Cacao

A pod like a dragon egg, and inside it the thing chocolate is made of.

At the market in La Ceja they had cacao the way it grows on the tree. Not powder, not a bar, the whole pod. I had never seen one before and I did not expect it to be that big and that strange.

It is an elongated fruit the size of two fists, with a thick hard shell and deep grooves running along it. The colour sits somewhere between rust, crimson and black, as if someone had scorched it. It looks like a prop from a fairy tale, not like an ingredient.

Inside, the beans sit in a white slimy pulp, and nothing about it suggests that one day it will be chocolate.

Tasting the beans was the best thing at the whole market. The flavour is unbelievably intense: dark chocolate without sugar, only far more itself, with a sour edge you never get from a bar. Anyone who thinks they know what cacao tastes like is in for a surprise.

Colombia is one of the countries where cacao grows, and at the market it is sold as a crop, not as a souvenir. Next to the beans they had syrups, dried pieces and chocolate from local makers.