Recently, I read a great book, With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. It's about teen mom, Emoni, who lives in Philadelphia with her abuela while trying to finish high school and figure out her future. She has a lot of responsibilities, but the only time she can let loose and relax is in the kitchen, where she has natural talent and a love for creating new recipes. A new culinary class starts at her school, but can she handle it on top of all her other obligations?
Here is the author giving a quick talk about her book:
The book has a few actual recipes in it, so I decided to try one, Emoni's "When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Verbena Tembleque." The book says the recipe serves your heart when you are missing someone you love.
Ingredients:
2 cans of coconut milk
2/3 cup of sugar
4T cornstarch
Pinch of salt
Bunch of Lemon Verbena leaves or 1T dried verbena
2 vanilla beans, split open and scraped
Cinnamon, enough to garnish
Directions:
In a saucepan, heat coconut milk until boiling.
Take off the heat. Scrape the vanilla out of the seed pods as shown.
Muddle lemon verbena leaves if fresh (if dried just measure it out) and vanilla beans and add to coconut milk. Let steep for 15 minutes.
Strain lemon verbena leaves, removing the vanilla pods.
Mix the salt, sugar, and cornstarch into the coconut milk until the cornstarch is completely dissolved. Bring it to a boil again and keep stirring until the mixture begins to be as thick as pudding.
Place in a large bowl or in small ramakins and refrigerate for at least 5 hours.
Remove from the bowl. This looks more like a blob than I thought it would. I wonder if we should have had a more vigorous second boil which would have helped it be more solid.
Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve!
I loved this! It's basically a pudding, but in a flavor I've never had before. Lemon verbena isn't exactly a strong flavor, but it is very unique and goes well with the coconut and vanilla flavors. I will be making this again!
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