Salsa de los Piltes con Hoja Santa

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for charring and toasting
• •Volcanic stone molcajete or spice grinder for the whole spices
• •High-powered blender
• •Medium-mesh strainer
• •Wide clay cazuela or heavy skillet for frying the salsa
• •Wooden spoon

Instructions

1. 1

   Char the tomatoes and aromatics

   Heat a comal or heavy skillet over medium-high until a drop of water bounces and disappears. Lay the whole tomatoes, the unpeeled garlic, and the onion chunk on the dry surface. Turn them every few minutes until the tomato skins blister and split, the garlic skins blacken in patches, and the onion is dark on every face. This takes about 10 to 12 minutes for the tomato, less for the garlic. The char is the foundation. A boiled tomato gives you a flat salsa.

   Do not skin the tomatoes after charring. The blackened skin gives the salsa the smoky depth that distinguishes a Papaloapan salsa from a generic tomato sauce.
2. 2

   Toast the chiles

   Lower the comal heat to medium. Toast the ancho and guajillo separately, opened flat against the hot surface, about 20 to 30 seconds per side. They should puff slightly and release their oil. The kitchen will smell like a chile vendor's stall in Cosamaloapan. Pull them the second they shift from leathery to fragrant. Burned chile is bitter chile and there is no fixing it later.

   The chile ancho gives the salsa its sweetness and dark color. The guajillo gives it the cleaner red note. Together they balance. One without the other is a different sauce.
3. 3

   Soak the chiles

   Place the toasted chiles in a heatproof bowl and cover with hot tap water. Hot, not boiling. Let them soften for 15 minutes while you handle the spices. Boiling water cooks the skin and turns the salsa bitter. Hot water softens the flesh and lets the chile speak clean.

4. 4

   Toast the spices

   On the same comal, toast the cloves, peppercorns, and canela for about 30 seconds, until fragrant. Tip them into a molcajete or a spice grinder and grind to a fine powder. These are the colonial spices that traveled up the Papaloapan from the port of Veracruz, and they belong in this salsa. Do not skip them and do not substitute pre-ground.

5. 5

   Prepare the hoja santa

   Wipe the hoja santa leaves with a damp cloth. Run a knife along the thick center rib of each leaf and remove it, the rib is fibrous and will give the salsa a stringy texture. Stack the trimmed leaves and slice them into wide ribbons. The leaf is the soul of this salsa. Anise, sassafras, root beer, black pepper, all in one leaf. Nothing substitutes for it. If you cannot find fresh hoja santa, do not make this salsa today. Make it when the leaf comes back to your market.

6. 6

   Blend the base

   Peel the charred garlic. Drain the chiles, reserving the soaking water. In a blender, combine the charred tomatoes (with skin), garlic, onion, drained chiles, ground spices, and salt. Add a quarter cup of the chile soaking water to get things moving. Blend on high until completely smooth, about two minutes. Add four of the hoja santa ribbons in the last 20 seconds of blending. Save the other two ribbons for the finish. Strain through a medium sieve, pressing on the solids. You want body, not pulp.

7. 7

   Fry the salsa in lard

   Heat the manteca in a wide cazuela or heavy skillet over medium until it shimmers. Pour in the strained puree all at once. It will sputter loudly. Stand back. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 18 to 20 minutes, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until the salsa darkens from bright red to brick, thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon, and the fat starts to bead at the edges. La manteca es el sabor. The fry is what turns a blended puree into a salsa. Skip it and you are eating raw chile in tomato water.

8. 8

   Finish with hoja santa

   Stir in the reserved hoja santa ribbons. Taste for salt. Loosen with a few tablespoons of water or pork broth if the salsa has tightened too much, you want a coating consistency, thick enough to cling to a piece of meat inside a banana-leaf parcel but loose enough to soak into the masa around it. Pull off the heat. Asi se hace y punto.

Chef Tips

• •Hoja santa freezes poorly and dries even worse. The dried leaf loses most of what makes it interesting. If you can only find dried, use double the quantity and accept that it is a compromise, not an upgrade. The fresh leaf grows easily in warm climates and many Mexican grocers in the US stock it seasonally. Ask before they pull it from the back.
• •The lard is not negotiable. Olive oil tastes wrong. Vegetable oil tastes like nothing. The pork fat carries the chile and the spices and binds the salsa to the meat once it goes inside the pilte. La manteca es el sabor.
• •This salsa is the inside of a pilte, not a dipping salsa. It is meant to coat pieces of pork, chicken, or fish that get wrapped in banana leaf with masa and steamed. If you want a table salsa, make a salsa de molcajete with raw tomatillo and serrano. Different sauce, different purpose. No me vengas con atajos.

Advance Preparation

• •The salsa can be made up to three days ahead and refrigerated in a glass jar. The hoja santa flavor deepens overnight and the salsa is arguably better on day two.
• •The salsa freezes well for up to two months. Freeze in flat zip-top bags with the air pressed out. Thaw in the refrigerator and refresh with a few torn ribbons of fresh hoja santa before using, the frozen leaf loses brightness even if the body of the salsa survives.
• •If you are making piltes, the salsa should be at room temperature when you assemble the parcels. Cold salsa straight from the refrigerator will not bind to the meat the same way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 60g)