The Creole morning drink (served hot, frothed with a molinillo)
Outcast's Chocolate, Arequipa Style
DrinkReconstruction☕ 🍯 🌶️facile15 min
A thick hot chocolate, almost a cream, beaten until frothy, perfumed with cinnamon. A world away from the watery chocolate of Parisian cafés: here it is dense, ardent, generous like the Creole table.
The Creole morning drink (served hot, frothed with a molinillo)
A thick hot chocolate, almost a cream, beaten until frothy, perfumed with cinnamon. A world away from the watery chocolate of Parisian cafés: here it is dense, ardent, generous like the Creole table.
When I arrived in Arequipa, a stranger yet a daughter of the land through my father, each morning they served me this chocolate beaten in a jar with a little wooden molinillo until it frothed. Ah! It was not the insipid decoction of our Paris cafés: it was a thick, burning brew, perfumed with cinnamon, that set the heart firm for the day. I tasted in it the legacy of that father I had scarcely known, and each cup told me that I too was of that land.
Ingredients
- •Peruvian cacao tablet — one piece (base)
- •Water or milk — one cup (liquid)
- •Sugar — to taste (sweetness)
- •Cinnamon — a stick shard (flavor)
How it was made : In Peru, chocolate was beaten with a molinillo, a small wooden whisk twirled between the palms to make it froth. Cinnamon was the queen spice; chocolate was drunk thick and very sweet, a legacy of Spanish-American colonial customs.
Sources : Flora Tristan, Pérégrinations d'une paria (1838)