Gastronomique: The Doña Tomàs Cookbook.

We tried three, and we can safely say that Thomas Schnetz and Dona Savitsky's batting average with the clumsy home cook is a respectable .667. We had a decent success with the budín de elote, a recipe of which you can find here. It was a fluffy corn pudding with bits of zucchini, light and tasty as summer.

We scored a home run with the flan de rosas, a rose water flavored flan with a caramel topping. We made it twice, and twice it went poof and disappeared. The hardest part turned out to locate the rose water, which we now know you can find at Rainbow, Berkeley Bowl or, of all places, Golden Produce (and not across Church Street at the Market Safeway).