Death is Semisweet by Lou Jane Temple Read Free Book Online Page A

we’ve got one hundred and seventy something years to go, Heaven thought. “What happened in 1828?”
    “Cocoa beans are more than half cocoa butter, did you know that?” Stephanie was warming to her subject. “In 1828, a Dutch man named Conrad Van Houten invented a screw press that removed most of the butter from the bean. You ended up with cocoa powder and cocoa butter.”
    “So that’s why we call it Dutch chocolate?”
    “Not really,” Stephanie said dismissively. She wasn’t going to be hurried. “Then you added some of the cocoa butter back in to the cocoa powder, along with sugar, and it’s much smoother, it’s ‘eating’ chocolate. It became all the rage. Did you know that in World War Two, soldiers would sometimes get just three bars of chocolate to last them a whole day in battle?”
    “Boy, a bunch of troops seriously jazzed up on chocolate. No wonder we won. I remember the time Iris, she couldn’t have been more than eight, ate three Hershey’s with almonds. She didn’t come down for days.”
    “Now, do you want to know how cocoa beans get to be these blocks of chocolate we have here?” Stephanie asked sweetly. She was pouring melted milk chocolate into big metal Santa Claus molds.
    “You bet I do,” Heaven said. This would at least lead to Foster’s eventually. It had to.
    “Well, first the cocoa pods are harvested and broken apart and the pulp and the beans set out in the sun where they ferment. Things happen,” Stephanie said as she left the molded Santas to set up and deftly tossed some popcorn in a large copper bowl of dark melted chocolate. She threw in some toasted macadamia nuts that had been broken up.
    “Things happen? That’s sounds like me trying to describe blimps to Hank. What happens?”
    Stephanie gave Heaven a superior smile. “It gets hot and it kills the seeds’ embryos, for one thing. The cell walls are broken down and the astringent phenolic compounds bind together. So there.”
    “I’m assuming this is all good news,” Heaven tried gallantly. She really did want to know about chocolate but at this rate it would be News Year’s Eve before she got out of here.
    “Yes, it is. Now the beans are cleaned up and dried out and shipped to second-tier producers.”
    “Up till now, it’s been first tier?”
    “That’s right,” Stephanie said with a little surprise in her voice. Heaven was obviously interested and paying attention. “The second tier is the chocolate factory where—”
    “Like Foster’s?” Heaven interrupted.
    Stephanie shook her head. “No, no. Foster’s is a candymaker. That’s third tier. Now listen.”
    “I know, and don’t interrupt you or you’ll start all over at the Aztecs,” Heaven said with a laugh. She could see there was no quick way to do this.
    “The beans come into the chocolate factory. The chocolate factories are mostly in Switzerland, Belgium,and England. Callebaut and Valrhona are two kinds I use,” Stephanie said, pointing to two big blocks of chocolate sitting on the counter, “and they’re two of the best and most expensive.”
    You would.” Heaven too, always used the best ingredients she could afford and it didn’t surprise her that Stephanie did the same.
    “So first, the beans are roasted, then a winnowing machine cracks open the seeds. There are these little morsels inside the shells and they are called nibs. Now this is where a chocolate factory gets its distinctive style.”
    “From the nibs?” Heaven asked, deciding to just be a good student for a while and not try to lead the conversation.
    “From blending nibs from all over the world and from different estates from the same country, just like a wine-maker would.”
    “Who grows most of the cocoa?”
    “It’s called cacao until it’s broken down to the seeds, then it’s cocoa.”
    “Sorry,” Heaven said quickly. “Who grows most of the cacao?”
    “West Africa and Brazil. Any place within twenty degrees north or south of the equator can