okay, i bought the nut milk bag
I went to high school in New Hampshire and there was always that one day in the spring. You’d walk around, legs newly bare, and remember: this is what it’s like when people are happy. This is what it’s like when we’re not bundled into hunches and expending all our energy in surviving, in not falling into wide swells of sadness. This is what it’s like when our backs are straight and our gazes look up and a fresh gust of air isn’t a personal affront.
Winter is, for the most part, a long act of forgetting. (Unless you live in California, LOL!) We forget what it’s like to have light past six; we forget what it’s like to feel cheery outside of dessert-centric holidays; we forget what it’s like when people are generally in a good mood and don’t operate from a baseline of light seasonal depression. Then there’s that one day. I imagine it’s like having amnesia and seeing the ocean, again but for the first time.
So I’d forgotten what it felt like to pour cold beer into a hot body. In Mexico I remembered. (Of course!) I was there alone, had planned for a week of reading on a beach, had found myself an island. After a few days of maddening quiet I met a guy who offered to take me fishing and I’d said yes because that’s what you do, that’s the reason you travel by yourself, for like the 3% chance that something fun like that will happen, some enchanted evening you may see a stranger, etc, etc. I didn’t catch anything from our little skipper pitched against the wind but I learned how to cast and I didn’t hook anyone in the mouth. I remembered my Spanish. I only got a mild sunburn. We were supposed to be out for three hours so when we got back after eight our bodies were hot to the touch and exhausted and we sat and asked for beers and they were icy and that was what mattered. Dos Equis is fine. When I lived in Park Slope I learned to lean on Miller High Lifes in the hot months, three dollars at happy hour that felt like a gentler and internal version of pouring a bucket of ice over your head.
:))))))))
Slowly and softly (read: boozily) we came back to life at the bar, enough to order dinner, and there was a little cup of horchata getting passed around from the bartender, clear ice bobbing in milky liquid, just a half pour so we could taste. There was coconut milk in there and I’m assuming that’s what made it excellent, refreshing in a different way. You could drink a tall glass of it on a beach somewhere or you could drink it when you’re back home and it’s neither hot nor sunny and there’s nobody to take you out on a boat but you still want a fucking break, a bit of refreshment.
So yes you guessed it I tried to recreate it just now. The fun thing about food is you can lie to yourself and say that if you make something you ate while you were traveling you’ll be able to relive the experiences that surrounded your consumption of it in the first place but ha ha I don’t really think that’s true!! ANyways I’ve never made horchata before (have you? do you have secrets?). I figured it was just like making almond milk, but it’s not, rice and nuts are different animals. The process is simple at first read: Blitz dry white rice in a blender (or coffee grinder!), soak it in warm water with cinnamon, blend, add milk. Figured I’d just add coconut milk instead of regular milk and everything would be peachy. But the straining part took forever. As I write this I’m sitting through my second strain, still slow. The flavor is aces but it’s still a little gritty*, not perfectly smooth. Gives me lots of time to stomp around and pout about things not being as easy as I want them to be, Mexico not being 30 minutes away, etc, etc.
The recipe I used is David Lebovitz’s adaptation of Fany Gerson’s recipe (except I used light, canned coconut milk), and both of those people are excellent so I likely made some sort of mistake. I may have ground my rice too finely, I might try it again if I’m looking for a way to procrastinate later this week, I may go back to Mexico soon, la la la. If you know stuff about Horchata, weigh in in the comments below, by which I mean respond to this email! Don’t forget to like and subscribe! Don’t forget to send me your extra JetBlue miles!
Also because this is my newsletter and I get to do what I want, here are some recent stories of mine: An essay/interview on Lucky Peach about my mom’s boxed brownies, which are better than your mom’s boxed brownies. And also this essay I wrote for Brooklyn Magazine about trying and failing to find a regular bar. I hope you enjoy them!
This horchata is actually fine and good but I’m still upset about it,
Marian
* Just texted a friend to complain about this, and she said “I like a gritty horchata!” so, like, who knows!
** Another smart person on twitter says that I need a nut milk bag so maybe that’s the answer!
*** Now that I’ve made such a big deal about all of this I guess I have to try it again, so see you back here next week! Same place, probably a completely different time!