I did it! I made my first authentic mesoamerican ancestral cacao drink, from scratch!
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This is Pozol. It’s corn that I nixtamalised and ground, then fermented for 2 days. I mixed that with cacao that I sourced from a family-run co-operative in Ecuador.
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My husband, who tries all my experiments truly loved this. He described it as ‘fantastic’. The corn lends it sweetness, a floral taste and thickness; the cacao such depth, bitterness and kick.
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The mesoamerican original cultivators and worshippers of these two amazing plants – corn and cacao – knew what they were doing with this drink!
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So grateful for the rabbit-hole that the 700-page ‘The Secret Life of Chocolate’ has sent me down. Leaning about how indigenous new world communities interacted with corn and cacao is enriching my life greatly.
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If you want to know more about the book, I talk about it on the latest @ancestralkitchenpodcast with @farmandhearth. And I’m thinking we need a whole episode dedicated to chocolate in the future!
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There will be some more pictures of my process in my story today – saved to my Chocolate highlight if you’re here later.