Day 34

I have to share my breakfast - inspired by the food from Farm and Table. It was so successful I had it almost every morning this week. As most everyone knows, I'm working for an new restaurant in town that is not only amazing and exciting in lots of different ways, but also falls really perfectly in line with what I'm doing with this project. Also, our food is pretty undeniably amazing.

One of the items of the brunch menu is a traditional New Mexican staple, which, shamefully, I had never heard of before, called atole. Atole is a kind of cornmeal porridge made from toasted masa and here in New Mexico, it's made specifically from blue corn masa. When I tried it for the first time at Farm & Table, it was (unsurprisingly) amazing, so when I saw a bin of atole flour at the co-op while cruising for new, rules-happy meal, how could I not take some to try?

Finding a recipe online was a little difficult, since it turns out that New Mexican atole is different from traditional atole, but when I finally found one that looked right, I was surprised and skeptical about how quick and simple was supposed to be. It's basically just flour and water:

Ingredients
1 cup blue corn meal
2 cups milk
2 cups water
Sugar to taste
1/2 tsp salt

Directions
Mix blue corn meal, salt and water and bring to boil, stirring constantly. Add milk and stir until thickened. Serve hot and add sugar to taste.

See? And it actually was that easy. AND it only took about 5 minutes, AND it made enough to last the entire week.

Now, I know what amounts to a bowl of flour isn't exactly the best way to start a morning, and as a result this sadly won't turn into an every day thing, but atole is a very traditional food and thus, in my opinion, falls into the category of Rule 48 (Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks), and thus, in my opinion, gets the thumbs up. Or maybe I'm just trying to justify continuing to make this delicious food.

Because, most importantly, it tasted great.

I added a little maple syrup, some walnuts and some strawberries, but the possibilities of how to dress it up are endless. My friend Monica used to add cinnamon sticks and cardemom pods to the water she boiled our oatmeal in - I'm wondering how that would taste with atole. I bet it's amazing.

I'm not sure how readily available blue corn atole flour is outside New Mexico, so this might be just a completely worthless post if you're located outside of the Land of Enchantment. But I think I've seen this brand sold all the way out in New York, so don't lose hope! It's definitely worth looking into.