By Renée 

When Editor Doreen said, WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING FAR AWAY, Renée responded with a favorite recipe that reminds her, fondly, of familiar but far-away places.

This is a Mexican recipe that blends two parts of my culture that I have grown up with: Spanish and Mexican. A good way to describe it is mestizo. It includes flavors that were popular in Mexico (e.g. chocolate) along with the notoriously Mexican absence of baking.

Ingredients:

•  2 packets of biscuits (400 g), regular vanilla or butter biscuits are fine as long as they are rectangular 
• For the Crema de Chocolate:
  • 200 milliliters of heavy whipping cream 
  • 250 grams of chocolate 
  • 1 tbsp of butter 
• For the Natilla: 
  • 5 eggs 
  • 4 tbsp sugar 
  • 1 tsp vanilla (paste) 
  • 1 stick of cinnamon 
  • 1 liter of milk
  • 2 tbsp of cornstarch

Procedure for the Natilla: 

1. Heat the milk with the cinnamon stick until it boils (you can add lemon peel for flavor). Remove from heat and allow to cool until room temperature, and remove the cinnamon stick.
2. Separate the yolks from the whites, and beat the yolks with the sugar. Add the cornstarch to the egg mixture, and mix well. 
3. Add the egg mixture to the milk. Add in the vanilla, and reheat on medium intensity. Mix continuously until it reaches a boil, then immediately remove from burner. Allow to cool to room temperature. 

Procedure for the Crema de Chocolate: 

• Melt broken up chocolate bar with a tablespoon of butter in a bain-marie. Mix with the warm nata. 

You can melt the chocolate in the microwave, but the traditional method is in the bain-marie. A bain-marie is a warm water bath, where you put the pot in which you are cooking inside a larger pot filled with water.

Building the Tarta: 

1. Lay the first layer of cookies in a medium-sized ceramic pan, similar to the type used for a bain-marie.
2. Spread a layer of chocolate on the cookies, then a slightly thicker layer of the natilla, and repeat until done with ingredients. Finish on a layer of chocolate.
3. Keep in the fridge for at least two hours.
4. Cut and serve as rectangular bars.

Far-Away Editor: Doreen Yuan