Huevos con Chile Verde Anaheim Sonorense

This is from Sonora. Not 'the north,' not 'border country,' Sonora. The desert state where the wheat fields irrigated by the Yaqui and Mayo rivers give the country its flour tortillas, where cattle ranches feed the carne asada tradition, and where the Anaheim chile, the chile verde del norte, ripens long and pale green in the valleys around Hermosillo and Caborca.

This is a three-ingredient dish. Chile, eggs, manteca. That is it. The skill is in the roast on the chile, the patience in the scramble, and the conviction to serve it on a sobaquera and not a corn tortilla. In noroeste, flour is where it belongs. The sobaquera, the thin hand-stretched flour tortilla the size of a dinner plate, is named for the way Sonoran women stretch the dough across the forearm under the armpit, the sobaco. That tortilla is the utensil. You tear, you scoop, you eat.

My mother was from Jalisco and she made huevos a la mexicana, the central Mexican version with tomato. The first time I had this dish I was in a small comedor outside Hermosillo, a cattle-country kitchen with a comal the size of a wagon wheel. The senora at the stove looked at me and said, 'Aqui no usamos jitomate. El chile verde es suficiente.' Here we do not use tomato. The green chile is enough. She was right. The Anaheim has a sweetness and a vegetal depth that does not need a tomato to round it out. Asi se hace y punto.

If you cannot find true chile Anaheim, look for what some markets sell as 'New Mexico Hatch chile,' the closely related cousin. The pueblos along the border share this chile across an artificial line. What you cannot do is substitute poblano. The poblano is from Puebla, central Mexico, with a different sugar and a different heat. This is a Sonoran dish. Cada estado, su propia cocina.