Doce de Leite (Part 1)

There’s not much to do on a Friday night in the Coração Eucarístico. Seniors mostly populate the bairro, and those of bar-going age in the Coreu (as it is affectionately called) that do go to one of the four local bars are mostly well out of college. Unlike at American universities, where students live in dorms or apartments or Greek houses close to campus (and thereby equally close to a wealth of drinking establishments), in Brazil it’s rare for college students to do what Ricardo and I are doing: start a república and live on their own. The vast majority of students still live at home throughout college, commuting to class everyday by bus, car, or (to quote the Southern comedian James Gregory, “for those that’s got money”) taxi. Any going out is done as close to home as possible, though every now and then you’ll treat yourself by going out in one of the several downtown bairros. However, doing so means taking a bus there and, if you’re lucky, back; few bus lines operate in the late night/wee morning hours, so more often than not the return trip is made by taxi, whether you’s got money or not.

The last couple Friday nights I went out to the theatre and then drinks afterward with some friends from school, being fortunate enough to catch one of the three buses per hour that make the witching hour trek back to the Coreu. (Theatre is very big in Brazilian culture, and it shows in BH, a city that enjoys dozens of houses and one of the most famous Brazilian companies, the Grupo Galpão. This craze for the stage is definitely something worth delving deeper into for a future post.) This past Friday night, however, I wasn’t in much of a going out mood. Yet at the same time I didn’t want to just be stuck at home in front of the TV or the Net. One would think that the Coreu would have a movie theatre at the very least. To my knowledge it doesn’t even have a bingo parlor (or its Brazilian equivalent) for its large contingency of seniors. So then, what to do?

Suddenly it hits me. I get the desire to “mexer na cozinha,” which I’d translate (aptly so, in my case) as “mess around in the kitchen.” I figure I’m here to experience Brazilian culture, so why not try to reproduce that culture right here right now in the form of something edible? I run through the list in my head of possible dishes I could make. I’ll probably have to start with something easy, something that requires relatively few ingredients and little preparation. Then I remember Dona Dirce telling us how easy it was to make Doce de Leite (I think in the U.S. we use the Spanish Dulce de Leche, but for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a decadently sweet, thick cross between pudding and caramel). According to her grandmotherly advice, all it takes is milk, sugar, and a pinch of salt (which keeps the milk from separating), which you mix and boil until it reaches caramely goodness. It’s settled. I grab some cash and head to the local bakery/convenient store just down the street to get what I need.

I can’t remember exactly how much milk and sugar I need, so I grab a couple liters and a kilo of sugar. (I apologize, this is going to sound very ethnocentric, but to me the metric system belongs in the laboratory, not the kitchen, as much of a lab as it may be. When I’m told I’m getting 300mL of juice and a burger with 150g of meat I feel more like a lab rat being experimented on than a human being that drinks 12oz. and eats a quarter-pounder. Maybe herein lie the roots of so much misunderstanding between our worlds.) Also, of course, the ingredients are only half the battle, so when I get home I pull up a recipe for the dessert online to get to know the cooking process in greater detail. According to the culinária mineira section at www.bussolanet.com.br, I need two liters of milk and 750 grams of sugar. I have to put the milk in a large saucepan and place on the burner to boil. Once it reaches boiling, I add the sugar, turn down the heat, and stir. For 45 minutes. For some reason I had assumed the magical Brazilian climate would intervene and 5 minutes after the mixture is made the milky-sugary mass would turn creamy. But, I figure this is above all a learning experience, and so if the lesson takes 45 minutes, that’s not a minute less than it has to be.

I boil. I mix. I start to stir. And stir. And stir.

And stir.

30 minutes stirring in front of a stove. I look over at my laundry hanging up in the next room. I imagine what it must have been like for housewives on Brazilian farms at the beginning of the 20th century. Or (who am I kidding?) today even. Slaving away all day long to keep the domestics duties of the fazenda in order. Or what about even one century earlier, when the person slaving away all day long was, in fact, a slave? I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like.

I keep stirring. My YouTube Generation self is bored out of its mind. This calls for a beer. I open the fridge and pull out the last of our stock of Bohemia, a brand that makes nicer deck chairs than beer. Our next 12-pack will be of Itaipava, a crisp, unpretentious, Mexican-like beer. I take a drink and turn back to my stirring. Still liquid.

The bitter smell of too-warm milk—an easily recognizable smell for any ex-barista—wafts up from the cauldron in front of me. I wonder if maybe there really is too much milk in the mix now. Time for a taste. I bring the wooden spoon to my mouth, blow it cool, and dab my tongue on it. Sure enough, sweeter than God’s breath. So when the @%&! does it turn brown and creamy?!

I keep stirring. I take another swig of Bohemia and make another bitter beer face. I look at my watch. 45 minutes on the dot. My caveman logic determines that what I need is more solids to go with the bubbling liquid. I dump another small-glass-cup-full of sugar (100g? 150?) into the mix. Half expecting this to be a catalytic action, my spirits drop when I don’t see a change in state after another five minutes.

In light of the excess amount of fossil fuel used in this experiment, and the fact that this is just that, an experiment, I decide to turn off the burner and let the pot cool. Maybe it’s in the cooling process that the syrup slowly changes to goo. And if not, at the very least I’ve made a luxurious mating ground for Dengue mosquitoes.

I decide to upgrade my beer-break and take my mug into the living room and turn on the TV. It’s a Friday night, so the quality is pretty sparse. I flip through the dozen or so channels about three or four times before deciding to head back to the kitchen and meet my fate. Miraculously, the mixture I find, while still quite warm, has started to congeal. I bring the pot into the living room and continue to stir it while watching TV. Slowly I begin to feel more resistance as I stir. When I pick up the spoon, a thin, tan strand falls back into the mix. I ask myself, if all it takes is for the hot mix to cool to finish the process, then why can’t I just mix cold milk with sugar, stir, and be done with it?! That would save so much time and energy, both my own and that in the gas tank. But that would be too easy I guess.

When the saucepan has cooled enough I decide to stick it in the fridge to expedite the cooling process. It’s late anyway and I’m tired and Ricardo wants to show me some (what else?) YouTube videos and quite frankly I don’t want to have to look at this goop until tomorrow morning. I put it on the top shelf and shut the door. Out of sight, out of mind.

I wake up Saturday morning and take what has become my routine walk down to the bakery to get some fresh bread and rolls for breakfast. Upon my return I open the fridge and pull out the now ice cold saucepan. I stir the beige mass. Not the sticky hard I had hoped for, but not liquid either. At least it’s not a total loss. At least by look and feel. Now for the taste. I put a couple spoonfuls on my plate next to a couple rolls, and soon the gelatiny mass pools around the solid forms like the Blob. Looks like I’ll have no choice but to eat the rolls with a bit of frosting on them. I break off a piece of the roll and take a bite. The cold granulations are perhaps, yes, a little too sweet, and together with the roll I feel like more like I’m eating a caramel-frosted Krispy Kreme Donut than the creamy Brazilian delicacy I had begun Friday night hoping for. But it’s edible. What’s done is done. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. Or poorly made sweet milk. I know I’ll have a second chance to experiment and hopefully come up with something closer to what I had hypothesized. And probably a third and a fourth. (Who am I kidding, probably a 34th.) In the meantime, there’s still a liter-and-a-half of industrial strength Krispy Kreme frosting in the fridge.

Dessert anyone?