The kitchen filled with the fine aroma of toasted cacao beans. I couldn’t believe I had so much Nacional bean at my disposal. They were considered the finest of the beans and as such, they were expensive. I was used to working with Forastero beans, their African counterpart, which were sometimes easier to find in Sevilla. To think that I practically owned a plantation bursting with this so-called golden seed.

Bachita and Martin stared at me wide-mouthed as I ground the beans I had just roasted and peeled in a mortar, transforming them into a creamy brown paste. I wished they had a mill—it would’ve made the process much faster.

“Hand me some milk,” I told Bachita, “and sugar and cinnamon, please.”

At first, Bachita and Martin had both been astonished that I, a man, would get into the kitchen and prepare something so complex, but I informed them that the first chocolate houses in Europe were opened and run by men. Besides, Martin himself had prepared bass for me the other day.

Their curiosity about the process and what would come out of it was enough to distract them from their own cultural norms and preconceived roles.

Or so I hoped.

In an odd way, Bachita reminded me of my assistant at the chocolatería. The way she lingered by me, attentive and obedient. It was strange that she would remind me of La Cordobesa because they didn’t look anything like each other. La Cordobesa was lean and had an angular face, like a wire hanger, whereas Bachita was hefty and her nose had the texture of a ginger root. Martin stood there, watching with the same bewildered expression of a child discovering that hens laid eggs.

And I was the one introducing him to this delicacy. There were only a few things I was confident about in my life and making chocolate was one of them. The process never failed me. Since my grandmother first taught me her recipe, I’d felt the same anticipation. The transformation from bean to paste was something I never grew tired of seeing. It was magical.

“And now, the secret ingredient,” I said. “Sea salt.”

Both of them looked at me as if I should be sent to the nearest asylum.

“Just trust me,” I said.

“You have to add a pinch of salt to the chocolate,” my grandmother would say, “to moderate the kick.”

I initially didn’t believe her. I was, after all, trying to make a dessert. But after hesitantly following her instructions, I realized how salt had the strange ability of enhancing the flavor and made the dark chocolate and cocoa a little less bitter.

“Look at that,” Martin said.