Today I planted the fourth and final Borojo tree. Last night I had a chance to ask Joao’s family (real Brazilians!) about these strange South American tropical fruits that I’m planting and to my surprise they haven’t heard about most of them. I mentioned the borojo crab milkshake from Colombia and they couldn’t believe such a drink exists. Maybe they have different names in Portuguese, and there must be different names from region to region. So they haven’t heard about borojo, envira caju, or even rollinia, but they knew about jaboticaba and cupuassu (cousin of cacao).
Today I cracked open 8 mocambo fruits aka jaguar cacao which is another cacao relative. The Mayans called it pataxte and it is mentioned in the Popol Vuh, their sacred texts.
“This will be our food: maize, pepper seeds, beans, cacáo & pataxte…”.
It must have held some sort of cultural significance thousands of years ago and played a huge part in their diet. Now all of that is long forgotten and pataxte is just a fruit that makes an inferior tasting chocolate, but there must be more to it.
Im going to attempt to do a micro ferment to make a mini batch of jaguar chocolate. The pulp is way thicker compared to regular cacao with a raw scrambled egg like color and sliminess. I added a bunch of coconut sugar to give the yeasts more food. We’ll see what happens!
Originally posted on 2021-05-08, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.