Ponteduro Sonorense

This is from Sonora. From the cattle ranches and small-town kitchens of the northern desert, where wheat replaced corn at the table but corn never left the candy jar. Ponteduro is the Sonoran answer to what you make when you have a handful of dried maiz, a cone of piloncillo, and a comal that has been on the fire since before sunrise.

The corn has to be cracked, not ground. Sonoran cooks pounded it in a molcajete or wrapped the kernels in a cloth and worked them with a stone. You want pieces with edges and uneven shapes so the syrup grabs hold and the finished ball has texture under the tooth. Toast the cracked corn on a dry comal until it smells like pinole, that nutty sweetness that comes from the corn sugars caramelizing in the dry heat. This is the same toasting the ranch cooks did over mesquite. The smell tells you when it is right.

The syrup is piloncillo, water, and canela. Nothing else needs to be there. Piloncillo carries a mineral depth that white sugar cannot fake, and the canela, the soft true cinnamon from Mexican groceries, not the harsh cassia bark from the supermarket spice aisle, ties the whole candy to the Sonoran sweet tradition. The mixture has to cook to the hard ball stage or the candy will stay sticky and sad. No me vengas con atajos.

My mother did not make ponteduro. She was from Jalisco and her sweets were ate, jericalla, dulce de leche cooked in a clay pot. The first time I tasted ponteduro was at a small market in Magdalena de Kino, sold three for a peso by a woman who had been making them every Saturday for forty-two years. She told me her recipe in five sentences and watched me write it down. That is how this knowledge travels. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.