Dulce de Calabaza Sinaloense en Piloncillo

This is from Sinaloa. The northern Pacific coast, where calabaza de Castilla grows enormous and the cooks have been turning it into dulce since before the trains came through. You will find versions of dulce de calabaza in many Mexican states, calabaza en tacha is the Michoacan and central Mexico name for the Day of the Dead version, but the sinaloense version is its own animal: less spice, more piloncillo, and that bowl of cold milk that turns the dish from a candy into a meal.

The two things that make this dish work are the calabaza de Castilla and the piloncillo. The calabaza de Castilla is the big green-and-orange pumpkin that sits in heaps at the mercados from October through February. Its flesh is dense, almost dry, with a deep squash flavor that holds up to hours in syrup. A butternut will give you mush. A jack-o-lantern pumpkin will give you sadness. Wait for the right calabaza or do not make this dish.

The piloncillo is the unrefined cane sugar that comes in cones, dark brown, mineral, with a flavor that white sugar and brown sugar both can only dream about. La piloncillo es el sabor de este dulce. The canela, the cloves, the orange peel, those are the supporting cast. The piloncillo is the star.

My mother did not make this. She was from Jalisco and she made calabaza en tacha for Dia de Muertos with a heavier hand on the spices. The sinaloense version I learned from a senora in Culiacan named Dona Esperanza, who fed it to me in a clay bowl at her kitchen table with a tall glass jar of cold milk on the side. She poured the milk over my bowl herself and watched me eat it. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This one belongs to Sinaloa.