Dulce de Leche Cortada

Ingredients

• 2 litres whole milk
• 3 limes, juiced and strained
• 500 g sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 60 g raisins — optional
• a scrape of nutmeg — optional
• a pinch of salt

Method

1. Bring the milk to the edge of a boil

   Pour the milk into a wide, heavy pot and heat it over medium until it steams hard and just begins to lift at the edges. Use the widest pot you own: this cooks down for over an hour and a narrow pan means an hour of stirring a deep column of milk that scorches at the bottom anyway.

2. Cut the milk on purpose

   Take the pot off the heat, pour in the strained lime juice and stir once — only once — then leave it completely alone for five minutes while it splits into white curds and thin yellowish whey. This is not an accident to be fixed: the curd is the dessert, and the whole texture of dulce de leche cortada depends on those curds forming whole and being left whole.

   5 min

3. Sweeten and return to low heat

   Scatter the sugar, the cinnamon sticks and the pinch of salt over the surface and set the pot back on the lowest flame. Do not stir it in; let the sugar sink and dissolve on its own. A spoon dragged through now shreds the curds into grains and you end up with sweet milky sand instead of soft flakes.

4. Cook it down without stirring

   Let it cook at a lazy simmer for an hour to an hour and a quarter, nudging the pot in a slow circle now and then instead of stirring, and adding the raisins about halfway. It is ready when the whey has cooked away to a thick amber syrup and the curds sit suspended in it rather than swimming.

   1 h 10 min

5. Watch the last ten minutes

   Once the syrup starts to thicken visibly it goes from caramel to burnt fast, so stay at the pot and pull it the moment a spoon dragged across the bottom leaves a track that closes slowly. Grate over the nutmeg off the heat, where it keeps its perfume.

6. Set and serve cool

   Pour it into a shallow dish, fish out the cinnamon sticks and let it cool to room temperature, then chill for at least two hours so it sets to a spoonable, fudgy body. It is eaten cold, in small portions, often with a slice of white cheese against the sweetness.

   2 h