Chilate de la Costa Chica

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for toasting
• •Clean kitchen towel for husking the cacao
• •Large bowl or jar for the overnight soak
• •High-powered blender
• •Fine-mesh strainer
• •Two large pitchers for the long pour
• •Jicaras (dried gourd cups) or small clay cups for serving

Instructions

1. 1

   Toast the cacao

   Heat a dry comal or heavy skillet over medium-low. Add the cacao beans in a single layer. Toast for 8 to 10 minutes, shaking the pan often, until the shells crackle and lift away from the bean and the kitchen smells like a chocolate mill in Pinotepa Nacional. Tip them onto a plate to cool. Once cool enough to handle, rub the beans between your palms or inside a clean kitchen towel. The papery shells slip off. Discard them. You want only the dark, fragrant nibs.

   Cacao burns fast and silently. Keep the heat low and your nose in the pan. Burned cacao tastes like ash and there is no recovering from it.
2. 2

   Toast the rice and cinnamon

   On the same comal, still over medium-low heat, toast the dry rice and the cinnamon sticks together for about 5 minutes. Stir constantly. The rice will turn from white to pale gold and smell nutty, like the bottom of a cazuela. The cinnamon will release its oils and perfume the kitchen. Pull it off the heat the moment the rice colors. Toasted rice is what gives chilate its body. Untoasted rice gives you horchata, and that is a different drink from a different state.

3. 3

   Soak overnight

   Combine the toasted cacao nibs, toasted rice, cinnamon sticks, and 4 cups of the cold water in a large bowl or jar. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, or overnight. The rice swells, the cinnamon bleeds into the water, and the cacao softens enough to give itself up to the blender. Do not skip this soak. The texture of chilate depends on it.

4. 4

   Dissolve the piloncillo

   While the rice and cacao soak, make a simple syrup. Combine the chopped piloncillo with 1 cup of water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the piloncillo dissolves completely, about 5 minutes. It will smell like molasses and burnt sugar, because that is what piloncillo is. Remove from heat and let cool. Use real piloncillo, the dark cone of unrefined cane sugar from the mercado. Brown sugar is not piloncillo. The depth is not the same.

5. 5

   Blend the base

   Pour the soaked rice and cacao mixture, including all the soaking liquid and the cinnamon sticks, into a high-powered blender. Add the cooled piloncillo syrup and the pinch of salt. Blend on the highest setting for 3 to 4 full minutes. Stop and scrape down the sides once or twice. The mixture should be deep brown, thick, and nearly smooth. The cacao will never go fully silky in a home blender, and that gritty edge is part of what tells you this is chilate and not chocolate milk.

6. 6

   Strain through a fine sieve

   Set a fine-mesh strainer over a large pitcher. Pour the blended mixture through it in batches, pressing down hard with the back of a wooden spoon to extract every drop. Discard the solids that stay in the strainer. You should have a thick, dark brown liquid. Stir in the remaining 3 cups of cold water. Taste it now. If it needs more sweetness, dissolve more piloncillo in a splash of hot water and stir it in. The chilate should taste of toasted cacao first, cinnamon second, sugar last.

7. 7

   Pour from a height to froth

   Chill the pitcher for at least one hour. To serve, pour the chilate from one pitcher into another from a height of about two feet, then pour it back. Do this three or four times. The drink will foam up the way it does at the stalls in Pinotepa and Cuajinicuilapa, where the women lift the jicara high and let the chilate fall in a long brown ribbon. The froth on top is the signature. Serve immediately over ice in jicaras or clay cups.

   If you have a molinillo, the wooden whisk used for hot chocolate, you can froth the chilate that way too. But the long pour is how it is done on the Costa Chica, and the height matters. The drop is what makes the foam.

Chef Tips

• •The cacao beans are the soul of this drink. Look for them at a Mexican mercado or from a chocolate maker who sells whole beans. Criollo or trinitario beans from Tabasco or Chiapas are the ones the Costa Chica cooks would use. Cacao powder is a compromise, not an upgrade, and the toasting step is what gives chilate its character. You cannot toast powder.
• •Use canela de Ceylan, the soft, papery Mexican cinnamon that crumbles easily between your fingers. The hard cassia cinnamon sold in most American supermarkets is a different spice with a sharper, hotter flavor. The wrong cinnamon will throw the whole drink off balance.
• •Real piloncillo, not brown sugar. Piloncillo is unrefined cane sugar pressed into a cone, and it tastes of molasses and minerals. Brown sugar is white sugar with molasses added back. The difference is everything in a drink this simple.
• •The pour is not decoration. The height aerates the drink and gives it the foam that defines chilate on the Costa Chica. If you serve it flat, you have made the recipe but not the dish. Pour high and pour with confidence.

Advance Preparation

• •The toasted cacao and rice can be prepared up to a week ahead and stored in an airtight jar at room temperature. The toasting smell will fade, but the flavor holds.
• •The full chilate base can be made one day ahead and refrigerated. The flavors deepen overnight, but you must do the long pour right before serving. The foam does not survive storage.
• •The piloncillo syrup keeps in the refrigerator for two weeks and is useful for sweetening cafe de olla, atole, and other Mexican drinks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 240g)