that come to
mind. But as far as I read, chocolate
has more than even blueberries. As long as you don't.
(18:12):
That's what I read. Cool goji berries maybe?
Just sounds like everyone could use some extra electrons.
So OK, getting back on chocolatehere.
I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, you prefer the taste
of dark chocolate, right? It's.
Not even chocolate if it's not dark to me.
OK. OK.
So then I guess, duh, Do you probably prefer making dark
(18:35):
chocolate versus milk chocolate?Yeah, I have made milk chocolate
just so that I could understand how it's made.
And it's kind of a remarkable innovation that came out of, I
believe, Switzerland. You can't just pour milk into
chocolate. It will seize up and make
ganache. So you have to make it the right
(18:58):
way by dehydrating the milk first.
So it was interesting to me froman innovation standpoint.
But no, I don't like it at all, OK?
So tell me your thoughts on white chocolate.
No cacao at all. Well, most people who like dark
chocolate don't like white chocolate, and you could include
me in there, but it is interesting to think about what
(19:20):
white chocolate is. I don't think there's a lot of
like hard and fast standards about it.
So you could you could do lots of things with it.
One of the interesting things about the cacao bean is that
it's about half cacao solids andhalf cacao butter.
(19:41):
Oh, the Jelly part. The Jelly part is the butter.
If you're say, if you're referring to the like the, the,
the kind of fruity part of it, like the outside that's white,
no, that, that actually is not the cacao butter.
The cacao butter is in the cacaoseed itself.
So if you're looking at a cacao seed, it's about the size of an
(20:04):
almond, a little bigger, and it's very dark.
So when you look at it, all you think is the cacao solids.
That's the thing that gives the very earthy flavor or the fruity
flavor. But what's interesting is that
that bean is about half cacao butter, and in Amsterdam they
figured out how to extract all of that that oil by heating it
(20:27):
and pressing it, and what's leftis just the cacao solids.
Then they can make chocolate milk out of it, for example.
Sometimes they'll alkali, don't know if I've got that verb
right, but they'll make an alkali version of the cacao
solids at that point, and then it combines, dissolves more
easily in milk. But what about this whole other
(20:50):
half, this cacao butter? You can use that to make the
white chocolate. White chocolate would be
fundamentally cacao butter, but then you could add sugar to it,
you can add milk solids to it, and then that allows you to
experiment with it. So what's really interesting for
me when I learn this is that in that little cacao seed, you have
(21:14):
two very, very important parts of chocolate.
And one of them, the dark part of it called cacao solids.
That's where you get almost all the flavor.
But what's this cacao butter for?
It's what gives you structure for a nice chocolate bar.
And so then you can innovate in different ways, like white
(21:37):
chocolate is no cacao solids, just cacao butter.
But then imagine you could take cacao butter and you could add
other flavors to it, just like mint or rose.
And you could, you could make a cacao, you could make a
chocolate that doesn't have any chocolate solids in it.
Those are the two things that you get.
(21:59):
You get structure from the cacaobutter and you get flavor from
the cacao solids. I just thought that was so
interesting when I started learning about chocolate making.
Yeah, that is so interesting. I for some reason, I was under
the impression that white chocolate was just milk and
sugar. So I thought you're gonna like
go off and be like, I hate whitechocolate.
I can't even believe it's regarded as chocolate.
(22:21):
But it turns out, I guess they use part of the cacao bean,
which is the cacao butter. Yeah.
And you know, when you when you look at these measurements of
like 70 percent, 80% dark chocolate, I began to wonder,
like, how like, who's really enforcing these standards
(22:42):
because you could take a pure cacao butter and make a bar out
of it. Yeah.
And to me, I started wondering, well, isn't that 100% chocolate?
It's not 100% dark chocolate, but it's 100% cacao.
So yeah, I don't know who's really enforcing all of these
(23:03):
these definitions. That's so interesting.
I wonder if they are held to thesame standard as like for
example, like wine labels, they have to list where it was like
cultivated, where it was processed, all these things.
And like, if they have a certainclassification, it has to go
through all these different tests.
So I wonder if chocolate is the same way.
(23:24):
But I know the chocolate industry has gone through so
many controversial things. So that kind of makes me think
like maybe they don't have specific standards or like
conventional naming systems in place.
But or maybe the other way, likemaybe they do to try and like
make things better from those controversial times.
I have no idea I that's not in this episode, so I guess we'll
(23:48):
have to find out later. Yeah, well, there's definitely a
lot of things to worry about when you're consuming chocolate.
You got to worry about whether they employed child labor or
slave labor in the growing of the cacao.
You've got to worry about contaminants, whether they use
different pesticides. If if you want something organic
(24:11):
and organic is a nice very cleanstandard that's enforced to be
able to say it's organic, you have to go through rigorous
testing. And then in the production of
it, there's things like, you know, there's a drying step and
in certain countries to dry it, they'll, they'll need a piece of
land to do that. And if that land is just too
(24:34):
close to a road, you can have exhaust that is getting into the
the cacao beans and there will be like.
This is this this cultivation. This batch has a smoky flavor.
Yeah, I detect some tractor. Notes of tractor So what are
(24:55):
your favorite high level cacao bars or blends that you've made
with your own beans? Well, I'd say that some of my
favorite, well, one of my favorite brands is Cho
Chocolate. That was a brand in San
Francisco. And San Francisco's got a whole
history of chocolate, which is fascinating.
And I, I think it's because, yeah, I think it's because
(25:19):
chocolate can be manufactured there in the right temperature
ranges because the Bay and the ocean around San Francisco helps
keep the, keeps it very stable. So you've got Ghirardelli that
was there also you have access to the ocean.
So the beans coming up from South America could be delivered
(25:40):
easily, and then when you've made it, it stores without
melting. Yeah.
There's Ghirardelli. There's Cho.
Dandelion. Dandelion.
There's another very famous one.Yeah, there's so many chocolate
places around here. Like for one of my team off
sites, we went to Dandelion and did like a chocolate making
(26:03):
experience and we got to do a tour at in their whole factory
which was pretty cool. In the San Francisco area, you
have famous brands like Ghirardelli and Sharpen Burger
and Dandelion, but the OG for mewas Cho Chocolate TCHO.
They're the ones who really got me to understand that there's
(26:26):
different flavor profiles of different dark chocolate.
It's not all about the percentage of cacao.
It also has to do with where wasgrown, what variety was it that
was grown there? There's like at least three
different varieties of cacao. So I like Cho chocolate just
because of it. It introduced me to this idea.
(26:49):
And then one of the types of chocolate that I like a lot is
Madagascar. They have a very, very fruity
variety of bean there, which is very nice.
And then in Peru, I believe there's a very nutty 1, I think
it's called. It's actually a white bean.
(27:09):
And so the chocolate comes out being a very light brown color
and it's very nutty. It's delicious.
Other cacao beans are very, verydeep purple.
And then I don't know if you've heard about it, but there's a
they've discovered a completely new variety of cacao that is
called Ruby. It makes Ruby cacao, Ruby
(27:33):
chocolate, and it's pink and it's beautiful.
I haven't had too many chances to eat it yet, but it's pretty
intriguing. Wow, that's so cool.
I've never ever heard of that. That's so cool.
The part that you brought up about it, one of the beans being
nutty, that kind of reminded me that, you know, most people
(27:54):
don't know that the cacao bean is not a nut, it's a fruit,
right? Yeah, it's something that I've
looked into trying to get like areally detailed understanding of
what is a nut, because a lot of the things we pop in our mouth
that are called nuts, maybe they're not nuts because as I
understand it, a nut is an editable seed.
(28:15):
And so that would rule out whichthings that we call nuts.
Walm. Yeah, there's certain things
that we call nuts with corn nuts.
Pecan, corn nuts. Pecan nuts.
Peanuts. Yeah, some of them, yeah, so
many. But if it's an edible seed,
(28:37):
then, well, that's what a cow seed bean is.
So maybe it is a nut, but it has.
Like a fridge nut or it just exhibits different flavor
qualities. I want to give you this quote
that I came across while I've been contemplating this question
(28:58):
as is it a nut? Is it a fruit?
What is it? It's from Claude Monet.
Claude Monet says to see we mustforget the names of things we
are looking at. Profound.
It is. It was it's gifts giving me
goosebumps just remembering the first time that I really
(29:19):
experienced this when I was making chocolate and I was being
very careful not to let any water drip into my chocolate.
Because if you get water and chocolate, it seizes up and then
you've got to make kind of ganache, but you're not going to
be able to temper it very easilyto make a nice bar.
So I'm making chocolate and I'm noticing that it's getting so
(29:41):
hot that steam is coming off of it.
And I thought, I don't want thatsteam to drip back into my
chocolate. But wait a minute, Why do I see
these billing clouds of steam? Why would there be water in
cacao and then it done to me? Oh, because it's fruit.
Fruit's got liquid in it. And then my whole world
(30:05):
shattered. Because I I tell you, Lena, up
until that moment, if I were to walk into a grocery store, if I
wanted fruit, I would go to the fruit section.
If I wanted chocolate, I would go to the candy aisle.
These were completely different areas of the store in my mind.
(30:25):
But when I saw that billowing cloud of steam coming off the
chocolate, I started to feel what Monet was trying to tell us
is that the names of things are not the things.
We've introduced language to classify the world, and it
sometimes blinds us from what's really there.
(30:48):
It was even one of the most profound moments in my life when
I figured this out experientially in meditation and
was just examining who am I? And, you know, I thought, well,
you know, if I, if I were unfortunate enough to like, lose
(31:09):
a hand or something, and the hand was sitting on the sidewalk
over there and the rest of my meet was over here, I certainly
would say this is me, not the hand.
And so I just did this. Yeah, You know, I just did this
exercise. I divided and I dissected.
Where am I? And I came to this little point
behind my my eyes, and I said no.
(31:30):
Well, it's actually kind of moving around.
Sometimes I feel I'm over here. Sometimes I feel I'm over here.
And then I thought, well, maybe I'm the voice in my head.
Yeah. Is my is my voice my soul.
But then after I asked that question, Lena, the voice paused
for a moment. There was no voice, but I was
(31:52):
still here. And so my whole world came
gathered, was just shattered because all of this time in my
life, I thought me, Michael was a thing.
And then in that moment, I realized that the language I had
been using all my life to understand things, whether it
was chocolate versus fruit or meversus the rest of the universe,
(32:18):
none of that stuff exists. It's language that traps us in a
lot of cases. And like Monet said to see must
forget the names of things we are looking at.
And when you ask me something like what kind of chocolate I
like, this comes to mind becauseI I've realized that through
(32:38):
eating chocolate, No2 bars of chocolate are the same.
In fact, No2 bites of chocolate are the same.
First bite of chocolate, you know, gives me one rush and, you
know, tingles through my body and makes my mouth happy.
And then the subsequent bites are just, they're just not the
same. Like diminishing returns.
(33:00):
Well, diminishing returns, but also that the entire idea of
sameness is a mental construct. There's no two things that are
exactly the same, because if they were the same, they'd be
the same. They wouldn't be different.
Oh. My God, wow.
That was like a philosophy lesson and it made me think of a
(33:25):
lot of different things. I feel like I would have
understood Monet's quote if it instead of the word see, it was
understand. You can understand things once
you remove the name. And I think you're totally
right. Language is basically what helps
us to identify things and put them in different buckets so
that it's easier to like talk about things.
(33:47):
But that doesn't necessarily mean that it only belongs in
that bucket. Yeah, so many philosophical
debates are just about this person.
Me thinks the word means this thing, and the other person
thinks it means this other thing.
But really, I think what my namewas trying to teach us is that
the whole idea of classifying and language and names and
(34:10):
sameness, that's all human phenomenon.
These all these things existed before we had language
basically. Exactly.
These things would still exist even if we didn't have language
to define them, define them, describe them.
So if you had to put it very simply, are you saying cacao
beans are both a fruit and a nut?
(34:33):
For me. OK interesting.
Wow amazing. Slightly related but not.
I got lychees from Trader Joe's and I always thought they were
fruits but on the box they're labeled lychee nuts so I'm like
mind blown because I'm not eating the seeds I'm eating the
flesh around it. So similar.
(34:55):
Similar but different. Section 3.
From bean to bar the chocolate making process.
Are you ready for trivia? Question 3.
So far, you're 2 for two. During chocolate production,
which step is responsible for developing the chocolate's
(35:15):
complex flavors and reducing bitterness?
A conching, B grinding, C tempering or D molding.
It's actually E roasting. What?
Conching. Well, conching definitely can
(35:36):
help release some of the the volatile compounds that make it
kind of acidic or astringent, but most of the flavor
development actually happens during, well, the fermentation
actually I should say fermentation and roasting those
(35:56):
and then conching. Those are the the parts of the
process that most develop the flavor, and the reason I know
this is because I've done experiments where I left some of
those steps out. OK.
And for example, if you don't ferment the bean, it's going to
be even hard to to make chocolate in the 1st place.
(36:19):
But it's just, it's going to taste like, you know, like peas.
It's going to taste like a vegetable.
Oh. So is chocolate a vegetable?
I'm joking. OK, well, back to the trivia
question. Out of the multiple choice
answers I gave you, which one? So you said, you said.
Well, Conching caught my attention.
(36:40):
What were the other three? Yeah.
Conching is correct, so good job, but I guess you're probably
more correct because you're the expert.
But that's what I found from theInternet.
The other ones were grinding, tempering and molding.
Well, I would also put in a plugfor if those are the only
options you're going to give me first, conching because it
releases volatile compounds thatmake it bitter or whatever.
(37:04):
But in my own experience, tempering also can affect the
flavor simply because if you have a very an overly tempered
piece of chocolate, it's not it's just not going to melt
quickly enough in your mouth. And it has to melt in order for
the flavor compounds to penetrate the parts of our
(37:28):
tongue and our and our olfactoryorgans to let us experience the
flavor. And so, yeah, I would say that
as well. So.
Tempering and fermenting. #1 fermenting #2 roasting #3
conching OK and then tempering. OK, got it.
(37:51):
In my opinion, amazing. Good to know.
You know, I obviously I'm not the expert here, so thank you
for calling me out on that. So we all have something new.
I wouldn't call myself an experteither.
There's definitely a lot of experts that I pay attention to,
but I'm I'm more of a hobbyist. OK, well you're definitely more
practice than me. I do have a bonus question.
(38:13):
I know you probably didn't see this coming, but who invented
the conching method? A John Cadbury, B Rodolfi Lint,
or C Domenico Ghirardelli. Well, it wasn't Domenico
Ghirardelli because I believe hewas in San Francisco.
(38:35):
And last time I remember readingabout conching, it was invented
in Europe. So it's either going to be
Cadbury, which I believe is British, or lint.
And lint I recently read. What was his innovation?
Well, I'm going to guess lint. You're correct.
Good job. OK.
(38:57):
Cool. Well, I know the answer for the
original question was actually fermentation, but I did my
research on conching, so I'm going to tell you a little bit
more about that. So conching is a critical step
in chocolate making invented by Rodolfo Lint in 1879.
In this process, the chocolate is continuously mixed and
(39:19):
aerated at a warm temperature. This intense mixing smooths the
texture, reduces acidity, and releases volatile compounds
resulting in chocolates rich, well-rounded flavor.
Conching can last anywhere from a few hours to several days
depending on the desired outcome, and it's fascinating
(39:40):
how even slight tweaks in the step can dramatically change the
final product. Like my dad said, he's
experimented taking out different steps in the process
and seeing how that changes the flavor.
Have you ever played around withthe length of conching to see
how it affects the flavor and texture?
Definitely. And that relates to my chocolate
(40:00):
making method where I I don't really use the traditional home
chef equipment because I don't like to be burdened by having to
buy and own things. So one one time for.
For Grandma's birthday, I decided I would try to make her
(40:22):
dark chocolate, and I wanted to do it with as little equipment
as possible. So I decided I would try to use
one of our blenders. Remember we had a Blendtec and a
Vitamix, and I used to like to do competitions between them.
Yeah. So I yeah.
So for chocolate making, probably could use either
(40:44):
either. I was very proud of this because
there's a there's a famous chocolate maker out there who
found a post online where he said you cannot make dark
chocolate with a blender. And so I took that as a
challenge to figure out how to make, make it with my Vitamix.
And I was successful, I think. Do you have?
(41:06):
Do you remember eating any of the chocolate?
That I made, yeah. I remember eating a lot of the
chocolate that you made. I think I remember this specific
instance and I think you delivered it in a plastic tin,
plastic like to go sort of thing.
I don't. Not sure if that's the exact
instance, but did it taste good?Yeah, I think I was able to get
(41:30):
chocolate that was pretty decent.
And the Vitamix would serve multiple functions.
It would grind the nibs down, which is usually a, you know,
like it's own machine, then refine it, you know, turn it
from a nib into the chocolate liqueur, which is ground up
(41:51):
chocolate that's liquefied. And then I'd use it for conching
as well. And I would just use a very low
speed. And I played around with doing
it, not doing it at all, and then doing it for, you know, 3
hours. OK.
In which case I ended up having to buy a few different Vitamix
after I it took some time to learn how to make chocolate and
(42:15):
vitamins without burning the motor.
But yeah, it's possible. OK, cool.
Wow, lots of experimentation going on there.
So at home, how long does it take to make a piece of
chocolate? And then in a factory, how long
do you think it takes to make a piece of chocolate?
Like from bean to bar for both of those situations.
(42:39):
Well, the way I'm going to answer that is if it's a race
and I have to make chocolate as fast as possible, bean to bar at
home and I'm starting with fermented beans that have been
imported. I, it was a competition, I could
make chocolate in four hours. Oh.
My gosh. Well, that's that's if the beans
(43:02):
were already fermented. If they're already fermented,
now there is some variability inin how long you could ferment,
but usually it's going to take, I would say, at least two days.
Wow. OK.
Usually more like 5 days. And then you got to grow the
bean. You can't.
(43:22):
You can't. Yeah.
It takes four years for a for a seedling cacao to begin bearing
fruit. So what producers a lot of times
do is combine it with, combine their crop with something like
banana, which starts to produce very quickly and it also
provides some shade for the cacao trees.
(43:44):
And then four years into it, they can start fermenting beans.
Wow OK so fastest from already fermented bean to bar 4 hours
very fast. It probably wouldn't taste, it
probably wouldn't win a taste competition, but I could make
it, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure you can't rush
(44:05):
good tasting good quality chocolate.
And in your opinion, what do youthink is the most challenging
part of chocolate making overall?
This one's good enough to be a trivia question.
Oh, really? Yeah.
So maybe can I turn into a trivia question for you?
Sure, I just thought it was moreof like an opinion but go ahead.
(44:28):
There's a pretty clear answer. So, Lena, which of these steps
in chocolate chocolate making doyou think is hardest to master?
Roasting, refining, tempering, or packaging.
I think tempering. And why do you say that?
OK, the reason I think temperingis because from what I've seen
(44:53):
in like cooking shows or dessertshows or even chocolate specific
competition shows, temper is kind of what either makes or
breaks someone's chocolate. Absolutely.
And the very common joke around chocolate people is that you
lose your temper. Well.
(45:15):
That's funny, actually. It's so frustrating.
The one redeeming quality of this step of the process is that
you can redo it, unlike roasting.
If you mess that up, better justtoss your beans.
If you burn them, you can't unburn them.
But with tempering, it's a physical process that just
(45:38):
depends on the temperature. So if you get your temperature
profile or your cooling and heating profiles wrong and it
turns out incorrect, you can just do it over.
So it's it's got that redeeming quality to it, but it's hard,
very hard. Wow, that's good to know.
That's good to know. All right.
And then I have one final question for you on chocolate.
(46:01):
Let's say someone wants to startmaking chocolate at home.
What advice would you give to that someone who wants to start
making chocolate at home? Like where to buy ethically
sourced beans or yes, equipment or tools, etcetera, stuff like
that. Well, I would say that there's
so much variety that it depends on what the person's interested
(46:25):
in. For me, I really wanted to learn
the whole thing and do it with no equipment or as little
equipment as possible. You know so much of chocolate
process has developed over the last two to 4000 years and some
of it was discovered by accidentand some of it may have been
(46:46):
introduced because it somebody thought they should write a book
about it. So I wanted to find out like
what you really need to make it.And what I discovered is that it
can be made with a high end blender.
Contrary to what one guru thinks, but one of the ways that
I had to refine my own procedureto get it to be smooth enough is
(47:10):
I introduced a metal coffee filter.
Because after I've ground it andrefined it with the with the
high end blender, it still mighthave some grittiness in it.
So I just pass it through a standard coffee filter made out
of metal and then that ensures that it gets the the particle
(47:34):
size down to I believe it has tobe less than 10 microns or 20
microns in order for our tongue not to perceive any grittiness.
So that was $110 improvement to the the process that that I
would recommend if you if your goal is to figure out how to
(47:57):
make it with minimal equipment. Wow, very cool.
And then what about like ethically sourced beans?
To get ethically sourced beans, there's websites that
specifically promote that and wecan put some in the in the show
notes. The chocolate Alchemist or
Chocolate Alchemy is one that's the guy I was telling you about
(48:19):
who said it can't, you can't make.
Oh my gosh, you can't make. But so that the owner of
Chocolate Alchemy claimed that you can't make chocolate with a
blender. So I disagree with him on that.
But I do agree, I do think he has a very good website for
cacao. And then there's, I think
(48:40):
Uncommon Grounds is another one.But if you search specifically
to find ethically sourced beans,that's going to be something
that they're going to be very prominent about.
Or if you want to be sure, you could be like me and go directly
two places in Honduras or Ecuador, Brazil, Indonesia and
(49:03):
cot do cot Dover. I don't know if I said that
correctly. Where's that cot de Ivory, Ivory
Coast? It's on that little hook, the
hook end of West Africa. That's where more than I think
it's more than 40% of the production of cows from there,
(49:24):
even though the original bean was from Brazil.
Africa is the biggest producer. Maybe it just grows better
there. Yeah, and South America, by
contrast, is the biggest producer of coffee.
So these beans. Originally found in Africa.
In Africa. So these beans hopped the
Atlantic Ocean. Oh.
(49:45):
My gosh, how funny. OK, awesome.
Well, let's take it to the conclusion.
Wrap up. OK Dad, so that wraps up my 3
sections here today. You basically knew everything I
was talking about already, but was there anything that you
(50:08):
really enjoyed talking about during this chat?
Well, I'm, I'm trying to think of an answer that doesn't have
to do with just getting to spendtime with my favorite one of two
people on on earth, you and yourbrother.
So I really can't. Well, I guess getting to talk to
one of my favorite people about one of my favorite subjects was
(50:29):
the highlight of my year. Probably.
Oh. My God.
OK, cool. And then did you have fun?
And if you were to be a guest again, what do you think you'd
want to be quizzed on? Well, I would love to be on your
show again, of course. And I have like 20 trivia
questions I've been waiting to give you about Latin America,
(50:53):
which will be fun. Oh my.
God. You could also quiz me about
probably meditation, veganism, artificial intelligence.
Those are some topics I could probably.
I might not get as many answers right as with chocolate, but
yeah, I could try my best, yeah.Could be, could be entertaining
nonetheless. Thank you for listening to the
(51:14):
show. This is Trivia Tangents, where
we cover various trivia topics. We have new episodes released
every Thursday, which I like to call Trivia Thursday.
I'm Lena, and special thanks to my dad for sharing his awesome
insights and trivia tangents about chocolate with us.
Make sure to keep an eye out fornext week's episode all about
Freaky Friday. Just in time for Freaky Friday
(51:34):
too. Freakier Friday, I think it's
called. Thanks for listening.
And learning. If you enjoyed this episode,
please give us a five star rating or thumbs up.
(51:56):
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