EP10_mixdown.txt 00:00:04:16 - 00:00:23:01 Erich Hi, everyone. Welcome to Potluck. Today we have a special guest, Cristina Castellanos. The events choose, among many other things, she has a chocolate sauce. She's also my mentor and the food storage guide business. And today, we're going to talk about chocolate. 00:00:23:08 - 00:00:25:20 Cristina Hi, Cristina. Hello. How are you? 00:00:26:13 - 00:00:27:15 Erich I'm good. How are you? 00:00:27:24 - 00:00:31:13 Cristina I'm good. I'm good. I actually just ate a piece of brownie. 00:00:32:05 - 00:00:45:09 Erich Just to get in the mood. The chocolate. So what you do are lowercase belongs to this so-called bean to bar movement. Can you tell us a little bit about this and what it is? 00:00:45:16 - 00:01:08:02 Cristina Yeah. So Luca is a chocolate shop. Um, so lunar means Earth and the earth in back language because we're in the Basque country, and that comes from cacao. So what we do is because me and my partner were both born in Mexico, we bring cocoa beans from Mexico, We come here, grind them and make them into chocolate and combine Mexican. 00:01:08:02 - 00:01:34:03 Cristina And that flavors. And it has been to bar chocolate, which means we we do the whole process from being to the bar. And basically what we've done is opened a small shop that is where the machines are separated by a glass window so people can see the process because we're so I like disassociated from what's how chocolate is made and what chocolate tastes like. 00:01:34:03 - 00:01:59:05 Cristina And so many people don't know that it actually comes from a fruit. So this is what we're doing. We're trying to bring the process and the origin of chocolate closer to people so they understand and appreciate it a lot more. I think there's not like a sexy way of saying educate, but it's like reeducating people to appreciate and eat chocolate in the in a different way. 00:01:59:10 - 00:02:07:24 Cristina So being to bar is is a movement that started in the nineties but is also the way that you make the chocolate. 00:02:08:04 - 00:02:38:15 Erich This reminds me of of this scandal that happened in New York with the Marx Brothers that were like this hipster guys with a chocolate store. And at some point they found out that they were just melting while running chocolate and reshaping it and selling it. Is that something that is common in the chocolate world, like fraud or using the wrong labels for for the cacao time? 00:02:38:19 - 00:03:03:01 Cristina So I think the Marx Brothers scandal, everybody knows about it. But also weirdly, like their design was amazing and it was such a big scandal and they were so popular that it actually in a way, kind of helped to attract people to be to bar. So, I mean, suddenly there was a scandal behind it, but it did also have a good purpose, I think. 00:03:04:02 - 00:03:26:24 Cristina I think what chocolate does is there's a lot of deceiving, deceiving marketing. So if you do an experiment, if you do if you buy a bean to bar chocolate bar, and then you go to the supermarket and you buy a chocolate bar that you find there to compare the label. So what the big industry does is they copy the terms that the bean bar movement is using. 00:03:28:11 - 00:04:00:15 Cristina So it is definitely deceiving. And like the best tips is the less ingredients, the better. Chocolate should just be cocoa beans and sugar or cocoa beans, sugar and cocoa butter. If it's a dark chocolate, the less ingredients the better. And the more information you get from the bar. Also a lot better. Like, you know, in wine, you always want to know where the grapes are grown, where the the wine, the winery, the guys who makes it, the terroir. 00:04:00:15 - 00:04:25:10 Cristina They hear like the notes. And people are really proud of sharing this information. But really, that doesn't happen with chocolate because everybody thinks that it is a dark. Not everybody knows that it is a dark chocolate that's made with cocoa beans from the Philippines. It's going to taste different than if you have a chocolate made with cocoa beans from Mexico or Venezuela or, you know, Costa Rica. 00:04:25:10 - 00:04:47:10 Cristina But it should be a given. So what happens is so first we drink the chocolate, then they add sugar in Spain, then they do the first chocolate bar, then they add the milk, the milk powder, and then they do the first mass produced chocolate bar with the Hershey's. They take it to the U.S. and really they forget to portray the milk. 00:04:47:24 - 00:05:12:08 Cristina So the chocolate bars taste a little bit like off, a little bit like vomit. So they changed the recipe and people are like, no, no, no, bring back the original recipe. And so they bring it back. And if you look at the Hershey's bar, sometimes they have the letters PG, PR, which is this like added flavoring that is like off milk. 00:05:13:15 - 00:05:40:17 Cristina But having a matte. And so chocolate before was for royalty, for the aristocracy, for people who could afford paying the chocolate. And you have to think that cocoa beans used to be considered. They were used as currency, so they were very important. And then with the mass produced ones, the only way they can they found a way to make it affordable was to reduce the price and add more sugar. 00:05:41:03 - 00:06:08:13 Cristina So chocolate that you buy in the supermarket are mass produced chocolates where the traceability where they get their cocoa beans from is completely dodgy. The number one ingredient is always sugar, and it's very hard to work with a cocoa beans without adding anything else to it. You have to be patient like the emulsifying it with the soy lecithin, sunflower lecithin. 00:06:08:22 - 00:06:30:20 Cristina The palm oil just makes it cheaper and easier to work with and more fluid. Right? So all the usually most of the chocolate bars in the supermarket will have these ingredients where they bind to bar chocolate is like a good wine where they're trying to show off, where they buy their cocoa beans from, where they roast them, and the flavor profile. 00:06:31:08 - 00:06:46:10 Cristina So what you want to do when you're making a beach bar, chocolate is basically like enhance the flavor of the raw ingredient and not mess it up. Like when you're in a kitchen, you have really good ingredients. Your goal is not to mess up the really good ingredients. 00:06:47:03 - 00:06:59:04 Erich Yeah, I agree. I think simplicity is key. And in many culinary processes, I don't know if I have told you this before. I have told us too many people, but Luca is the best chocolate I've ever tried. 00:07:01:10 - 00:07:30:24 Erich Religion. So I had like, been to buy chocolates before. But I mean, the beans to our world is like the ocean. It's like the the natural wine world. You know, you get many different flavors and many different types. Yeah. Um, but this one especially, I'm a fan of the I would say 70% is my sweet spot here. We can also talk about our percentages. 00:07:31:08 - 00:07:53:17 Erich Yeah, I think when it goes above that 8085, perhaps it's too, too bitter for me, at least in the ones I've tried. I know there are no strict rules about this. Yeah, but. But I was really. I really enjoyed it because this was like a like good chocolates, but better. 00:07:53:17 - 00:08:16:00 Cristina That's amazing. Well, it's definitely. I think you can sometimes. I don't know. My father makes fun of me. He's just like, Oh, why do you force us to do all these steps before we eat the chocolate? I don't want to stare at it and look at the color and let it melt like, But you're going to miss out on all the amazing complexities and the flavors. 00:08:16:11 - 00:08:36:01 Cristina And I think once you learn how to properly eat and savor chocolate, there's no way of going back. Like chocolate is the one ingredient in the world that has to go up to the temperature of your body for you to be able to taste it. So if you open a chocolate bar, you just gobble and chew, which is what we're used to doing. 00:08:36:18 - 00:08:48:09 Cristina You miss out on like all the magic, right? Whereas again, if you think of wine, you don't just look the lugged a whole bottle of wine like you take your time and savoring. That's what you want to do with the chocolate as well. 00:08:49:08 - 00:08:55:11 Erich You just let it melt in your mouth, right? That's the best way to taste it. Yeah. 00:08:55:11 - 00:09:16:15 Cristina So you so you look at it, you see the shiny that's glossy. It has that white powder powder on it. That's the sugar bloom or the butter bloom, which usually happens when there's a drastic change in temperature. Nothing's going to happen to you. It's just it loses aroma. Properties. And then what you want to do is you want to eat especially the dark chocolate. 00:09:16:15 - 00:09:34:11 Cristina You want to break it, close your ears, and you want to hear it for that sharp snap. I would see if I have a chance. Snaps. You can hear it. And this is this is a sign of a temporary break when the when the crystals are formed. 00:09:34:11 - 00:09:34:23 Erich Something. 00:09:35:11 - 00:09:38:10 Cristina Can here snap. 00:09:38:10 - 00:09:38:23 Erich Yeah. 00:09:39:17 - 00:10:00:19 Cristina So it's a good step. And it also you want to you want to smell it. You want to feel the aromas and just like when you're like with everything that you eat, your body is like priming itself to whatever you're going to taste. So you just bite a bit of it and just let it melts in your mouth. 00:10:00:21 - 00:10:29:01 Cristina You can chew a bit, but you want to cover your whole tongue. And then just like give yourself 30 seconds to enjoy the chocolate, basically. And then once it's melted and it's disappeared, you also want to concentrate on how long the flavor lingers in your mouth, which is amazing. If you compare beach bar chocolate with the supermarket, supermarket chocolate, will you just like, disappear really quickly or be super, super, super sweet? 00:10:29:21 - 00:10:50:22 Erich Yeah, That's the other thing I wanted to tell you. I think I actually already told you this, that after trying your chocolate, you completely ruined my experience of eating cheap chocolates because I feel like the palm oil and all the trash that that is in it. Not now. I can actually taste it. You're having a good one. 00:10:51:04 - 00:10:53:19 Cristina Yeah. That greasy layer on the top of your mouth. 00:10:54:09 - 00:10:54:18 Erich Yeah. 00:10:55:08 - 00:10:57:07 Cristina This is saying. 00:10:57:07 - 00:11:05:20 Erich Can we talk also about the do's and don'ts storage in chocolate? I mean, a lot of people called chocolate and the French. 00:11:06:15 - 00:11:08:05 Cristina I think people like the crunch. 00:11:08:23 - 00:11:09:09 Erich Okay. 00:11:10:03 - 00:11:14:10 Cristina I think that's why people put it in the fridge. Never put your chocolate in the fridge. 00:11:14:15 - 00:11:57:24 Erich That's the first thing. I also learned why while working with chocolate, I worked in a chocolate store from Maria Fernanda Jacoby when she was starting in Venezuela, a chocolate store called Kakao to learn how to work with chocolate, how to temper chocolate, how to make bonus, how to make the ganache. It was pretty nice. I remember the the most iconic she had was it was a passion fruit on one and also there was one that was really nice with in Venezuela but also in other regions of the Amazonas there is a hot sauce made out of ants. 00:11:58:16 - 00:12:32:10 Erich And in Venezuela it's called Katara. And we had a bonbon filled with with our copyright message that that was my favorite part. So yeah, that was really nice. And also to mention Maria Fernanda has played a key role and the development of a Venezuelan cacao. Due to the whole crisis, many of the largest chocolate companies had to leave, so all the the farmers and producers from the land that are from there learned how to make chocolate. 00:12:32:10 - 00:13:00:19 Erich Well, she posted a movement to teach specially women how to make chocolate and and small chocolate companies. And of course since these people were the farmers by generations, they knew the 85% of cows and the difference between all of them. So if you if you give this if you empower this people to make their own chocolate, for sure, they're going to be better than anyone else because they know the products so well. 00:13:02:07 - 00:13:28:10 Cristina Wow. I think there's there's definitely amazing things happening with with chocolate. I think I heard there's also a brand in Nicaragua that did that that showed a lot of homeowners like housewives to make their own chocolate and they started their own business. Yeah, I think there's lots of. 00:13:28:13 - 00:13:37:20 Erich Can you make chocolate at home so that advisable or is that just a waste of energy putting a blender for a chocolate? 00:13:37:24 - 00:14:09:00 Cristina By all means, do it. I feel like if you make chocolate, it makes you appreciate good chocolate even more. They give you see how hard it is to make it. The first times we made Chocolate home not good girls. We were like, We tried it with the ninja. But also if you already by the nips then like some of those already done there, the roasting someone's already done the the taking the husk away that you have less control over it like fermentation is the most important. 00:14:09:00 - 00:14:33:18 Cristina I think what is also happening and maybe I'm mixing different ideas, but I think one is the bean to bar movement. One is the fact that before usually chocolate was known like very popular in places like Belgium, Switzerland, and they didn't even know that they even have cocoa beans there. And now the cocoa producing countries are also having their own brands that are making really, really good chocolate. 00:14:33:18 - 00:14:40:02 Cristina There is also amazing being for brands in Mexico and Venezuela in lots of countries. 00:14:40:12 - 00:14:51:02 Erich And Ecuador also became a major player. I remember Venezuela was like one of the top players before the whole crisis and that got a little bit displaced. 00:14:51:03 - 00:15:16:05 Cristina But it has like one of the most amazing reputations of amazing cocoa Venezuela for sure. So I think Mexicans, I always think that we always think that chocolate was invented there and cocoa beans only grew there. But I think they've actually had new discoveries where it's actually closer to Central America and further down south. 00:15:16:05 - 00:15:27:16 Erich The information I have is south of Maracaibo Lake in Venezuela is where they found the oldest cocoa beans archeologically. 00:15:27:16 - 00:15:56:22 Cristina And what I do think that's amazing is that it's managed to spread all over like you literally are the equator around, like you're surrounded by cocoa beans everywhere. It's like the fruit that connects us all in the get delicious and the sound recording. But so storage of chocolate, we were saying, do not put it in the fridge because you want to have the drastic change in temperature. 00:15:56:22 - 00:16:27:01 Cristina If you do have a wine fridge, that's actually like the ideal temperature. Otherwise you want to store it in a dark, cool place, no light. And the thing about the fridge as well is that chocolate absorbs everything. So you have like in place onion, it'll absorb all over the onion if you live in a very hot place and the only place you can actually leave it is in the fridge. 00:16:27:01 - 00:16:47:18 Cristina Then I would suggest having an airtight Tupperware. Otherwise it absorbs everything. Or if you want to do experiments which which we did with, for example, white chocolate, then we put it in a Ziploc bag with lavender, then it'll absorb the lavender or truffle or. 00:16:48:15 - 00:17:02:20 Erich Yeah, I knew that about eggs. Yeah. If you have a really high quality truffle, you do just storage together with eggs. And the eggs will taste like chocolate will absorb the flavor. 00:17:03:21 - 00:17:06:18 Cristina It's the same thing. It absorbs everything. 00:17:07:02 - 00:17:13:23 Erich Yeah, Fat fiber absorbs flavor. That's so it's something that happens. 00:17:13:23 - 00:17:19:07 Cristina But lesson like, if there's one thing you can take away from this conversation is to not put your chocolate in the fridge. 00:17:20:14 - 00:17:49:14 Erich So and then there's another common misconception. People think that if you melt chocolate and then you put it in the fridge, it's actually it will get hard again. And then you can make shapes or any any kinds of put it in a mold and then take it out. And that's not how it works at all. I mean, like you have to temper it that there is like a specific temperature curve. 00:17:50:05 - 00:18:07:14 Erich So the chocolate crystallizes and then you can work with is to make whatever chocolate bars or sculptures or whatever you want. You told me once that there is a difference in tempering techniques between being two bar and an industrial chocolate. 00:18:07:21 - 00:18:38:22 Cristina So I think the thing about AM industrial chocolate is that they just add more different kind of fats, so it makes it easier to work with. It's more liquid if you are going to do, if you do hand tempering, you have to control the temperature and if you do been to bar chocolate expliquer. So if you are going to do it, if you are going to hand tempering, then you have to be like you have to master the technique. 00:18:40:05 - 00:19:03:06 Cristina Obviously, if you have like if you're going to make it bigger quantities and you have a machine that will control the temperature and there's like this lovely thing that goes up and down and it controls the temperature, it has two different ones to make sure that it's shiny and you're able to put it in the mold, but you can't just have any old chocolate, put it in the microwave, it won't be shiny like you have to do it. 00:19:03:15 - 00:19:16:02 Cristina Control the temperatures, basically. But the reason why it's harder is because we don't you don't have any extra added fat. That's why people add soy lecithin and sunflower and palm oil. 00:19:17:21 - 00:19:21:04 Erich Yeah. It also makes it cheaper to produce. 00:19:21:14 - 00:19:22:11 Cristina 100%. 00:19:22:21 - 00:19:26:19 Erich Also something that companies are looking for all the time. 00:19:27:18 - 00:20:08:21 Cristina Which is what we were talking about. What what be like. And I'm sorry I ruined your your experience of eating chocolate, but it really is like when someone opens a door or when you like, it's like you open your eyes to the your taste buds, you open your taste buds. There's no way that you can not taste the fat, the burnt cocoa beans, the extra sugar and the dull and disgusting flavors you get from supermarket chocolate in general, as opposed to been to bar and craft chocolates, which are like so fruity. 00:20:08:21 - 00:20:32:07 Cristina It's like you just open the door to so many different flavors you didn't know that chocolate could have because the big industry is trying to hide that, right? That's like the main difference. If you if you are paying more for your cocoa beans, this means that the people who are fermenting it and drying it are taking a lot more care of it. 00:20:32:10 - 00:21:02:16 Cristina That's why you're paying them more. Whereas if you are exploiting people and exploiting the land and paying them nothing, obviously no one's going to take care of the fermentation and the drying like it should be. So you compare like that one is massive quantities and when they get the beans out of the bag, they literally just burn the whole thing so that it's a homogenous flavor with a shitload of sugar, a whole lot of sugar. 00:21:03:03 - 00:21:03:14 Cristina You know. 00:21:04:14 - 00:21:07:16 Erich You can say actually a of serious. 00:21:07:16 - 00:21:13:13 Cristina But that's obesity. That's what making it disgusting. But also sugar is so addictive. Right. 00:21:13:17 - 00:21:30:08 Erich You mentioned that chocolate can have like like fruity profiles and what one of the chocolates I liked the most from Lorca was SOCO, Moscow. What's the new school? So going to school, it's the name of the coverage, right? 00:21:31:03 - 00:21:36:06 Cristina It's it's also it's the region. It's the South Woodchipper. 00:21:36:06 - 00:21:53:11 Erich Yeah. And it has this racing profile. And and this is something probably that the the industry doesn't feel. It's the proper chocolate flavor. So they discarded. But that's exactly what makes it so interesting that things. 00:21:54:12 - 00:22:18:06 Cristina And also like the the way that we're so used to describing chocolate you're just like it's bitter. Maybe you say creamy and it's sweet, whereas dark chocolate doesn't have to be bitter. Which kind of ties in to what you were mentioning before about the percentages. Percentages mean nothing in terms of bitterness in general. Like the soccer score. It's down. 00:22:18:07 - 00:22:52:03 Cristina It tastes like raisins, like dried fruits, like hazelnut. And I also think in general, Mexico has kind of those notes. But then you have cockles from Tanzania and the Philippines and they'll have like mango passion, fruit, flowers, so many amazing flavor notes which you get from the terroir, the fermentation and the drying, and then the recipe that the chocolate maker will give it. 00:22:52:11 - 00:23:12:20 Cristina So what you want to do with the bar chocolate is do a super late roast. You just want to roast it enough so that it releases the flavor. Whereas the big industry would just roast it until it's burnt. But yeah, so when you I remember when we had the chocolate, you were like, this is like green. Like it is like crazy. 00:23:13:05 - 00:23:14:01 Cristina That's exactly what. 00:23:17:19 - 00:23:22:11 Erich Are you still doing virtual tastings. You were doing that during the quarantine, right? 00:23:22:14 - 00:23:52:20 Cristina Yeah. So during the yeah, during the pandemic. So before I was, you know, I have my food tour project and then we started making chocolate at home and I was like, I really want to have a chocolate factory. You, I have a chocolate shop. So we did this course to become certified chocolate tasters. If anyone wants to have a look at it, colleagues, International Institute of Chocolate and Cocoa account to see and you can. 00:23:52:23 - 00:23:56:22 Erich That sounds like a fun certificate to get it's. 00:23:56:22 - 00:24:07:22 Cristina A really fun certificate so it's three levels. They teach it in London Florence and they're also doing it in Spain now. And it was amazing. Amazing. 00:24:08:09 - 00:24:12:12 Erich But you had to travel abroad to get the certificate. 00:24:12:22 - 00:24:46:20 Cristina Yeah, we, we, we did the course in London. We did the, the first two levels, which I have to do the third one. And that was like definitely a clear and marked the before and after moment in the way that we taste everything and anything like that. We just became obsessed. We have we started buying chocolate from all over, started making our own chocolate, and then thought I was going to go and work in Norway with some amazing chocolate makers called Fluke. 00:24:47:11 - 00:25:04:14 Cristina And he said, okay, I'm going to go for three months. I'm going to he's really good at doing bonbons. So he said, okay, I'll help them do a line of bonbons. They're going to teach me how to use the machinery, because no one told you that if you were a chocolate maker, no more of a mechanic than the pastry chef. 00:25:04:15 - 00:25:30:23 Cristina Exactly. So when the pandemic hit, he couldn't leave. And since our whole world kind of revolved around food and now chocolate, I thought, okay, how can I make how can we mix what we're doing now with the tourism that we used to? But I used to working, so we designed these chocolate and wine tours to the Basque country. 00:25:31:08 - 00:25:53:03 Cristina So they traveled to the Basque country through chocolate and wine. That's what we did. So we would shipped boxes of chalk and wine to people and connect on them. And people were really drunk at the end and really happy and eating amazing chocolate. But we would also send them the chocolate that we were making. So we would like our experiments. 00:25:53:03 - 00:26:19:00 Cristina We were like getting like a real feedback from people and chocolate that no one else in the world was going to be able to taste. So that was fun. We did that and then we actually did manage to go to Norway. So we were there for a year and a half with these amazing women and yeah, that's where she learned to be a mechanic. 00:26:19:00 - 00:27:00:15 Cristina And I learned how to taste more chocolate. And then and then we came back and we had like the whole concept of the name and we did these a collection of ten bars and we sent them to the International Chocolate Awards, which is also a thing. And we won nine prizes the first year, which was amazing. And then and then we just opened the shop tournament two and a half months ago and it's basically chocolate bars, drinking chocolate with like not like the Spanish version, which is really thick, but more like the Latin American version, which is lighter. 00:27:01:04 - 00:27:12:07 Cristina And you can actually have it with water and milk. And we have this little stick, the one in the yes, you can do your own films, and then bonbons and cakes and brownies and cookies. 00:27:12:07 - 00:27:19:08 Erich And are there like channels to buy internationally or you have to go to the storage. You want a chocolate bar. 00:27:19:21 - 00:27:21:13 Cristina So now we've come to the store. 00:27:23:14 - 00:27:24:06 Erich Comfortably, but we. 00:27:24:22 - 00:27:55:22 Cristina Go to the Basque country and we're also we're going to open to an online shop next year for sure. And hopefully we'll be able to to work with some of the Ninja bar distributors in Europe. So stay tuned for Instagram. But yeah, well, we'll be doing it. And I don't do many virtual chocolaty things that much anymore, maybe like once a month, but we're doing them in person as well in the shop. 00:27:55:22 - 00:28:03:14 Cristina So we're able to show people like all the steps how you do it, how to taste that, and then how to pair it with wine. 00:28:04:02 - 00:28:05:12 Erich And mezcal. 00:28:05:24 - 00:28:06:19 Cristina Are good mixology. 00:28:07:01 - 00:28:12:13 Erich That's what I did. That was that was something getting drunk on mescal and chocolates. 00:28:13:08 - 00:28:21:09 Cristina So you really do think chocolate can give you this latent drinking feeling as well? 00:28:21:09 - 00:28:25:02 Erich So that was our chocolate episode. Thank you very much, Christine. 00:28:25:08 - 00:28:36:18 Cristina No problems, no pleasure for any other questions. You know, just drop me a message.