Ong Ning-Geng, founder of Chocolate Concierge isn’t just selling bon bons, bars, brittles and bark (though he certainly wants customers to buy those). He’s also pushing a new perspective: that some of the most incredibly delicious chocolate you’ll ever enjoy is 100 per cent domestic.
On an airless day in Raub, Pahang, we learn the first rule of fermentation: to always follow your nose. “Pay attention when visiting any fermenting farm, especially if things smell foul,” warns Ong Ning-Geng. The chocolatier scrunches his face ever so slightly. “If it doesn’t evoke food, it’s not good.” Fruity or vegetal aromas are a positive thing, it would seem. Rot is not.
The moment of truth arrives: pausing before one of 20 whisky barrels in his fermentation shack, Ning lifts a corner of the burlap sack. A sticky-sweet scent spills forth, drifting towards us in wafts and tendrils, penetrating our nostrils.
Inside each barrel is neither sauerkraut nor soy sauce, but cocoa beans, some still coated in placenta. Closing his eyes momentarily, Ning waves one hand in a circular motion as if to flex his wrist. “I’m getting banana, pandan, and a lot of leafy qualities,” he says, matching the learnedness of any vintner or viticulturist. Tapai or tuak is my shout-out, whereas someone else in our party proposes cekodok batter.
Heat, a byproduct of fermentation, radiates from the beans, which appear in a wide spectrum of purple, from lilac to eggplant. “Could I parboil an egg in here?” I ask, thinking of my own compost pile back home.
Ning’s answer is affirmative: “You certainly could sous vide certain foods in these barrels; the temperature wavers between 50 and 55 degrees Celsius.”
Speaking of offshoots, “I’ve a fun story about this fermentation shack,” grins Ning, pointing at a robust durian tree some five feet away. “We came really close to chopping down the then barren tree when setting up our ‘fermentary,’ but changed our minds as I quite liked the shade it afforded the shack.” In a strange case of symbiosis, the tree began to flourish, bearing superlative fruit shortly after. As it turns out, juices from the cocoa beans had seeped through cracks in the flooring, flowing into the soil, and providing all kinds of goodness to the tree’s roots.