Crema Reina de Puebla

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Wide heavy pot or copper cazo for reducing milk
• •Wooden spoon with a flat edge
• •High-powered blender or metate for grinding almendra pelada
• •Fine-mesh strainer
• •Shallow talavera serving dish or individual talavera cups

Instructions

1. 1

   Prepare the almonds

   Put the almendra pelada in a bowl and cover with warm water for 20 minutes. Drain well. If you could only find almonds with skins, cover them with boiling water for 1 minute, drain, and slip off every skin by hand. Yes, every one. The cream should be pale and smooth, not flecked with brown skins.

2. 2

   Reduce the milk

   Pour the leche entera into a wide heavy pot or copper cazo. Add the Mexican canela stick and salt. Bring just to a gentle bubble over medium heat, then lower the heat and cook slowly, scraping the bottom and sides with a wooden spoon every few minutes, until the milk reduces from 8 cups to about 5 cups. This takes 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes. The milk should taste cooked, rounded, and faintly sweet before you add the sugar. This is where lazy recipes reach for condensed milk. No me vengas con atajos.

   Use a wide pot. More surface area reduces the milk evenly. A narrow pot makes you wait longer and gives the milk more chances to scorch.
3. 3

   Grind the almond

   Remove the canela stick and reserve it for the table if you want the cook's proof beside the dish. Ladle 1 cup of the hot reduced milk into a blender with the drained almendra pelada. Blend for 2 full minutes, stopping to scrape the jar, until the almond paste is as smooth as your blender can make it. A metate does this beautifully. A blender is allowed. The point is smoothness, not suffering.

4. 4

   Make the almíbar

   Combine the azúcar de caña, grated piloncillo claro, and water in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring until dissolved, then simmer 8 to 10 minutes until the syrup falls from the spoon in a thin thread. Do not use corn syrup. It gives shine without flavor, and this dish is not asking for tricks.

5. 5

   Temper the yemas

   Whisk the yemas de huevo in a bowl until smooth. Slowly ladle in 1 1/2 cups of the hot reduced milk, whisking constantly. You are teaching the yemas to accept the heat. Pour hot milk all at once and they scramble. Do it slowly and they bind the cream.

6. 6

   Thicken the cream

   Return the almond mixture, the remaining reduced milk, the almíbar, and the tempered yemas to the pot. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly with the wooden spoon, until the cream thickens enough to leave a clear track across the back of the spoon, 12 to 18 minutes. If you use a thermometer, aim for 170F to 175F. Do not let it boil. Stir in the vanilla at the end, then strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean bowl for the convent texture.

   If the cream starts to look grainy, take it off the heat immediately and strain it. Boiling yemas is how you make sweet scrambled eggs. Puebla did not ask for that.
7. 7

   Chill and finish

   Pour the crema into a shallow talavera serving dish or individual talavera cups. Press parchment or wax paper directly on the surface if you do not want a skin. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate at least 3 hours. Just before serving, grate nuez moscada over the top. Serve cool, not icy, with a clean spoon mark through the cream. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Buy almendra pelada from a good mercado stall or dulcería supplier. Smell it before you pay. Rancid almond smells oily and dusty, and it will ruin the whole pot.
• •Mexican canela is softer and sweeter than hard cassia cinnamon. If your stick is thick, dark, and impossible to break, it is probably cassia. It will work in an emergency, but the perfume is heavier. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •There are no chiles in Crema Reina de Puebla. That is not a mistake. Mexican cuisine contains convent custards, fruit pastes, milk sweets, breads, moles, seafood, nixtamal, and a hundred other systems. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
• •The talavera matters at the table. Puebla's ceramic tradition belongs beside Puebla's convent sweets. Food is not only flavor; it is the vessel, the room, the hand that serves it.

Advance Preparation

• •The crema can be made up to 2 days ahead and refrigerated with parchment or wax paper pressed directly on the surface.
• •Grate the nuez moscada only at serving time. Pre-ground nutmeg tastes tired before it reaches the table.
• •The milk can be reduced one day ahead. Refrigerate it, then warm gently before grinding the almonds and tempering the yemas.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 245g)