Espagueti Verde

Espagueti verde is from Ciudad de Mexico. Not from Italy, not from Puebla, from the kitchens of the capital, where Italian pasta arrived in the late 19th century and was promptly absorbed into the Mexican household. The capitalino home cook took the spaghetti, looked at what was in the cazuela, and said: this needs poblano.

The sauce is the dish. Charred chile poblano, crema, evaporated milk, queso crema, cilantro, parsley, onion, garlic. Nothing else. The poblano has to be roasted black on a flame, not steamed, not boiled. The char is what gives the sauce its smoke. The crema and the queso crema give it the silk. The evaporated milk is the secret nobody from Mexico City will tell you about, it is what makes the sauce coat the pasta the way it does in childhood memory.

This is birthday-party food. School-lunch food. The plate the abuela makes when the grandchildren come over and there is no time for mole. Every cumpleanos infantil in Colonia Roma, Coyoacan, or Iztapalapa has had a tray of espagueti verde next to the tinga de pollo and the gelatina. My mother made it on Sundays when we needed something fast and green and filling, and she always finished it with crumbled queso fresco at the table. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to the capital. Asi se hace y punto.