Give me all the atmospheric rivers.
Ben Gibbard gets me in “no room in frame:”
How can I stay
In the sun
When the rain flows
All through my veins
I don’t know if it’s the gray or the gloom that my type A personality finds so soothing, so calming. But when my feed is full of Angelenos talking about “how bad the weather is” or the misery of “it’s going to rain for the next four days it’s so depressing”
I. am. seriously. giddy.
When I landed in Portland from Guadalajara in 2007, it was a dark, dreary rainy night in December. I was wearing a t-shirt and a Mexico-type “winter coat” from Bershka that was obviously not going to cut it for those Oregon winters when the sun goes down at 4 p.m. I stepped outside PDX and watched the rain in awe and the electric green of the pine trees.
I felt alive.
We’re finally having chilly and rainy days in Long Beach. I’m stoked for my garden, I’m excited for green hills, the wildflowers; the superbloom to be.
I’ve made a tradition of cooking something cozy to celebrate winter days. Sometimes it’s a big batch of guava atole, or quart containers full to the brim of bitter drinking chocolate. Other times it’s oxtail bolognese.
But nothing says cozy more than pudding. And nothing makes you feel more at home than the flavors and textures of the joy you experienced as a child.
That flavor is tres leches for me.
Tres leches is the flavor that Nestlé forced down our throats to make them rich. According to Food52, the most likely theory is that tres leches originated in England around the Middle Ages. It is said that it appeared in the British-colonized part of Nicaragua during the late colonial era after the invention and introduction of condensed and evaporated milk. This makes sense as Nicaragua was colonized by both Spain (1522-1821) on the west coast and England (1633-1860) on the east coast.
When I first tried the atole cake at Gusto Bread in Long Beach it was like eating tres leches, but not—because it’s better. Their cake is soaked with their housemade nixtamalized atole to produce a cloud-like bite in the same way a traditional tres leches does from being soaked with whole milk, evaporated, and condensed canned milk. Ana and Arturo of Gusto Bread invite me to reclaim our flavors and make tres leches without the bullshit.
In this recipe, I replicate the spirit of tres leches by simmering non-dairy milk such as almond, soy, and coconut with vanilla for a mere ten minutes to reduce it just enough to amplify its milky flavor. You can swap all kinds of milk here to use what you have on hand such as oat, or even whole milk. It will work. The mixture is thickened with a slurry and the hardest thing about this recipe is not eating the entire pot of pudding while you’re “testing” for consistency. Wink wink.
The pudding is totally vegan. But I did top it with my favorite style of whipped cream which you whip until stiff peaks form and then fold just enough sour cream or crème fraîche to bring some body and tang. If you’ve never had this whipped cream variation, well I’m so excited for you!
Go ahead and double the pudding for double the fun. Perhaps add a layer of cajeta before topping it with the tangy whipped cream.
Give thanks to the rain.