Walk in my footsteps

Chapter nine: September.

Chocolate and Three Kings’ bread.

Ingredient for the chocolate:

2 pounds Soconusco chocolate

2 pounds Maracaibo chocolate

2 pounds Caracas chocolate

4 to 6 pounds sugar, to taste

Preparation:

The first step is to toast the chocolate beans. It’s good to use a metal pan rather than an earthenware griddle since the pores of the griddle soak up the oil the beans give off. It’s very important to pay attention to this sort of detail, since the goodness of the chocolate depends on three things, namely: that the chocolate beans used are good and without defect, that you mix several types of beans to make the chocolate, and finally, the amount of toasting.

It’s advisable to toast the cocoa beans just until the moment they begin to give to give off oil. If they are removed from the heat before then, they will make a discolored and disagreeable-looking chocolate, which will be indigestible besides. On the other hand, if they are left on the heat too long, most of the beans will be burned, which will make the chocolate bitter and acrid.

Tita extracted just half of a teaspoon of this oil to mix with sweet almond oil for an excellent lip ointment. Her lips always chapped every winter, no matter what precautions she took. When she was a child, this caused considerable discomfort, whenever she laughed the fleshy part of her lips would crack open and bleed, producing a sharp pain. In time she grew resigned to this. Now that she didn’t have a lot of reason to laugh it no longer concerned her. She could wait patiently for spring for the cracks to disappear. The only reason she was making the pomade what that some guests were coming to the house tonight to share the King’s Day bread.

It was for vanity that she wanted her lips to look soft and shiny for the party, not because she expected to laugh very much. The suspicion that she was pregnant hardly brought a laugh to her lips! This possibility had not occurred to her as she consummated her love with Pedro. She still hadn’t told him. She planned to do so tonight, but she didn’t know how. What would Pedro’s reaction be? And the solution to this huge problem? She had no idea.

She would rather not torment herself, would rather turn her mind toward more trivial matters like the preparation of a god lip balm. For that there’s nothing like cocoa butter. But before starting to prepare it, she had to have a chocolate ready. (…)

The Three Kings’Day Bread.

Ingredients:

30 grams fresh yeast

1 and ¼ kilos flour

8 eggs

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons orange-blossom-water

1 and ½ cups milk

300 grams sugar

300 grams butter

250 grams candied fruit

1 porcelain doll

This book was offered to me a long time ago by my mother-in-law, Beverly Levitan, in Lenox - Massachussetts. It’s a colored mixture of love and Mexican recipes…

Laura Esquivel originally a screen writer was nominated for the Ariel Award for the best screenplay by the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures for her screenplay Chido One. The film version of “Like water for chocolate” swept the Ariel Award in 1992 and went on in 1993 to become the biggest grossing foreign film ever released in the United-States. It won in 1994 the prestigious ABBY award which is given annually by the Americans booksellers Association to the books members. Laura Esquivel lives in Mexico.