Manchamanteles Poblano

Manchamanteles is Puebla's. Oaxaca claims a version too, and Oaxacan cooks will argue that manchamanteles belongs to their seven moles, but the dish as most Mexicans know it, with the pineapple and the plantain and the apple folded into a brick-red chile base, lives in Puebla's central highlands. This is a colonial-era mole, born in the convents where Spanish fruit met Mexican chile and somebody decided they belonged in the same pot.

The name tells you everything. Manchamanteles. Tablecloth-stainer. The mole is so red, so generous, so unconcerned with restraint that it will get on the cloth and stay there. That is the dish's promise. A timid manchamanteles is not manchamanteles. The chile ancho gives it the sweetness and the deep red color. The pasilla gives it the smoky depth. The guajillo adds a little brightness at the top. Together they build a sauce that can hold pork and chorizo and fruit without falling apart.

The fruit is what makes people nervous. Pineapple in a mole? Plantain in a mole? Apple? Yes. All of it. Mexican cuisine has used fruit in savory dishes since long before the Spanish arrived, and the convent cooks of 17th-century Puebla took that tradition and ran with it when European fruit arrived in the markets. Manchamanteles is a baroque composition. Sweet and savory in the same spoonful. The pineapple cuts through the richness of the pork. The plantain thickens the sauce and gives it a custardy soft note. The apple holds its shape and gives the cook something to bite through.

My mother did not cook manchamanteles. She was from Jalisco and her moles were rancho moles, simpler and meatier. I learned this one in San Pedro Cholula from a señora named Doña Concha who served it at every baptism in her family for forty years. She told me, very seriously, that if the tablecloth is not stained at the end of the meal, the cook did not make enough. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This one belongs to Puebla.