Greeting everyone!
My name is Bong Willy, you can call me Willy or just Will.
I live with my family that work in micro scale garment industry. So, I'm a newbie to this gourmet food thing, especially chocolate (before knowing fine chocolate, just knew chocolate as a snack and in cheap confection). Oh, and also, pardon for my bad English, not having any formal course except from school.
When first met with Jeffry Lukito (TCL member too) and a pastry chef, named Markus Andrew, opened my mind about real chocolate (they using couverture term) and compound. Then, after tasted Valrhona, I realized that there is a different categories for chocolate, it is fine chocolate.
Not satisfied with the last meeting, I start looking about fine chocolate from internet. The more I learn, the more I don't know about this. Start with how to taste it, how it become from cacao plant into chocolate bar, the brief history and then, this community. My mind was blew with this information about fine chocolate and make me have this passion to jump in chocolate industry.
In my country, only people who have been live abroad (Europe, Australia, or USA) or have formal study in culinary school that have this passion about gourmet food, especially fine chocolate. So, I rarely have friend to discuss and share this passion. But, I see this as a good challenge for me.
Before I read Discover Chocolate, I've got plan to write a book about fine chocolate in Indonesian, so people will know this and get passionate about fine chocolate too.
The problem is, I don't have the needed experience and support yet, so it will take a long time for this plan to realize. Hope from this community, I will learn faster from another chocophile who have more experiences and knowledge.
Oh, not just write book about fine chocolate, I want to make my own bean-to-bar chocolate company too, so I can help local cacao farmer gain more living from their plant; arrange tour and travel to the chocolate maker country; educate people with tasting event.
Wow! There are so many home work to do, and hope my passion can keep me on track. Still not find the track though, so I start with learning from books and internet (thanks to Discover Chocolate that have book reference); improve my English so I can learn faster from this community and other site; learn French and other languages used in chocolate maker country; and the most important one, make some money first (not from chocolate industry yet), so I have the capability to travel around chocolate maker country and learn directly from the plantation to chocolate factory.
Well, that's about me, nice to know everyone. Hope we can meet someday.
updated by @bong-willy: 04/16/15 09:33:03