Budín Azteca de Pollo y Rajas Poblanas

This is a Ciudad de México dish. Specifically a chilango home-kitchen dish, the kind of recipe that lives in the notebooks of mothers across the Valle de México and gets pulled out for a birthday lunch, a baptism, or any Sunday when the family is coming over and there is leftover chicken in the refrigerator. People also call it pastel azteca. Same dish. Different name.

The foundation is rajas poblanas. Charred chile poblano, peeled and torn into strips, cooked down with onion and lard until the smoke softens into something sweet. Without proper rajas, this is just a casserole with chicken in it. With proper rajas, it is a budín. The chile has to be blackened over an open flame and sweated under a towel. Not roasted in the oven. Not blistered in a pan. Charred. The skin has to come off in sheets. That smoke is the dish.

My mother made this almost every other Sunday with whatever chicken she had poached for caldo earlier in the week. She wrote the recipe in the margin of her notebook with no measurements, just the order of the layers and a note that said 'no escatimes en el queso Oaxaca,' do not skimp on the queso Oaxaca. She was right about that. Queso Oaxaca is what melts into the strings between the layers and makes a budín pull apart properly when you serve it. Mozzarella will not do this. Monterey Jack will not do this. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo, and the work here is in the layering and the cheese.

The elote is in season from late spring through early fall in central Mexico. If your corn is good, the budín is alive. If your corn is starchy and tired, leave it out and add another poblano. Mexican grandmothers cook with what the mercado is selling today.