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Tiste-Nicaragua's National Drink
Roast 1 quart dried corn and grind it fine. Mix with 1/2 pound roasted cocoa beans, also ground fine, and 1/2 ounce cinnamon stick, powdered. Stir into 3 quarts water. Let stand 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Then strain through cloth, squeezing out "milk" of corn and cocoa beans. Sugar to taste and drink as cold as possible.
All Central Americans use spices in their natural state and powder them as needed; and there's no place like a camp to acquire such a hearty habit.
I TABLESPOON COCOA I TABLESPOON SUGAR COCOA 1/2 CUP BOILING WATER 2 CUPS MILK Mix cocoa and sugar. Stir smooth with a little boiling water and add rest of boiling water. Boil 3-5 minutes. Add milk and stir rapidly or beat until cocoa is hot.
Tiste is a cold, unfermented corn-and-cocoa drink, thickened only by the fine solids that pass through the cloth. The whole character of it comes from how dark you take the roast and how fine you grind.
- The hinge: grind, then strainNothing is cooked here, so texture is entirely mechanical. Grind the roasted corn and cocoa to a flour-fine powder, then work the liquid through a doubled square of muslin or a nut-milk bag, squeezing hard. A coarse grind or a lazy squeeze gives a thin, gritty drink.
- Dried cornThis means whole dried field corn or hominy corn, not sweet corn kernels and not fresh masa. A quart of dry kernels is roughly 1 1/2 lb. Toast it in a dry heavy pan or on a sheet at 350F until it smells nutty and colours unevenly, then grind in batches in a spice or coffee mill.
- Roasted cocoa beansHalf a pound of whole roasted cacao beans, husks rubbed off. These are sold as cacao beans or cocoa nibs; nibs are already hulled and can be used straight. Unsweetened cocoa powder is not a substitute, having had most of its fat pressed out, and will not give the same body.
- CinnamonHalf an ounce of stick cinnamon is roughly four to six 3-inch sticks, depending on their thickness. Central American cinnamon is true cinnamon (canela, Cinnamomum verum), which is softer, paler and easier to powder than the hard cassia sold as cinnamon in most supermarkets.
- Steeping and temperatureThe recipe calls for two hours' standing at room temperature; in a warm camp or kitchen, steep in the refrigerator instead and give it three to four hours, stirring when you think of it. The drink is meant to be served very cold, so chill the strained liquid thoroughly rather than pouring it over ice, which dilutes it.
- SweeteningSugar to taste means a good deal of it by modern habit; start at about 1/3 cup for the batch and go up. In Nicaragua this is often sweetened with raw cane sugar or panela, which suits the roasted flavours better than white sugar.
- YieldThree quarts of water gives roughly ten to twelve small glasses. The solids settle, so stir or shake before each pour.