25. Joining the Merchant Class

July 1, 2021

• African Truffle assortment using Depa chocolate
• Depa:  our first chocolate production facility.  David's customers.
• Description of truffle production
• Other products using Depa chocolate
• Description of vendors in the Cordes Saturday morning market

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 4:58

That was the prelude in D major by Johann Sebastian Bach. It's a very tricky piece as it starts with an octave run in the pedals, quite challenging for my arthritic feet. I'm going to be playing it at our fundraiser on the 22nd of September at the Performing Arts Center, along with four or five other pieces. The fundraiser will begin with 45 minutes of organ music by me, followed by Don Marushka giving a talk about our accomplishments since the last fundraiser in November of 2019. And then we will finish with appetizers by Splash Cafe and a luscious chocolate mousse dessert made with the chocolate of Depa Côte d'Ivoire. That's where we do our work in Depa and Pesoin. And now for today's feature, which is entitled Joining the Merchant Class. Eve and I moved to Cordesurciel, France, in August 2018. For almost three years now, every Saturday morning at the market downtown, we have hunted and gathered with other Cordasien and Cordésiennes. We hunted from stall to stall, paid our money, and gathered our purchases. About four months ago, I arranged with Angelina, the owner of Cord Aubah, a store that specializes in local foods and wines, to sell the chocolate truffles that I plan to manufacture in our home kitchen. I've been doing it ever since. They come in fifteen flavors cafe double, chipotle, curry raisin, ginger, cranberry, pine nuts, peanuts, hazelnuts, whiskey, vanilla, apple pepper, banana coconut, orange, vanilla, martipan, and Arabian. I know that last one sounds sort of funny, but it's actually made with um date paste that I roll into balls and then uh and then I roll them in chocolate with in the Depa chocolate and then top it with sesame seeds. I make all of these uh truffles with the bittersweet or milk chocolate that I import from the village of Depa Côte d'Ivoire. Depa has been making chocolate since 2013 when I raised the funds for three buildings and five machines that roast, crack, winnow, and grind cocoa beans into cocoa liquor, and the fifth machine being a mélangeur that takes twenty-four hours to reduce the particle size of the cocoa liquor and sugar to fifteen microns. The result is a very fine chocolate in more ways than one. And the beans for this depa chocolate are grown by a hundred and ten members of SOCO Plan, which means Societe de Cacao de Planteur, a cooperative that means uh a group of plant of uh cocoa farmers. That's what it basically means. A cooperative that David Logbo uh David Logbo Zigro and I established several years ago. David did all the work and I supplied the money. Since then, David has been selling most of his chocolate to clinics, schools, and government offices. Clinics use his chocolate to control the blood sugar of diabetes patients. Unlike pastries, bread, and starchy staples, such as rice, potatoes, and cassava, chocolate provides calories in a measured way. It combats the debilitating peaks and valleys of blood sugar that can plague diabetics. Schools buy David's chocolate because students do a lot of thinking, and the human brain uses between 66 and 80% of one's daily blood glucose supply. For the same reason, government offices buy his chocolate so that officials and staff can make intelligent decisions. Of course, I'm saying this with tongue in cheek because, well, intelligent decisions from government people. Well, of course, it's very easy to, you know, take a pot shot at anybody who works for government. But it's also tongue-in-cheek because um I know that people eat chocolate not just to satisfy the dictates of their hypothalamus or their pancreas, these are the sites involved in regulating blood sugar, but also to satisfy the parts of their limbic systems that produce pleasure. Anyway, back to Angelina and Cordoba. She suggested that I try selling at the Saturday morning market. I found the idea intriguing and unique. A retired American pr university professor leaves intelligentsia and joins the French merchant class. Karl Marx might not approve. Economic philosophers may not like it when their categories get busted. I called Tomas at the Miries, that's the town hall, and asked him whether there might be objections to my joining the merchandisers. He replied that he saw no reason why not, and the Miries didn't even want to cut. Perhaps they saw this as a win-win. After all, local producers should be encouraged to market their wares and provide alternatives to the big box store mania that has bank bankrupted so many small businesses around the world. I get the impression that the French government might be more sensitive to the needs of small business than the US government. My impression is based partly on observation and partly on having been the owner of two bakery restaurants in Austin, Texas, and a chocolate shop in San Luis Obispo, California for almost twenty years. Nothing like years of personal sacrifice only to watch your tax dollars used to fund military hardware while giant corporations get to avoid their economic and social responsibilities. Well, I guess you know where my political leanings are. Might there be a historical reason for the difference in sensitivity of the two governments? Perhaps comparing the American and French Revolutions might shed some light. The American Revolution was an uprising against King George the Second and his government that milked the colonies until they became mad as hornets. I use that metaphor because we have a hornet's nest outside our door. Despite the wonderful language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both documents being based on a true appreciation of the Enlightenment, the fact is that in the USA, the disparities between the haves and have nots, between whites and non whites, males and females, they just won't go away. The French Revolution, in contrast, seems more systemic and deep-seated. Unlike the American Revolution, it was class based against the aristocrats and the Roman Catholic clergy, both of which for over a thousand years had cynically used their political power to gain economic power at the expense of the working and merchant classes. The resulting resentment led to the loss of 60,000 heads lopped off with a razor sharp blade, and it produced a durable sense of entitlement and empowerment that permeates the lower classes to this day. The horrors of the French Revolution in turn led to a government that is afraid of repeating history. Okay, end of segue and back to the Saturday market. I asked Tomas if there were any rules of which I should be aware. He replied show up at 7 30 AM and Bernard, the police officer, and I will be looking for you. We will show you where to set up. So the week prior to that fateful Saturday morning in April, I produced 135 truffles, which amounts to 15 boxes of nine. My plan was to assemble custom assortments on request. I had posters printed advertising the assortments as Truff Africain or African truffles. They are African in that the chocolate comes uniquely from the Daipa chocolate plant. I order ten kilograms of chocolate at a time from Dave. He pours the liquid chocolate into small boxes, which uh have about a two kilogram capacity, about 4.5 pounds. That way I don't pay any customs duties because two kilograms is the limit. Um although the cost of uh postage from Abidjan, uh the big city in Côte d'Ivoire, to my house is 15 euros per kilogram or eight dollars per pound. So you can see that's not a recipe for sustainability. Um but I'm trying to uh start off small and figure out how to grow this business. Um the blocks of chocolate arrive uh generally two weeks after he ships them. I remove the blocks from their plastic bags and cardboard boxes and put each block in a stainless steel bowl and set the oven heat at intensity number one with the fan going. Within two hours, I have liquid chocolate, which I then pour onto silicone mats and allow to set into sheets of chocolate, which I break into shards. And it is with these shards that I temper and convert into chocolate truffles. And so I've been selling truffles and chocolate dipped cookies every Saturday, but not rain or shine, just shine. Rain, humidity, and chocolate don't mix. Also, heat and chocolate don't mix, so shine without too much heat. In addition to the truffles, I've also been selling chocolate dipped cookies. These include palmiers, which faintly resemble palm leaves, and that's how they got their name, although they're made with butter puff pastry rolled out in sugar. They're very crispy and buttery and loaded with a flavor of caramelized sugar. I dipped the less handsome side in chocolate. So it's a great contrast between butter, caramel, and chocolate with a nice crunchy, creamy textural contrast. I made meringue mushrooms and hazelnut meringue fingers. These also are dipped or decorated with chocolate. I made Spritz horseshoe sandwiched with raspberry jam and dipped in chocolate and praline granules, a classic Austrian cookie, although the praline is a little French addition. I made checkerboard butter cookies, which involves two colors of butter cookie dough, one vanilla and one chocolate, and then uh uh made sliced with a knife into checkerboards, and then the back half of the checkerboard is spread with chocolate. Anything to consume chocolate. Linzeraugan, I make and I dip the top halves of the Linzeraugen in chocolate so that they then they have raspberry eyes peeking into a dark chocolate face. These are Austrian cookies that combine the flavors of butter, raspberry jam, and chocolate. Uh chocolate dip brownie cubes. I uh bake coffee, raspberry, or caramel brownies, cut them in cubes and dip them in chocolate. Uh as you can see, there's a lot of sinning going on. Uh elephant ears, butter, puff pastry rolled out in cinnamon sugar, baked and then spread with chocolate. A wonderful crunchy contrast of cinnamon and chocolate. And finally, chocolate-dipped gingerbread fingers. Gingerbread, that is the kind that I make gingerbread houses out of. Or I'm I'm going to try a German gingerbread where you boil honey. Uh, that's a really wonderful, that's the original gingerbread before they came up with molasses from the uh slave and sugar industries. Um, but this gingerbread is the molasses kind of that I'm thinking of to uh and that's also flavored with four spices, and that contrasts very well with chocolate. So on Friday evening I pack our microelectric car that resembles a giant blue bubble with an umbrella, a round table, a chair, a cooler full of truffles, a box of cookies, boxes of boxes, gallons of water for waiting down the umbrella, and some other items. Saturday morning I get up at 5.15 in the morning and leave at 7 a.m., drive up Rue de la Compadie and then zigzag down the hill into the valley opposite our house, and drive along the country road in the floodplain of the mighty Oros, a rivulet 1.5 feet wide and one foot deep that supports three brook trout. Although once I saw two fishermen wipe out the entire population in less than half an hour. I hope they got replaced. Then I drive part way back up the hill to Lower Cord, where the market is busily taking shape. Slowly I steer our petite pigeon blue electric citroen voiturette among the new numerous stalls and park next to the man who sells local canned goods such as pate de foie gras and stuffed gooseneck. One of my favorites. Both of them are my favorites. Right across from my spot is a table dedicated to the region's famous Aye Jose or pink garlic. They sell clumps of the treasured garlic bottles of odoriferous soup a lae or garlic soup, sunflower, and chamoline oil. Camelene is a plant that I hadn't heard of before, but and it's quite a nice uh spicy little oil used in salads. You can't cook with it because it's extremely unsaturated. Um to my right is a man who gives massages and sells apple juice that he has made from four varieties of wild apples, all uh wild apples, not the kinds that have been engineered. He once uh worked for Doctors Without Borders in West Africa, and he's a he's a wonderful uh talking companion. On the other side is a man who sells starter plants. Uh before the Marshall Plan uh and Keynesian economics, autos were unaffordable for most people in this region. Instead of driving 30 miles to visit Leclerc, which is a giant supermarket in Alby, for frozen and canned goods, everyone tended their own gardens and ate fresh foods daily. And to save labor, they bought starters rather than waiting weeks for seeds to sprout and become transplantable. Judging from this man's popularity, there's still a few holdouts who tend their own gardens. Next to the starter man is a woman who sells essential oils, salves, and incenses of all kinds. Next to her is a fry cook. He makes zucchini beignets with or without chev. And he makes cod across. These are codfish balls whose crispy, light, moist texture complements the aroma of deep fat herbs and fish. These things are absolutely addictive. Um, I just love them. Uh, he also makes a different stew every Saturday that he serves with either rice pilaf or pom lionese. That's potato sauce made with sliced onion. Across the way is a truck featuring three types of sushi: nigiri, maki, and chirashi. Nigiri sushi is made with balls of lightly vinegared rice topped with slices of raw fish. Maki sushi is the one made with nori seaweed that has a layer of vinegared rice and then rolled around a center of cucumbers or raw fish or cooked fish. And chirashi sushi is served in a bowl. It's um a bowl containing rice, pickled cucumbers, sesame seeds, um, often seaweed, and then topped with raw fish. Uh the sushi man started a couple of years ago, and his sushi has become far more delicate in texture. He is closer and closer to mastering the art of slamming the brakes on rice grain cookery because in order to do sushi right, you have to get the rice just the right texture. Unlike the ones you buy in the supermarket that are more sodden. Next to sushi san, sushi san is Monsieur Aligaux, who makes a popular occitan auvergne dish, Occitanie, which represents a big part of southern France, that's where we live, was once comprised of many kingdoms until Pope Innocent III, love the name, and King Philip II of France conducted a uh jointly conducted uh the Albigensian Crusade, in which was a genocide that resulted in the extermination of the Cathars who um were uh threatening the strength of the Catholic Church with an alternate religion. And the king of the uh crusade represented an annexation of Occitani, which was a very wealthy region whose taxes poured into the French treasury for centuries after that. To this day. And for the French people, well, um they got a new potato dish called aligaux, uh L I G O T. Um but Aligaux came a little later after the uh Albigensian crusade, that is, centuries later. Because potatoes weren't introduced into the French diet until the late 18th century. Algo is uh from Auvergne. It's made by whipping mashed potatoes with cantal cheese and auvergna cheese, cream, butter, and garlic using a long, strong stick to produce a gluey consistency that when lifted into the air falls back into the pot in a long rope. It's perfect street food. Great for the eye and great for the tummy. You can watch the aliggoteur making his aligot and then take it home. Fry a sausage and enjoy it with a tall glass of beer. Which is not something you would do in Auberg, but it's really good. A generation ago, before fruit and salad supplanted virtually all other forms of potatoes and vegetables on the French menu, it was not unusual to see waiters in restaurants whipping aligaux table side. Fried potatoes have done so much cultural damage. To the left of Monsieur Aligaux is Madame Aviron. Aviron is a region to the east of us. We live in Tarn. She tends a table about thirty feet long, stacked with all sorts of specialties of Aviron, which is named after the river that cuts through the uh dramatic limestone gorges and drains uh an area west of the Rhone River. Her table is topped with breads, sausages, hams, pastries, and desserts. The breads are remarkable in their formlessness. They are simply hunks of dough cut with a knife into giant strips, given final proof and baked off. They call them secret secrets, although I do not know what the secret is. Maybe it's because they save labor costs by not having to shake the dough. But I'm very fond of it. And it's it's a great dough, and it's great wheat that they make it from when it's local. Um I'm especially fond of the circle is made with walnut or sesame seeds. Madame Avion also sells hard fermented sausages of all sizes and shapes, made with ground pork and packed into casing. Uh they are hungry dry. And the longer they are ate, the harder the texture. Some of them are covered in a white mold depending upon what humidity you age them at. Among the pastries are tarts filled with prune paste or with walnut in a sticky custard like pecan pie. And then there are cakes they make with chestnut paste. I love those cakes. And there is the legendary aveune sweetbread called fouas, F-O-U-A-C-E, which is um a bastardization of fugas, which is a bastardization of focaccium from the Romans, which means cooked under coal. It's basically a brioche that is coated with a sugar syrup and sprinkled with large sugar crystals. There are also two boulangers in our community of merchants. The word boulanger refers to bread baker, as in earlier days um that in that is B B B or B4 by Get. Um the uh French ate mostly the boul. The boul was just a round ball. And hence the name. Anyway, um the breads are are made the old-fashioned way by Levin, which means using a wild yeast culture. One of the boulangers uh does a wonderful whole wheat and a half whole wheat bread, which I'm very fond of because whole wheat is much better for you if you're a diabetic. And last but not least is Olivier, a uh tall Moroccan gentleman whose twenty-foot-long table is packed with at least a dozen varieties of the world's best olives, and also dozens of dried or candy fruits, which I can look at, but I can't eat because I'm tired of it. But the olives I can eat all I want. Well, that's it on my Saturday morning effort to join the merchant class while attempting to stimulate sales of West African village-made chocolate. If you have any ideas on how you can join forces to come back, make chocolate and cut into their monopoly and cut into child labor and child slavery, let me know. You can find me at TW Newhouse, Tw N E U H A U S at Gmail.com. Leave the chocolat. Long live chocolate. And long live those of us who eat it. And now we finish with the feud in D major.