Mangaluru:

With China increasingly looking towards India to meet growing demand for areca nut back home, the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd will export two metric tonnes of tender areca nut in the first week of August.

The husk of tender nut is used widely in China to make mouth freshener and other edible items after due processing there.

As per a memorandum of understanding between Campco management and Kou Wei Wang (King of Taste), the Chinese company will depute its experts to the Puttur unit of the multi-state cooperative in the second week of July. The experts will impart training on processing and standardization of products of their requirement, said Konkodi Padmanabha, former president of Campco, who was part of a three-member delegation that visited China last week.

Padmanabha said as per a Campco study, areca nut is grown to the tune of 1.22 lakh tonnes in Hunan province of China annually. “There are around 20 manufacturers of areca nut mouth fresheners across China. Nine out of 26 states in China use mouth fresheners made out of tender areca nut, and the agreement (with Kou Wei Wang) could well open the doors for more imports of the raw material there,” he said.

Noting that the Hunan-based company has capacity to supply only to nine states and is unable to give to the rest due to the lack of raw material, he said the company is producing high-standard value added products compared to other companies that produce areca nut products of different standard. “We will collect data on (other) companies and also meet their demand for all varieties of areca nut grown in India at a future date as and when they raise a demand,” he added.

Suresh Bhandary, managing director, said Kou Wei Wang has indicated its preference for the first quality areca nut for their needs and have indicated a price of Rs 350-400/kg. This will be a good rate for the growers and also provide them financial back up in the eventuality of courts in India banning supari and gutka completely, he said. Further exports depends on how the first consignment due for exports in August is received there.

S R Satish Chandra, president, the Campco Ltd, said, “Demand for areca nut far outweighs domestic production in China. In future, Chinese companies may set up their mouth freshener producing units in India itself.”

Suresh Bhandary, MD, the Campco Ltd, said, “Tender areca nut is boiled for one hour and then dried. Chinese companies have the machines needed for the process. If Kou Wei Wang wants some modification to the machine we have, Campco will do so.”

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Mangalore / Jaideep Shenoy / TNN / June 22nd, 2016

We dine with the founder of Earth Loaf and decode what goes into this Indian-grown artisanal chocolate

After a whiskey chocolate dinner and an interview with David Bello, Earth Loaf’s founder, I’m trying to gather my thoughts, but the bar of chocolate is distracting. Wrapped in candy pink bearing a peacock motif, it’s anything but candy. Deep dark chocolate of Kerala origin, made with palmyra sugar and locally-sourced ingredients, 72 per cent is wood fermented in cedar boxes. The chocolate is dark and slightly bitter, has a fruity finish and a woody earthiness that comes from the cedar wood boxes — a first in many ways.

For the socially conscious consumer, Earth Loaf ticks all the right boxes. The cocoa is single origin, sourced from either Karnataka or Kerala — there’ll be one from Tamil Nadu soon — the sweetener used is local palmyra, the farmers are closely involved in the production and it’s all hand-made. From ‘bean to bar’, as David is fond of saying, it’s a local Indian product — but it took a Londoner with Greek roots to make it.

Earth Loaf, originally, was the name of a bakery in London that David started, and after moving to Mysore with his partner Angelika in 2012, he used the name for the small chocolate-making endeavour that took off. What started as 3-4 kg of chocolate made by hand for friends and family became a registered company that works with cocoa farmers in Karnataka, to create a sustainable, Indian chocolate brand. A one-man show today, Earth Loaf is David’s baby, as he calls it, and he does everything from sourcing cocoa beans to web-designing for the site and even creating the lovely packaging that features a peacock motif from the Chittara art of the Malnad region. Today, David calls Mysore home, and having grown up in South Africa, took to Indian climes like a fish to water. “I love the heat! I thrive in it,” he grins.

Artisan, vegan, raw — there are many labels that Earth Loaf identifies with, but that’s not what its selling point is. For David, it’s simply his vision, translated through fine chocolate. Which is why the bars are specific in their flavours; they aren’t trying to cater to a variety of palettes. “There have been people who tried our chocolate, disliked it or found it too bitter. But they came back, to try another flavour. A second, third, even a fourth time. They are willing to experiment and they keep coming back,” he says. Well aware of the Indian sweet tooth, David is just putting out into the market something he enjoys himself — dark chocolate with some unusual pairings. And there’s also the story behind each bar. David knows the farmers personally, he’s even learnt Kannada to converse with them, and he prices his products a bit on the higher side, because he believes that the farmer should get his fair share. The bars are all processed by hand, from the grinding of the beans to the final packing.

His 72-per cent bars of single-origin raw chocolate are paired with unusual ingredients like gondhoraj– a lemon that’s somewhere between the Italian lemons used to make limoncello and an African kaffir lime found only in parts of Bengal and Assam — smoked salt, dried apricots, nuts and more. David’s background as a mixologist is reflected in how he pairs his flavours, often reworking an idea for months at a time, until he gets it right. “Even when I was bartending back in London, I’d work on a single cocktail, like a Martinez, for about six months till I got it right,” he says. And it’s the same with his fruit pairings. Recently, he’s been trying to infuse a jamun-like fruit native to Karnataka into his chocolate, without much success.  “The chocolate keeps overpowering it, so I’m trying different things. I’ve been trying to squeeze the essence out of the rind of the fruit, like how you would a bergamot, but it didn’t work, so now I’m trying to dry the rind, powder it and see if that will work better.”

For a country that’s quite a prolific producer of cocoa, India seems to be relatively new when it comes to the bean-to-bar variety of chocolate. “Cocoa was originally brought to India from Indonesia in 1798, by the East India Company,” he explains, “and India has had varieties of cocoa growing, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that Cadbury decided to push cocoa farming in India and that’s when it took off.”

Much like the coffee culture that came from the West to show us the amazing varieties we have in India, there’s a wave of chocolate appreciation that’s slowly gaining ground. A far cry from the sugared candy bars you see at grocery stores, today’s artisanal chocolate is locally sourced, handmade, has tasting notes that range from woody and fruity to acidic, is affected by the terroir, and lends itself to all kinds of pairings from food to wine and whisky. And this chocolate evangelist from Mysore, is more than happy to introduce the country to its own hidden chocolate treasures.

(A menu pairing Earth Loaf chocolates and Jameson whiskey is available at On The Rocks, Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park till June 26. It is priced at Rs. 2,999 per person.)

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Metroplus> Society / by Elizabeth Mathew / Chennai – June 21st, 2016