Propagating cacao

The Talamanca region of Costa Rica has been growing cacao for millennium: the indigenous BriBri used it as both sacred medicinal and food; the Spanish grew it commercially beginning in the 1600s; the Afro-Caribbeans farmed it since settling this area a hundred years ago, and now it's seeing a local revival thanks to the growing interest in artisan chocolate.

We grow several heirloom varieties; some collected from indigenous upper Talamanca, some original Matina cacao grown here for centuries and some personal selections from almost 30 years of working the farm. We are collecting and sharing cacao seedlings from local cacao farmers to save and improve on local varieties. It's all quite exciting - especially seeing the enlivened local interest in growing great cacao.

We have the perfect climate with ideal growing conditions- high humidity and temperatures which don't drop below 73 degrees F, even on the coolest night.

Currently we are grafting much of our 'new' cacao, selecting the best from our heirloom trees and replicating. But we always need rootstock, so we sow many seeds. For those of you with an interest, this is what we do.

Cacao, like most tropical seeds, doesn't like to dry out, and will lose viability the drier the seed becomes. Plant as fresh as possible!

Lay cacao seeds on their narrow side, embedded about ⅓ to ½ of their depth into moist soil. Soil should be rich, potting soil, loose and moist. If not growing in the tropics, or if it's cooler than usual, 'tent' the potting tray in a plastic bag. This means place a roomy, transparent plastic bag over the tray, raised with the aid of a stick, with plenty of air inside. This creates a mini greenhouse with a nice moist, warm environment. Ambient temperature should not fall below 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep soil moist, not wet and not dry!

Seeds should germinate in 3 to 6 days, depending on conditions.

 You can see here that we are quite hard on our seeds! But they do just fine.

Here are the seedlings potted up, developing quite nicely: you can see the remnants of the opened seed about 3 inches up from the soil. We will give these another month or so under the shade cloth before we plant them out or graft them.

I also offer cacao seeds for growing on my Etsy store, here's what most Mondays look like: harvest the cacao pod, clean and pack in damp sawdust (from the farm, so organic!), then double bag and label appropriately. There's 10-12 fat, fresh seeds in each bag.

cacao kills cockroaches

I believe that every creature has a place and a role in the world. However there are certain creatures which I just don't want to share space with. I have various agreements with several species: scorpions, larger ants, spiders, biting flies, that if we share space we are purely courteous and harm no-one. It works: and on those rare instances when it doesn't then usually that creature is removed from our common space. Cockroaches too have a place and I can be fond of them, cleaning and clearing away our detritus, but somehow reviled more than all the flies, ants and wasps which share the same momentous task: they are the vultures of the insect world. They're actually quite cute up close.

However there is a point beyond tolerance and I reached it this week. They got into my chickpea flour.

I live in the jungle and I am fully aware that I am here as a guest and part of the honour is that I share the space with all the other inhabitants. Everything in my kitchen is double bagged and in tupperware boxes. I am oh so well aware of all the ants, flies, mites, weevils, grasshoppers, stink bugs, and endless strange looking 6 leggededs, as well as the myriad spores of yeasts, molds, fungi, plus all the bacteria, protozoa and multi formed parasites that live here too. I've played host to a number of the best of them. Oh yes. But when the roaches finally break through into my chickpea flour, take up residence in my traveling coffee mug and eat the onions in my veggie basket, I'm over it.

Cacao kills cockroaches. I imagine it's the same mixture of chemicals which pep us up, which causes a heartattack or overloads the cockroach to death, but the result is quick and final. But cacao is also rather an expensive - if all organic - way to go. So yesterday I made some special killer candy. Roaches love onion and orange juice, and chickpea flour, I blended chopped onion with just enough orange juice to wet it, added some chickpea flour and powdered boric acid. The mix I formed into patties and placed around the kitchen and bathroom on top of squares of old plastic bags (easy to move and a lot cleaner). The boric acid takes up to 10 days to work. It's a slow and nasty death of starvation and dehydration, and I'm sorry for that. Cacao would be better. When I get the population down I might switch to smaller amounts of cacao powder, or might mix cacao in with the borax.

It's a nasty business.

chocolate! or, lifestyle choices

The farmer and I are making slow gradual changes in a way I like. The changes are to do with our eating habits, over the last year we have become somewhat complacent and indulgent with our food. The farmer is an excellent cook and appreciates encouragement and so meals have been getting more lavish. Recently we have become aware of changes associated with a year plus of rich food and plenty of it. It's time to cut back.

We've switched to cooking with coconut oil. There's plenty of information on the web about the benefits of using coconut oil, suffice to say here that it improves metabolic rate, strengthens the immune system and lowers blood pressure. Plus it's delicious. I have been making the oil myself - a time consuming process, but rewarding as the oil we use is completely organic, fresh and unbelievably rich and wonderful. There are two ways to make oil from coconuts in the kitchen (at least for food grade oil): cold pressed and stove-top. For cold pressed oil you need an oil expeller. We have the loan of a PITEBA oil mill. I like it, but it could do with some improvements, it's not the cleanest or easiest way to work. The other way is by grating the coconut, squeezing the milk out (easier with the addition of a little water), and then simmering the milk until it magically becomes oil. I prefer using the PITEBA, but it's easier using the stove.

I'm also making my own yoghurt and cream cheese. We had been buying 1/2 fat cream cheese, but I don't like the sound of the emulsifiers and gums and enhancers on the ingredients list, making one's own is very simple. (I will write up methods for yoghurt and cream cheese in another post.) It doesn't really take any time at all, and I know exactly what I'm eating. And of course it makes me so much happier to be making our food from scratch. If only we had a goat.

The sourdough starter is back on track and I've been making wholewheat sourdough biscuits daily for our lunch sandwiches. Served with cream cheese and greens from the garden.

And the chocolate? We've been researching cacao again and have read that cacao has a positive effect on lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, plus it balances moods and emotions, creates a sense of well being and suppresses appetite! We've been enjoying lightly toasted cacao beans with meals for the past few days. I really like it: anything that brings me closer to the land, the seasons and home scale food production fills me with such contentment and feelings of ease, yes, life is good.

jammin', with fudge

After a long hiatus I made some araza jam this morning. There's a small season starting and I was able to pick 2/3rds of a bucket of fruit to make 11 jars of what has become our signature jam. I also found just enough nutmeg to make two jars of nutmeg butter. What incredible smells filled the kitchen! Especially as we were also slicing ginger and processing black pepper.

I've been trying to make fudge these last two days. Back in the US, my class would make and sell fudge by the caseload for Christmas fairs. We could knock out fudge like no-one else and had all the packaging and presentation - and sales talk - down to a tee. But this is the first time I've tried it in three years and the recipes from up north don't work so well due to temperature and humidity differences, plus the farmer won't eat butter (!). And there's the caveat that everything we offer at the farmers' market comes from the farm. So. Here's my new recipe:

Coconut Chocolate Fudge
one serving (enough for 4 people after dinner treat)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil
2/3 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup powdered cacao
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Melt oil, milk and sugar together in heavy bottomed pan, bring to boil and boil until it reaches the soft ball stage. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Wait for 5 minutes then stir in powdered cacao. Wait 5 more minutes then beat until mixture loses its glossiness. Pour into silicon mold (or onto greased parchment paper). Allow to cool before eating (if possible). The cacao and coconut milk comes from the farm, the oil came from Bastimentos Island, the vanilla from Mexico (but soon from our farm) and the sugar from the store. No photos, we ate it before I had the chance to bring out the camera.

cacao harvest time

roasted cacao beans

We're in the middle of our cacao harvest. It takes a while, spread out over a course of maybe 5 weeks as we wait for pods to ripen. The cacao pods grow from the trunk and branches of the tree and change from a pale green to a darker yellow or red before they are ripe.
This farm used to be a cacao plantation, but was abandoned in the 1970s due to the Monila blight which took out almost all the cacao farms in this area. The blight attacks the fruit, not the tree, so there are still many many hundreds of trees around which produce fruit. The harvest is a spotty thing, as we do not treat the trees or fight the blight, we harvest what we can: the rest the squirrels or blight takes. It's not a huge harvest, just enough to last us the year.

The pods are hand picked with a curved blade on a strong stick - cacao pods rarely fall by themselves and last years blackened, eaten out pods can still be seen on the trees. They do make an excellent mulch though, so we like to see them on the ground. After picking they are cut open with a machete and the insides scooped out into a bucket. I've written about cacao several times on this blog (search for cacao in the search tool), so won't go into too much detail herte about how it all looks. When the bucket is full it is emptied into a gunny sack - in our case old rice sacks, and hung in a cool covered area, for 5 days or so. In the past the cacao was piled onto banana leaves and covered with more leaves.

Inside the sack the beans ferment in their white gloopy pulp: fruit flies, beetles, earwigs are all part of the process. The bag smells like fairly bad and oozes a sticky transparent juice. Not really what one would associate with chocolate.

After 5 days the beans look like beans - the white pulp covering is gone and they look like smooth plump almonds in a tawny covered skin. Now they are sun dried for 3 or 4 days or until they snap cleanly when broken in two. At this stage they are ready for storage - the major chocolate producers buy them at this point and roast them as needed. We roast ours just before we use them for the best flavour.

The beans are edible at every stage, raw in their pulp they are bitter and 'green', taste nothing like chocolate. Dried they are still bitter and smell a little chocolately but have no real taste. After roasting they begin to have the wonderful aroma of chocolate. We use our in granola bars, in granola, in dried fruit mixes and to munch on when we need an energy boost.

cacao pods on the tree

pile of pods, each pod contains 20-50 beans

the gunny sack with beans and pulp

inside the gunny sack, day 2

making chocolate

I was asked how cacao beans became chocolate. Here's the simple answer, demonstrated by Flori, who helps me in the kitchen twice a week (and who is showing me her method for 'milk' chocolate here), and Luca, my nephew visiting from Scotland.

First the beans must be harvested, fermented, dried, roasted and the shells removed. (See earlier post, Cacao.)

Grind the beans in a mill with the finest tooth possible, you want the beans to become a paste, keep passing it through the mill until a thick paste consistency is obtained.
 
Make coconut milk by grating the flesh of two coconuts, putting in blender with either the water from the coconuts or a cup of regular water, blending then straining. Save a little of the grated coconut for later.
Put the cacao paste in a pot and add a little of the coconut milk, stir and cook over medium heat until the mixture dries out a little. Stirring all the time!!!
 
Add more coconut milk add stir again - you want the mixture to almost dry out, the liquid from the milk to evaporate but the flavour to remain. The consistency of the paste will become smoother.
 
Keep adding the coconut milk little by little until the paste becomes more 'plastic'. Taste and add some sugar if you need it (evaporated cane sugar would have been the sweetener used traditionally).
 

Remove the pan from the heat, dollop the contents onto a work surface and allow to cool a little. Roll into sausages or truffle sized balls and coat in the grated coconut, or leave as is. Put in fridge to set up.

Enjoy!!!!!

tour of the farm, part one: the upper farm

Our farm sits about 300 meters from the ocean, as the crow flies, by road it's about 400 meters. The lower farm is level and rises back into the hills which dip and rise to create perfect pockets of rich soil and mulch filled runoff for the upper farm. The name Island Farm is the original name and was given because the land is bordered by creeks. The borders have been extended beyond those creeks in some places, but the name, Finca la Isla, remains.

Much of the upper farm is forest. When this land was first settled the workable land was cleared and converted to pasture or cacao plantation. The parts which are steeper or difficult to access are primary rainforest. The pasture was abandoned many years ago and is reverting beautifully to secondary forest. You can tell it's going well by the quality of the upper canopy trees. The cacao was abandoned when the blight came about 30 years ago. Cacao is an understory tree and so the big forest trees were never cut: hence it's a fairly simple process for the forest to return. On first sight it all looks like jungle: hanging vines as thick as my arm, roots running rampant in some places as high as my thigh, animals, insects, birds and reptiles everywhere should one be still enough to see and hear them. But to someone more familiar it is possible to tell what was original forest, what was pasture and what was plantation by the types and forms of the trees present.

Within the upper farm lies growing areas for salak, greens, vanilla and fruit orchard. Another slope is dotted with black pepper. The farm plants are interspersed with forest which makes for a very beautiful farm. The forest trees act as windbreak, create micro-climate, help with pest control by supplying habitat and diversion for beneficial insects and animals as well as pests. Their falling leaves, fruits and branches become compost and mulch, and when a big tree falls it creates more space and light for possible new farm plants, or forest trees. Our farm plants are mixed together though we do tend to group species, hence the vanilla is separated from the salak by edible ferns, katuk, passion fruit, curry tree and several citrus, and separating two salak areas are more fruit trees, yampi and several great mushrooming stumps. Only the vanilla is in rows, everything else is planted at will.

cacao

I'm roasting cacao for granola bars. It's a fun job, the hard stone sound of dried bean against cast iron skillet, the growing scent of chocolate and the sudden pop as the first bean splits its shell. Then I can take them off the heat and wait until they are cool enough to handle before I shell them. Cacao is much easier to shell while it's still hot.
The botanical name for the cacao tree is theobroma cacao, Greek for food of the gods, it was revered by the native Indians as a food of the gods. The story goes that the first cacao tree grew from the dead body of Sura, the co-creator god of south and central america. It was used ceremoniously, as medicine and as money. Is this where the expression ‘money grows on trees’ comes from? In the Mayan culture a porter earned 100 cacao beans a day: the price of a hare; an avocado cost one bean; a fish wrapped in a corn husk cost 3. It was taken or exchanged during both religious and civic ceremonies, for example at a wedding the bride and groom exchanged 5 beans.
The trees look a little like apple trees, fairly short and gnarled. The pods grow from the stems and trunk and are shaped like a rugby ball but ridged and knobbly, they vary in colour from a minty green to a deep dark maroon. Inside the beans hang from a sinewy tough central stem – a bit like the middle of a tangerine but much stronger. The beans are covered with thick white ooze which tastes sweet but makes the whole thing look like the innards of some alien. The beans are almond shaped and sized, but smooth, they’re a creamy coffee colour, inside they are the most royal bright purple. The whole pod from inside out is an experience of colour and texture, shelling the beans has to be a fairly ritualistic practice moving through hard to soft to hard, ridged to slippery to smooth surfaces. The beans taste bitter but they come with a kick: 5 roughly equal an espresso shot. And they are rich. I’ve heard of people eating 30 and getting high, seeing the cacao god himself!
It’s said that cacao is a superfood: very rich in antioxidants, potassium, magnesium, dopamine, seratonin, anandamide, tryptophan and phenylethylamines are amongst the 300 chemical compounds present in cacao. With the seratonin, anandamide, dopamine and phenylethylamine it’s no wonder chocolate lifts one’s mood and why so many people reach for a slab when all else seems to fail. Of course the most healthy way to absorb all this goodness is through the fresh or dried bean, but that’s not so practical. They say that the addition of dairy products blocks the absorption of much of the benefits, so the darker the chocolate - and the least processed - the better for you.
This farm was a cacao plantation until the blight came. There are many trees left and we still harvest a good amount, enough to sell at the farmers' market and use in our bars and cookies. The harvesting is fun too: remove the beans and their white goop and throw in a gunny sack which gets hung undercover for 5 to 6 days. The beans ferment during this time and the white goop attracts the bugs and bacteria necessary for the fermentation. After the fermentation the beans are sun dried for maybe another 3 to 5 days and are then stored until needed. The major cacao traders and chocolate companies trade in these dried beans and the bigger chocolate producers have on average a 2 year supply of these dried beans. In Costa Rica cacao is at its highest price in years, but at barely $2 per kilo of organic dried beans, it's not really viable as a cash crop. Most cacao now comes from west african countries - hence the two year store as these countries are not so stable.
Back to my delicious task!