Pay de Guayaba con Queso de Bola

This is a Yucatán pie. Specifically a Mérida pie, the kind that sits behind the glass of every panadería on Calle 62 and the kind that an abuela will pull from the oven on a Sunday afternoon after the cochinita pibil has been put away. Yucatán does not bake like the rest of Mexico. The peninsula was a port. Holanda, Cuba, Lebanon, France, all of them came through Progreso and Sisal, and the kitchens absorbed what they brought. Edam cheese in red wax, sold across the Yucatán as queso de bola, is one of those inheritances. It is in the marquesitas, in the queso relleno, and it is in this pay.

The two ingredients that matter are the ate de guayaba and the queso de bola. The ate has to be firm, the dark kind that holds its shape on the cutting board, not the soft jarred stuff. You cook it down with milk and a stick of canela mexicana until it melts into a glossy paste, bright with lime zest. The queso de bola goes both inside the pie and across the top. The salt of the Edam against the sweet of the guayaba is the entire point. Without that contrast you have a guava tart. With it you have a pay yucateco.

My mother did not bake this. She was from Jalisco and her dulces were tejocote and capirotada. I learned this one in 2009 from a señora named Doña Marina who ran a small panadería on the corner of Calle 55 and 60 in Mérida and who, after three afternoons of watching me roll dough badly, finally let me write down her measurements in pencil. She told me the secret was to not be shy with the cheese on top. Recetas probadas y garantizadas. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.