Pico de Jícama con Pepino y Mango

This is the fruit cup of central Mexico. Ciudad de México, Estado de México, Puebla, Tlaxcala. Sold from glass-walled carritos on every busy corner, where the vendor stabs spears of jícama and mango into a cup, douses them in lime, and asks one question: ¿con chile? You say yes. You always say yes.

The ingredient that defines this version is chile piquín. Not Tajín, although Tajín comes from this same idea and is now sold in every supermarket from Tijuana to Toronto. Chile piquín is the small wild chile that grows in the brush of central and northern Mexico, ground into a bright red-orange powder that hits harder than the commercial blends. The vendors on the street use chile piquín because they grew up with it. Their mothers used chile piquín. Their abuelas used chile piquín. Tajín is the convenient cousin. Piquín is the original.

The rule of this dish is balance. Sweet from the mango and the orange. Cool from the jícama and cucumber. Sour from the lime, which has to be Mexican lime if you can find it, the small green ones, not the big Persian limes that taste like watered-down perfume. Salt to pull everything forward. Then the chile, generous, the way it is on the street, because timid chile is an insult to the dish.

My mother used to cut a jícama into spears in the afternoon when the heat in Colonia Roma was at its worst, and we would eat them standing at the kitchen counter, dipped in lime and chile, before dinner. She would tell us not to fill up. We always filled up. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and sometimes la cena es una jícama con chile.