Pavo Norteño Navideño

This is the Christmas turkey of the north. Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, the states where the cattle ranches stretch to the horizon and the pecan orchards line the rivers around Parras and Delicias. Pavo navideño is not a Mexico City dish dressed up for the holidays. It is a norteño dish, and the difference is in the adobo, the picadillo, the flour tortillas on the table instead of corn.

The rub is a chile adobo of guajillo, ancho, and pasilla, blended with garlic, vinegar, canela, and lard. It goes on the bird the way a Yucatecan would rub a pibil with recado rojo, except this is the north and the chiles are different and the technique speaks to a different geography. The picadillo inside is the same baroque composition that fills chiles en nogada in Puebla, ground beef and pork, pear, apple, plantain, raisins, capers, olives, and the pecans that grow in the orchards of Coahuila and Chihuahua. Sweet and savory in the same bite, the way the cooks of the north have been building festive picadillos for generations.

My mother was from Jalisco and we did not eat pavo on Nochebuena in our house. We ate bacalao and ensalada de Nochebuena. But I spent a Christmas in Saltillo in my late twenties, in the home of a senora named Soledad whose mother had been a cook in one of the old hacienda kitchens, and the bird that came out of her oven that night, dark mahogany from the adobo, the cavity packed with a glistening picadillo of beef and pecans, the kitchen smelling of toasted chile and canela, taught me that Mexico's Christmas table looks different in every state. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This is the norte's version. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.