Agua Fresca 11: Horchata de Chufa

Well, the afternoon of the 4th July seems like a good time to post about horchata de chufa. It would make a perfect drink to go along with a picnic on the 4th, even though it has no American credentials whatsoever. Or perhaps you’d better stick to iced tea or lemonade or beer.

My first taste of horchata de chufa was a couple of years ago. I’d spent a placid day poking around Alicante on the south coast of Spain–the old town, the regular market (fascinating), the weekly market (a disappointment), the FNAC store for books, a series of five and ten cent stores–while my husband was off talking with the big law school there about problems in legal epistemology. The sun was setting, my feet were aching, and I still had not found the horchata I was looking for. As I made my way back to the hotel along the promenade dodging one of those dizzying inset patterns that give you slight vertigo that the Spanish seem to favor (and that are fun), there was a nineteenth century green stand selling ice cream and horchata.

A tall squishy plastic glass in hand I sat and sipped. Heaven. This is one of the world’s great drinks, rich, creamy, slightly almondy, light years better than Mexican rice versions, delicious as those are. It was a pity it was not in a traditional horchateria though relaxing among the townspeople under the trees looking out to the Mediterranean was nothing to complain about either.

Chufa (or tiger nut) as it’s called in English is a nodule that grows on the roots of a kind of sedge, probably originally from somewhere in the Near East. If you read Spanish, here’s an informative page on the how chufa is grown commercially on 540 hectares in Valencia, Spain. And here’s one in English on its use in the US in the last century for fattening pigs and now for wildlife havens ( I do rather doubt its claim that chufa is widely available in Mexico).

I’ll spare you the multitude of links to pseudo histories of chufa/horchata in which king’s daughters squeal various improbable phrases that supposedly gave birth to the name. Instead here’s the official denomination of origin site.

If you want to experiment with making this nectar and live in the US, here’s a source where you can buy chufa, at a price, of course. I did read somewhere that it’s widely used for feeding carp, a bit of a waste, I’d say, though I’m sure the carp are happy as can be. You’d have to use your own judgment about whether such sources were safe. I brought back a stash from Barcelona. This is what they look like.

I have adjusted a recipe given by Lourdes March and Alicia Rios, impeccable sources for Spanish cuisine, in the magnificently illustrated Heritage of Spanish Cooking (1992).

Take 8 oz of chufa nuts, rinse them well, and soak them overnight in water. They will soften and swell a little but don’t expect the dramatic changes you see with beans. The following day, drain off the water, and put the nuts in the blender with 4 cups of water. Give them a good long whirl.

Then drain them through a sieve into a pitcher.

Add a little sugar and taste. They may benefit from just a touch of cinnamon and lemon to heighten the flavor. Tip the sieved bits back into the blender, add the lemon or lime and piece of cinnamon stick if you want, and whirl and sieve again. I repeat this a third time because I don’t want to waste any of the precious extract.

Adjust seasonings, chill well, serve, find a lovely, calm place with a great view to sit, and sigh.

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