Chiltomate Yucateco

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for charring
• •Volcanic stone molcajete for grinding
• •Tongs for turning the vegetables on the comal
• •Small clay cazuela or heavy skillet for frying the salsa

Instructions

1. 1

   Heat the comal

   Set a cast iron comal or heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Let it get hot, five or six minutes, until a drop of water dances and disappears in a second. A cold comal will steam the tomatoes instead of charring them, and a steamed tomato is not chiltomate. You want black spots on the skin, not red juice in the pan.

   If you have a gas burner and a wire rack, you can char directly over the open flame. That is how it is done over wood fires in the rural Yucatan. The comal is the household version.
2. 2

   Char the tomatoes, chiles, onion, and garlic

   Place the whole tomatoes, the two habaneros, the onion half, and the unpeeled garlic on the dry comal. Do not crowd them. Turn each piece every two or three minutes with tongs as the skins blister and blacken in patches. The tomatoes take 10 to 12 minutes and should collapse softly when you press them. The habaneros take 4 to 5 minutes, the garlic about 6, the onion about 8. Pull each one off when its skin is mottled black and the flesh underneath has gone tender. The kitchen will smell sharp and a little smoky. That smoke is the salsa.

3. 3

   Peel the garlic, leave the rest

   Let the charred vegetables rest on a plate for five minutes until they are cool enough to handle. Slip the papery skins off the garlic and discard them. Leave the blackened skins on the tomatoes, onion, and habaneros. Those black spots are flavor. The cooks in Merida do not peel the tomatoes for chiltomate. They want the smoke in the sauce.

4. 4

   Grind, do not puree

   Transfer the tomatoes, charred onion half, garlic, and one habanero to a molcajete and grind to a rough, chunky sauce. You want texture: visible pieces of tomato, flecks of skin, the salsa should look like food, not like soup. If you do not have a molcajete, pulse in a blender three or four times only. No me vengas con atajos: a puree is not chiltomate. Taste the salsa now and decide on the second habanero. The Peninsula likes it hot. Add the second chile, chopped fine, if you want a true Yucateco bite. Stir, do not blend again.

   Wash your hands twice with soap after handling habanero, and do not touch your face for an hour. The oils get into everything. The senoras at the Mercado Lucas de Galvez will tell you the same.
5. 5

   Fry the salsa in lard

   Heat the lard in a heavy skillet or small cazuela over medium until it shimmers. Add the finely chopped onion and cook, stirring, for three to four minutes until soft and translucent. Pour in the ground tomato mixture. It will sputter. Stir, lower the heat to medium-low, and let it cook for eight to ten minutes. The salsa will darken, thicken, and the fat will start to separate at the edges. That is how you know it is done. La manteca es el sabor. A chiltomate cooked in oil tastes like a different sauce.

6. 6

   Finish with sour orange and salt

   Stir in the salt and the naranja agria juice. If you have fresh epazote, tear a few leaves and drop them in for the last minute of cooking. Taste. The salsa should taste of smoke, of ripe tomato, of the bright sourness of the Peninsula, with the habanero heat sitting just behind. Adjust salt. Pull it off the heat and let it rest for five minutes before serving. Asi se hace y punto.

7. 7

   Serve at the table

   Spoon the chiltomate warm over codzitos, panuchos, salbutes, huevos motulenos, or simply onto a warm corn tortilla. In Yucateco homes it sits on the table in a clay cazuelita next to the pickled red onions and the bowl of habanero salsa. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •The tomatoes have to be ripe. A pale supermarket tomato will give you a thin, sour chiltomate no matter how long you char it. If the only good tomatoes you can find are smaller cherry or campari tomatoes in winter, use those. Mexican grandmothers cook with what the mercado is selling today, not what looks good in January.
• •Naranja agria is the sour orange of the Peninsula. You can find it at Latin markets that serve a Caribbean or Yucatecan clientele, often labeled as bitter orange or seville orange. If you cannot find it, mix two parts lime juice with one part regular orange juice. It is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •Chiltomate keeps in the refrigerator for four days and the flavor only deepens. It does not freeze well because the texture suffers, but it reheats beautifully in a small cazuela with a fresh splash of sour orange at the end.

Advance Preparation

• •The salsa can be made up to three days ahead and kept refrigerated in a covered glass jar. Reheat gently in a small skillet with a teaspoon of lard before serving.
• •The vegetables can be charred one day ahead and held in the refrigerator, then ground and fried on serving day. Some Yucateco cooks prefer this two-step method because the charred tomatoes deepen overnight.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 80g)