Fats, lipids and oils.

I love to cook with fats and oils. I love the tastes and smells it imparts to foods.  I like using an avocado with its high fat content  to create a creamy dressing that is both healthy and satisfying, or using peanut oil which adds a wonderful flavor to quickly cooked foods. Walnut oil is intense and a little goes a long way in dressings or drizzled over something warm.  The addition of lard or suet - if you can find it - in pound cakes  is marvelous; wrapping lard or suet around a piece of meat is to rediscover an age old method to keeping meat tender and moist with the added flavor making it sumptuous. 

As a cook, one must learn the properties of fats and oils to decide what will work best in a recipe, whether sweet or savory.  Cocoa fat, combined with the protein in the cocoa bean, is what thickens the warm or hot drink enjoyed centuries ago and, when done correctly, creates a velvety texture. The method of creating cocoa powder that is used in today's hot chocolate requires that most of the cocoa fat is removed, thereby removing the velvety texture and yet allowing for rapid dispersion in cold milk or water.  In today's world, we are rediscovering the texture that was once created by beating the chocolate fat into an emulsion using methods that did not exist years ago, a method that could take over an hour. Today we re-create that amazing texture with different methods that don't require a strong arm and loads of free time. 

Cooking with the fat in cocoa beans for savory cooking is a wonderful adventure, an excellent way to learn how flavor builds upon other flavors.  As a cook and as someone who enjoys great flavors, exploring the  savory side of chocolate is a entirely new way to understand how the fat in cocoa is special compared to other fats -- for me that is a key to happiness.