Queso de Tuna del Valle del Mezquital

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Gloves and a stiff brush for cleaning tuna cardona
• •Wide copper cazo for dulces or heavy stainless steel preserving pan
• •Long wooden paddle
• •Coarse sieve, fine-mesh sieve, and cheesecloth
• •Smooth stone slab, marble board, or wide heatproof bowl for beating
• •8-inch square mold or small wooden candy molds

Instructions

1. 1

   Choose the tuna

   Use ripe tuna cardona, the red or purple fruit of the nopal cardon. The skins should be deeply colored, the fruit should feel heavy, and the flesh should smell floral and sweet once opened. If the market only has pale, watery supermarket prickly pears, wait. This dulce is the fruit, nothing else. Bad tuna makes bad queso.

   Tuna season in the central Mexican semi-desert runs mostly through late summer into early fall, depending on rain and altitude. Cook what the market is selling today. Así se hace y punto.
2. 2

   Clean and peel

   Wear gloves. Brush the tuna under running water to remove any remaining fine spines, then cut off both ends of each fruit. Make one lengthwise slit through the peel and lift the flesh out with your thumb or a small knife. Work over a bowl because good tuna bleeds juice the color of garnet.

   Those tiny spines are called glochids and they do not forgive carelessness. Use gloves and keep a damp towel nearby for the knife handle.
3. 3

   Release the juice

   Put the peeled fruit in a wide heavy pot and crush it with clean hands or a potato masher. Warm it over low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring, just until the fruit loosens and floods the pot with juice. Do not use a blender. A blender breaks the seeds and gives the candy a gritty, bitter edge. The seeds are guests here, not ingredients.

4. 4

   Strain the pulp

   Pass the warm crushed fruit through a coarse sieve or colander first, pressing firmly to separate the juice and soft pulp from the seeds. Then strain the liquid again through a fine-mesh sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth. You want clean, seedless juice. The pot should hold about 10 to 12 cups, depending on the fruit. If you have less, your tuna was dry. The market already told you something.

5. 5

   Boil in copper

   Pour the strained juice into a clean copper cazo made for dulces, or a wide heavy stainless steel preserving pan. Bring it to a strong boil over medium-high heat and skim the purple foam that gathers on top. Stir with a long wooden paddle. The wide pan matters because evaporation is the work. A narrow pot makes you stand there all day arguing with syrup.

   If your copper has green patina, do not use it. Tradition is not an excuse for poisoning people. Use clean polished copper or stainless steel.
6. 6

   Reduce to melcocha

   Keep the juice at a steady boil for 3 1/2 to 5 hours, stirring more often as it thickens. The color will move from bright magenta to dark garnet, then to a brown-purple paste. When the paddle leaves a path across the bottom of the cazo for two seconds before the paste closes, you are close. Drop a little onto a cold plate. It should hold its shape and peel away with your finger, not run like jam. This is melcocha.

   A thermometer can help, but texture rules. At sea level the paste usually lands around 225F to 230F. In Hidalgo's altitude, the number shifts. Watch the paddle, not your anxiety.
7. 7

   Beat the paste

   Let the melcocha cool until it is very warm but no longer dangerously bubbling. Scrape it onto a smooth stone slab, marble board, or into a wide heatproof bowl. Beat, fold, and slap it with a wooden paddle for 15 to 25 minutes. It will lighten from glossy dark purple-brown to a more opaque brown and become less sticky. This beating is what turns cooked juice into queso de tuna. Skip it and you have thick syrup, not candy.

   Molten fruit sugar burns badly. Long sleeves, steady hands, no children near the table. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.
8. 8

   Mold and dry

   Press the beaten paste into an 8-inch square mold lined with parchment, or into small wooden molds if you have them. Smooth the top with the back of a damp spoon. Cover loosely with a clean cloth and let it orear, dry in the air, for 12 hours. Turn the block out, peel off the parchment, and let the other side dry for another 12 hours. The surface should feel dry and leathery, while the center stays firm enough to slice.

9. 9

   Slice and serve

   Cut the queso de tuna with a thin knife wiped with a damp cloth between slices. Serve small pieces with cafe de olla, atole blanco, or on a holiday dulces tray. It is intense, concentrated fruit from a dry-land kitchen. A little slice carries a whole basket of tuna cardona. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

Chef Tips

• •Tuna cardona is the point. White tuna, green tuna, and xoconostle will not give you the same color, sweetness, or set. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •Do not add gelatin. Do not add commercial pectin. Do not add milk because the word queso confused you. The set comes from reducing the fruit and beating the melcocha while it is warm.
• •The seeds must stay whole until they are strained out. Once you grind them, the texture is ruined. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado, they will tell you the same thing.
• •A wide copper cazo gives the cleanest reduction because the juice evaporates quickly and evenly. Stainless steel works in a home kitchen. Aluminum is poor company for acidic fruit and can give the candy a dull taste.
• •If the finished block stays sticky after 24 hours, it was undercooked or the room is humid. Cut it into thick pieces and dry them on parchment for another day. Recetas probadas y garantizadas, but only if you respect the point.

Advance Preparation

• •Queso de tuna is made for waiting. Prepare it one to three days before serving so the surface has time to dry and the block slices cleanly.
• •The strained tuna juice can be refrigerated for 24 hours before cooking. After that, its natural sugars begin to ferment and the flavor changes.
• •Wrap the dried block in parchment and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks. Let it come to room temperature before slicing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 38g)