Adobo de Puerco Poblano

This is from Puebla. Not the Puebla of chiles en nogada and mole poblano, the festival dishes, the photographs. The other Puebla. The weekday Puebla. The pot that a poblana cook puts on the stove on a Tuesday afternoon because there is pork shoulder in the refrigerator and a fistful of dried chiles in the basket above the comal.

Adobo means vinegar. That is the whole word, before anything else. The Spanish brought the technique of preserving meat in vinegar and spice, and Puebla's cooks took it and gave it chile guajillo and chile ancho, a little chile pasilla for depth, cumin and clove and canela from the spice trade that flowed through the city for three centuries. What came out is a thick, brick-red sauce that is not a mole, not a salsa, not a stew. It is an adobo, and it is its own thing. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

The technique is simple, the discipline is everything. Toast the chiles without burning them. Soak them in hot water, not boiling, or the skins turn bitter. Strain the sauce, no exceptions. Fry the paste in lard until it darkens and the fat breaks. These steps are not suggestions. They are the recipe. Skip one and you have a thin red sauce with pork in it. Do them right and you have adobo.

My mother had a page for adobo in her notebook, written in her hand, the margins crowded with arrows pointing to a single underlined word: vinagre. She was from Jalisco but she had a cousin from San Martin Texmelucan who taught her this version, and she made it on the days she did not have time for anything bigger. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and adobo is one of the dishes that proves it.