MOCTEZUMA'S WIFE'S CHOCOLATE RECIPE.

Kidzania is a city built for kids, occupying two floors of a top notch shoppingcomplex in the middle of Jakarta.The original exists in Mexico City.
On the ground floor are the city-type outlets, hair salons,departmental stores, supermarkets,theatres, institutes, driving schools, hospitals and so on. On the top floor is the industrial complex. Here kids are shown how ice cream, biscuits and indeed chocolates are manufactured.

A few weekends ago our community group took the kids through the "Silver Queen Chocolate Factory". They goggled at the massive processes of roasting, winnowing, grinding, conching, refining, tempering and moulding in huge gleaming machines(though the ones in Kidszania were kindly, kidsize). Then one wise guy piped, "Did Moctezuma have all these machines to make his chocolate?". The day before we has taken them through a briefing which included brief history of chocolate.

Last weekend we gathered at the slickest and largest kitchen in the neighbourhood to make chocolate as Moctezuma would have made it. Or at least by some of his many many wives assisted dutifully by his 8 daughters and 11 sons.

We brought a kilo of fermented beans from a plantation near Bandung. They were nice and dry and good-looking as far as beans go. We laid them out in single layers on baking trays and roasted them in a 300 degree preheated house oven for 30 minutes.

By this time a nice aroma,filled the kitchen. We then let the beans cool. Then one by one a group of six started to crack the beans and collect the nibs. The rest of the group watched a soap on television.

It is tough work separating about the nibs from the husk. Now we know why Moctezuma had many wives and 19 children. He probably yelled to them, "Come guys faster! You know that grouchy Spaniard Cortes is going to pop in any moment now!I want to cool him down with some chocolate." Moctezuma incidentally had warehouses of cocoa beans. Some he used for making chocolate and the rest for currency to buy stocks and shares.Or whatever they had those days.

After we collected the nibs, we ground a batch(8 spoons of nibs) with two spoons of sugar, in a coffee grinder. The other batch, simply ground the same in a motor and pestle. We ground and ground and ground. The coffee grinder gets over-heated so we had to stop from time to time.

What we had now,was varietal chocolate, that is to say" Moctezuma chocolate". To some purists, primitive. But I wouldn't tell old Moctezuma that. He was skilled at severing heads at the slightest provocation.

It was gritty but most of the group agreed that it "startling". We never tasted chocolate this mysterious, rich and flavoursome before. Moctezuma's wives probably beat it up while warming with honey and cinnamon, making it froth. There is a picture found on the walls of the ruins that showed a statuesque brunette, presumably one of Moctezuma's wives, pouring a cup of prepared from above her head to a vessel on the ground. Rather like the Malaysian Indians make "Teh Tareh". This obviously gave the drink a good head of foam.

We used a batch to flavour brownies. It was unique and great to taste. The recipe, along with other Moctezuma type recipes(or recipes his wives should have tried) will be featured in the Java Chocolate Newsletter.

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE.

Eventually one day Herman Cortes dropped in to visit. Moctezuma welcomed him with a cup of cocoa."It's ******* bitter!" said Cortes and threw up. Not really, I made that up. In fact he liked it so much that he took sacks of beans home. He also invited one of Moctezuma" daughters to Spain(absolutely true) where most probably, she taught ChocoVic to split beans and extract nibs(pure conjecture).