TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Hot Chocolate Drinks: Chocolate-Eh, Chocolate-Mexicano, Chocolate-Filipino

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Hot Chocolate Drinks: Chocolate-Eh, Chocolate-Mexicano, Chocolate-Filipino

The above picture shows Doug Noble and Lauren Brainard at the Cafe San Agustin in San Miguel Allende, famous for their Chocolate drinks. Every time I visit San Miguel Allende, I have hot chocolate there. I've tried their Spanish, French, as well as Mexican chocolate hot drinks.

Like many Filipinos, I'm a chocolate drinker.

When I was small, my mother used to buy chocolate tableya (tablets) and make chocolate drinks. For years, she used to send me tableya to the U.S., sometimes with great trouble. I told her not to bother when I discovered Mexican chocolate in California supermarkets -- Ibarra, Abuelita, in the Mexican section usually, in bright yellow packaging.

I take one Mexican tableya, add 1 can of evaporated milk to it and whisk together over low heat. This is good for 3 cups, more or less.

A better recipe is the following: 1/2 Mexican chocolate and 1/2 local Philippine chocolate (the chocolate from Batangas is great). Philippine chocolate is pure, with a bit of bitterness, and when you mix this with the milder Mexican chocolate, you get something very tasty, something with "more personality."

This half-Filipino, half-Mexican chocolate drink is best served with local Filipino delicacies as puto, bibingka, suman, etc. Truly, it's a feast for a king, or queen.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.