Dulce de Pitaya del Desierto

This is from Sonora. Specifically from the desert stretches between Hermosillo, Guaymas, and the Yaqui Valley, where the pitahaya cactus, the same that the seris and yaquis have harvested for centuries, fruits for a few weeks every May and June. The pitaya season is short and violent. The fruit ripens in a window the desert allows, and then it is over.

The pulp is bright magenta or deep coral, studded with small black seeds that you do not strain out. The flavor is somewhere between watermelon and prickly pear, with a faint floral edge that the heat of the cook concentrates. Sonorans turn the fresh fruit into aguas frescas, into helados, and, when there is more than a family can eat in a week, into this dulce: a slow reduction with sugar and lime that holds the May harvest into the dry months. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

I traveled to a pitayera outside Bacum the year I was working on the northern volume. A senora named Dona Refugio showed me how to handle the fruit, how to singe the glochids off with a candle, how to know the pulp was ready by the way it pulled away from the side of her copper pot. She did not weigh anything. She tasted as she went. She told me her mother used to set the cooled dulce on a windowsill in a clay dish and that the cinnamon in the pot was the difference between a Sonoran dulce de pitaya and any other. I wrote it down. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

This is not a dessert you make from a jar of pulp from the supermarket. If you cannot find pitaya in May or June at a Mexican mercado or a specialty fruit market, wait until next year. The cuisine respects its seasons and so should you.