Submitted by:
Nora Serpas
Category:
Dessert
Country of Origin:
El Salvador
Cook time:
1 hour 15 minutes
Serves:
8
Ingredients:
1 cup roasted unsalted cashew nuts
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of rice flour
1 liter of milk
Cinnamon bark
Water as needed
Steps:
1. Boil half a cup of water and add the cinnamon bark to your liking. Let the water cool with the cinnamon.
2. Boil a cup of water and add the cashew nuts. Simmer for five minutes and let cool.
3. Traditionally, the cooked nuts were ground in stone or in nixtamal mill. Now you can use the blender. Grind the nuts with the water they were cooked in and the cinnamon water (without the cinnamon bark). When you are done, do not wash the blender.
4. Sieve the ground nuts in a pot with a minimum capacity of four liters. Add water little by little to facilitate the sieving.
5. In the blender add milk, rice flour, and sugar and blend together. Add this mixture to the pot with the ground nuts, add water to the blender to "wash" the mixture and dissolve the contents of the pot.
6. Put the pot on moderate heat to cook, constantly stirring the atol from the bottom of the pot using a wooden spoon. The atol will thicken little by little. The cooking process can last from thirty to forty minutes, depending on the amount of water that was necessary to strain and dissolve the nut mixture.
7. Do not stop stirring the atol. If the atol gets "stuck" on the bottom of the pot, it can burn or taste smoky.
8. The recipe will yield from six to eight large cups of atol, which can be served cold or hot.
What makes this recipe special?
This atol is traditional from the zone of Zacatecoluca, department of La Paz, El Salvador. In the past decade, its preparation at home for typical meals has become less frequent. Like other traditions, recipes and tastes get lost. For that reason, my father asked the neighbors for their recipes for atol, and he tested and corrected them until he obtained the cashew nut atol.
Additional notes:
This atol is a thick, sweet dessert beverage. The cashew is the Anacardium occidentale, also known as cashew nut. It is known by marañón, cajú, anacardo, castaña de cajú, acguil or merey in Spanish and by cajou in French.