Papas con Rajas al Estilo Oaxaqueño

This is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Valles Centrales, the valleys around Oaxaca City where chile de agua grows and where quesillo is hand-pulled fresh every morning in the dairy towns of Etla.

Rajas in central Mexico means strips of chile poblano. In Oaxaca, rajas means chile de agua, and the difference is everything. Chile de agua is thinner-walled, more delicate, with a bright vegetal heat that does not exist anywhere else in Mexico. It does not travel well. It does not dry well. It belongs to one valley and one season, and a Oaxacan cook will tell you that papas con rajas made with poblano is a fine dish but it is not this dish.

The technique is simple and the rules are not negotiable. Char the chile until the skin blisters black. Sweat it under a plate. Peel by hand, never under water. Cook the potatoes in lard until the edges crisp. Add the rajas and the epazote. Pull the quesillo into ribbons and let the residual heat melt it. Six steps. No mole. No two-day commitment. This is what a senora in Oaxaca cooks on a Tuesday when her family wants something honest and fast.

My notebook has three versions of papas con rajas, all collected in the Mercado Benito Juarez in 2014. The senora who taught me the Oaxacan one, Doña Petra from a stall near the cheese vendors, watched me peel the chiles and slapped my hand away from the faucet. "Asi no, mija. El humo es el sabor." Don't wash off the smoke. The smoke is the flavor. I have not peeled a chile under running water since.