Mantequilla de Chiltepín Sonorense

This is from Sonora. From the desert and the coast, from the cattle country of Cananea down to the Sea of Cortez, where the chiltepín grows wild on shrubs the size of a child and the parrilla is built into the side of the house.

The chile is the dish. Chile chiltepín, the small round pea-sized chile that ripens red on wild bushes in the Sierra Madre Occidental, hand-harvested in the fall by families who have done this work for generations. It is the oldest chile in Mexico, the mother of all the cultivated chiles that came after. Sonorenses keep a jar of dried chiltepines on the table the way other states keep a salt shaker. They keep another jar of chiltepines en vinagre in the refrigerator. And the ones who know what they are doing keep a third jar: a small glass jar of mantequilla de chiltepín, ready to spoon onto whatever just came off the parrilla.

The butter is not complicated. Toasted chiltepín, lime, garlic, manteca de cerdo folded into butter. But the ingredients are non-negotiable. The chiltepín has to be Sonoran or Chihuahuense, hand-picked. The lime has to be Mexican lime, the small green ones, not Persian. The manteca has to be real pork lard. La manteca es el sabor. Sonoran cooking is built around beef and fat and chile, and this butter is that whole pantry compressed into a spoonful.

My mother was not Sonorense. She was from Jalisco. But she had a friend from Hermosillo who sent her a jar of chiltepines every December, wrapped in a paper bag inside a coffee tin. The page in her notebook for this butter is in her friend's handwriting, not hers, and at the bottom it says: 'No le pongas mas que esto. El chiltepín no se discute.' Do not add anything else. The chiltepín is not up for debate. Cada estado, su propia cocina.