Mole de Caderas de Huajuapan

This is from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca. Not the Valles Centrales, not the coast, not Oaxaca city. Huajuapan de Leon, a town that most food tourists have never heard of and most Oaxacans from the capital only visit once a year, in October, when the matanza happens. If you have not been there during the matanza, you have not eaten this dish. You have eaten a version of it.

The matanza is the annual goat slaughter that has anchored the Mixteca's economy and its cuisine for generations. Thousands of goats that spent the year grazing on wild herbs in the dry mountain scrubland are brought to Huajuapan in October. The whole town cooks. The caderas, the hip bones and lower back of the goat, go into this mole. Other cuts go to other dishes: the ribs to barbacoa, the stomach to pancita. Nothing is wasted. The caderas are prized because the flat bones give the broth its body and the thin meat clinging to them concentrates flavor in a way a boneless cut never could.

The chile that defines this stew is the costeño, both amarillo and rojo, a thin-fleshed dried chile from Oaxaca's Pacific coast that is sharp and bright and nothing like the deep earthiness of the pasilla oaxaqueño or the smokiness of chipotle. Chile costeño gives the broth its color, somewhere between red and burnt orange, and its direct, clean heat. The other defining ingredient is hoja de aguacate, dried avocado leaf, which releases an anise-like perfume the moment it hits the hot broth. These two ingredients are the signature. Without them, you are making a goat stew. With them, you are making mole de caderas. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to the Mixteca.

I first traveled to Huajuapan during the matanza in 2014. The air in the town smelled like roasting chile and simmering goat for blocks in every direction. A senora named Dona Elvira served me a bowl from a clay olla the size of a washtub and watched me eat without saying a word. When I finished, she said: 'You came all the way from the capital for this?' I said yes. She served me another bowl. I have her recipe in a notebook, written in her handwriting, with the note: 'mas hoja de aguacate de lo que piensas.' More avocado leaf than you think. She was right.