Licuado de Mamey Oaxaqueño

This is Oaxaca. The mamey grows across the southern half of Mexico, but the licuado is what the senoras at the Mercado Benito Juarez and the Mercado 20 de Noviembre in Oaxaca de Juarez hand you in a tall glass at seven in the morning, alongside a tamal de mole or a piece of pan de yema still warm from the wood oven. It is breakfast and it is breakfast for working people. Thick, filling, sweet enough to wake you up, dense enough to carry you through the morning.

The mamey does the work. A ripe one is salmon-orange, almost the color of cooked salmon, with flesh that is dense and creamy and tastes faintly of sweet potato and almond at the same time. If you have to add sugar, your mamey was not ripe. La fruta hace el trabajo. The canela goes in to warm the cold milk, not to flavor the fruit. A pinch of salt sharpens everything. That is the recipe. No me vengas con atajos.

My mother did not make this. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco does not have mamey the way the south does. I learned this licuado from a woman named Dona Elvia who ran a juice stand in the Mercado de Abastos in Oaxaca for forty-three years. She told me the secret was to keep the milk and the fruit cold and the blender working long enough to make it heavy. Heavy is the word she used. A licuado de mamey hecho como debe ser is heavy. You feel it when you lift the glass. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.