It's one of these interviews that is the reason I'm writing about Mexican candy today. It's not something I had ever really thought much about, at least since the occasional treat in middle school Spanish class or the spicy Pixy Stix-like candy that kids from Mexico used to get in care packages at camp.
Yet…Lynne's interview with Fany Gerson about her book -- My Sweet Mexico -- really intrigued me. She talked about coconut and limes; about candies that had origins in convents; about candied tropical fruits like tamarind and others. And this was suddenly an arena I wanted to play in.
The book is beautiful and fascinating. I've now made a few recipes from it, and they've been very unlike anything I've ever done before. This makes for some fun time in the kitchen, but also makes the book occasionally difficult to cook from. I can deal with some vagueness in a cookie recipe because I've made hundreds (thousands?) of cookies and know roughly what's going to happen. I know less about what "thick" means as a time to stop heating a mixture of coconut and sugar (um…how thick should it be?). The book assumes a bit of expertise I don't always have, and the suggested timings seem to be a bit off. But the results have been tasty.
A couple candies so far. First, I tried a lime 'jamoncillo' or milk fudge. This basically is the product of slowly cooking down sweetened condensed milk, condensed milk, and butter, flavored with lots of lime zest. It was a lot of stirring (though much less than if one had started with sugar and non-condensed milk; this is a shortcut), but the result was rich and flavorful. Many other flavors are possible.I also made cocada -- a coconut caramel candy. These were not all that pretty, so no photo. Here you basically make a caramel syrup using coconut water, then stir in grated coconut (I used frozen) and cook it until quite thick (defined here as being able to see the bottom of the pot when stirring), and then add some lime zest. The resulting product is then formed into little balls. These were extremely sweet, but tasty. Mine came out a bit soupier than the ones in the cookbook pictures. I think this may have been because I used frozen coconut.
With that in mind, I bought a fresh coconut when I made limones rellenos de coco -- coconut-stuffed limes. These had fascinated me from the start; whole limes cooked, hollowed out, sweetened with sugar syrup and then filled with sweet fresh coconut. They were a lot of work, especially given the amount of new techniques I had to figure out. I had never cracked a coconut shell and grated the meat, nor had I ever hollowed out a lime. I'm still not sure I did either of these things correctly. The result, however, is pretty cool looking, I have to say. These are for my colleagues on Wednesday, so I'll withhold judgment until they've tasted them.Some interesting things here. I'm wanting to learn more about candy, and to keep playing with this book. I'll keep you posted and would love to hear about your experiences.
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