Arroz con Leche Yucateco

This is the Yucatán version of arroz con leche. Not the one from Ciudad de México, which stands up like a pudding when you spoon it. The peninsular version is looser, soupier, almost a thick atole of rice and milk, and it is meant to be drunk as much as eaten. Pour it into a cup. That is how the señoras in the Lucas de Gálvez market serve it.

The ratio is what makes it Yucatán: more milk to less rice. Then the perfume of canela ceylán, the soft pale cinnamon from Ceylon that the Yucatán dulcerías have used since the colonial trade routes brought it through Campeche's port. Cassia, the dark hard cinnamon sold in most North American supermarkets, is not the same spice. Use canela. The peel of limón criollo, the small native lime of the peninsula, gives it the citrus lift that the central-Mexico version does not have. If you cannot find criollo, Persian lime peel will get you close.

My mother's notebook has an arroz con leche recipe from Jalisco, thicker, no lime peel, made with a stick of cassia from the supermarket because that was what she could buy in Colonia Roma in the eighties. I made it that way for years before I went to Mérida and ate it from a clay cup at a stall near the cathedral. I came home and rewrote the recipe. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the Yucatán cup is its own thing. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.