Palanquetas de Cacahuate

Palanquetas come from the dulcerias of Oaxaca. You see them stacked in clear glass jars at every market, Benito Juarez, 20 de Noviembre, the stalls around the Zocalo, sold by the piece to children and to grown men who pretend they are buying for their nieces.

The binder is piloncillo, not white sugar. That is the whole argument. White sugar gives you a clear, brittle candy that tastes of nothing but sweet. Piloncillo brings the molasses, the smoke, the faint bitterness that lets the peanut come through. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Oaxaca's sweet kitchen runs on piloncillo from the cane country around Tlacolula. If your piloncillo is light and soft, find a vendor who sells the dark cones from Veracruz or Oaxaca itself. The color of the cone is the color of the palanqueta.

The other thing the dulceros will tell you is that the peanut has to be raw and toasted on a comal, not bought already roasted. The toasting on the comal pulls a different oil out of the nut, smokier, more present. Salted cocktail peanuts will not do this. No me vengas con atajos.

My mother kept a tin of palanquetas in a cupboard above the stove for unannounced visitors. She did not make them often, she bought them from a senora at La Merced who came down from Oaxaca twice a year. When that senora stopped coming, my mother started making her own. The recipe is in her notebook, two lines long: 'cacahuate tostado, piloncillo a punto de bola dura, sal al final.' That is the whole thing. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.