Tabasco Chontal Achiote Paste (Pasta de Achiote Tabasqueña)

Tabasco first. The Chontal, or Yokot'an, lowlands around Nacajuca, Centla, Jalpa de Méndez, and the mouths of the Grijalva and Usumacinta are wet country: cacao, plantain, achiote, sour orange, momo leaves, chaya, and fish that taste of river, smoke, and banana leaf. This paste belongs there, not in Yucatán and not in Oaxaca.

Achiote gives the red color, but Tabasco's hand is the citrus. The paste stays looser than the Yucatecan recado rojo, bright with naranja agria and sharpened with chile amashito, that tiny Tabasco chile people keep trying to call piquín. It is not piquín. The women who taught me this in Nacajuca ground it to stain pejelagarto, mone tamales, pork, and chicken before the banana leaf did its work.

No me vengas con atajos. If you buy a brick of commercial recado rojo and loosen it with orange juice, you have made a shortcut with a label. This one starts with whole achiote, toasted spices, garlic, chile amashito, and sour orange. The paste should look like wet red clay and smell like citrus, pepper, and the edge of a comal.

My mother from Jalisco did not make this. She would have respected it anyway. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Tabasco's version tastes like river country.