Maricel Presilla shows her James Beard award at her Zafra restaurant

aricel Presilla (born Santiago de Cuba) is truly versatile. As a chef, she has cooked for President Obama at the White House. Her two restaurants, Cucharamama and Zafra, and food store and bakery Ultramarinos, embody the spirit of Latin America in the New York area as a result of her constant exploration for the best Latin American food in its country of origin. (For Maricel, a tapado soup in Rio Blanco, Guatemala, could be as inspiring as a rabbit terrine served near Notre Dame in Paris.)

As a cacao expert, she likes to get her hands dirty by visiting cacao plantations in Central and South America, not only to speak to the farmers, but to examine the pod colours and shape, open them up, bite into the seeds and taste them,  in order to determine the best cacao varietal.

As a writer and medievalist, she has written the ‘New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes’ and is about to publish a bible on ‘Gran Cocina Latina’, (WW Norton), where every little region has an extraordinary secret to share.

And if that is not enough, last week, the James Beard Foundation awarded her the Best Chef Mid-Atlantic prize – an Oscar in terms of food – at the Lincoln Center in New York City.

Seventy% had the pleasure and honour of speaking to her.

What was your earliest dream?

To explore the world.

What was your very first job?

Selling lemonade at a Cuban political rally when I was a child, but that lasted only one hour until I was told by a soldier to close shop because private vendors should not be making a profit in a socialist country.

Who was your mentor?

For cooking, I trained with the late Peruvian chef Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, the first to introduce the concept of tapas to the Unites States. He was the long-time assistant of James Beard.

As a graduate student of medieval history, my mentor was the famous medievalist and prolific author Norman F. Cantor. He had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

For cacao, I learned a lot with Venezuelan cacao agronomist the late Humberto Reyes and his wife Lilian, a cacao pathologist.

Did you ever consider another career apart from being a chef or food writer?

I had been programmed (genetically, I believe) to be a history or literature professor, or an anthropologist. But I would have loved to have been a geographer or an archaeologist.

You have travelled throughout Latin America in search of the best food. Where did you find it?

I always find good food, even in the most improbable places. Mexico has an embarrassment of culinary riches, but Peru and Ecuador, in South America, have wonderful regional cuisines. I am currently smitten with Ecuadorian food and obsessed with Nacional cacao.

As a chocolate expert, what are the main signs of good chocolate?

Maricel Presilla doing research at the San Joaquin farm in the plains of Venezuela in the late 1990's. Once owned by Chocolates El Rey, the farm no longer exists as it was occupied by squatters with the support of the current government of President Hugo Chávez.

I have always looked for round chocolates that tickle my palate with a variety of sensory experiences, that linger in my mouth for a long time. I appreciate the combination of complementary flavour notes: the lush acidity of dark fruit, the soothing calm of nuts, the complex sweetness of brown loaf sugar, and the subtle jolt of spice.

But I am learning to appreciate more dominant single notes of wood and herbs, or the assertive floral aromas that are characteristic of some rare Ecuadorian cacaos with strong Nacional blood.

What varietal flavours make a perfect chocolate?

I have always been partial to nutty Venezuelan criollos like Porcelana or Guasare or more complex trinitarios with a strong criollo blood and round dark fruit from places like Barlovento, Cuyagua or Chuao, but now my palate is more refined and I appreciate the inherent quality of other Latin American cacaos.

I now enjoy the black olive notes of a Nicaraguan cacao (as in Duffy’s  Nicaragua Nicaliso) or the deeply herbal nature of a Pacari Raw Ecuadorian cacao from Los Ríos.

Who would you invite to your ideal dinner party?

Twelve is the magic number of guests for me because they will fit snugly around my 18^th century Filipino table.

I would invite people of all ages (dead or alive) and from different walks of life to keep the conversation lively. I would invite James Beard for obvious reasons. Anton Mosimann, a refined Swiss chef with a restaurant in London (a true gourmand who enjoys my food and my restaurants), Prince Charles (because I like the way he thinks and writes about organic food and sustainability), and Oliver Sacks, a famous neuroscientist who adores Latin American food. Hoping that he would play the saxophone after dinner, I would ask my Cuban friend, Paquito de Rivera, a fantastic jazz musician, to join us.

Of course, I would include some of my chocolate friends. Santiago Peralta of Pacari Chocolate is one of the best dining companions I know.

Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate would fly from Utah to New Jersey to eat anything I cook for him and would bring his delicious chocolates.

Paul A Young would sit by my side and keep me entertained telling me about his latest flavour experiments, and Martin Christy, who has a discriminating palate, would be at the head of the table talking about his latest chocolate and cacao adventures. He would be pleased with the certainty that I would go out of my way to prepare special vegetarian Latin American dishes just for him.

Susana Cárdenas Overstall, Lourdes Delgado and Monica Meschini would also be at the table. Susana and Lourdes will cheer when I serve roasted ripe plantain with a peanut condiment from their home region, and Monica, who is very choosy and opinionated, will test my culinary abilities and keep my use of cilantro to a discreet minimum.

What would you serve?

I would start with my Caribbean squash soup laced with cacao and a small torchon of foie gras (for the non-vegetarians) and a spoonful of Ecuadorian mantequilla blanca (a type of crème fraîche) from Manabí.

I will follow with my Cuban-style fresh corn polenta topped with shrimp in vanilla and chipotle sauce and a touch of chocolate and cacao.

As a main course, it would be a contest. My Cuban-style roast pork with a side of mote (Ecuadorian hominy) and roasted oca, an Andean tuber, and rice and vegetarian Cuban black beans. This is always a hit. But I also enjoy a pan-roasted breast of duck with crispy skin, thinly sliced and served over a tamarillo (tree tomato) mole sauce laced with chocolate flavored with Andean mortiño and a side of Manabí-style roasted ripe plantain with the peanut condiment called salprieta.

For dessert, expect something creamy and delicious made with chocolate, but also a tasting of at least a dozen chocolates made with Latin American cacaos paired with special after dinner drinks.

What is your biggest extravagance?

Buying a very expensive and huge Spanish Renaissance wooden door (from a palace no less) in New York and shipping it to my house in Spain and paying a special import sales tax for it.

What is your greatest disappointment?

Not to be able to help the cacao farmers of Cuba’s Jauco region, including my own family. While I have been able to commercialise the cacao of small farms in countries like Venezuela, the state-controlled cacao industry of Cuba does not allow anyone to deal directly with Cuban farmers.

And your greatest achievement?

Three milestones come to mind. My cacao and chocolate books The New Taste of Chocolate for Ten Speed Press (2001 and 2009), the chocolate bars I was able to create with the late Robert Steinberg with cacao from my favorite farm in Venezuela, and my most recent award for Outstanding Best-Chef Mid-Atlantic given to me by the prestigious James Beard Foundation on May 7, 2012.

Maricel Presilla is the first Latin American woman and the third woman in history to win this award. She is a member of the Grand Jury for the International Chocolate Awards taking place in London from 28 May – 3 June.

The Guardian

Bloomberg Business Week

The International Chocolate Awards are an independent organisation, partnering with fine chocolate experts and organisations in different countries with independent verification and oversight.

The first year’s Awards will run in 2012 in Italy, the UK and the USA with other countries in progress. The first Grand Final will be held in Chocolate Week, 8-14 October, in the London. In future years the final will rotate around different locations.

The International Chocolate Awards are completely independent of any other fine chocolate organisation, but will work with associations and other partners in each particpating country. The Awards are overseen by an International Advisory Committee, an Entrants committee and the judging is overseen by an independent, international Grand Jury. For full details and our committment to fairness and transparency, see the awards website at www.internationalchocolateawards.com.

European Semi-final, London, 28 May 2012

The European Semi-final of the International Chocolate Awards will take place 28 May – 1 June in London. Judging will be in all categories, including origin and plain dark chocolate bars.

If you are a chocolate company, details of how to enter are at www.internationalchocolateawards.com/entry-forms.

The Americas Semi-final will be held in New York in September. Details of the dates and how to enter for US, Canadian, Latin American and Caribbean companies will be available soon.

Italian National Competitions – results

On 14 April, Seventy% and Chocolate Week packed their suitcases and took off for Tuscany to organise the Italian National Chocolate Awards with Italian chocolate expert, Monica Meschini.

Over 100 chocolate products were entered from all over Italy, with judges from Florence, Milan, Rome and London gathering in the Medici’s villa in Artimino for a non-stop contest lasting three days.

Some of the Judging team at Artimino

The winners of 12 categories were announced last week. Highlights included a gold for ‘Lattesal’ from Domori and Slitti’s ‘Riccosa’ , which took Gold in milk chocolate spreads.

The winners will compete alongside the best of the European and Americas semi-finals (London, May 2012 & New York, Sept 2012). Tthe Grand Final will take place during Chocolate Week in London, 8-14 October.

Peru is a country of fine, aromatic cocoa, and like all good things it comes in small quantities. Does it really need to grow a hybrid cocoa?

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Forbes.com

Bonnat's chocolate bar from 1903

hat prompted this article was our visit to the Salon du Chocolat in Paris last October. The key players of the chocolate world were there – intriguing characters – those we only know through their creations. All of a sudden, they were in front of us, sharing their chocolates and their stories.  They seemed to be in high demand by a long queue of people wishing to speak to them. Murmurings of ‘Excusez-Moi Monsieur’ were repeated every two minutes. We were only left with the joy of tasting some delightful mango ganaches but we had a whole list of unanswered questions.

As we left the Salon, we were beguiled to find out who these chocolate pioneers were –  the ones that put French chocolate on the world map. The Lower Rhone happens to be the region where tradition and innovation in fine chocolate started a chocolate revolution.  Below are a few stories on the region’s chocolatiers.

‘Bonnat – France’s legendary chocolatier’

It is a big day for Stéphane Bonnat. He has been running around his chocolate factory manically as he prepares to travel to Japan and Bangkok in few days time. “Chocolate season begins now and I am taking a small roasting machine from the 1920’s with me to demonstrate how to conch chocolate,” he says.

Stéphane Bonnat at his chocolate factory in Voiron

Nevertheless, the international side of the business is also booming.  The demand for Bonnat’s respected bean-to-bar products is as strong as ever, with the original Bonnat shop in Voiron having become something of a site of pilgrimage for fans of fine chocolate.

How did all begin? His great grandfather, Felix Bonnat, founded the chocolate factory in 1884.  As Voiron is located on what was one of the principal trading roads to Switzerland, at a time when Lindt was revolutionizing the chocolate industry, the region became a magnet for all types of business related to cacao. “The response was an economic one; it is not in vain that four of the fine-artisan French chocolate businesses still remain in the Lower Rhone even now,” he explains.

Funnily enough, there is an older theory that justifies the reason why chocolatiers established themselves in the South of France. “In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the French Crown permitted Iberian Jews, fleeing religious persecution in Spain and Portugal, to settle in this part of France. They brought both cacao and the craft of making chocolate to the region,” explains Susan Terrio, author of the book Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate.

At the beginning of the 1900’s, the Bonnat chocolaterie had won its reputation. Local customers went crazy for the beautiful hand-made bonbons, orange krugetes that are still today’s bestsellers and pralines – elaborated with cacao from Cuba, Ecuador and from the farms of the Franceschi family in Venezuela.

Selection of bonbons and pralines from Bonnat chocolaterie from the early 1900's

The fact that they have had access to fine cacao from different parts of the world, encouraged Stephane Bonnat’s great-grandfather to produce the first box of single origin when nobody else even thought about it. “In 1984, we expanded our range of single origin, took them to the Salon du Chocolat in Paris and it was a revolution!” Nowadays, Bonnat chocolate bars come from the finest cacao plantations in 42 regions of the world.

Where do you see the future of cacao and chocolate? “The future depends on quality and sustainability. Consumers are demanding high quality chocolate and the difficult thing is maintaining this quality. It is important to visit the plantations, encourage the farmers to grow fine cacao and pay better prices for it. If we don’t reassure farmers’ labour, they will prefer working in another industry and abandon the cacao plantations.[  In countries like Dominican Republic, they prefer to work in tourism rather than in cacao. We don’t want to be left without fine flavour cacao,” concludes Stephane.

‘Morin – Four generation of tradition’

Chocolaterie A. Morin's orchard in Donziere

“I was a naughty boy, not allowed to be in the factory without my father’s supervision. It was late at night and I was by myself, standing on a stool, putting chocolate into boxes. I was five years old, a small boy and I when I had finished, I could not get down from the stool! My father came to find me and saw me crying,” remembers Franck Morin from Chocolaterie A. Morin in Donzere, as he recalls his first chocolate memories, with a big grin on his face.

His great grandfather, Gustave Morin, started working for the chocolate factory at the monastery of Aiguebelle in 1884. At that time, cacao beans arrived from Latin America, to the port of Marseille and were then transported by train straight to Donzere.

The making of pistachio chocolate bonbons by A.Morin Chocolaterie

By the 1920’s, Gustave had become one of the most prominent confectionary experts until WWII broke out, changing the spectrum of the artisan chocolate world. “There was not enough cacao and sugar available to produce chocolate and the few bonbons we made were sent to the German army”, explains Franck.

The factory closed down, moved to Morocco and Gustavo Morin was meant to move with it. He was fully trained and ready to go, but for family reasons he couldn’t.  He decided to open up his own business but due to the instability after the war, he could not cope and decided to quit.

“After the war, intensified competition from industrial manufacturers provoked the disappearance of most small-scale chocolatiers as well as the subsequent restructuring of the craft,” explains Terrio – and that is exactly what happened to Morin.

Franck Morin visits a cacao farm in Central America

In 1958, his grandfather decided to open the chocolate business again. At that stage, his father learnt the art of making pralines and bonbons with delicious almonds, hazelnuts, morello cherries, fresh from the company’s own orchard.  The tradition continued and now Franck is creating single origin bars with fine cacao from Peru, Madagascar, Vietnam, Venezuela, Sao Tome, among other countries.

“We don’t want to make a perfect chocolate, we want to keep having the opportunity of making chocolate with the finest cacao beans in the best possible way,” says Franck.

‘Pralus – A childhood passion’

François Pralus’ love of chocolate began at a very early age, in an environment rich with tradition, craft and exposure to the finest ingredients. In 1955 his father had invented the speciality for which he became famous, the ‘praluline’ – a much copied brioche with praline, made with toasted pink sugar coated almonds and hazelnuts. Auguste won many awards for his work, achieving national acclaim.

As François grew up he trained to follow in his father’s footsteps, a practice still common in France and Italy but almost lost in the English-speaking world.

Francois Pralus outside his shop in Roanne

From Brazil to Paris, François worked in renowned restaurants and undertook an internship at the chocolate department of the Ecole Lenôtre in Paris. Perhaps most significantly though was the time he apprenticed with his first master, the legendary chocolate maker Maurice Bernachon in Lyon – godfather of the modern chocolate movement in France.

Inspired by this great artisanal patissier chocolate maker, when François returned to Roanne after his travels he began to contemplate the creation of his own chocolate, from the bean. This would mean a return to the tradition of patisseries before industrialisation, where making chocolate was a normal part of their business.

After taking over the running of Pralus in 1988, it didn’t take long for François to set up his ‘chocolate laboratory’ in 1991. Soon his travels began again, this time to source beans for Pralus’ new chocolate making venture to produce a rare fine chocolate from local African beans and then on to Madagascar, Brazil, Indonesia – to name just a few.

In Madagascar Pralus have taken this idea a step further. On the island of Nossy-Bé, to the North West of the Madagascan main island, sixteen hectares of land have become the home of the first Pralus owned plantation.

With a staff of forty-four, and now producing beans for three different types of Pralus’ Madagascar chocolate, the plantation has a growing reputation and has provided the beans for some of Pralus’ best chocolate. “I do everything myself”, François Pralus explains, “instead of being supplied by specialist suppliers.”

Our trip to the Lower Rhone ends here. Unfortunately, we could not get to historical Lyon, a Unesco World Heritage site and home of Maurice Bernachon – one of the most famous names in French chocolate. We will leave that to our next quest.

Out of the wrapper, there are already alarming signs of divergence from what has for many years been the reference standard for Porcelana. The bar is dark, not the usual light colour one expects, but with an almost burnt-umber colour. Even though finish is virtually free from blemishes, this darkness is both worrisome and calls into doubt whether even the same beans are being used. What’s going on?

Aroma is also very, very different from the delicacy of previous Porcelana vintages: this one is powerful and spicy, with pepper and cinnamon dominating. Hints of rubber and coffee seem more in character with a Forastero: surely not! But the aroma is certainly more similar to Domori’s more standard “Cru” line, especially to the Sambirano. Something very odd is happening here. This isn’t the Porcelana we’ve grown to love.

However initially the flavour is completely reassuring, and indeed makes clear that yes, this is definitely Porcelana, starting with a fruity mix of strawberry and tropical. But then it all goes awry, turning to nutty and then becoming progressively darker, coffee and cocoa dominating with an overwhelmingly coffee finish. The culprit is clear: the roast is much darker than previous batches, and in this darkness erases much of the character of the Porcelana bean whose delicacy is literally everything. Texture isn’t a problem, nor does one expect this with Domori; it’s as smooth and creamy as ever, that is to say, near-perfect.

So what’s happened to the process? The situation, as this reviewer is given to understand, is that without other changes, Domori has recently installed an infra-red “pre-roaster”. Its effects on the Porcelana are manifest, and damaging. Pre-roast is causing overroast, when married to an identical final roasting process. Indeed, what else could Domori have expected? Clearly any process such as IR that subjects the beans to a heat radiation source is bound to cause a net increase in effective roast, all other factors remaining the same, and thus if nothing else, if they are committed to this step, then the final roast must be suitably reduced. However, the outcome might still diverge. What Domori is doing here is simply reducing the potential of one of the finest chocolates the world has seen.

Surely Domori has noticed the difference in internal taste tests? If not, this should be a message to them: the flavour has changed, definitely for the worse. Now, let us be clear: the flavour isn’t bad: it’s still an excellent chocolate. But it’s not a great chocolate, as it has always been up until now. Maybe Domori has reasoned that the chocolate is almost as good as before, with a process that confers certain unspecified benefits. But this is the first step down the slippery slope from greatness to mediocrity. With a truly great, uncompromising, top-of-the-line product such as Porcelena, the first compromise, the first tradeoff of almost-as-good for convenience, starts a downward trend, and now the next subtle step downward seems easier to justify, particularly if nobody remembers what it was once like, and before long a sequence of such steps gradually erodes away product quality until what one has left is only a tragic parody of a a once-great product. With Porcelana, in particular, which is Domori’s flagship product and which above all others should brook no compromise whatsoever, there is no way this can go uncommented or unfixed. If Domori persists with this new style without fixing the problems, then inevitably its unique position, style, and reputation will disappear, and it will only end up being a small company competing with much larger, much more well-financed industrial concerns for the mid-grade premium chocolate market. This is a competition it will probably lose. And the world will lose its only first-rate exemplar of Porcelana bean chocolate.