I worked in kitchens to pay my way through an economics degree and quickly realised that cooking was my passion. As a commis chef working with bread, pastry and chocolate, I was fascinated by how many times the chocolate pudding could be reinvented and wondered about the process of turning cocoa beans into chocolate.
The science is tricky. First, I taste the bean to determine its quality, then experiment with styles of roasting. Then it goes through the grinding and conching stages. Since no micro-batch chocolate-making equipment exists, I’ve become an inventor, adapting machinery parts from different cuisines: I’ve modified equipment used for grinding bulgar wheat in India, and our cocoa-butter press has been upscaled using a car jack.
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