I got an invitation to the Carib Reserve where Carib Indians live in a way of life that has modernised but still keeps the old ways. Only the sixth crystal combines everything together with a mirror surface, that's the one all the cooking shows go on about when talking about 'tempering'.Ĭocoa processing with Carib Indians In my adventure days, I was staying in Dominica for a while, staying in Jean Rhys house, now a guest house, Cherry Orchard, and setting off on expeditions mostly to go climbing. And all of these are reached by heating chocolate to exact temperatures. There are six different crystallne states of chocolate, they each contribute that delicious mouth feel of instantly melting chocolate, crispness of the first bite then the softer texture, the smoothness, all the good the good things we love chocolate for. They didn't have a tv (the family was weird) so they had only seen it at friends' houses and described it to their mother as a woman in a bath who puts a Cadbury's Flake in her mouth and looks overcome with happiness. Then they all saw the Cadbury's Flake ad on tv and agreed that they had never seen anyone look so. When the author was young he would have to bathe after his two older brothers, so he said the water was always cold and it wasn't very pleasant. Chocolate was a nasty, fatty, gritty bitter drink for the Incas I don't quite believe him but through technology has now been transformed into the almost orgasmic pleasure it is today.

I hadn't realised it was such a technical marvel. The most fascinating by far was Aerogel But the most immediately interesting was chocolate. There were many interesting materials described in the book.

Stuff matters miodownik