WOULD YOU URGE YOUR CHILD TO BE A CHOCOLATIER OR A DOCTOR?

Being a very practical person, wise to the ways of world, I would responsibly advice my children to be doctors. Because, from evidence evaluated today, it does not matter much whether you are a good doctor or a hopeless one. You will still make a lot of money and have a comfortable living.Unfortunately the same cannot be said of your patients. But if you are a mediocre chocolatier, you are surely headed down the rocky road of life.

The good thing is everybody has an inborn talent waiting to blossom out to be great chefs or chocolatiers.Everyone loves to eat. Of course the majority get distracted and go into absurdities like nuclear physics. However if you are like my son, who keeps wondering and experimenting on how to make a chocolate cookie better, or his noodles more exciting or what happens if you add balsamic vinegar to rice, then it is very likely that he may see greatness in the culinary arts.And at far less cost me me than a degree in medicine or law.

Lately I have been covertly(because my wife sees him one day as a powerfully rich unscrupulous lawyer)encouraging him to pursue his curiosity in the culinary arts. I told him about Ferran Adria who began his culinary life as a dishwasher. Then a army cook. Then joined El Bulli and 18 months(I keep stressing 18 months, because my son is terribly impatient)later became head chef of El Bulli.

I told his about Heston Blumenthol and how this great man who after high school spend a week with Raymond Blanc and a few months with Marco Pierre White then lept into fame. I told my son that Blumenthal's mentor, Marco Pierre White started as a dishwasher at a the Hotel Saint George(which nobody has heard of) and then went on to establishments like the Box Tree, Le Gauroche and La Tante Clair. My son was very impressed as I rolled out these names in my best French.

The point I was trying to make is that what he needed was passion not a fearfully expensive education which undoubtedly I would have to slog for till my dying days to pay.

To be fair and balanced, as a parent must be, I told him also of Ramon Morato, probably the most famous choclatier of all. He did go to formal confectionery and chocolate schools like the National High School of Pastry, Confectionary, Ice Cream and Chocolate at Yssingeaux. I emphasised of course that Morato had won a scholarship to go there.

To bring him back from France I quoted Ferran Adria who said, "Ideal customers dont come to El Bulli to eat, they come for the experience." And that the secret of great cooking was the contrasts in flavour, temperature and texture." The study of which, I pointed out, was ever present in the street foods of Jakarta, Indonesia. Hundreds of such excellent establishments exist minutes away from our home.

I told my son about Heston Blumenthol's philosophy on food which was to discover and exploit the diner's perception of his expectations of types of food and surprise him or her out of their minds. That too can be studied intensively in Indonesia. After all, I reminded him that Indonesia was home to all ingredients and spices and herbs know to man. As well as all the textures and flavours and indeed temperatures. You are, I told my son, in the finest cooking environment in the world. It was these 17000 island archipelago that the world was supplied with spices for a thousand years or more. Here his vision could be as broad as he makes it. Never as blinkered as French cuisine which is over-rated, over-priced and mostly arrogance.Chic yes, but predictable.

Coming back to my son becoming a chocolatier I told him of the passion of Charles Barry who in 1842 travelled to Africa to look for beans. Of course he should have come to Indonesia but it no good moan about it now. Besides Africa was closer. But my son can find great cocoa beans throughout our islands. Cocoa plantations existed on Sulewesi, Java, Sumetra, Papua, Maluku,West Timor, Bali, Kalimantan, Nias and Flores. His backyard was rich with exciting beans.Bernard Callebaut actually treated his father's brewery turned chocolate factory as his playroom. And eventually learned all the secrets of making chocolate. A bit of apprenticeship with chocolaterie Menunier and off to Calgary, Canada where, much against all advice from snooty Europeans, he started his own thriving chocolate factories.

In Indonesia my son would find in most communities at least one home industry engaged in baking or chocolate or both.And because these homes dream of sending off their children to universities the motivation to successfully compete and innovate, throbs relentlessly. The country, without exaggeration is an backyard university campus in the craft of chocolate.The best best thing about it was the chocolate created was unique to the country and relevant to consumer needs. This country being the third largest consumer market in Asia, its an opportunity and challenge not to be sneezed.

Summing up, I told my son, he may not make as much money as a lousy doctor or an unscrupulous lawyer, nor afford a divorce(which he thinks is mandatory on a route to fame), but he may well be able to afford the Honda he seamed to take a fancy for. Unless of course he can reach the heights of Ramon Morato or Ferran Adria. Here, to be fair, I told him that El Bulli actually operates at a loss. They make their money on their books.

WHAT REALLY IS JAVA?

I had a few emails asking for more information on Java. And why is it so important, in my opinion,to chocolate? Well here is a lesson on Java.

It"s one of the 17,000 island of Indonesia. The most populated. About 124 million people live on this island which is approximately the size of the United Kingdom. It is 1300 km long and 300km broad at the widest point. It has a very impressive mountain range as a backbone with volcanoes; some live, some simmering and some dormant. This much perhaps, and the tourist attractions,you can get from the Internet if you search for Java, Indonesia.

But what the Internet does not tell you is that almost 60% of the Javanese are engaged in some way or other, big, medium and small, in the industry of preparing food to sell. Everyone in Java knows, some one involved in the food industry. My wife sells chocolates(of course) and recently health foods.Her uncle is in fried rice. Her aunt makes tempe. A C Neilsen, will give you nice categories of occupations which they say occupy the Javanese. But they don't mention the numbers engaged in the food industry.

Along any street in Java you see carts, makeshift tents, little hole in the wall establishments offering straight from the pan absolutely superb assortment of foods with intriguing combinations of tastes, flavours and textures and immensely satisfying for prices no more that $2.

Javanese work very hard at it. The street out of the housing complex, I live in,springs to life at 4am with offers of porridge, soups, noodles and rice dishes, the flavours and tastes of which,I guarantee, Ferran Adria or Heston Blumenthol, could not possibly imagine.

These establishments are depleted of their stock by 9am. At 11am a new crop,of similar establishments spring up to serve lunch. A bigger bunch of restaurants now winding into side lanes and car park spring up for dinner. Some switch menus at 11pm to serve some innovative suppers till 2am. You see this happenning all over Java.

These are separate from the posh air conditioned and chic sidewalk cafes, restaurant which often reach to the heavens of fine dining. There are in Jakarta, the capital city, over 3000 such institutions. This does not include McDonalds, Dunking Donuts, KFCs, Burger King, Wendy, etc etc.

Java is also home to the world largest instant noodle industry. Coming soon, the instant rice-porridge industry. All with a fascinating array of flavours and mixes.

Then there are the small snack industries; Home enterprises that compete with the numbers bakeries. I believe that Bandung, a hilltop city, about two hours drive from Jakarta, is the world's cap[ital of snacks. I all my travel I have never seen such a variety of snacking foods, baked, fried or steamed.

It is possible for each Javanese entrepreneur to stay in business, support their families(some send their sons and daughters to US and Australian universities to specialise or learn new trades) and be competitive because the backyard is simply alive and bristling with appropriate resources.

Java for centuries was the hub of the Spice Islands.Here exists every spice known to man, cloves, herbs,flavours, aromas, sugars, medicinal plants and other culinary treasures. There are notorious recipes from almost each of the 17,000 islands. There are also resources from the seas that surround these islands and 360million chickens strutting around.

Here came, among others, Ptolemy and Marco Polo. Indian, Arabs, Chinese, Malays, the Portuguese, Dutch and the English came. Nearly all of them stay long enough to blend their cuisines with the Javanese. The result is that there is lot to be inventive on.

Many of the recipes have been copied and taken inside the posh restaurants where they have been prepared with the "finest ingredients money can buy". But is not the same as sitting on precarious bum-hurting stools, under a canvas roof,with the perspiring cooking stirring up your breakfast or dinner, in a noisy sizzling wok hidden under a aromatic haze of smoke. So many of those copy cats have dropped out of the race and tried Italian or Turkish.

Coming back to chocolate, what makes Java so special is the unique soil of Java, the mighty amount of culinary resources and the inspiring inventiveness that hangs around like a holy aura. This is an ideal chocolate laboratory.

Java chocolate has made a small impact on the world scene. I particularly like a review on the l'artisan de Chocolate's Java. 72% cocoa. "An Indonesian on the wild side. Unlike anything in the chocolate world. Components of leather and bizarre peaty flavours.Suggestion of smoke and tobacco." Spicy and Satin smooth.

What possibilities and opportunities to start from.