Reciprocity

One of my favorite recipes in the old red checked recipe book is this one for a hearty, hot drink. I well remember the day when little 8-year-old Marta came to the door and handed me the recipe as a gift. It was written in pencil on two bits of notebook paper, whip-stitched through the holes to bind them together.

Atolé is a classic Mexican drink. I love to make it on high-energy winter days, and think it is better than hot cocoa as a warm up after a long afternoon of trekking through the snow. I have a pouch cook variation that I take on backpacking trips as well. Tonight, after coming in from a bitter cold walk around the dog park, I decided to try the recipe from Gourmet Sleuth, which looked a little more sophisticated with its whole vanilla beans, etc. But it doesn’t have milk in it, and was quite a bit thinner than my recipe. So I think, in the end, Marta’s Atolé wins out. I generally use Billington’s Molasses Sugar (available at Wegman’s here in Ithaca, or online) for this recipe. It provides a rich flavor that I imagine more nearly approximates the flavor of traditional piloncillo.

(Hint: click on the images below to view the full size photos over at Flickr. You’ll be able to read the recipe better.)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Memoirs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.