Chileatole de Tichinda con Atole Agrio

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Clay olla or heavy 4-quart pot (a clay olla retains heat more evenly and is what they use on the coast)
• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for toasting chiles and charring vegetables
• •Blender
• •Fine-mesh sieve or clean cloth for straining the atole agrio
• •Stiff brush for scrubbing the tichindas
• •Glass jar or clay vessel for fermenting the atole agrio

Instructions

1. 1

   Ferment the atole agrio

   Two to three days before you plan to cook, dissolve the nixtamalized masa in 4 cups of water in a clay olla or glass jar. Work it with your hands until no lumps remain. Cover loosely with a clean cloth or cheesecloth, not a lid. The masa needs to breathe. Set it in a warm corner of your kitchen, away from direct sun. After 24 hours, you will smell a slight sourness. After 48 hours, the water will be cloudy and the smell will be distinctly tangy, like a young yogurt. By 72 hours, it is sharp and alive. Taste it. The sourness should be assertive but clean, not rotten. That tang is the backbone of this dish. No me vengas con atajos: you cannot rush fermentation with vinegar or citrus. The bacteria do the work on their own schedule.

   In hot coastal climates, 48 hours is usually enough. In a cooler kitchen, give it the full 72. If it smells foul or develops black mold, discard it and start again. A thin white film on the surface is normal and harmless; stir it back in.
2. 2

   Purge and scrub the tichindas

   Soak the tichindas in a bowl of cold salted water for at least one hour, changing the water twice. They grow on mangrove roots in silty estuaries and they carry sand and mud inside. After soaking, scrub each one under running water with a stiff brush. Discard any that are cracked, open and do not close when tapped, or feel unusually light. These are dead and will ruin the pot. A live tichinda is heavy for its size and clamped shut.

   If you have never handled tichindas, expect them to be much smaller and darker than blue mussels. They look like black river stones. The yield of meat per shell is small, which is why you need two pounds for four to six people.
3. 3

   Toast the chiles and char the vegetables

   Heat a dry comal or heavy skillet over medium. Toast the chile costeño rojo for about 20 seconds per side, pressing each one flat against the comal with a spatula. They are thin and papery and they go from toasted to burned in seconds. You want them puffed and fragrant, the color deepening from red to a dark brick without any black. Set them aside. On the same comal, char the tomatoes, unpeeled garlic, and quarter onion, turning occasionally, until blistered and softened on all sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. The garlic skin will blacken. That is fine. The tomato skin will split and the juice will sizzle on the comal. That caramelization is flavor.

   Chile costeño rojo is the dried chile of the Oaxacan and Guerrero Pacific coast. It has a sharp, direct, almost stinging heat with none of the sweetness of guajillo or the smoke of chipotle. If you absolutely cannot find it, dried chile de arbol is a distant second, but you lose the regional character. That is a compromise, not an upgrade.
4. 4

   Soak and blend the chile base

   Place the toasted chiles in a bowl and cover with 1 cup of hot tap water. Let them soften for 15 minutes. Transfer the softened chiles and their soaking water to a blender. Peel the charred garlic cloves and add them to the blender along with the charred tomatoes and onion. Blend until smooth. Do not strain. The texture of this sauce should have body to it, not the silky refinement of a mole. This is coastal cooking. It is direct.

5. 5

   Fry the chile paste

   Melt the tablespoon of manteca de cerdo in a clay olla or heavy pot over medium heat. When the lard shimmers, pour in the chile blend. It will sputter and pop. Stir constantly for 4 to 5 minutes. The paste will darken by a shade, the raw edge of the garlic will cook out, and the fat will begin to separate at the edges. That separation is your signal that the chile base is ready to receive the atole agrio. La manteca es el sabor, even in small amounts.

6. 6

   Strain and add the atole agrio

   Stir the fermented atole agrio to recombine it, then strain it through a fine-mesh sieve or a clean cloth directly into the pot with the chile paste, pressing on the solids to extract all the starchy, sour liquid. Discard the gritty residue left in the cloth. Add the remaining 2 cups of water. Stir well. The broth will be a cloudy reddish-brown, thicker than a consomme but thinner than a porridge. Bring it to a gentle simmer, stirring frequently to prevent the corn starch from settling and scorching on the bottom.

   The atole agrio thickens as it heats. If it becomes too dense, add water a half cup at a time. You want it to coat a spoon but still move freely in the pot. It should have the body of a thick soup, not a paste.
7. 7

   Cook the tichindas in the chileatole

   Once the broth is at a steady simmer and the sourness, heat, and salt are in balance, taste it now and adjust the salt, add the scrubbed tichindas all at once. Stir gently to submerge them. Cover the pot. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes. The tichindas are ready when they have opened. Every last one that is going to open will have done so by seven minutes. Discard any that remain closed. Drop in the epazote sprig, stir once, and let it steep in the hot broth for two minutes before serving. The epazote is not decoration. It cuts through the richness of the corn and the mineral brine of the mussels.

8. 8

   Serve immediately

   Ladle the chileatole into deep clay bowls, making sure each serving gets a generous mound of tichindas and plenty of the thickened broth. Set lime wedges on the side. Squeeze the lime over the bowl at the table, not before. The acid brightens the fermented sourness into something that lifts the whole dish. Eat with a spoon in one hand and a warm corn tortilla in the other, using the tortilla to scoop the mussels from their shells. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Tichindas are nearly impossible to find outside the Costa Chica. If you live near a Mexican or Latin American market on the Pacific coast of the US, ask. Some fishmongers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area occasionally carry them. If you cannot find tichindas, small Pacific coast mussels or very small clams (Manila clams work) will give you a similar briny mineral quality, but the iron depth of the tichinda is its own thing. You will know the difference.
• •The atole agrio is the soul of this dish. If you skip the fermentation and just use fresh dissolved masa, you will have a perfectly decent chileatole, but you will not have this chileatole. The sourness is not a garnish. It is structural. Give it the two or three days it asks for.
• •Chile costeño rojo is available online from Oaxacan specialty vendors and at markets in communities with large Oaxacan populations. It is worth seeking out. Preguntale a las senoras del mercado. They will know who carries it.
• •Do not add the epazote at the beginning. It goes in at the very end, off the heat or nearly so. Long cooking turns epazote bitter and medicinal. Two minutes of steeping is what you want: the green, camphor-like aroma without the sharp edge.

Advance Preparation

• •The atole agrio must be started 2 to 3 days before cooking. This is not optional. Dissolve the masa in water, cover with cloth, and ferment at room temperature. The fermentation time depends on the warmth of your kitchen: 48 hours in a warm coastal climate, up to 72 in a cooler one.
• •The chile base (toasted chiles, charred tomato, garlic, and onion, blended) can be made one day ahead and refrigerated. Bring it to room temperature before frying.
• •The tichindas must be cleaned and purged the same day you cook them. Do not hold live shellfish longer than 24 hours in the refrigerator. They are best cooked the day they are bought.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 400g)