Visiting Adams Organic Farm in Thailand

Posted on 21 April 2012 by christao408

A chance meeting with an American expat whose family is in the seed business leads to a behind-the-scenes tour of an organic vegetable farm in Korat province.

Full video here; story follows:

When I moved to Thailand a bit more than six years ago, organic produce was a rare sight. The more western-oriented supermarkets would have small sections – one or two shelves in a single refrigerated display case – featuring lonely looking organic vegetables, often flown in from foreign shores.

Today when I visit the produce section of the market, the organic selection makes up as much as about one-tenth of the available real estate. Many of the organic items are grown in Thailand, although imports are still present. The range of organic produce is wider, too: apples to arugula, okra to onions.

I am pleased that organic produce is gaining traction in the Thai market. I am also confused, though, at the number of “near” or “faux” organic products being sold. With labels like “pesticide safe”, “hygienic”, and “INSERT LABEL HERE” and no clear oversight and regulation, I am never sure just what I can safely eat.

Curious and confused, I took advantage of my recent introduction to Tim Chung, an American who is now living in Thailand to help manage his family’s organic farm and fresh vegetable operations. Tim extended an invitation to visit Adams Organic’s farm in Pak Thong Chai in Nakhon Ratchasima province – about a three-hour drive from Bangkok.

This is one of Adams Organic’s two locations. They also work with more than 20 organic rice farmers in Yasothon province in Thailand’s northeastern Isaan region, to grow organic vegetables in the dry and cool seasons. This works out well because rice does not grow efficiently during those seasons and vegetable production generally dips during the rainy season, which is prime rice-growing time.

Adams Organic started in 2009 as an offshoot of a commercial organic seed producer, AEL, whose roots stretch back more than four decades. According to Tim, they saw a growing demand in Thailand for fresh organic produce so started experimenting with the idea. They now produce about six tons of vegetables each month for retail sale.

The Pak Thong Chai farm is about 30 rai (or 12 acres). The farm grows a variety of organic vegetables, including tomatoes, zucchini, salad greens, melons, squash, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, and shallots. Some of these are grown in open fields and others are grown in net houses.

Net houses are similar to green houses except the sheeting is permeable so its effect is more to keep the insects and other pests out than to regulate the temperature. In addition, the very fine mesh of the netting provides protection from predators (including insects) that would eat crops and potentially carry unwanted diseases. Along with some additional dark sheeting, the nets provide a bit of relief from the strong sunlight and regular rain showers.

To enter the net houses, you step in a box of ground limestone. This helps reduce the risk of soil-borne disease being brought in. There are also sprayers for hand sanitizer. The two sets of double net curtains help restrict the entry of insects.

Another organic pest control methods is the placement of sticky yellow flags, which attract the insects and then trap them once they land.

Additionally, inside the net houses you find plastic containers of sulfur powder. As the sun heats the sulfur, it gives off a gas that repels certain insects and also discourages the growth of microbes and fungus. Despite all those efforts – a testament to how abundant the ranks of insects are – there were still some insects inside the net house, but none that were causing a significant problem to the crops.

An interesting side effect of these efforts to minimize insects is that pollination of the plants has to be done by hand.

In addition to not using pesticides, growing organic also means that you cannot use herbicides. The farm has several techniques to minimize the number of weeds, which are harmful to the crops because they compete for water and nourishment.

Before planting, the freshly plowed fields are covered with black plastic sheeting. In colder climates this would be done to help warm the soil and wake it for a late winter or early spring planting. Here in Thailand, the black plastic super-heats the soil, killing off many of the seeds of other plants that may be in the soil already.

Seedlings of the desired crop are planted in holes cut into the plastic. As the crops grow, the plastic sheeting minimizes the number of competing weeds by cutting off any sunlight to them. Hand-weeding is also necessary while the crops are young. As the crops grow older, though, grasses and less-invasive weeds are allowed to grow side-by-side with the crops.

To conserve water, a drip irrigation system is used. This ensures that the plants receive a regular supply of water that is focused on the area immediately around the plant, reducing waste.

As I learned during the visit, farming is a cyclical practice: the nutrients that you take from the ground must be replaced. In conventional farming, this is done with petroleum-based chemical fertilizers. With organic farming, the cycle is sustained in a variety of ways. For example, fields are planted in a rotating basis to ensure that soil quality is not diminished. For example, fields that grow tomatoes might then be plated with zucchini and then allowed to lie fallow before tomatoes are planted again. Different plants take and return different nutrients to the soil, one reason that the industrial agricultural practice of planting huge expanses with a single crop season after season, so called “mono-crops,” is so damaging.

Additionally, the farm makes its own compost from trimmings and the remnants of plants after the fruits and vegetables are harvested. These trimmings are allowed to ferment and be biodegraded in plastic barrels before being worked back into the fields with organic steer manure. They are in the process of constructing a vermiculture – worm-based – composting system, too.

One of the challenges when growing organic is keeping your fields from being contaminated from outside sources. To counter this, Adams Organic maintains an awareness of what is grown on neighboring farms and ensure that their fields are set back sufficiently from the property borders to maintain the organic quality of their produce.

Our final stop on the tour was the packing house, a small warehouse that includes sanitary processing rooms and a chiller room. Produce is picked almost every day and the workers inspect, trim, and package the vegetables. The packaged vegetables are then stored in the chiller room before being delivered three times a week to Bangkok-area stores by refrigerated truck.

Their produce is available at ten locations of Tops supermarkets, several Foodland locations, and four Gourmet Marketplace locations (associated with the Mall Group). They also have a retail storefront on Soi Saladaeng and they are working towards a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture program where you pay a subscription rate and receive weekly deliveries of the freshest produce.

One of my big questions about organic food in Thailand is the extent to which it is reliably organic. On our trip, we were joined by a US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) certified inspector. Adams Organic is regularly inspected not only by US-licensed inspectors, but also inspectors for the European Union, Japan, and Korea. The inspections occur not because their food is currently exported (all of it is sold within Thailand) but because their original and primary business is growing organic seeds, which are exported for sale.

Tim explained that it is difficult to give a general statement about organic providers in Thailand. The only way to be completely certain is to have your own chemical test kit and test different brands to see for yourself. Of course, that isn’t practicable. Most organic brands use a variety of farmers to provide their produce. The key, he explained, is to have good quality control to ensure all the products are grown by farmers who strictly follow organic practices.

While the market for organics is expanding, the retail price for organics is relatively low compared to Singapore and Hong Kong. This is good news for Thai consumers but creates a challenge for organic farmers. The retail operation is not yet profitable for Adams Organic, but they see this as a long-term project. Proper positioning now will give them the opportunity to develop the market and build a sustainable, profitable business in sustainable, healthy produce.

Many thanks to Tim and the folks at Adams Organic for letting me take a behind-the-scenes look and share it with you. From left to right: Flerida, Tim, me, Ken, and Chow.

Food in Bangkok: The Bibimbab

Posted on 15 April 2012 by christao408

Recently a new Korean restaurant opened near the mouth of Sukhumvit Soi 24 immediately across from the Emporium. It is called The Bibimbab and its menu focuses on the classic Korean one-pot meal which features a ridiculously hot stone bowl filled with rice, vegetables, meat, and chili paste, which you then mix together before eating. Tawn and I visited for dinner two weeks ago.

There are those cuisines with which I am extremely familiar and there are other cuisines about which I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like to. Korean is one of the latter. I always enjoy eating Korean food but I often feel a bit lost, uncertain of what I’m doing, how I should order, and whether the food I’m eating is very good or just passable by Korean standards. Bear that in mind as I talk about the restaurant, please.

The Bibimbab is an attractive place to passers-by. The restaurant is airy and bright. The logo is colorful and modern. It is the type of place that is designed to appeal to people like me: those who like Korean food but don’t know much about it. That fact alone should probably make me nervous, right?

We visited on a weeknight a few weeks after they opened. The tables were full and new customers were arriving and filling seats just as quickly as they were vacated. The interior looks a bit like a fast-food restaurant although it provides table service. The menu focuses on bibimbab, fried rice, and soups. They do not offer any of the “grill it yourself” dishes that are popular at many Korean restaurants.

The restaurant’s branding and social media marketing is very up-to-date. They clearly want you to connect with your favorite bibimbab restaurant via your smart phone, tablet, computer, etc.

Their website actually offers useful information for the novice Korean food eater including helpful cartoons illustrating how to eat different dishes as well as general Korean food eating etiquette tips. Above is one an example of one of those helpful cartoons.

Your meal begins with complimentary banchan. These are the side dishes (often erroneously referred to as kimchi, I learned – which refers only to the fermented vegetables) that accompany rice in Korean meals. Just by writing this entry, my knowledge about Korean food has expanded! The restaurant refills these throughout your meal. While the staff was busy, they were helpful and friendly.

An overview of our meal. We ordered two dishes and shared them. Along with the side of rice and broth that came with one dish, we had a very hearty meal for two people, coming in at about 500 baht or under US$17.

Our first dish was the jeyook bibimbab, rice and vegetables with spicy stir-fried pork. This was tasty. One of the nice things about bibimbab is the crispy crust of rice that forms at the bottom of the bowl. When it is time to eat it, there’s a nice crunchiness to it, a textural contrast to the rest of the dish.

We also ordered dakbokkeumtang – spicy chicken stew with vegetables. While this wasn’t the spiciest Korean soup I’ve had – I remember a date years ago who took me to a Korean restaurant in Los Angeles, serving me a spicy tofu soup that nearly dissolved my tongue – it was spicy enough. Flavors were good and I couldn’t help but think that this would be perfect food for chilly weather… if only we had some chilly weather in Bangkok!

Overall, I was satisfied with The Bibimbab and imagine we’ll go back from time to time. The prices are reasonable for dinner, the portions generous, and the food is tasty. The question about authenticity is one I can’t answer, but at some level you have to ask whether authenticity is more important than simply enjoying the food.

Baking: Lychee and Rhubarb Pie

Posted on 9 April 2012 by christao408

Two weekends ago I traveled to Samut Songkhram, the smallest of Thailand’s 77 provinces, located about ninety minutes to the southwest of Bangkok. There I had lunch with Ajarn Yai (literally, “big teacher”), the retired director of the rural school where I previously volunteered as an English teacher. This being lychee season, Ajarn Yai insisted that we take several big bunches of freshly-harvested lychees. Once home, I decided to try something new: a lychee-rhubarb pie.

Lychee are the fruit of an evergreen tree that grows in tropical and subtropical climates. The fruit is round, about one inch (two to three centimeters) in diameter, and is covered in a leathery rind. Peeling is easy, if slightly tedious.

The interior flesh has a grape-like texture – firm but slightly squishy. Most lychee have a large, inedible pit but some trees produce seedless fruit informally called khathoey (or ladyboy) lychee by the Thais. The flavor of lychee is sweet and perfumey, not overpowering but slightly astringent – especially in not-quite-ripe fruit.

It is this astringency that made me think of rhubarb. Since the lychee were sweet and astringent and the rhubarb is tart, I thought they might make a refreshing dessert – kind of in the same way that a lemon sorbet can cleanse your palate between courses in a meal. I peeled the lychee, chopped the rhubarb, and mixed in some sugar and corn starch as a thickener.

Trying something different for my pie crust, I cut rounds (in honor of the shape of the lychee) to form the top crust. It then went into the oven for about 40 minutes until the crust was golden and the filling cooked through.

The end result: The filling was a little dryer than I would have liked and quite tart, too. That’s probably because I added only a half-cup of sugar. I liked the flavor, though, and it worked very nicely as a refreshing dessert after a richly flavored meal, cutting through the flavors of the meal better than a heavier, sweeter dessert would. Next time, though, I think a bit more sugar is called for and also a few minutes of pre-cooking the filling to extract more juices.

Saigon Journal

Posted on 4 April 2012 by christao408

My entry about bánh mi I made for brunch a few weeks back reminded me of a trip Tawn and I took to Ho Chi Minh City in February 2006 with my high school friend Ryan.

The whole entry is here, in case you’d like to peruse the photos, some of which are quite good.

Bánh Mi Brunch

Posted on 2 April 2012 by christao408

A few weekends ago we had friends over for brunch. I had slow-roasted a pork shoulder and thought it might be nice to thinly slice the meat and make Bánh Mi, the Vietnamese style sandwiches, as a main course.

Appetizer: cubes of fresh mango (so sweet this time of year!), drizzled with plain yogurt and sprinkled with some homemade granola.

Homemade Bánh Mi: Baugettes from Le Blanc bakery on Sukhumvit Soi 39 with sliced roasted pork shoulder, corriander, mayonnaise, pickled carrots and daikon radish, hot peppers, and a splash of fish sauce. In this initial round, I didn’t add enough pickles. The next evening I made another batch, this time with more pickles, and the results were much closer to authentic.

Fresh papaya and watermelon for dessert.

And a loaf of homemade banana bread, served with some whipped cream cheese and butter.

The Problem with Governors Eating Pink Slime

Posted on 30 March 2012 by christao408

Even 8,000 miles away, I’ve been unable to avoid hearing about “pink slime” – or, if you prefer, “finely textured lean beef” – and the resulting commotion being made as people come to learn that the ground beef they are buying often contains additives that have been treated in some disturbing ways.

This week, a trio of governors (Brownback from Kansas, Perry from Texas, and Branstad from Iowa) visited a Nebraska meat processing plant owned by the ominously named Beef Products, Incorporated, with media in tow. To prove their claim that this finely textured lean beef is safe to eat, after their tour of the plant they ate hamburgers made from the meat additive.

Good for them, but their publicity stunt missed the larger issue. The question isn’t whether or not this finely textured lean beef meets the minimum standards of food safety. The question is whether consumers have a right to know whether the ground beef they are buying contains any of this highly processed additive.

Let me explain my rationale: When you go to the store and buy a pound of ground beef, or when you buy a “100% beef” hamburger at a restaurant, this is what you probably have in your mind:

You expect chunks of beef, perhaps with a little more fat than this picture shows, that have been ground. But if that’s all you expect, you may be in for a stomach-turning shock.

It has been reported that up to 70% of the ground beef sold in the United States has finely textured lean beef (a.k.a. “pink slime”) added to it and, of that ground beef, up to 25% of the total may be made up of the additive.

This additive is made from the stuff that’s left over once all the “meat” is cut off the cow’s caracas: stuff like connective tissue and spinal, rectal, and digestive lining. In the strictest sense, I guess it is “beef”… but it isn’t what I have in mind when I buy ground beef.

Now, my personal philosophy on food and nutrition is that we are better off when we eat food that has been processed as little as possible – ideally, not at all. Each step of processing robs nutrients from the food and generally increases the cost of the food.

When I think of eating meat – and despite having spent a few years in university as a vegetarian, I’m definitely a meat eater – I would never want to eat any meat that has had to be sent through large rollers, as in the picture above, which shows how the finely textured lean beef is produced at the BPI plant. “Meat” that has to be sent through rollers can’t be a healthy choice, even if it meets the Food and Drug Administration’s definition of “generally recognized as safe.”

Which is why I think at the heart of this matter – the heart that the merry trio of hamburger helper governors has missed – is a question of transparency, of consumers’ right to know, of truth in labeling. Something that is labeled as “100% ground beef” shouldn’t contain any finely textured lean beef… which we more accurately ought to call “ammonia bathed offal.” Instead, it should be labeled something like “ground beef with up to X% additives.”

Again, I’m not saying that this product shouldn’t be allowed to exist on the market. I just think that we have a right to know what has been added to our food and how our food has been processed before we buy it.

Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

Posted on 26 March 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to show her how to make pie crust. When I asked what kind of pie she wanted to make, she suggested a sweet potato pie. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve never had a sweet potato pie. Nonetheless, I agreed and sought out a recipe. Ultimately, I settled on a combination sweet potato / pecan pie.

The sweet potato pie isn’t that far off from a pumpkin pie. You roast sweet potatoes, skin them,then mix the flesh with sugar, a little salt, and an egg. That filling is put into an unbaked pie shell and topped with pecans and a pecan pie filling – a sugar syrup and egg mixture. Bake it until set.

End result with freshly made whipped cream. Turned out nicely!

Lard-o-Licious Bangkok

Posted on 18 March 2012 by christao408

On March 16 and 17, an event space in Bangkok called Opposite hosted a pop-up restaurant called Lard-o-Licious. A friend of mine served as sous chef and invited me to the event. While some of my non-pork eating readers may be turned off, I was really excited to attend this dinner.

Opposite (second floor of the building on the right) is located off Sukhumvit Soi 51, a small alley just a short walk from the Thong Lo BTS station. It is also just one soi over from our condo. The pavement in front is uneven and badly in need of replacement. An international school is down the street and a few restaurants and massage parlors fill out the rest of the neighborhood.

Opposite is thus named because it is located directly across the soi from a bar/restaurant called WTF, owned by Somrak Sila and Christopher Wise, the same people who own Opposite. The space is about 60 square meters (600 square feet) and has a kitchen and bar area. It is perfect for gallery exhibitions, dinners, parties, performances, and other such events.

When I arrived I found my friend Brian Bartusch, on the left, helping chef Jess Barnes prepare dishes. The well-inked Jess hails from Melbourne, Australia and has worked in a wide variety of restaurants both there and in Bangkok including at Grossi Trattoria and Bed Supperclub. He will be the chef of Quince, a new Modern Australian restaurant set to open in May on Sukhumvit Soi 45.

Sneaking a peak in the kitchen, I saw some watermelon salad with toasted pistachios and some homemade pickled vegetables.

Plates and plates of freshly made bread, with which to slather up all of the good flavors that would follow.

As we arrived, there were plates on the tables with liver and Thai brandy pate with house made mustard fruits on crostini. I really enjoy pate (perhaps thanks to my paternal grandfather who fed me lots of liverwurst when I visited as a child) and this met expectations.

The space was arranged with three long tables running the length of the space, a small temporary bar mixing white sangria as guests arrived, a screen showing a loop of food-related videos, and lamps made from used plastic rice bags. The lamps echoed traditional northern Thai paper lamps and were a colorful touch.

Before dinner started, the organizers of the event said a few words then local illustrator Kathy Macleod showed us a 7-minute animated video providing a brief history of pork. I filmed it and have embedded it above for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately, I didn’t seek out her permission to share the video but hopefully this counts as fair use. Please see her facebook page for more information about her comics. (Link to video on YouTube for high definition version.)

The first course was composed of four dishes. Shown here are steamed buns (similar to Chinese style bao) filled with pulled pork shoulder, red cabbage slaw, and prawn mayonnaise. These were very fun and the pork was flavorful and tender, albeit a little under-seasoned. I ended up eating only about half the bun for fear I would fill myself too quickly.

Also on the table were jars of head cheese – confit pork terrine served with olives and pickled vegetables. The name “head cheese” makes some people squeamish. Really, there is no need. It is basically made with the various scraps of meat from the animal’s head, much in the same way that sausage is made from various scraps of meat from elsewhere in the body. The head cheese was very flavorful and tender.

The next dish was roasted bone marrow with Italian parsley salad and shallot jam. Bone marrow is another one of those dishes that some folks have a problem with. Anthony Bourdain called it the “butter of the gods” and, in my opinion, he isn’t far off. It is rich and fatty and flavorful. While you might think that your cholesterol shoots through the roof just as soon as the platter is set down in front of you, the good news is that bone marrow is rich in monounsaturated fat as well as protein.

The final dish of the first course was a watermelon and mint salad served with rosewater, pistachio, and feta cheese. I was pleasantly surprised to see this dish, considering that I’ve made variations of it twice in the past month and a half.

The pacing was leisurely – the entire meal took over three hours – so we had time to visit with other people at the table and to get up and wander around. One of the interesting things about family style seating is that, of course, you end up meeting people sitting next to you whom you’ve never previously met. The drawback in this situation was that there were a lot of people who already knew each other and Tawn and I were outsiders, but folks were very friendly. I spent a good portion of the evening chatting with the owner of Bed Supperclub, who was seated directly across from me. I will say that in my advancing age, it is increasingly hard for me to carry on conversations in moderately loud environments.

The second course also featured four dishes. The first was smoked pork loin served with cabbage and sticky juices. The menu said it was served with puffed grains but I didn’t see those. There was wild rice served on the side to absorb the yummy juices. This dish was fantastic – very tender and flavorful.

Another interesting dish was the pork cooked in milk, served with white beans and lovage. Lovage is an herbacious perennial plant – a fact I had to look up. Braising the pork in milk worked very well to make it exceedingly tender. The dish was very enjoyable although it was lacking a little bit of salt. Tawn pointed out that, despite not being a Thai dish, a bit of fish sauce and a few Thai chilies would have complemented it perfectly.

A third dish was eggplant, labne and soy bean salad, with romesco sauce. This may have been the highlight of the evening. It had tremendous flavor, hearty but not heavy. Labne is yoghurt which has been strained to remove the whey.

The final dish in the second course was fennel, citrus, spring onions, celery, and holy basil. This was a combination of flavors I really liked but the fennel was tremendously tough which made it unpleasant to eat.

Our meal was accompanied by a trio of wines from a Thai vineyard called Monsoon Valley – a 2011 Colombard, 2010 Shiraz, and a 2010 fortified Muscat. All three were pleasant. Thai wines have been slowly improving and while they still have some way to go, I’ve been having more of them in the past year or two that impress me. There were also two home-brewed beers made by Brian, one a pale ale and the other a toasted coconut malt.

For dessert we had a bittersweet chocolate and blood cake (more of a mousse, really) with hazelnut pastry and tangerine ice cream. The big question at the table was, “Is it real blood!?” I went to ask the chef and, sure enough, it was real pig’s blood. A mixture of equal parts of chocolate and pig’s blood are blended and cooked. I think cream is added, if I recall correctly, along with some gelatin. It is then chilled overnight and foamed to lighten the texture. How did it taste? Fantastic. You would never had known there was blood in there – it just tasted like a very rich chocolate mousse.

All in all, the meal – which was about $65 per person inclusive of everything – was quite a reasonable price for a special occasion dinner. There was plenty of food and wine and the menu was both tasty and creative. I enjoy when food can engage me intellectually as well as in the more traditional ways such as through flavor, smell, and texture. I’m looking forward to the next pop-up restaurant event at Opposite as well as the opening in two months of Quince, Jess Barnes’ new restaurant here in Bangkok.

Attempt to Bake Gougères

Posted on 16 March 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago, I tried my hand at making gougères, a French pastry that the ever-helpful 101cookbooks.com describes as “golden pom-poms of cheese-crusted magic.” They use a dough similar to the choux pastry dough used to make éclairs and cream puffs but are supposed to be easier to make. Here’s what the finished product looks like, according to 101cookbooks.com’s recipe:

Beautiful, right? So I decided to make some for a brunch I was hosting. The recipe wasn’t too hard to follow: bring a mixture of beer (or water, if you prefer), milk, butter, and salt just to a boil. Add a mixture of all-purpose and whole-wheat flours, stirring until smooth and slightly toasted. Cool slightly then mix in the eggs, one at a time. Finally, mix in grated cheddar cheese and portion onto a baking tray, cooking immediately.

Following the recipe, I made my dough, measuring carefully and mixing in the eggs as indicated. The mixture seemed a little loose, though. Instead of following my instincts and trying to thicken it by adding more flour (which would have given it a taste of raw flour since it hadn’t been toasted along with the rest of the mixture), I proceeded with the dough as it was.

Portioned onto the parchment-lined baking sheet, the dough confirmed my fears. It started spreading too much. Undaunted, I sprinkled a little more cheese and some anise seeds on top and put them into the oven.

The end results were decidedly flatter than the ones in the recipe’s picture. The taste was okay, but they didn’t have the “poof” I was looking for. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I did wrong but I would like to try again.

Making Chocolates at Baker Republic

Posted on 12 March 2012 by christao408

In February, a new store opened on Sukhuvmit Soi 49. Called Baker Republic, it specializes in the supplies candy and cake-makers need to produce the finest desserts. In the run-up to Valentine’s Day, they offered complimentary chocolate making classes, for which Chow and I signed up.

Fresh flowers add a touch of elegance to Baker Republic’s light-filled store on the second floor of the 49 Terrace shopping center.

The shop is owned by a family whose business is importing packaged foodstuffs. Since many of the brands they import sell goods used for baking, opening a shop like Baker Republic was an obvious next step. On the right side of the picture is their climate-controlled chocolate storage room. Like a humidor for fine chocolates, this room ensures that the chocolate you buy is at its very best.

As part of the class, we were invited to conduct a chocolate tasting, working through different brands and different percentages of cacao. As hard as it was, I forced myself to put up with this tortuous task! By the end, I had confirmed that I prefer darker chocolates to lighter ones and more expensive chocolates to cheaper ones.

Some of the other baking supplies offered at Baker Republic. From candles to sprinkles, fillings to flours, they seemed to have just about anything you would need in order to bake. Now, an interesting question arises here: do enough people in Bangkok bake to really give a shop like this a chance to survive? Most city homes don’t have ovens, at least not full-size baking ovens.

Our instructor started with white chocolate, melting it on top of a bowl of simmering water in order to “temper” the chocolate. I had heard of the process before but hadn’t understood it. Tempering is the process of controlling the size of the cocoa butter crystals. When the crystals are of a uniform, small size, the surface of the chocolate will have a uniform sheen and it will snap when you break it. Untempered chocolate will have irregular, larger crystals and the surface will have a matte appearance, crumbling when you break it.

There are a few different methods to temper chocolate but the result of each is that you bring the chocolate to a high enough temperature to melt all the cocao butter crystals, then cool it slowly to a point where the medium- and small-size crystals form, stirring all the while. Finally, you again heat the chocolate, but only to a temperature where the medium-size crystals melt. Yes, it is a little tricky.

To make different colored chocolates using the white chocolate as a base, we added food coloring. The secret, though, is that you have to use an oil-based food coloring with chocolate. Water-based colorings, such as those you use when baking Red Velvet cake, won’t work.

From left: the powdered food coloring mixed with a small amount of melted cocao butter; the resulting paste dribbled onto tempered, partially-melted white chocolate; and then the color being stirred into the chocolate.

Parchment paper bags were filled with the chocolate and we started filling the plastic molds. Above, Chow tries her hand at filling the molds so that there are no air bubbles.

One thing I quickly learned is that you don’t have nearly as much control over the squeezing of the chocolate as you think you do. I suppose it takes a practiced hand to build sufficient technique.

Trying to get fancy, I add layers of different colored chocolate, popping the tray into the refrigerator for a few minutes in between each layer to help it set.

Mid-way through the process you can see some filled molds as well as others where I’ve tried to add squiggles that will then be topped with chocolate of a different color. Trying to create fine, thin lines of chocolate was a challenge.

The goal was to not have any air bubbles, so after filling the trays we would tap them on the counter several times, then hold them up and inspect them. You can see several bubbles around the yellow squiggles where the purple chocolate hasn’t filled in the spaces completely.

Next, we moved to dark chocolate. Truth be told, I don’t much care for white chocolate, although it can more easily be colored.

Close-up of my chocolate molds. Again, you can see the challenge with air bubbles. As you tap the trays on the counter, the bubbles work their way to the surface. But if the chocolate has cooled too much, the shape of the popped bubble holds and you don’t have a pleasantly smooth surface. These are the very chocolates that appear (finished) in the first picture of this entry.

P1200416

After about twenty minutes in the fridge, the chocolates popped right out of the molds. You can see where those bubbles on the purple and yellow striped chocolates never went away. The chocolate was nicely tempered, though, and had a nice sheen and pleasant snap.

The other two students, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, used heart-shaped molds and piped the letters L-O-V-E – backwards and upside-down, nonetheless – to create this cute presentation.

After this experience, I’m inclined to think that, just as with baking macarons, making chocolates is one of those skills for which it is better to just pay for someone else’s expertise! That said, I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about chocolate making at Baker Republic.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Tag Archives: food