Chayotes con Elote y Quesillo

This dish is from Oaxaca. From the Valles Centrales, where the chayote vines climb the back walls of every casa with a patio and the white corn comes in by the burlap sack from the milpas outside Tlacolula. It is a side dish, plain and weekday, the kind of thing a senora makes on a Tuesday because the chayotes are heavy and the corn is sweet and the quesillo was bought that morning at the mercado.

Three things make this Oaxacan and not generic. The quesillo, pulled into strands by hand, never the pre-shredded mozzarella that some people try to pass off. The epazote, with its mineral bite that cuts through the cream and the corn. And the lard. Yes, the lard. Vegetable oil will cook the chayote. It will not season it. La manteca es el sabor and Oaxaca knows this better than most.

My mother's notebook does not have this recipe. She was Jalisciense and chayote was a stewing vegetable to her, never a star. I learned this dish from a senora named Rosa who sells quesillo at the Mercado de Abastos in Oaxaca City. She made it for me on a hot plate behind her stall while she explained that you do not boil the chayote, you saute it, and you do not melt the quesillo into a sauce, you let it slump on top and pull it with a spoon. Cada estado, su propia cocina.