Agua de Chilacayota

This is from Oaxaca. Walk into the Mercado 20 de Noviembre on any morning and you will see them lined up: the great glass vitroleros holding aguas frescas of horchata, jamaica, chia, tamarindo, and the pale, golden one in the middle, full of long pale strands suspended in cinnamon-scented syrup. That is chilacayota. It is the agua that tells you which mercado you are standing in.

The chilacayota itself is a squash you will not find in most American supermarkets. Cucurbita ficifolia. The skin is hard, pale green, marbled with white. The flesh, when you cook it, breaks down into long fibrous strands that look like pale spaghetti. That is the entire point of the dish. You are not making a smooth blended drink. You are making an agua where you chew the squash as you drink it. If you strain those strands out, you have missed what chilacayota is.

The sweetener has to be piloncillo. Real piloncillo, the cones of unrefined cane sugar with the deep dark notes of molasses still in them. Not brown sugar. Not honey. Not maple. The canela has to be the soft, papery true cinnamon from Ceylon that any tienda mexicana sells as canela. The hard cassia at the supermarket is the wrong spice. Get the right ingredients or wait until you can. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Oaxaca's aguas freshcas are not negotiable.

My mother did not make this. It is not a Jalisciense drink. I learned it in Oaxaca, watching a senora named Dona Mela ladle it from her vitrolero at a stall in the Central de Abastos. She told me her secret was the lime at the end, just enough to wake the canela up. I wrote it in the margin of my notebook. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.