- Luke Zahm: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: This is so good, it'll make you go nuts.

[Eric laughs]

- My name is Eric Rupert, the founder of Fortune Favors.

- Unequivocally the best pecans on the planet. What, so like over there, what is that?

- Huh?

- Yeah, exactly.

[Eric laughs]

Nothing to see here.

- Eric: It's a little miracle, it's the seed of life, and it's North America's only native tree nut. And then we partnered up with Mayana Chocolate up in Spooner.

- My name is Daniel Herskovic. I am the owner of Mayana Chocolate.

- Luke: To kinda crawl inside the mind of Wisconsin's own Willy Wonka. 

- Daniel: Today, we're making our Magic Bar, featuring those Fortune Favors pecans.

- § This is how we nougat §

[Luke laughs]

§ This is how we nougat §
What is nougat? My whole life, I've been plagued by this question. Oh, man. All my neurons right now, everything is flowing. This is a thing of beauty; this is art.

Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

- The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie, and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[people cheer]

Just look for our badge. It's on everything we make.

- Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland? So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food? Yes; yes, we are. Organic Valley. 

[upbeat banjo music]

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993. Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer's made.

- Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone. Come for the adventure, stay for the memories. Go wild in Wisconsin. To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

- Twenty-minute commutes. Weekends on the lake. Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities. Not to mention all the great food! There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin. Learn more at InWisconsin. com.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore. From local animal sourcing to onsite, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers. The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Luke: Additional support from the following underwriters. Also with the support of Friends of PBS Wisconsin. 

[upbeat music]

We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet. We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

[meat sizzling]

We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[glasses clinking]

We are storytellers. We are Wisconsin Foodie.

[bright music]

Wisconsin is a leader in food manufacturing. In fact, a lot of our most iconic foods are produced in relatively nondescript places, like our industrial parks. Today, we're going to pull back the curtain with our friends at Fortune Favors, and see how they produce arguably the most delicious pecan I've ever tasted.

- My name is Eric Rupert. I'm the chef, owner, founder of Fortune Favors. We make what we think are the world's best pecans, and that's pretty much all we make, but we're very, very focused on making those pecans. I got into the world of pecans by accident. I was making candied pecans probably 15 years ago, and so I was making pecans one day, candied pecans the way I'd always made them, and put them in the wrong pot, and I could go on and on, but that's how they were born. And I knew right away that once I tasted them that they were extraordinary.

And was in 2009, the economy tanked. I applied at Epic. And I'd never met Luke before, but somehow, he had sorta thrown my name out there, not knowing that I had applied, and those things connected. Did that for 12, 13 years, and then started this. [bright music continues] Fortune favors the bold, that was sort of the original translation. But really, fortune favors the compassionate, fortune favors the kind, fortune favors the delicious. You can put anything at the end of it, and it sounds good. And it just is a positive, it's very attractive, in the truest sense of the word, attractive.

[car door closing]

- Eric Rupert?

- Luke Zahm!

- How you doin', my man?

- I'm good; how are you?

- I'm great. What am I looking at today?

- Well, four basic ingredients, really. Mother Nature, as you know, does virtually all the work. So pecans, little bit of cane sugar, little bit of salt, and a couple drops of canola oil. That's all it takes.

- Luke: These are cooking right now?

- Eric: Yep, yeah, we start 'em in a simple syrup.

- Luke: Okay.

- And then we simmer 'em. You can see the liquid here; it's nice and brown. That's some of the skin gets washed off from the pecans.

- Luke: Sure.

- Pecan is our favorite, favorite. Did you know they grow this far north?

- No, I didn't actually.

- They do, as a matter of fact. They do; we call 'em something else though.

- What do we call 'em?

- Hickory nuts.

- Hickory nuts, sure.

- A hickory nut is the mother root tree of all the pecans. And the word pecan is actually a derivative of an Algonquin word that means—

- That just means nut, right?

- That means nut that's really hard to crack. 

- Luke: Okay.

- And it's North America's only native tree nut. I've got some raw pecans I wanna show ya. So there they are.

- What do you taste for in a good pecan?

- Balance, depth of flavor. I want them to be fresh. The way that they're harvested, they all get harvested sorta between now and the end of January, so we want things that are really fresh. There's a lot of different varieties of pecans. A lot of 'em are grown for shippability, for size, but not so much for flavor. So the ones that we get, these happen to be from Georgia, and we love the flavor of these pecans. 

- Okay.

- Anything beyond that, you know, you gotta start with something that's great, so we do that. So try, actually just try one; I'll try one too. I will always marvel at Mother Nature's ability to create something that has fat in it.

- Mm-hmm. Avocados, nuts. It's sort of a, it's a little miracle. It's a seed of life; it is the seed.

- Luke: Right.

- And the pecans are, as I said before, North America's only native tree nut. It's just amazing. We sorta take 'em for granted. We see all these here, but you think about the effort that both Mother Nature and the growers, just to get this tray, let alone a whole wall of 'em there.

- Right. [laughs]

- Or a whole pallet. So that's what it tastes like. I get a little maple, I get a little buttery flavor, like actual really good butter, and then I get that depth of flavor.

- Luke: Yeah.

- Let me show you what they look like when they're finished.

- Luke: Awesome. 

[pecans rattling]

Wow!

- Eric: I know.

- Immediately, I mean, we can see the depth of color. You know, there's definitely been a Maillard reaction that happens here so that that sugar is caramelized. But the shellac, like, almost the sheen to it. Here we go.

[pecan crunching]

[Eric laughs]

- I know.

- That's ridiculous. The depth of flavor is massive, and, like, you get that whole mouth sensation, like the umami, it just fills out your palate.

- Yep.

- But the sweetness, the inherent crunch, a little bit of, you know, that maple balance. 

- Mm-hmm.

- The butteriness doesn't go away, but it's one of those flavor profiles that you wanna keep reaching for. What, so like over there, what is that?

- Huh?

- Yeah, exactly.

[Eric laughs]

There's nothing. . . Nothing to see here. These are worth it.

- Eric: They're fun, they're really fun.

- Luke: Eric, I know that these wonderful people have to get back to the process of making sure that the love is in every can, but I'm hoping we get a chance to explore a little bit more with our palate. 

- Eric: Yeah, let's go to the shop.

- Luke: Okay, awesome.

[gentle music]

We're in Madison, on our way to the Fortune Favor storefront. Eric Rupert's ethos with food has shaped the way I look at food for my entire career. In fact, he was my chef mentor for about three and a half years in a period of my mid-20s. And his rule and philosophy of using great ingredients and simple preparations completely shines through in the Fortune Favors nuts. I'm so excited to see what he's got in store for us next. So Eric, we're here at the Fortune Favors tasting facility, and this is the retail store too, and it's lovely, by the way.

- Eric: Thank you.

- I wanna really kinda dive into some of the other flavor profiles. I know we tasted the original today back in the production facility.

- Yep, got that one.

- But you promised me a couple different varieties.

- Sure, we're gonna go to The Everything. So garlic, onion, poppy seed, sesame seed, salt. Still a little bit a sugar, same process that we make. We just, we make our own everything seasoning.

- That's delicious; the umami on this one is incredible.

- I know, I know.

- That onion, garlic. 

- Super great on salads. Then we have Fortune Favors The Spicy.

- Luke: Okay.

- Five kinds of chili: guajillo, pasilla, ancho, piquín, and chipotle.

- Luke: Okay.

- Eric: All right. So go ahead.

- Luke: Okay.

- On the back of your tongue.

- Yep, the sides and the back of my tongue, and now as I breathe air into it, it really enhances it. But it's, I mean, it's really balanced. It's not like an attacking heat. It feels so much like a very comforting.

- Exactly.

- Warming. But it is, that's kind of a heady one.

- Very easy to make things super hot. You just dump a bunch of cayenne on it.

- Sure.

- That's not what we do. 

- Yeah.

- So this one actually took probably 25 tries to get it where I wanted it, and this is what, so we make our own chili mix, and there you go. But again, a big, bold flavor. Just like all the others, it has to keep up with that toasted nut, that toasted pecan. So those are all the things we make. And then we've partnered up with Mayana Chocolate up in Spooner to make the Magic Bar. And it turns out, they were big fans of ours, we're big fans of them, and that made everything so easy.

I described what we were looking for; they loved the idea. So rich, rich caramel that's actually made with pecans. He infuses the pecans into the cream and the butter; unbelievable. Nougat made with our pecans, and then pecans embedded through it, like whole pecans, enrobed in really, really good chocolate.

- Okay.

- What about that isn't amazing? You will remember the first time you have a Magic Bar the rest of your life.

- Awesome, I love the fact that it's named Magic Bar. It's kinda got a little bit of that, like, Willy Wonka, you know, cross-reference there that, well, I guess it makes me wanna eat it.

[Luke laughs]

- Have at it.

- All right, here we go. The Magic Bar.

[chiming sound]

- Eric: I'll leave you be for a second.

- [laughs] As the kids say, that's lit. 

[Eric laughs]

It's fire, it is so, so good. Mm, I mean, you still get some of the inherent richness from the pecans themselves, you get that consistency, that crunch. But then you get that caramel, you get that nougat, and the chocolate all kinda, like, brings it together. Man, it is the chef's kiss, my gosh. I mean, you've used the reference today that people lose their minds over these flavors, and it's really no wonder. This is so good, it'll make you go nuts.

[Eric laughs]

Eric, my man, it's good to catch up with you.

- You too.

- As always. I really have to say that the ethos that you inspired me to cook with lives in these cans of nuts. Cooking with your heart, cooking with great ingredients, cooking with simplicity but focus. And it's my profound belief that every single person who has the opportunity to try these, should, number one. But number two, that these are unequivocally the best pecans on the planet. This is something that you are doing for all the right reasons, and I'm so proud of you.

- Thank you.

- Keep going.

- Thank you.

- Keep going.

- Really appreciate that. It means a great deal coming from you. 

- Thanks man, awesome.

- All right.

- Boom.

[light music]

After meeting with our friends at Fortune Favors and getting the story behind the Magic Bar, a chocolate bar made with Fortune Favors Pecans, and delicate nougat, and caramel, and chocolate, we are on the road to Spooner, Wisconsin to meet with master confection maker Daniel, and get the behind-the-scenes look at the Mayana chocolate and confection-making process. I am really excited today to have some questions answered. Namely, how does one come up with such amazing chocolates? But number two, what is nougat? My whole life, I've been plagued by this question. So, we're on our way to find out.

- My name is Daniel Herskovic. I'm the owner of Mayana Chocolate. And we are here in Spooner, Wisconsin. 
What we focus on are candy bars, which are confections. And all of our confections, which include caramel, nougat, some crunchy peanut butter stuff, coconut, we enrobe it all in chocolate, in dark chocolate. We are committed to making the most delicious, the most pleasurable, and the most finely-crafted candy bar there is. 

Today, we're making our Magic Bar, featuring those Fortune Favors pecans. The process of making our Magic Bars starts with making our caramel. So we cook our caramel nice and slow, we stir in the pecans, lay that down, let that set. Then we make the pecan nougat that goes on top, let that all set overnight. And then the next day, we cut and enrobe it in chocolate.

- Luke: So one of the things I've been asked throughout my culinary career is what is nougat? Can you please definitively answer for us today, what is nougat?

- Nougat is an aerated confection.

- Luke: Okay. 

- After that, anything goes. So in the world of confections, there is the Three Musketeers type of nougat, and then there's Charleston Chew. They are very different, but they're both nougat. So I'm gonna show you how we make ours.

- Luke: Cool.

- Daniel: The first step is we've already dissolved our sugar.

- Luke: Okay.

- Daniel: In water. And we're going to heat that up to a certain temperature.

- Luke: Okay. 

- And then in our mixing bowl, we have egg whites.

- Luke: Egg whites, okay, great, so that's the aeration.

- Daniel: Yes. We're going to get the egg whites moving.

- Okay.

- So you can press this black button.

- Start the black, okay, here we go.

- Daniel: You all right?

- Luke: Whoa!

- Daniel: And I've got just a tiny bit of sugar.

- Luke: Okay.

- And that is going to stabilize the egg whites. It's gonna help them gain some traction and whip up the bowl. So we're gonna get these nice and fluffy, and then we're going to add some honey, which is going to add some softness to the nougat and some great flavor.

- Luke: Okay. You know, the smell of this hot honey, it's very rich, but everything kind of in combination, I mean, I've got the caramel right next to me which is also very beautiful. It's harmonious on your olfactory senses, meaning that it all smells pretty darn good. So we just poured in that syrup, poured it in there on those egg whites and that honey, and a little bit of that sugar. And I think we just cooked the eggs, correct?

- Daniel: Yes we did, yes.

- Great, so now we have this, it's still aerating, it's still movin' around. What do we do next?

- We're gonna add a few more ingredients, including the nuts, and then we're gonna be ready to pour it out.

- Luke: Fantastic, which one do we start with?

- Cocoa butter. 

- Luke: Cocoa butter?

- There you go.

- Thank you.

- So you're gonna add that in.

- Luke: Okay. You can see the actual physical structure of it change, yeah.

- Thanks. You're gonna add salt and vanilla.

- Salt and vanilla?

- Daniel: Yes.

- Luke: Fantastic.

- Daniel: Good luck with this. 

- Luke: Okay.

- This is the Fortune Favors pecans, chopped up.

- Luke: Sweet.

- Daniel: We're gonna do chopped up and whole. That way, there's a lotta nuts in each bar.

- Luke: Excellent.

§ This is how we nougat §

[laughs]

§ This is how we nougat §

Yeah!

- Daniel: Now we have whole pecans.

- The whole pecans.

[light music]

- Daniel: All right, now we're done.

- Luke: Nice. 

- Daniel: Now we gotta get it outta here. You ready?

- Luke: One, two, three, up.

- Daniel: Okay.

- Worker: You wanna reset?

- Daniel: There we go.

[pot clinking]

- Oh man, that's tough.

- And gravity does help.

- Yep.

§ The candy man can §

Okay.

- Okay, now we're gonna smooth it out and roll it out.

- Okay. 

- All right. Okay.

[Luke laughs]

And then you and I are gonna start rolling.

- Luke: Okay.

- And you will truly get a workout. Okay, and we're gonna press down real hard. Okay, nice. All right, and then we're gonna take another silicone mat, and you and I are gonna press down really as hard as you can. Magic Bar is actually our toughest bar to roll out.

- Luke: Really? [laughs]

- Because it's stuffed with all these pecans. 

- Pecans, exactly. So this is kinda tough. I gotta say, like, moving this much molten sugar, getting it into the right place with the right consistency in the right time, and all these pecans in here, that is definitely a labor of love, my brother.

- Yeah, you gotta love it.

[Luke laughs]

- Yeah, you gotta love it. To the victor go the spoils. Little bit of leftover nougat here. Oh, man. All my neurons right now, and my sugar receptors, and my dopamine, and the oxytocin, everything is flowing, and I mean that in so many good ways. It's really well-balanced. 

That's the part that kinda surprises me. Sometimes when you eat a confection, or candy, it's really easy to be like, "Blah, that's just sugar." But with those pecans in there, that little bit of salt, you get some of that smoothness in the texture of the honey and the cocoa butter. It really comes together in this beautiful cacophony of flavor. I know I shouldn't probably go back for the next bite, but I'm gonna. Because when in Spooner, do as the Spooners. . . do? Do as the people in Spooner do.

[Luke laughs]

[light music]

- Okay, our caramel and nougat have set overnight, and we have Aspen, our kitchen manager, she's going to cut it on our cutting machine. 

- Cool. Is this like a standard, run-of-the-mill candy cutting machine?

- This machine was custom-made for us and custom-built for us in Montana.

- I can't even imagine what it would be like to cut these by hand.

- Daniel: That's how we did it in the old days.

- Luke: Really?

- Daniel: It's ready to go for enrobing.

- Luke: Enrobing, okay. Nuts.

- Daniel: Enrobing is another way to say coat in chocolate.

- Luke: Okay.

- So we've got Jamie, our master enrober here. 

- Big ups.

- Yeah, and she's gonna show you how to load a candy bar on our enrober.

- That's awesome; I don't wanna prevent you from doing your job because I know you are so good at it, but I do wanna take one look at one of these naked Magic Bars. This is a thing of beauty. I mean, it's artisan, but this is art, like, seeing all the striations and the beautiful pecans in there, that little bit of chocolate on the back. Now, Jamie, we'd be remiss if we didn't get to see you do your thing here with the enrobing.

- Jamie: Do you wanna try?

- Yes, I would love to try it. Every one of these bars is enrobed by hand, like, you touch all of the--? Wow!

- That's right.

- That's, I love that. That's the essence of the artisan process. So I see the candy bars going in, and it's so satisfying to watch them get coated with that chocolate. And once it's gone through this side, talk to me about what happens once the chocolate bars have been enrobed.

- Daniel: On the other side of the enrober, the excess chocolate is being shaken off, and then it goes into a cooling tunnel, and it spends four minutes in there. We have Emily at the other end who is collecting them, and now they're ready to package.

- Luke: Excellent. I'm excited to see how all of this beautiful essence of artisan quality, and those pecans that are so darn good, come together in this chocolate bar. So may I?

- Daniel: Yes, please.

- Okay, fantastic. I'm going to just very carefully here, we'll do a little of this magic. I like this. 

- Nice.

- I mean, you get all the beautiful striation of nougat, and the pecans, and the caramel, and the chocolate.

- Mm.

- Daniel: Mm-hmm.

- What do you taste when you taste your own concoctions?

- I guess I'm just getting a lot of depth. I don't just wanna eat this in a hurry. I want to just really get some alone time with it [Luke laughs] and enjoy it.

- I love it. This is truly meant to be savored, and it definitely shines through. I always say that's like the roadmap to the Midwestern palate, that balance of salt, sweet, and fat, that richness. 

- Daniel: Okay.

- And that one lights up my entire, I mean, my entire palate and my taste buds. I'm so honored to have been taken through the entire process today, had the opportunity to meet your staff. What great humans.

- Daniel: That's right, we are a team, we are a team.

- Luke: And then, you know, to kinda crawl inside the mind of Wisconsin's own Willy Wonka, which is great. I was a little disappointed we didn't have Oompa Loompas, but on the other end, [Luke laughs] this is so delicious and amazing, I feel like I can save my Oompa Loompa fix for another day.

- Daniel: Okay, nice.

[light music]

- You ever made a TV show before?

- Nope.

- Okay, great. 

- Never have, never have.

- Check it off the box.

- All right.

- Producer: If you could just move a little this way 'cause you're getting close to the fire.

- He smells funny though.

- I do smell really funny.

- No, it's me, it's me.

[both laugh]

- You get that crunch from the tortilla trip-- Tortilla, you get the crunch from the tortilla chips.

- Good luck editing, guys.

- I have very little, like, self-control when it comes to, like, wanting to, like, "Ooh gosh, I wanna taste it."

- Daniel: Well, if you need some alone time.

[Luke and Jamie laugh]

- Man, you ate all of that nougat, oh, my God.

- I didn't eat anything this morning; I had an apple.

- What's Irish and sits in the rain?

- Producer: I don't know, what is?

- Paddy O'Furniture.

[producer laughs]

[Eric claps hands]

I've been reduced to dad jokes.

- Luke: Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

- The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie, and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[people cheer]

Just look for our badge. It's on everything we make.

- Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland? So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food? Yes; yes, we are. Organic Valley. 

[light banjo music]

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993. Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer's made.

- Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone. Come for the adventure, stay for the memories. Go wild in Wisconsin. To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

- Twenty-minute commutes. Weekends on the lake. Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities. Not to mention all the great food! There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin. Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore. From local animal sourcing to onsite, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically-raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers. The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Luke: Additional support from the following underwriters. Also with the support of Friends of PBS Wisconsin. 

Are you hungry for more? Then go to our YouTube channel and subscribe, and be in the loop every time we release new content, behind-the-scenes footage, and new episodes that you can preview before anyone else. Check us out.

[light music]