Bollito con Café con Leche

One of my favourite comfort foods as a kid was bollitos and for breakfast and it was best paired with café con leche. Bollito is made with white cornmeal, water, salt and oil. It is made by hand rolling into cylinder shape that fits in your hands and then placing it in boiling water. Once it’s ready, and there’s steam coming out of them, you would add butter – or at that time margarine – and shredded white cheese, both which will melt and cool off the bollito. You would mash the bollito, cheese and butter with a fork.

My Abuela, would make café con leche to go with it. Café con leche is not only coffee and milk. It’s dripped coffee – made from the coffee sock – whisked together with power milk and sugar, to reach a creamy and foamy consistency. I remember my sister did not like café con leche so my Abuela would give her straight black coffee, which I thought was disgusting!

One of the things I remember so dearly from this time it is the dresses my Abuela always used to wear. It was always very hot where she used to live so she would wear long, wide, very light, short-sleeved dresses. She called them ‘bata.’

So, dressed in one of those batas, she would serve us bollito and café con leche for breakfast almost everyday.

– My Abuela, like my dad, would add the café con leche into the mix of the bollito with cheese.

– Some people would add Sardines, or eggs, or ham spread.