Chef Juan

Move to a new country, get married, and have twins, and you just might discover the urge to bake.

After almost one year of life in el norte, Juan really misses the food of his homeland. It started with a simple yearning one morning: "I want real meringues", he said. "Meringue meringues." Apparently, we have no decent meringues here in the US, a logical conclusion if all you've found are those crunchy bite-sized meringues at Whole Foods that cost an arm and a leg.

You see, real meringues, which here means Yucatecan meringues, are delicately crispy on the outside and perfectly gooey on the inside. They neither cloy the palate nor stick to your teeth. Juan had hoped to find something like this here in the Latino wonderland of Langley Park, but alas: apparently, meringues are not that popular in El Salvador. And so it is that Juan's quest yielded a meringue-spackled kitchen, a pan of freshly baked meringues and, why of course!: a huge tres leches cake.

Appreciating how the simple inspiration to bake meringues prompted the large-scale production of baking a cake is something like understanding how hanging a picture on the wall in the living room inspires the addition of a new wing to the house. There's a connection, yes, but it involves a leap of some proportion.

Tres leches is well worth the leap. True to its name, it consists of three milk-based components: a custard-like filling, a sweet milky sauce in which the cake is soaked, and... well, I'll have to get back to you on the third "milk," but suffice it to say that this cake is not for the lactose intolerant among us.* Made Juan's way, the cake is ultimately frosted with meringue. Make more than enough meringue for the cake, and you've got yourself the makings for meringue meringues.

Put like that, Juan's tres leches journey is more akin to adding a new wing to the house as a means of finding a nail with which to hang that picture in the living room-- make tres leches, and you'll have left over meringue. No matter, all three iterations of the meringues and the cake have been deemed delicious by his focus group, which mainly consists of... me. Sigh. I of all people so don't need to have baked goods sitting around the house in need of a tester.

But now very much on a roll, Juan recently decided that a good cake deserved some equally good pork. (Naturally.) Another call home later, and he knew how to go about preparing what is traditionally a Monday dish in Yucatan, frijol con puerco. No stranger to frijol con puerco myself (see my earlier blog entries about this here and here), I'm thrilled that Juan's passion has taken a more substantial turn, something to balance the sugar rush of the meringues.

All of this makes for the good life that we have: two beautiful babies and a husband that keeps me fed, all with inspiration to spare.

*I've since learned that the three 'milks' are sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and plain old milk. These are included in both the custard type filling and the sweet milky syrup in which the cake is soaked. There's also an obscene number of eggs in a tres leches cake, but I imagine calling it a ocho huevos cake wouldn't go over as well as tres leches.)