Atole de Pechita Norteño

This is a drink of the Mexican north. Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and the upper edge of the Bajio where mesquite trees grow wild on the ranchero land and the pods, pechitas, drop in late summer to be gathered and dried for winter. You will not find this atole in Oaxaca. You will not find it in Yucatán. It is desert food, and the desert pours into the cup.

The pechita is the dried pod of the mesquite tree, Prosopis velutina or Prosopis glandulosa depending on which side of the Sierra Madre you are standing on. The Comcáac on the Sonoran coast, the Tohono O'odham of the border desert, the Yaqui along the Rio Yaqui, all of them have eaten mesquite for thousands of years. They ground the pods into harina de mezquite, a sweet flour that fed entire communities through the lean months. The atole is one of the oldest preparations: pods boiled in water, the dark sweet liquid strained off, thickened with corn, drunk hot. Everything else here, the piloncillo, the milk, the cinnamon, came later with the Spaniards. The bones of the drink are pre-Columbian.

The flavor is unlike anything else in Mexican cooking. Caramel. Molasses. A whisper of smoke from the wood the pod grew on. A natural sweetness that does not taste like cane. I collected this recipe from a senora in Ures, Sonora, who learned it from her grandmother, who learned it from a Yaqui woman who worked in her family's kitchen. The senora told me, "La pechita no se cocina, se respeta." The pechita is not cooked, it is respected. She meant: do not boil it to death. Do not bury the flavor under sugar. Let the desert speak.

Cada estado, su propia cocina. This one belongs to the north.