Nieve de Tejate

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy stockpot for nixtamalizing the corn
• •Cast iron comal for toasting cacao, pixtle, and rosita
• •High-powered blender (or, if you have access, a metate calentado)
• •Fine-mesh sieve
• •Wooden garrafa with metal cylinder and wooden pala (or a 1.5-quart electric ice cream machine as compromise)
• •Stout glass tulip cups for serving

Instructions

1. 1

   Nixtamalize the corn

   Combine the maíz criollo and 4 cups of water in a heavy pot. Stir in the cal until it dissolves. Bring to a low simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes, then cover, pull off the heat, and let it rest overnight. The kernels should slip their skins between your fingers in the morning. Drain and rinse three times in cold water until the water runs clear and the corn smells sweet, not chalky. This is nixtamal. Without it, you do not have tejate. You have a slurry of raw corn.

   If your kernels still taste raw at the center, give them another 10 minutes of simmer. Pre-Columbian Oaxaca built an entire cuisine on getting this step right.
2. 2

   Toast the cacao and pixtle

   Heat a dry comal over medium-low. Toast the cacao beans, stirring constantly, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the shells crack and the kitchen smells of warm chocolate and earth. Peel the shells off. In the same comal, toast the mamey pits, already shelled, until they darken to deep coffee-brown and turn brittle, about 12 to 15 minutes. Pixtle is bitter raw and aromatic toasted. The bitterness is the soul of tejate. No me vengas con atajos: store-bought cocoa powder is not cacao.

3. 3

   Toast the rosita de cacao

   Drop the rosita flowers onto the warm comal for no more than 30 seconds per side. They should release a perfume that sits between vanilla and dried roses. The flower is what gives tejate its foam. Without rosita, no foam. Without the foam, no tejate. The senoras at Mercado 20 de Noviembre will tell you the same thing.

4. 4

   Grind the paste

   On a metate, the senoras of San Andres Huayapam grind the cacao, pixtle, rosita, and a portion of the nixtamal into a thick dark paste, passing the stone over the masa for an hour while a fire warms the metate from beneath. We do not have an hour and we do not have a metate. Use a high-powered blender. Combine the toasted cacao, toasted pixtle kernels, toasted rosita flowers, and half the drained nixtamal. Add 1 cup of cold water and the salt. Blend on high for 4 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides, until you have a dense, dark, slightly oily paste. It should look like wet earth and smell like a Oaxacan market at dawn.

5. 5

   Build the tejate base

   Transfer the paste to a large bowl. Add the remaining nixtamal and 1 more cup of cold water. Now you work the paste with your hands. Plunge your fingers in and squeeze the masa through them, breaking the paste apart, for 10 minutes. The fat from the cacao and pixtle will start to surface as a pale film. This handwork is not optional. The mechanical action is what coaxes the foam out later. Dissolve the piloncillo in 1 cup of hot water until it is syrup, let it cool completely, then stir it into the base with the remaining 3 cups of cold water.

6. 6

   Strain and rest

   Pass the tejate base through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing on the solids with the back of a wooden spoon. Discard the spent corn skins and chocolate fiber. Taste the liquid. It should be sweet but not cloying, bitter at the back from the pixtle, floral from the rosita, and unmistakably of corn. Adjust piloncillo if you need to. Refrigerate the base for at least 1 hour. Cold base churns faster and freezes finer.

   Tejate as a drink would be served at this stage in a painted jicara gourd, with the cocoa-butter foam scooped on top. We are taking it one step further into nieve. The drink and the nieve are cousins, not the same dish.
7. 7

   Set up the garrafa

   A garrafa is a wooden barrel that cradles a metal cylinder, a wooden pala for scraping, and a slurry of crushed ice and rock salt that surrounds the cylinder and pulls the temperature below freezing. Pour the cold tejate base into the metal cylinder and seat it in the barrel. Pack the gap with crushed ice in 3-inch layers, salting heavily between each layer. The salt is what makes the ice cold enough to freeze the nieve. Without rock salt, you have wet ice. Asi se hace y punto.

8. 8

   Churn by hand for an hour

   Spin the cylinder with one hand and scrape the inner walls with the wooden pala in the other. Spin, scrape, spin, scrape. The mixture clings to the cold walls and you pull it back into the center, where it freezes the next layer. After 20 minutes you will see ice crystals beginning to set along the walls. After 40 minutes the nieve thickens to the consistency of soft-serve. After an hour, it holds its shape on the pala. The arms ache. That is the price of nieve de garrafa. Industrial helado is made by a machine. Nieve is made by a person.

   If you do not have a garrafa, an electric ice cream machine will give you a nieve, not the nieve. The texture from hand-churning is coarser, more crystalline, with bigger ice fractures. That is correct. Industrial smoothness is not the goal.
9. 9

   Serve in tulip glasses

   Scoop the nieve with the wooden pala into stout glass tulip cups, the way the nevero does at Jardín Sócrates. Serve immediately. Tejate nieve has cocoa butter and toasted corn solids in it, and it stiffens fast in a home freezer. If you have leftovers, store them in a chilled metal container with a tight lid, and let them temper at room temperature for 5 minutes before scooping again. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Sourcing is the whole battle. If you cannot get rosita de cacao, do not substitute. There is nothing else like it. A specialty Oaxacan importer or Mercado de Etla in person are your two real options. Without rosita, you have made a corn and cacao agua, not tejate.
• •Pixtle is not optional and not interchangeable. It is the toasted inner kernel of the mamey sapote pit, sold in bags at any Oaxacan market and increasingly online. Almonds are not a substitute. The bitterness profile is completely different and the dish goes from tejate to milkshake.
• •If you cannot find cacao blanco from Tabasco or Chiapas, use raw cacao beans from any Mesoamerican source. Do not use roasted cocoa nibs and do not, under any circumstances, use cocoa powder. The fat content and the fermentation level are the dish.
• •A garrafa is the right tool but not a realistic one for most home kitchens. An electric ice cream machine will give you a respectable nieve. The texture will be smoother than it should be. Accept the compromise and tell your guests what the real version looks like.

Advance Preparation

• •Nixtamalize the corn the night before. The 8-hour rest after the simmer is non-negotiable, and the cooled nixtamal is easier to work with the next morning.
• •The tejate paste, before adding water and piloncillo, can be made up to 2 days ahead and refrigerated, tightly covered. The aromatics actually deepen with a day of rest.
• •The strained tejate base must be fully cold before it goes into the garrafa. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, ideally 4 hours. A warm base will not freeze cleanly.
• •Once churned, nieve de tejate is best within 6 hours. After that, the cocoa butter solids harden in a home freezer and the texture goes glassy. This is a dessert that wants to be eaten the day it is made.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 175g)