Tetteh Quarshie and Ghanaian Cocoa

While the title of this blog entry sounds like it might be for the West African remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, it is in fact about the man who--quite significantly and quite famously--smuggled the first cocoa pod into this region, thus triggering production and harvest of one of the most important traded goods in Ghana. Two of Ghanaian-born Tetteh Quarshie's original trees, planted in the 1870s, still remain on Ghana's first cocoa farm at Mampong. While the guided tour was somewhat expensive (relatively speaking and not by North American "Disneyworld-esque" standards), it was definitely worth it as we were once again afforded a private, guided tour by one of the keepers of the site and residents of Mampong, whose father has worked the plantation for nearly twenty years (we met him too!).

I had, in some deep, dark recess of my mind, a vague notion of the idea that chocolate and trees are somehow connected, but I must admit that I could not have elaborated further. in fact, you could have just as likely talked me out of a belief that chocolate actually grows on trees. I mean, who'd a' thunk it? What next...money? The cocoa tree bears, in two distinct seasons, just about as many cocoa pods as an apple tree bears apples and the pods are ripe when they turn to a bright, pumpkin-coloured orange. The harvesters use a long pole to clip the ripe pods off of the trees, then the pods are collected and taken to the next phase of processing. All of this, like so many things in Africa, is still done traditionally, by hand rather than by automation.

The pods are then split and the beans are separated from the placenta of the pods. We were given a few of these (surprisingly) sweet, soft, white beans to suck on and the outer skin tasted like lemon drops. The kids were reluctant to try them at first and were soon asking for more! Of course their parents exercised tasteful restraint, modelling decorum and tact for their offspring (and besides...our cheeks were full!). There are a few important plants that are planted alongside the cocoa trees, not the least of which are the cocoyams. Their leaves (I do hope I've got this right!) are laid out and the beans are placed between them to dry. The drying takes about seven days and the eventual outcome are beans that are covered in a peanut-like skin and are much darker in colour. Actually, they looked a lot like very large coffee beans but I may be projecting here (don't get me started on coffee again!).

The tasting of the dried cocoa beans was an even bigger hits than the taste test of the ripe ones and we were allowed to take a few for the road. These beans tasted like dark chocolate and (again, I may be fantasizing) had the texture of coffee beans. We bought some Cadbury Richoco (Cadbury, not by coincidence, is one of the bigger corporations in Ghana...and British Cadbury chocolate, dear readers, kicks the pants off of Canadian Cadbury chocolate--sorry!) for home and we have yet to have it as there are just not very many moments in the span of a day where we crave a steaming cup of hot cocoa! Of course as I type this, most of our Canadian friends and family are longing for just such a thing as they look out their windows and contemplate another (a-hem) "couple" months of winter. Whatever this entry has you longing for--the slow, painful death of its writer, or a marshmallow-laced mug of chocolatey goodness--we thank you Tetteh Quarshie!