The nation’s largest festival dedicated to chocolate, coffee and gourmet foods, the annual Southwest Chocolate & Coffee Fest, draws more than 23,000 attendees who sample and shop from 200 chocolatiers, coffee roasters, bakers, candy makers, purveyors of gourmet foods, coffee trucks, food trucks, and New Mexico’s finest breweries, wineries, and distilleries.
This year’s special guest from April 5 to April 6, two-time James Beard Award winner Maricel Presilla, is a chef, culinary historian, and author. Her two esteemed Hoboken, New Jersey restaurants – Cucharamama and Zafra – are now closed. However, Presilla’s book, The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes gives insight into her culinary acumen. The book has inspired countless chocolate lovers, makers, and farmers to look deeper into fine cacao from Latin America. She continues to educate about fine cacao and chocolate around the world from her platform as founder and Americas Director of the International Chocolate Awards and the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting.
Learn from Maricel Presilla at the Southwest Chocolate and Coffee Fest
In Albuquerque, she’ll be giving two public workshops where participants can learn the history of and how to taste both cacao and chocolate. “The idea is to focus on sensory analysis to understand it from the bean up, with its pre-Columbian history, all the way to the industry today.”
This won’t be the first time Presilla has visited New Mexico, either. She gave a keynote about chocolate at the New World Cuisine exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art in 2013, did research at the Chile Pepper Institute for her book on our ubiquitous peppers, and spent time in Chimayo for her PhD dissertation on devotional images.
“I love New Mexico, especially for the food – it’s one of my favorite places. When I was there, I fell in love with Chimayo peppers and now grow them in my own garden. I also cook beans in bean pots from New Mexico.”
While you wait around for the festival, get ready with a cup of Maricel Presilla’s Hot Chocolate “Agasajo” here!
Story by Kelly Koepke
Photos Courtesy of Maricel Presilla and Marcos Paulo
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