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Mexican Lifestyles Food & Dining Local Entrepreneur Cooks Up Cacao With Subtleties
Mexican Lifestyles Food & Dining Local Entrepreneur Cooks Up Cacao With Subtleties | Local Entrepreneur Cooks Up Cacao With Subtleties |
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| Written by Bob Kelly | |
| Saturday, 23 April 2005 | |
 'Chocolate maker Maria Luna (L) dips a truffle in the kitchen of Sensual Chocolatiers, which Mike McKenna (R) started in San Miguel de Allende and plans to expand.' - Photo By CR Files Good chocolates should be tasted the same way good wine is, slowly and in small amounts, according to chocolatier Mike McKenna, whose creations are sold retail and served at private and government functions, including those at Los Pinos, the official home of MexicoÕs president. ItÕs better to savor just one piece than to down several and miss the complexity of the different chocolates and flavorings, including the aftertaste, added McKenna, who is an ardent but easy-to-listen-to advocate of not trifling with truffles. While you canÕt dip your nose into a chocolate the way you can a wine glass, McKenna advises taking a small bite, rolling it in your mouth to start absorbing the flavors, inhaling to let the aroma build in your nose, chewing some more and swallowing slowly. But donÕt take another bite right away because youÕll miss the aftertaste, which can last for several minutes or longer. Many customers have gotten the slower-is-better message, stopping in daily to pay 10 pesos, or about 90 cents, for one truffle, he added. McKennaÕs company, Sensual Chocolatiers, is gearing up for the annual sales rush before MotherÕs Day, May 10, at its retail stores in San Miguel, Guanajuato and Queretaro. You wonÕt find any heart-shaped pieces with ÒI Love You, MomÓ on top. Mexican customers prefer the classic truffle in the 25 flavors available at any one time, McKenna said. For those for whom nothing is too good for mother, the stores will offer a keepsake glass box with brass fittings made by San Miguel artisans and filled with 18 truffles for 350 pesos ($31.50). Operating out of a one-room kitchen, McKennaÕs crew can hand make up to 1,000 truffles a day from some 200 flavors. In about two months, Sensual Chocolatiers will move to a new and larger facility outside San Miguel that will have a capacity of 50,000 truffles daily, enough to supply the 35 stores McKenna plans to open short-term. At full capacity, the plant will require 25 new employees added to the present 25 now on staff. McKenna said heÕs negotiating for a store in Puerta Vallarta and will be looking soon for space around Lake Chapala and in Leon, Irapuato and Morelia. The long-term goal is 100 stores, which will require additional capacity, but McKenna stressed, Òthere still wonÕt be any molds. Our products always will be hand made.Ó Years ago, while McKenna was building industrial furnaces around Hamilton, Ontario, he also became an enthusiastic confectioner. Unable to find good chocolates when he moved to San Miguel four years ago, he said, he began making truffles he sold through distributors. Unhappy that he couldnÕt control the freshness of his products, he opened his own stores two years ago, where chocolates move off shelves in three days. The company also provides smaller versions of the glass box as gifts for guests attending functions at Los Pinos, the state capital in Guanajuato and in San Miguel, which has designated the company as official city chocolatier. McKenna also supplies bed-and-breakfasts from Rhode Island to California with the truffle on the pillow at night. Mexico is a chocolatierÕs dream, McKenna said, because of the distinctiveness of the chocolate, in this case from Oaxaca, where the fermented, roasted cacao beans yield Òa wickedly good flavor.Ó Depending on the desired result, McKenna mixes coarser Oaxacan chocolate with products from other countries that are ground to be smoother. Also important are the sugars, fruit and other ingredients for flavorings. ÒWe could come up with 10 new recipes a week with everything we have to work with,Ó he said. A chance stop at a roadside stand recently yielded capulines, a dark-red fruit with a subtle flavor McKenna likens to a chokecherry. The result was a new product that was well received at an informal tasting this week. A local favorite is the San Miguel truffle with its chile accent. McKenna is experimenting with tequila and brandy flavors and has planted 8,000 agave cacti near the new building, enough for a syrup for the chocolates and a tequila made the old-fashioned way, he said, with the help of locals with the know-how and old but functioning equipment. |
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