76 04/2018
Exploring the past and future of Vietnamese chocolate Text and Images by James Pham THE VIETNAMESE HAVE A saying: Phi cua Troi, muoi doi chang co, meaning “Waste what God gives you and the next ten generations will go without.” Likely no one has mastered the art of multi-purposing quite like the humble people of the Mekong Delta where absolutely nothing goes to waste. In a small riverside workshop just outside of Vinh Long, a handsome older woman uses a ladle made from a coconut shell to pour rice flour batter over a piece of cloth stretched over a steamer. Her silvery hair is pulled back tight, revealing flawless skin that belies her seven decades. With practiced flicks of the wrist, she deftly coaxes the delicate rice flour crepe off in one piece, setting it on a bamboo mat to dry. Nearby, a family member uses discarded rice husks to feed a fire. Over it, she heats up sand in a large wok into which she throws a handful of unmilled rice. The kernels soon explode like popcorn, erupting into a fireworks display of fluffy white projectiles, ready to be mixed with ginger and sweet rice malt to make a tasty puffed rice treat. In the Mekong Delta, rice is the gift that keeps on giving. The stalks of the rice plant are dried and used as animal fodder, the husks as kindling, the ash as fertilizer and the kernels as food or cooked into malt. It’s the same with coconuts, another staple here. Tree trunks are carved into utensils, palm leaves are woven into thatch, and the juice, milk, flesh and shells of the coconuts themselves have dozens more uses. While rice and coconuts are familiar sights in the Delta, it’s another crop with multiple uses that’s brought me here today, one not typically associated with Vietnam—cacao. While most of the world grows the hardier and higher-yielding variety of cacao called Forastero, Vietnam’s finer Trinitario strain is a hybrid of Forastero with the more flavorful Criollo. The green, yellow or red shells can be shredded and used as substrate for growing mushrooms and the tartly sweet, almost mangosteen-like flesh can be eaten or made into alcohol. However, it’s the beans inside which command the most value. After fermenting, drying and roasting, the cocoa nibs are then ground and pressed, yielding cocoa liquor (used for making dark chocolate), cocoa butter (used for white chocolate and cosmetics) and cocoa powder. Originally introduced by the French in the late 19th century, the fate of cacao in Vietnam has waxed and waned over the last century or so. In colonial times, cacao gave way to more profitable crops like coffee and rubber. There was renewed interest in the 80s, but potential European and Russian buyers faded amidst the tumult brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the early 2000s, NGOs, foreign development programs, Hot chocolate at the Muoi Cuong Cacao Farm - Chocolate Tour by EXO TRAVEL OI VIETNAM 77