Chiles de Agua en Escabeche

This is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Valles Centrales, the central valleys around the city of Oaxaca where the chile de agua is grown and where you cannot eat a plate of cecina enchilada or tasajo without a small dish of these escabechados on the table.

The chile de agua is the point. It is an Oaxacan chile, almost exclusively. Conical, light green, thin-skinned, with heat that varies from one chile to the next on the same plant. It does not travel well, which is part of why this dish stays Oaxacan. If your chile vendor in Mexico City does not have them, you wait. If you live outside Mexico, you make this when you find them, and not before. No me vengas con atajos. A poblano is not a chile de agua. A jalapeño is not a chile de agua. The whole dish depends on this chile keeping its shape, its skin, and its specific grassy heat.

The vinegar should be vinagre de piña casero, the homemade pineapple vinegar that ferments slowly in a clay olla on a kitchen counter for three weeks. It is softer than commercial white vinegar, with a faint sweetness that meets the heat of the chile and the iron of the lard. The lard is non-negotiable. The escabeches I have collected from señoras at Mercado 20 de Noviembre and Mercado de la Merced de Oaxaca all use manteca de cerdo, and the difference between an escabeche made with lard and one made with oil is the difference between something that belongs on the table and something that belongs in a glass case at a fancy store.

My mother did not make this. She was Jalisciense and she pickled jalapeños, not chiles de agua. The first time I tasted chiles de agua en escabeche I was twenty-eight years old, sitting at a comedor in Tlacolula on market day with a plate of cecina, a stack of tlayudas, and this jar between us. The owner pushed it across the table and said, comelos así, despacio. I ate them slowly. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one is Oaxaca's.