Roasted Cacao Nibs and Raw Cane Sugar

Chocolate was a gift from the Americas, brought to the Philippines in the late seventeenth century via the Spanish galleons that plied the seas from Manila to Acapulco. The first cacao was planted—under the shade of coconut trees, to protect it from wind and sun—in Batangas, where my dad grew up, and the area is still known for making the best tablea: cacao beans fermented, dried, roasted over fire, hulled, then traditionally ground by hand between two stones into a sandy paste, which is th