Ellyn
Veteran
I'm not too fond of Like Water for Chocolate as a novel, because I was sooo not on team Pedro... but the recipes were fun. I thought the turkey mole was really good, and I was able to try out that recipe after Thanksgiving.
I forgot what reminded me, but there is this particularly tricky recipe for cream fritters... The ingredients for the chapter go as follows:
- 1 cup of heavy cream
- 6 eggs
- cinnamon
- syrup
So, just looking at this list, I thought--Hey, this will be so easy!
Ha, ha...no. It turns out to be as complicated as can possibly be made with so few ordinary everyday ingredients! So... intermediate, maybe, but it was impossible for me!
The first step was to separate the egg whites and the egg yolks, then mix the egg yolks with the cream and heat it into a custard.
From my experience with making eggnog, it can actually be pretty difficult to learn how to heat eggs and dairy in a way that it becomes fully cooked but doesn't curdle. Beginner cooks are safe with just throwing everything onto some kind of heat until it's "done". Custards have to be watched. Was I supposed to stir it to make it like eggnog to distribute the heat evenly, or would that ruin the shape that it was meant to be left alone to form? Was it supposed to curdle and then come smooth, like creme patisserie?
Even having beaten it, I was so temped to add an emulsifying firmer--flour, cornstarch, gelatine...at least vanilla essence!
Then, the egg whites are beaten to a consistency that the cream can be covered in it and re-fried in oil.
... Maybe I missed it, but the book never says what that is. Are the whites beaten into a meringue and then pan fried in oil? How is that possible when it's going to be mostly air? Is it supposed to flatten? Is it supposed to be deep-fried in oil? Is this where I'm supposed to add flour to give it a bready sort of body and the custard is essentially the filling?
At that, I gave up. I hadn't even gotten to the stage in the book where Gertrudis loses her temper because the book didn't warn either of us that you're supposed to make your own syrup. Although being a homestead ranch that's the setting for the novel, I should have figured...
The syrup requires kitchen science--and it's not even technically a syrup anymore, because it should be in the soft-ball stage of sugar water heating! (That's a step up from syrup, where it's just boiling sugar in water until the sugar dissolves and the water is slightly thicker. Hotter than that, and when you drop the boiled sugar-water in cold water then it should form a rindy sort of mucous. Hotter than that, and you get caramel. Hotter than that, and you get gummy worms. Hotter than that, and you get hard candy.)
Has anybody succeeded with this recipe? I tried and failed years ago, but feel like I have enough experience now to give it another go.
I forgot what reminded me, but there is this particularly tricky recipe for cream fritters... The ingredients for the chapter go as follows:
- 1 cup of heavy cream
- 6 eggs
- cinnamon
- syrup
So, just looking at this list, I thought--Hey, this will be so easy!
Ha, ha...no. It turns out to be as complicated as can possibly be made with so few ordinary everyday ingredients! So... intermediate, maybe, but it was impossible for me!
The first step was to separate the egg whites and the egg yolks, then mix the egg yolks with the cream and heat it into a custard.
From my experience with making eggnog, it can actually be pretty difficult to learn how to heat eggs and dairy in a way that it becomes fully cooked but doesn't curdle. Beginner cooks are safe with just throwing everything onto some kind of heat until it's "done". Custards have to be watched. Was I supposed to stir it to make it like eggnog to distribute the heat evenly, or would that ruin the shape that it was meant to be left alone to form? Was it supposed to curdle and then come smooth, like creme patisserie?
Even having beaten it, I was so temped to add an emulsifying firmer--flour, cornstarch, gelatine...at least vanilla essence!
Then, the egg whites are beaten to a consistency that the cream can be covered in it and re-fried in oil.
... Maybe I missed it, but the book never says what that is. Are the whites beaten into a meringue and then pan fried in oil? How is that possible when it's going to be mostly air? Is it supposed to flatten? Is it supposed to be deep-fried in oil? Is this where I'm supposed to add flour to give it a bready sort of body and the custard is essentially the filling?
At that, I gave up. I hadn't even gotten to the stage in the book where Gertrudis loses her temper because the book didn't warn either of us that you're supposed to make your own syrup. Although being a homestead ranch that's the setting for the novel, I should have figured...
The syrup requires kitchen science--and it's not even technically a syrup anymore, because it should be in the soft-ball stage of sugar water heating! (That's a step up from syrup, where it's just boiling sugar in water until the sugar dissolves and the water is slightly thicker. Hotter than that, and when you drop the boiled sugar-water in cold water then it should form a rindy sort of mucous. Hotter than that, and you get caramel. Hotter than that, and you get gummy worms. Hotter than that, and you get hard candy.)
Has anybody succeeded with this recipe? I tried and failed years ago, but feel like I have enough experience now to give it another go.
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