Parrillada Oaxaqueña de Tasajo, Cecina y Chorizo

This is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Pasillo de Humo inside the Mercado 20 de Noviembre in the capital, where the women who run the meat stalls hand you raw sheets of tasajo and cecina enchilada and you carry them, dripping adobo, to the charcoal grills at the back of the corridor. The smoke is so thick you walk out of there smelling like a campfire. That smoke is the recipe.

This is not Mexican barbecue and it is not a generic mixed grill. Esto no es comida de un solo Mexico. Tasajo is beef cured in salt and air, sliced into thin sheets the way only the carniceros of the Valles Centrales know how to slice it. Cecina enchilada is pork in red adobo, a different cut, a different cure, a different chile. Oaxacan chorizo is leaner and earthier than the chorizo from Toluca, with chile guajillo and chipotle and a different hand with the spices. You grill all three over hardwood and you serve them on tlayudas spread with asiento and refried black beans. The components are not interchangeable. Each one is its own tradition.

My notebook from the second Oaxaca trip in 2009 has a sentence underlined twice: 'No tlayuda sin asiento.' The asiento is the brown lard that settles to the bottom of the carnitas pot, with bits of crackling still in it. It is the smear under the beans, the ingredient most home cooks outside Oaxaca have never tasted. If you cannot get asiento, use more beans and accept the compromise. But find a Oaxacan butcher first, because the parrillada starts at the meat counter, not at the grill. Si no conoces el mercado, no conoces la cocina.

This is a dish to feed a table. Eight people, ten people, a backyard full of family on a Sunday afternoon. The smoke, the chile, the tearing of meat with the hands, the cebollitas charred and dressed with lime, the quesillo pulled apart in ribbons. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo. And this is the work of an entire region, set down on one platter. Asi se hace y punto.