In Praise of… | Page 2 of 2

Posted on April 11, 2018October 10, 2018 by Staff Writer

Goodnow Farms Craft Chocolate

Five single origin dark chocolate bars from Goodnow Farms and the beans used to produce them. The middle one, made from Mexican beans, actually has the highest cocoa content: 77% (Erb Photography for Mass Foodies)

In 2013, I had the pleasure of helping Michelle Miller of CBS News find her yummy. Don’t bother calling my wife, she knows. In fact, my wife watched. I had spent the previous two years helping her find her yummy and she was happy to share me with Michelle. Millions of others watched too. I don’t know if I touched all those people so they found their yummies too. But I tried, because I know of no more universal pleasure than what I offered: Chocolate. Beautiful, fine flavor chocolate. (Miller was covering the NYC Chocolate Show, and I was her guide.)

And here is a yummy truth I could not have conceived of in 2013: There is deep delicious, take-a-bite-and-you’ll-block-out-the-world craft chocolate being made in . . . Sudbury, MA. Yes, Sudbury. By Tom and Monica Rogan on a centuries-old farm they own on Goodnow Road – a place that gives the chocolate its name: Goodnow Farm. Which sounds lovely but is a completely inappropriate name for their chocolate. Because Goodnow chocolate is so much better than good – just eighteen months into its existence it’s excellent.

Tom tests fresh chocolate being ground smooth in the melanger (Erb Photography for Mass Foodies)

Why Craft Chocolate

Let’s get a few things out of the way first: Craft chocolate, processed exclusively from a few ingredients that grow in the ground not in a lab, is a food distinct from candy. (I love a Hershey with Almonds now and then but what the heck is PGPR or polyglycerol polyricinoleate and why is it in my candy bar?)

It takes several time consuming and labor intensive steps to get the main source for that food – cocoa beans or the fruit of the cacao tree – to Goodnow Road: cutting down pods from trees in often remote locales in countries like Nicaragua, Peru, Ecuador, and Mexico; splitting them open by hand and scooping out the beans and the sticky sweet pulp that surrounds them; and transporting the wet beans to somewhere they can be fermented for up to seven days and dried for several more before being bagged and shipped thousands of miles away to Sudbury.

Tom and Monica Rogan sourcing beans for Goodnow Farms chocolate in Peru for their Ucayali bar.

Tom and Monica know all the farmers in those locations and directly source their beans from them. (It’s worth mentioning in our fractious political world that not one of those farmers is putting anyone in America out of job: Only a very small amount of cacao beans come from the United States – Hawaii and Puerto Rico – as the trees bear fruit only 20 degrees north and south of the equator.) Once the Rogans receive the bags of beans, they hand sort them into containers before roasting, winnowing (meaning separating the cocoa nib from the husk of the bean), and grinding the nibs, combining them with sugar, cocoa butter, and other natural ingredients like nuts. All of that needs to happen before the molding, tempering and hand wrapping of the bars.

Every step in this chocolate production is calibrated to bring out the distinctive flavor of each bean. And every bit of the cocoa that goes into those small batch bars (up to 2000 are produced a week) comes from a single origin such as Ucayali in Peru or El Carmen in Nicaragua. Even the fresh pressed cocoa butter that makes the bars super smooth and creamy is single origin from the same beans – something only a few craft chocolate makers are doing today.

And … And … You’ve started to glaze over haven’t you?

Goodnow Farms’ Esmeraldas bar and cocoa powder from Ecuador (Erb Photography for Mass Foodies)

See, this is the problem trying to explain the deliciousness of craft chocolate without eating some at the same time. (Why aren’t you? You need an excuse to eat chocolate?) But even if you ARE eating some, chances are my words sound like “blah blah blah” after a while. Way to go, Jim, you just made chocolate boring, which I believe is an evil just south of clubbing a baby seal.

So let’s just get to it: You should not eat a particular Goodnow or any craft chocolate bar just because of the painstaking process of its production. Tune out the people who say the BEST chocolate is x or y or z or who tell you that you must savor every pretentious nibble like you are auditioning for a Grey Poupon commercial. How do they know what you’ll love? Ignore anyone who insists that you understand the genetics until you have an idea of the flavors you love. Don’t worry about labels like organic – most fine flavor cacao is de facto organic; many small farmers just can’t afford the certification process. Understand fair trade is by and large a marketing ploy that pales to “direct trade,” which puts more money into the pockets of farmers and helps ensure quality and value in the whole food chain. Finally, please, please, please tell the people who say they eat only 70% chocolate bars as if that is some indication of quality to get over themselves. Percentage is no indication of quality. 70% of overroasted bitter cocoa loaded with vanilla and lecithin and other stuff indicates there is more cocoa than the 11% cocoa mass in a Hershey Bar. But 70% of crap is still crap.

No, you should eat Goodnow craft chocolate because it’s yummy. Really, really yummy.

You should eat it because it will make you feel happy – even cheerful – no matter what else is happening in the world. Follow the flavors that please you. That’s what Tom and Monica did, and it led to this second career for the two of them – a shared partnership in chocolate and parenting that is as symbiotic as cocoa and sugar.

The Origin of Goodnow’s Origin Bars

All the cocoa used in Goodnow Farms chocolate is single origin, including the cocoa butter. Cocoa powder made from the beans is pressed into blocks and then ground and sold to chefs or mixed with sugar to make Goodnow’s hot chocolate mix. (Erb Photography for Mass Foodies)

It started several years ago in Los Angeles when Tom sold his TV production company (Best Thing I Ever Ate, Ace of Cakes) and Monica moved on from a successful real estate career. They wanted to find a business they could start together. They “discovered” it in a vintage furniture store in Santa Monica and its refrigerator of tasty homemade chocolate. Neither of them realized this was even possible. When the store went out of business, the chocolate lived on at a kiosk in Venice, a two-hour round trip the couple happily made. But after one too many trips only to find the store closed, Tom and Monica decided to try their hands at making chocolate themselves. They watched videos online, bought beans and a blade coffee grinder, sugar, and a mortar and pestle. Soon they started figuring out which beans had what flavors and learned about sourcing and equitable farming.

Friends kept saying they should sell what they were making, and they thought craft chocolate could be their second calling. “We lived in LA and the food and flavors to explore there were amazing,” says Tom. “The thought of being able to do that with chocolate was exciting.” They knew they wanted to raise their kids in Massachusetts – where Tom is from and Monica spent summers as a kid – so they went for it. Adds Monica, “We’re a husband and wife who had kids and wanted to do something fun for our next career together and have good lifestyle. We wanted a business we could enjoy and which allowed us to be creative and engage the community. What more do you need?”

In other words, they found their yummy and kept on chasing it.

Now, You Do the Same

Tom and Monica Rogan at Goodnow Farm (Erb Photography for Mass Foodies)

Find your yummy in a world of flavor that many of us never knew existed in chocolate. The chocolate produced at Goodnow Farms may be exclusively dark chocolate, meaning it contains no dairy, but if you have never had a craft chocolate bar, forget about the idea of dark chocolate or any high percentage chocolate being bitter or dry. Don’t let past yucks affect your yum. The added fat from the single origin cocoa butter really helps the mouth feel and accentuates the bars’ flavors. As Monica says, “There is no singular way to do chocolate. Each one is different. We need to celebrate that variety.”

But before I get into blah blah territory again remember what Tom says: “This is accessible if you appreciate it as something fun that’s meant to be enjoyed. Whether you take small bites of eat the whole bar in one sitting you’ll still taste the difference.”

Where you start is up to you: ask yourself what flavors you like. Or just try two or three and figure it out.

The earthy El Carmen from Nicaragua is probably the “gateway” chocolate at Goodnow, and the one with coffee is an exercise in complementary flavor perfection. Esmeraldas from Ecuador is easy to love too: A 2018 Good Food Award winner, its berry and jam flavors are deep and long, accentuated by the fresh pressed cocoa butter that comes from the beans. Or maybe the Ucayali from Peru: “When we started making chocolate, Ucayali was what I though the ultimate craft chocolate bar would taste like,” says Tom. “It’s fresh, herbal and aromatic – a good connection to the bean.”

If your idea of a party in your mouth is stronger and bigger? Dive right into Monica’s favorite: Asochivite from Guatemala, intensely fruity with a long finish created from beans Goodnow helped elevate by providing funds for the villagers to build a new fermentary and drying decks. The lightness of the color of Mexican Almendra Blanca (which translates to “white almond”) belies its power and distinctive flavor. And for the biggest, boldest, deepest punch of complex flavor? Nicalizo from Nicaragua is what you want.

You may initially blanch at the idea playing $8 for each Goodnow bar (which is on the low to mid end price range for craft chocolate bars on this level). But given the amount of work behind them and sheer pleasure they offer, consider it an affordable luxury like wine and beer or even artisan bread. Think of what you’re willing to pay for the best of those things, not what you spent for a candy bar as a kid, and you’ll happily give yourself over to the power of great craft chocolate.

“Craft chocolate is an art, but it’s also an expression,” says Monica. “It can bring people together. We need to create community to grow together. There is a world of flavor out there with chocolate that is very similar to wine. The joy in this is discovering all these different flavors and where they come from. Complexity is a great thing. Nuance is a great thing. Flavor is a great thing. Taste is a great thing. Love is a great thing.”

Craft chocolate at its best is all these things. Yum!

A Closer Look With Erb Photography

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Posted on March 13, 2018October 10, 2018 by Staff Writer

In Praise of The Raw Bar at Simjang

A recent selection of oysters from simjang's raw bar on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA (Erb Photography for Mass Foodies)

When I was 13, I lost myself in the buttery warm layers of a warm apple tart from Poilâne Bakery in Paris walking up the Rue du Cherche-Midi. I was so captivated by it, I smashed headfirst into a black iron lamp post. (I saved the tart.)

Something similar happened when I first spotted the raw bar at simjang, the new bunsik-style American-Korean contemporary restaurant from the team behind deadhorse hill. Walking into the restaurant, the allure of the glass case filled with oysters, clams, fish, a Dungeness crab, and incredible tiny scallops pulled me left, away from the host stand, and straight into the edge of the actual bar.

Executive Chef Jared Forman standing behind the raw bar display at simjang on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA (Erb Photo for Mass Foodies)

Simjang is Korean for heart and with its raw bar the restaurant is clearly wearing its heart on its sleeve. That raw bar may be just several feet of oysters and other bivalve mollusks and fish but its display is exciting and enticing – a heady mixture of love, passion, and taste. Especially those oysters. Eight varieties of different sizes and species the days I visited, each calling to me with their disparate flavors the way no other spot in town does.

Now before you think my heart analogy is anatomically north of why those oysters have such appeal, the notion that oysters are an aphrodisiac is scientifically unproven. The idea has been around for millennia but there’s nothing conclusive. But at the risk of sounding like I am perpetuating the power of fake news: science be damned. Oysters may be a placebo for desire, but as George Costanza said on Seinfeld, “It’s not a lie, if you believe it.”

Executive chef and co-owner Jared Forman understands. In one context, he called oysters “sexy.” But that was just one context of many. Forman is delighted to do a deep dive into his experience and knowledge of the shallow waters that hold those oyster beds. His tour around the half-dozen oysters I tasted revealed a chef intimately connected to what he serves.

Forman starts with two oysters from the Damariscotta River in Maine. The Maine coast “where the ocean meets the forest” down to Massachusetts captivates Forman, whose definition of a beach was New York City’s Coney Island, which hasn’t been home to oysters since the 19th century. He is particularly rapt by Glidden Points, which look like an oyster that walked (yes, they have a foot) out of central casting. Bottom planted without cages and hand-harvested by divers, they sink into the oxygenated silt and “live in that beautiful muck and do their oyster thing.” With a self-effacing grin, Forman calls them “a fat kid’s oysters” – given their size they shouldn’t be as perfect as they are, but these are meaty, super salty, and perfect. (Case in point, when simjang had some giant Oregon oysters that would be decidedly undelicious raw, they were cooked on the wood-fired grill and sliced.)

Glidden Points from the raw bar at simjang on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA (Erb Photo for Mass Foodies)

The other Maine oyster on offer during my visit was a Belon. Belons are the legendary European flat oyster of Brittany and true Belons come only from the Belon River there. But Maine Belons seem an equally fine version. Despite their growing proximity, these look and taste nothing like the Glidden Points, which are eastern or Virginica oysters. Belons are a different species entirely and are easily identified in the case where they are wrapped in rubber bands to preserve their freshness and moisture as they lack the ability to keep themselves closed out of water. Like the Glidden Points, Forman notes, these wild Belons are not a beginner’s oyster: “They are super coppery and interesting, but I wouldn’t recommend a half-dozen unless you know what you’re getting into.”

For those who need a gateway oyster, Forman heads south to Massachusetts and Island Creek Oysters – but not the company’s amazing namesake from Duxbury. These are Beach Points, which the company gets from Barnstable. “They are the perfect beginner oyster,” says Forman. “Delicious and easy to love. Nice and salty and crisp. These are for anyone but especially those who come in and want to try oysters but never had one before. The name even sounds approachable.”

Olympias from the raw bar at simjang on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA (Erb Photo for Mass Foodies)

The final Virginica or eastern oyster on the plate is a Puffer Petite from Wellfleet Massachusetts. The greenish shell signals its more vegetal flavor but as Forman notes, “It still has that easy brininess.” That brininess is in perfect contrast to the sweetness of two West Coast oysters, the first of which has its origins in Asia and is grown in Williapa Bay, Washington: the Shigoku. Redolent of cucumber and melon, Forman calls them the “ultimate expression of a West Coast oyster,” their sweetness coming from the fact they are a lot less salty than their eastern brethren. These Shigokus are also defined by deep cups which Forman explains comes from the tumbling the oysters like rocks to break off the edges and force them to grow down, not out, which makes for a “real chewy oyster experience.”

Finally, there’s the only oyster indigenous to the West Coast of the United States: the Olympia from south Puget Sound. They are tiny compared to the Gliddens and Belons but buyer beware: these too are not for beginners. “They pack the biggest punch in terms of flavor in the entire case,” Forman says. “They have an appealingly tinny metallic quality to them.”

Chef Forman shucking a Glidden Point from the raw bar at simjang on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA (Erb Photo for Mass Foodies)

At simjang, the plate of oysters comes with key limes not lemon – tasty and because as Forman notes, “they’re just so darn cute.” For an additional Korean twist, a fish sauce mignonette and a cocktail sauce spiked with gochujang, the legendary Korean red chili paste based condiment come on the side. Enjoy it all with a bubbly glass of Alice, the Osé Rose Brut Vino Spumante, or Medusa’s “Jang,” made exclusively for simjang.

Forman’s Korean connection to oysters dates back to when he worked for Korean-American chef David Chang at Momofuku. (For a look at the Korean raw and cooked seafood tradition, check out the recent Olympic eating story in the New York Times.) Forman had helped prepare Thomas Keller’s famed “oysters and pearls” dish at Per Se, but the passion and personal connection came from working with Chang. Inspired, Forman set off to know oysters the way Bo Jackson knows sports. (Jackson is one of two players, along with Massachusetts native Howie Long, from Forman’s beloved Oakland Raiders who adorn the simjang walls.). He explored flavors of different oysters, studied their history in America and the world, researched their environmental benefits, befriended farmers who grew them, and tried out different knives to shuck them. (He prefers a smaller New Haven style oyster knife from Dexter Russell in Massachusetts.)

Like many chefs, Forman prides himself on the connections he has with the farmers who provide the oysters and everything on display in the raw bar like littleneck (and soon Manilla) clams. But he gets kinda misty-eyed when we get to those stunning small scallops. Their size says “bay” but they are actually baby Atlantic sea scallops, which are. . . illegal to harvest wild.

Executive chef Jared Forman shows us a quick trick in shucking.

Boasting the region’s finest raw bar, simjang brings in an exotic mix of oysters, including the only oyster indigenous to the West Coast of the United States: the Olympia from south Puget Sound. Executive chef and co-owner Jared Forman shows us a quick trick in shucking.

Posted by Mass Foodies on Tuesday, March 13, 2018

But before you go calling the food police, Forman explains that they are actually legally farmed by lobstermen – something until recently he had never seen before. When they pull traps, there are always baby scallops clinging to the ropes. Instead of letting them just die on the boat, the lobstermen Forman works with “grab the tiny guys just like they were an oyster seed, put them in oyster bags, and drop them down into deep water so they are in their natural environment. When they are big enough, they pull the bags up and introduce some back into the environment because they can survive and sell the rest to us as a farm-raised crop. So we are not illegally harvesting but we are actually promoting healthy ecosystems.”

Simjang's spicy seafood stew, which also features baby cuttlefish, and Florida rock shrimp. (Erb Photo for Mass Foodies) — Simjang’s spicy seafood stew, which also features baby cuttlefish, and Florida rock shrimp. (Erb Photo for Mass Foodies)

And oh the flavor. Raw they are just nuggets of pure sweet scallop joy. They may be expensive but worth every bite, most notably in the spicy seafood stew, which also features baby cuttlefish, Florida rock shrimp, and pieces of whatever fresh fish is around.

Simjang is more, of course, than its raw bar. That said, it would make Forman completely happy to just see people lined up at the deep rock maple bar having a Jang, oysters, Korean fried chicken, and heading happily off. But come back another time for the rest of the menu: “I love oysters, I love bold Korean flavors,” Forman says, “mixing them is what I think is great about this country and great about food.”

Category: In Praise of…