Native Recipes
XOCATL (Chocolate) -- Aztecs, Mayans, Central American TribesHot Chocolate Mayan Style -- makes 4 cupsWhen Cortez and those guys arrived in Aztec country, they were unimpressed by these
little dark brown beans everyone seemed to carry around, until they learned these were
money -- 100 cacao beans would buy a slave. Probably Xocatl was actually developed
as a food by Mayan peoples farther south, the beans were a hot trade item, before they
finally got ground up and drunk as hot chocolate. You can just make cocoa your usual
way (which is perhaps by adding hot water to a pre-mixed envelope), and we can't grind
the beans, but here's a bit more authentic way.2 ounces (squares) bitter, unsugared bakers' chocolate
1 cup hot water
3 tablespoons honey
dash salt
3 cups hot milk
4 sticks cinnamon barkChop the chocolate and heat it in the water until melted. Add honey, salt, and beat the
hot chocolate water with a balloon wire whip as you add th warmed milk. To make it
more frothy and give more food value, you can beat up an egg or two, add hot chocolate
to it, then pour it into the chocolate cooking pot and continue to whip, (but this isn't
authentic). Serve the hot chocolate in mugs with cinnamon-bark stick stirrers in each.
Purists will tell you cinnamon is oriental, not Meso-American, which is true, but it is
readily available, and the cinnamon-flavored barks (canella) which are native to Mexico
and Meso-America are not readily available. The Aztecs, Mayans, and others of Meso
America used those. They also sometimes put bits of peyote mushroom in it, and other
spices. Sometimes it was made without honey, as a bitter drink, apparently this was
how it was served in European coffee houses for about 100 years until the Dutch got
wise to the fact that chocolate and sugar are the perfect taste combo, which the Native
people already knew. Dutch developed the process of treating cacao bean grindings
with alkalais to make cocoa powder which keeps and dissolves better and has most of
the bean's fat leached out of it. Chocolate's high potassium content makes a goodNative Foods -- Recipes-- Chocolate
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/food/r_choc.html (1 of 3) [5/17/2004 11:52:11 AM]