Most people probably think of chocolate as being European, but the cacao bean itself — the bitter seed that gives chocolate its taste — is native to Mexico.
The Mayans were the first to domesticate the crop, thousands of years before the Spaniards arrived. (The name cacao actually comes from the Mayan word kakaw.) Later, Mexica priests and other upper-class Aztecs drank ground cacao as a beverage, mixed with water and spices. The Mexica venerated cacao so much, in fact, that they used it as a currency and imposed a cacao tax on conquered villages.
Yesterday at cooking class, Yuri told us we were going to make chocolate from scratch, in the traditional Mexican way. We’d each grind 1/4 kilo of cacao beans on our metates, drawing out the natural cocoa butter until the beans turned into a thick, glossy liquid.
In keeping with the way the nuns used to make chocolate in Mexican convents, we’d each receive a portable flame to place under our grinding stone. The flame would heat the stone and melt the cacao a bit, making it easier to grind.
I had no idea what lie ahead of me — a common theme in this cooking class — so I kneeled on my straw mat and began grinding with high spirits. The beans crackled and crunched under my metlapil.
We’d toasted the cacao beans in the last class, so pulverizing them produced this nutty, kind of toasted-walnut smell, mixed with aromas of intense dark chocolate.
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