History Mexican Chocolate
Posted by tewfic in Chocolate Articles
If you have the opportunity of travelling to Mexico, go to the colourful street markets, You will find Indian women selling fist-sized tablets made from cocoa beans which have been pan-roasted at home, peeled by hand, roughly ground on a met ate (a slab of volcanic stone used for grinding foods) and flavoured with cinnamon and a lot of sugar.
It is a far cry from what developed countries call chocolate. It doesn’t melt, it is grainy, and it crunches with sugar crystals. It is, not surprisingly, very sweet. But these tablets are intended to be grated and then dissolved in hot water or milk to make a drink that hasn’t changed much from the old recipe used by the Spanish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I grew up in Mexico, and when I return to visit my family, I still seek out the women selling their chocolate tablets in the market. I buy them for the simple pleasure of steeping myself in another culture, even though the flavour, to me, in no way replicates chocolate.
