At this weekend’s Open Farm Days, Albertans are being welcomed onto farms and ranches to get a better sense of how food grows and gets from the farm field to our dinner table.
It’s a huge movement sweeping the culinary world, in restaurants, cookbooks and on TV cooking shows. But for the health or eco-conscious, and even the at-home cook too, there’s a growing interest and appreciation for ethically-grown, organic, natural foods. Wherever possible, fresh, locally-grown and sourced fare is desirable, but in central and northern Alberta, where there’s a much shorter growing season than many places in the world, it’s not always possible.
The popularity of farmers’ markets like St. Albert’s own wildly popular market and organic home delivery produce programs (SPUD and Organic Box make weekly deliveries in St. Albert) attest to the public desire to know and support farmers and farms, whether local or further afield. John Schneider, owner of Morinville-area Gold Forest Grains grows and mills antique wheats he sells to restaurants and at farmers’ markets to a public that snatches up every bag of flour he offers.
For Edmonton-area chocolatier Jacqueline Jacek, owner of Jacek Chocolate Couture, the quest to take her boutique chocolate business to the next level by going to the source of where chocolate making begins – the cacao farms south of the border – has already been a rewarding journey.
Jacek is now the first chocolate company in the region to source ethically-harvested raw cacao from growers in Peru, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Once shipped here, the beans are sorted, roasted, winnowed and refined at the company’s Sherwood Park studio before they are turned into bars for the Jacek fabric collection.
“We wanted more ownership of our product, to start from the cacao bean and the farm,” said Jacek, who combines her passion for chocolate and fashion in all her products – bars, artisan truffles and other creations sold from the Sherwood Park and 104 Street shops, plus through Save-On Foods stores in St. Albert. The local retailer carries Jacek’s fashion icon-inspired Coco bar (named for Coco Chanel) and the Audrey (a two-toned bar named for style-inspiration Audrey Hepburn).
With the new bean-to-bar fabric collection, Jacek is even offering tasting bars in store, recommending how to pair the nuances of Central America-sourced dark chocolate bars with coffees, teas, cheese, wines and even whiskeys.
“For me it’s all about sharing the joy. That’s why it has been important to meet farmers, learn about cacao farming and understand that these workers have as much passion and pride in their efforts and product as I do. It’s a challenge to find the right people to work with, but this is a 30-year project. We want to fill consumers in on the farmers’ stories so they get to know the cacao and chocolate story too: why things cost what they do,” said Jacek, who spent time earlier this year touring cacao farms in Costa Rica.
Jacek chocolate maker Curtis Jones said the bean-to-bar initiative is a natural step from his career as a chef, where he used chocolate as an ingredient and was motivated to learn to make it from scratch. In his evolution from chocolatier to chocolate maker, Jones has even fashioned a device to spin the husk off roasted cacao beans, allowing the heavier cocoa nibs to separate before they spend 72 hours in a refiner and are ground into a silky-smooth chocolate liquid.
“I really like sharing the chocolate making process with people, and hopefully it elevates their enjoyment even more,” he said.
Jacek said the enjoyment – the joy – is key, but she appreciates having complete control over the product, from start to finish. “Knowing exactly where your raw materials are coming from is important – it makes us more mindful about how connected we are to that farmer growing the cacao bean, their passion and commitment in the earliest part of the process. It’s a lot of effort to be farm-to-table in thinking and practice, but it’s worth it.”
Jacek will be a featured vendor when Edmonton Food Tours get up and running Sept. 3. Tour patrons will make a stop at the company’s 104 Street store to learn more about the bean-to-bar initiative and have a sample of the ethically-sourced product.
