Chileajo Mixteco

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy 10-inch skillet for toasting
• •Fine-mesh strainer
• •High-powered blender
• •Molcajete and tejolote, or electric spice grinder
• •Clean glass jars with tight-fitting lids for storage

Instructions

1. 1

   Char the garlic on the comal

   Heat a dry comal or heavy cast iron skillet over medium. Lay the unpeeled garlic cloves on it and turn them every minute or so for about 10 minutes, until the skins are blackened in patches and the cloves inside are soft when you press on them. The black skin is not failure. It is flavor. In Huajuapan, the senoras char the garlic until it almost frightens you. That bitter edge is what makes the paste taste like chileajo and not like garlic puree. Peel the cloves once they are cool enough to handle.

   Do not peel the garlic before charring. The skin protects the clove from burning while the inside softens. Naked garlic on a comal turns acrid in seconds.
2. 2

   Toast the chiles

   On the same comal, toast the guajillo, ancho, and costeno separately, about 20 to 30 seconds per side. Press them flat with a spatula. They should puff slightly, the skin should blister, and the kitchen should smell like the chile vendors at the Huajuapan market. The costeno is the smallest and burns the fastest. Watch it. The ancho is thick and tolerates more heat. Pull each one off the moment it is fragrant. Burned chile is bitter chile and there is no fixing a bitter chileajo.

   If you cannot find chile costeno, leave it out. Do not substitute chile de arbol. Costeno gives a sharp, bright heat that arbol cannot replicate, and arbol will overpower the paste.
3. 3

   Soak the chiles

   Place the toasted chiles in a heatproof bowl and cover with hot tap water. Hot, not boiling. Boiling water cooks the skins and pulls bitterness out of the seeds you missed. Weigh the chiles down with a small plate so they stay submerged. Let them soften for 20 minutes until they are pliable and the water has turned a deep red. Discard the soaking water. It carries the bitterness you do not want in the paste.

4. 4

   Toast the spices

   Lower the comal to medium-low. Add the cumin, peppercorns, cloves, and broken canela. Toast them for 2 to 3 minutes, shaking the pan, until the cumin darkens by a shade and the air sharpens. Tip them onto a plate to cool. Spices keep cooking on a hot comal even off the heat. The Mixteca is a dry, mountainous region and the spice trade reached it through Puebla and Oaxaca centuries ago. These four spices are the colonial signature of the dish.

5. 5

   Grind the spices

   Grind the toasted spices with the dried oregano and thyme to a fine powder. A molcajete and tejolote will do the work in about five minutes of patient grinding. A spice grinder works in 30 seconds. Both are honest. The metate the abuelas in Huajuapan use will give you a paste with a different texture than a blender, but for a chileajo destined for the cazuela, an electric grinder is not a betrayal. No me vengas con atajos when it comes to toasting. The grinding is negotiable.

6. 6

   Blend the paste

   Drain the soaked chiles and shake off excess water. Place them in a blender with the charred garlic, the ground spice mixture, both vinegars, and the salt. Blend on high for at least three full minutes. The paste should be thick, glossy, and the color of dried blood. If the blender struggles, add vinegar a tablespoon at a time, never water. Water dilutes the keeping power of the paste. Vinegar preserves it. This is a paste built to live in a jar in the kitchen for weeks.

7. 7

   Strain and fry

   Press the paste through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, working it through with a wooden spoon. Discard the bits of skin and seed left behind. In a heavy skillet, melt the manteca over medium heat. When it shimmers, add the strained paste. It will sputter. Stand back. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring constantly, until the paste darkens by two shades and the fat starts to bead at the edges. La manteca es el sabor and this final fry is what turns a raw chile puree into a chileajo. Skip it and the paste tastes flat and aggressive. Fry it and the chile flavor blooms.

   You will know the paste is done when a wooden spoon dragged through it leaves a clean trail across the bottom of the pan and the fat pools red around the edges. That separation is the signal.
8. 8

   Cool and store

   Let the chileajo cool to room temperature. Pack it into a clean glass jar and press the surface flat. Pour a thin film of melted manteca over the top to seal it. Refrigerate. The paste keeps for three weeks in the refrigerator and the flavor deepens after the first 48 hours. Use it to coat pork, chicken, goat, or vegetables before roasting. Thin it with a little broth to dress tortillas or stewed beans. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Find your chiles at a serious mercado or a Mexican grocery with turnover. Dried chiles that have sat on a shelf for a year are leathery and dusty. They will not toast properly and the paste will taste tired. The chiles should still be pliable when you bend them, like dried fruit, not like cardboard.
• •If you can get vinagre de pina casero, the homemade pineapple vinegar that Oaxacan cooks make in clay ollas, use it. It has a softer acidity than commercial vinegar and a faint fruit sweetness that suits the paste. Apple cider vinegar is the closest commercial substitute. White vinegar alone is too sharp.
• •The charred garlic is non-negotiable. Roasted garlic is sweet. Boiled garlic is flat. Charred garlic carries the bitter-smoky note that defines chileajo. If you are tempted to skip the char because the kitchen smells acrid, you have done it correctly. Push through.
• •Use the paste on goat, pork shoulder, or chicken thighs. Coat the meat thickly, let it marinate overnight, then roast slowly. The classic application is chivo en chileajo, slow-cooked goat from Huajuapan, but the paste also transforms cauliflower, potato, and chayote into something the Mixteca would recognize.

Advance Preparation

• •Chileajo is a make-ahead paste by design. It needs at least 24 hours of resting in the refrigerator before the flavors marry. Make it on Sunday and it is ready to use Monday through the following weekend.
• •The paste keeps for three weeks refrigerated under a film of melted manteca. For longer storage, freeze in two-tablespoon portions in an ice cube tray, then transfer the cubes to a freezer bag. Thaw what you need.
• •Doubled batches keep just as well. The Mixteca cooks make chileajo in large batches on market days when the chile vendors have the freshest stock.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 36g)