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The Yucatán Peninsula's calabaza de Castilla slow-cooked in piloncillo, Mexican canela, and clove until the chunks turn glossy and translucent. The pumpkin-in-honey that anchors the Hanal Pixán altar on the first days of November.
This is a Yucatecan dish. Not generic Mexican pumpkin, not autumn dessert. This is calabaza en dulce as it is made on the Peninsula, where it belongs to a specific calendar, the last days of October and the first two of November, and to a specific table, the Hanal Pixán altar set out for the dead who come back to eat with the living.
The calabaza has to be calabaza de Castilla, the ridged, hard-shelled, deep orange pumpkin you find piled outside the Lucas de Gálvez market in Mérida in late October. Not the watery decorative pumpkin from the supermarket, not butternut, not the small sugar pumpkin from a Pinterest board. Calabaza de Castilla holds its shape when you cook it for hours in piloncillo syrup. Other pumpkins collapse. The wrong ingredient will give you a sad, stringy compote. Si no conoces el mercado, no conoces la cocina.
The syrup is piloncillo, the dark unrefined cone sugar that smells like molasses and burned caramel, with sticks of Mexican canela, whole cloves, and a strip of orange peel. Some Mérida households add star anise. Some add a splash of anise liqueur. Every family has its variation and every family will tell you theirs is the right one. The constants do not move: calabaza de Castilla, piloncillo, canela verdadera, low heat, time.
My mother was from Jalisco and she did not make this. I learned it from a señora named Doña Reina in the colonia Itzimná of Mérida, who set her altar every year on October 31 with mazapanes, papel picado, candles, a glass of water, a plate of pibipollo, and a cazuela of dulce de calabaza still warm from the morning's cooking. She let me taste it before her dead did, and she told me, in the same breath she told me how to crosshatch the flesh: 'En Yucatán, los muertos comen primero, pero comen lo mismo que nosotros, así que hay que hacerlo bien.' In Yucatán, the dead eat first, but they eat the same thing we do, so you have to do it right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, even for the ones who are not here anymore.
Calabaza de Castilla, Cucurbita moschata, is indigenous to Mesoamerica and was cultivated by the Maya in the Yucatán Peninsula for at least four thousand years before the Spanish arrival, alongside corn and bean as the third element of the milpa. The colonial introduction of cane sugar, refined locally into piloncillo, and of canela and clove through the Manila Galleon trade transformed the pre-Columbian boiled-squash preparations into the syrup-soaked sweet that exists today. The dish's permanent fixture on the Hanal Pixán altar, the Maya-Yucatec observance of the Day of the Dead held from October 31 to November 2, reflects the syncretic fusion of Maya ancestor offerings with Catholic All Saints' and All Souls' Days; calabaza en dulce sits beside pibipollo, atole nuevo, and mucbipollo as one of the principal ofrendas the living set out for the returning souls.
Quantity
5 pounds
seeds and stringy pulp removed, cut into 3-inch chunks with skin on
Quantity
1 1/2 pounds (about 3 large cones)
roughly chopped
Quantity
4 cups
Quantity
2 sticks, about 6 inches each
Quantity
6
Quantity
1
common in Mérida households
Quantity
from 1 orange
cut in wide strips, no white pith
Quantity
pinch
dissolved in 4 cups cold water for soaking
Quantity
for serving
shaved or cut into wedges
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
warmed
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| calabaza de Castillaseeds and stringy pulp removed, cut into 3-inch chunks with skin on | 5 pounds |
| piloncilloroughly chopped | 1 1/2 pounds (about 3 large cones) |
| water | 4 cups |
| Mexican canela (Ceylon cinnamon) | 2 sticks, about 6 inches each |
| whole cloves | 6 |
| star anise (optional)common in Mérida households | 1 |
| orange peelcut in wide strips, no white pith | from 1 orange |
| cal (food-grade calcium hydroxide)dissolved in 4 cups cold water for soaking | pinch |
| queso de bola from Holanda (optional)shaved or cut into wedges | for serving |
| cold whole milk (optional) | for serving |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
Use calabaza de Castilla, the ridged orange pumpkin with hard green-streaked skin. Not the small sugar pumpkin from the supermarket aisle, not butternut, not the carving pumpkin from October. Calabaza de Castilla holds its shape when cooked and the flesh turns glossy without dissolving into puree. If your market does not carry it whole, ask for it in pieces. Yucatecan markets sell it both ways.
Dissolve the pinch of cal in 4 cups cold water and stir until cloudy. Submerge the calabaza chunks in the cal water and let them sit for one hour. The cal firms the cell walls so the chunks stay intact through hours of simmering in syrup. Without this step the calabaza turns to mush halfway through. The señoras of the Lucas de Gálvez market do not skip it and neither do you.
Lift the chunks out of the cal water and rinse them under cold running water until the water runs clear. Score the flesh side of each chunk in a shallow crosshatch about a quarter inch deep. The cuts let the piloncillo syrup penetrate the flesh instead of just glazing the surface. This is how you get calabaza that is sweet all the way through, not sweet on the outside and bland in the middle.
Combine the chopped piloncillo and 4 cups water in a wide heavy pot. Add the canela sticks, cloves, star anise if using, and the orange peel strips. Set over medium heat and stir until the piloncillo dissolves completely, about 10 minutes. The syrup should be the color of dark amber and smell like cinnamon and burned sugar. Do not let it boil hard yet. You are making syrup, not candy.
Arrange the rinsed calabaza chunks in the pot skin side down, scored flesh facing up. Pack them in one or two layers, no more. The syrup should come about three-quarters of the way up the chunks. If you need a little more liquid, add water a quarter cup at a time. Do not drown the calabaza. It releases water as it cooks and the syrup will thin on its own.
Bring the pot to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat. Lazy bubbles around the edges, nothing aggressive. Cook uncovered for one and a half to two hours, basting the exposed flesh with the syrup every 20 minutes using a wooden spoon or a small ladle. Do not stir. Stirring breaks the chunks. The flesh turns from opaque orange to translucent amber. The syrup reduces and thickens around it. The kitchen will smell like Mérida in late October.
The calabaza is done when a knife slides into the flesh with no resistance and the chunks look glossy and translucent at the edges where the syrup has worked into the cuts. The syrup should coat the back of a spoon. If you tilt the pot, it should pool slowly, not run like water. This is the almíbar. The shine of the almíbar on the calabaza is the visual signature of the dish.
Turn off the heat and let the calabaza rest in the pot, uncovered, for at least one hour before serving. This is not optional. The chunks keep absorbing syrup as they cool and the texture sets. Dulce de calabaza eaten straight off the heat tastes incomplete. Dulce de calabaza eaten after a long rest tastes like itself.
Spoon the chunks into shallow clay cazuelitas or onto a Talavera platter. Pour a generous pool of the dark piloncillo syrup over each serving. Set out shavings of queso de bola from Holanda and a small jarro of cold whole milk on the side. Each person decides: cheese on top, milk poured around it, or the syrup alone. In Mérida, plenty of households do all three. Así se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 325g)
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