La Poesía de la Comida

   ¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?  So, for the last several weeks, we've been working on a new project for our final exhibition!  This project was a combination of recipe building and poetry.  Each student chose a country either from Central America or South America with the inclusion of Mexico and Spain as well.  We each researched a traditional dish from that country, and then wrote poems either about the recipe itself or an ingredient in that dish.  At the exhibition we cooked our dishes and recited our poems to whoever asked for us to.
   The recipe I created was leche asada, a Chilean flan found from this website:



   Lacey Meek
   Leche Asada, Chile

  

   Ingredients (los ingredientes):

1 cup granulated white sugar                                                          1 taza azucar blanco

7 eggs                                                                                                  7 huevos

2 liters milk                                                                                          2 litros de leche

½ teaspoon cinnamon                                                                       ½ cucharadita canela

½ teaspoon nutmeg                                                                           ½ cucharadita nuez moscada

½ teaspoon vanilla                                                                            ½ cucharadita vainilla

   Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

   Precalienta el horno a 350 grados Fahrenheit

   Step 1:
   Start by cracking 6-8 eggs go in a small mixing bowl.  Add 1-cup of white sugar and beat until well-mixed and frothy.

·    Casca 6 a 8 huevos en un tazón pequeño.  Añade una taza de azúcar blanco y bate hasta ser bien mezclado espumoso.

   Step 2:
   In a large mixing bowl, combine the following (leaving enough space for the egg mixture): 2 liters of milk (just over 2 quarts,) ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon nutmeg, and ½ teaspoon vanilla.

·       En un tazón grande, mezcla lo siquiente (dejando espacio suficiente para la mezcla de huevos): 2 litros de leche (justo más de 2 cuartos), ½ cucharadita de canela, ½ cucharadita de nuez moscada, y ½ cucharadita de vainilla.

   Step 3:
   Cover the bottom of a 9x13” baking pan with approximately ½ cup of sugar. Place the pan on your stove-top and heat the mixture.  Stir often until it gradually begins to ‘caramelize.’ It is sometimes  necessary to add a bit of water, a tablespoon at a time, in order to keep the sugar boiling.

·      Tapa el fondo de un molde para hornear de 9”x13” con aproximadamente ½ taza de azúcar.  Pon el molde para hornear en la cocina y calienta la mezcla.  Revuelve a menudo hasta que gradualmente comienza a caramelizar.  A veces es necesario añadir un poco de agua, un cucharón a la vez para manlener hirviendo el azúcar.

   Step 4:

   Once the bottom of the pan is filled with caramelized sauce, remove it from heat.  Combine egg mixture with the milk mixture until they are well mixed.  Finally, pour the egg and milk mixture over the caramel sauce and bake it in the oven for at least a half an hour (until the top is brown and has lost its sheen.)

·       Una vez el fondo del molde para hornear está lleno con salsa caramelizada, quita del calor.  Mezcla la mezcla de huevos con la mezcla de leche hasta que ellos están bien mezclados.  Finalmente, vierte la mezcla de huevos y leche encima de la salsa de caramelo y hornea en el horno por lo menos media hora (hasta que la parte encima está café y no tiene lustre.)

Ode to Cinnamon, by Lacey Meek

Lightly sweet,

you burst upon my tongue.

A bitter explosion,

and the taste of the desert

call, whisper to me.

A heavenly cloak

encompassing

what once was plain,

earthen stardust

sets a fire to my lips.

Dragon fire.

A rusted dust,

the scent of hope, 

conjuring dreams of

flickering embers

on a cold winter night.

Elemental

earthy                      

light

brilliant,

a candle in the dark.

You are cinnamon,

the burning desire

of a hopeless people.

Oda a la Canela, por Lacey Meek

Ligeramente Dulce

tú revientas en mi lengua.

Una explosión amargo,

y el sabor del desierto

lama, susurra a mí.

Una capa celestial

abarcando

lo que fue sencillo,

polvo de estrellas terrenal

enciende un fuego a mis labios.

Fuego del dragón.

Un polvo aherrumbrado,

la fragancia de esperanza,

haciendo sueños de

brasas parpadeando

en una fría noche del invierno.

Elemental

a tierra

luz

brillante,

una vela en la oscuridad.

Tú eres canela,

el deseo ardiente

de personas desesperadas.

         When we first started this project, I was a little bit wary: I knew that I'd learned a lot in Spanish, but I wasn't certain that I was really ready to take on an ode, especially trying to imitate the style of Pablo Neruda.  Similarly, I wasn't sure how well our flan would turn out when I started cooking it, or even when we were cooking it (it was quite the adventure to melt the sugar.)  But by taking the poem a little bit at a time and by not giving up on my recipe, I eventually turned out two projects that I'm actually very proud of.
   The ode, thankfully, wasn't that difficult for me because I'd take a small section, and then translate it.  This process wasn't nearly as hard as writing an artist statement, for example, in Spanish.  Actually cooking the recipe, however, was somewhat scary.  This was because no one in my family had ever had flan, let alone cooked it.  So none of us knew what we were doing, and I was trying to carmalize sugar without burning it, but it was sticking to the pan when cooled.  We honestly thought that that would be the end of the pan.  Eventually we did get the sugar where we wanted it and combined the ingredients before putting them in the oven.  then of course, after twice the baking time, our flan was still too luiquidy but we figured maybe it would set up overnight.  Boy were we wrong.  However, in the end, the flan still tasted decent which was the biggest concern after this adventure.  this was a project that I really enjoyed and I would gladly repeat it again in the future.