Empanaditas de Amarillo

This is Oaxacan food. Valles Centrales. The women at the Mercado 20 de Noviembre in the city of Oaxaca have been selling these since before sunrise, stacked on clay plates behind glass cases, the mole amarillo staining the masa a deep gold that no other mole produces. If you have eaten empanaditas de amarillo from a market vendor in Oaxaca and then tried to find them anywhere else, you already know the problem. Nobody else makes them.

Mole amarillo is one of Oaxaca's seven moles, and it is the one most people outside the state have never tasted. The chile that defines it is the chilcostle, a yellow-orange chile grown almost exclusively in Oaxaca's Canada region, the same valley that produces the chilhuacle negro for mole negro. Without chilcostle, you do not have mole amarillo. You have a yellow sauce. There is a difference the first bite will teach you.

The hoja santa is the other signature. That large, heart-shaped leaf with the anise perfume lines the inside of the empanada, pressed into the masa before the filling goes in. It is not a garnish. It is architecture. The leaf releases its oils into the dough as the empanadita cooks on the comal, and by the time you bite through the crisp edge, the anise has woven itself into every layer. Preguntale a las senoras del mercado. They will tell you the same thing.

My mother did not make these. She was jalisciense and her empanadas used wheat flour and were fried. But I have a page in my notebook from a woman named Dona Elvira at the Mercado de Abastos in Oaxaca, 2014, who watched me write down every step and then corrected my proportions twice. She was right both times. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.