Costa Rica Caribbean Coast food
Did you ever wonder where your chocolate comes from?
Have you ever wondered where chocolate comes from? If you are anything like me, you eat a lot of it. When I got here, I had no idea how much went into harvesting and processing it as it goes from its organic raw state into the hyper processed candy that I salivate over when its paired with peanut butter. (*sigh*. I literally and unabashedly am a diehard lover of peanut butter cups).
Harvesting Cacao
Harvesting cacao, the raw ingredient in chocolate is the end of a longer process that takes anywhere from 3-5 years. The tree has to mature enough that it will flower, and from the flower, pods form and grow. After that, pods can be harvested.
Each tree can produce about 30 pods roughly. Each pod contains about 40ish seeds. They will use almost like a wooden club to crack the pod in half. Each tree will only produce about 1 pound of chocolate. Think about how much needs to be produced to satisfy our sweet tooth!
not my picture. Random internet pic.
Fermenting and Roasting
After the harvest, the beans have to dry out in the sun for about 7 days. This gives the beans a chance to develop their natural aromas as the liquid is dehydrated and flavors consolidated. This process is call fermentation.
From there, the beans are cleaned and roasted in a process similar to how coffee beans are prepared. This roast allows all those wonderful floavors to truly apprecriate and becme stronger. As the beans roast, they open, leaving the part that can be eaten ready for the next part of the process.
The edible part of the beans, called nibs, are extracted and can be formed into a powder or cocoa butter ready to process into those delightful little yummies we so love.
Cacao on the Caribbean Coast
The Bribri are an indigineous people that live in Northern Panama and Costa Rica. They are sometimes referred to as Costa RIca's hidden people. There are about 35,ooo in the country and about a third of them live in Limon Province in the Talamanca canton (a canton is an administrative district). And while most tourism happens here on the coast, most Bribri live in remote mountainous areas only accessible by boat.
The Bribri have been able to maintain their society, traditions and way of life for thousands of years. This is due to a few factors: the extreme geographic isolation of their villages, the general geographic and political isolation of Limon province in general by the Spanish conquerors and then the Costa Rican government, and finally, the inability of the Spanish to totally conquer several tribes of this region (Bribri being one) which led to the creation of the Talamanca Kingdom of the three indiginous kings being offically recognized in the 1800s.
The Bribri society is largely focused on agriculture, and the Bribri have nurtured their lands for generations. They practice several sustainable faming techniques, like using local and organic fertilizers and pesticides, combination planting, agroforestry, a land use management system that protects against deforestation and erosion. They grow about 100 crops, including yucca, corn, coffee, banana, and that most wonderful of all, cacao.
Cacao is sacred to the Bribri, as the story of its' origins can be traced back to the creator god. As the story goes, the creator of the world and of mankind, came to earth in the form of an old man. He went to a village seeking shelter and help one night. No one helped save one woman named Tsuru. As reward for her unique kindness, she was turned into the first cacao tree to offer her kindness and sustanence for all future generations. The Bribri consider the cacao tree female and sacred. As such, only women are allowed to prepare and serve the cacao drink used in ceremonies. The tree is also never used for firewood or construction.
Today cacao is a huge part of the eco-tourism industry in my area. There are several chocolate tours you can take to Bribri villages as they walk you through the process of creating and sampling the chocolate we all love. This is often paired with tours of their villages, other medical and important crops, learning about their sustainable farming practices and being immersed in nature. The heart of it, though, is learning the steps used, the other uses for chocolate and recipes used. The tour usually caps with samples and tastes, even some take home treats.
Sampling Cacao at home
So no blog post would be complete without an obligitory video of us trying the fruit. And its super crazy-- the timing of this, because I started this post, and my daughter asked that afternoon if we could stop and get cacao at one of stands on the way home from school the next day. Turns out, she's an old pro at the fruit, having had it at school and her friends houses. So I am late to the party.
We stopped the next day, and I recorded us with the process of opening and sampling. We had a grasshopper stop in the middle of sampling too, which was fun. So enjoy!
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