Pollo al Pulque

Pollo al pulque belongs to the high plains of Hidalgo and Tlaxcala, the maguey country. Drive the road from Apan toward Calpulalpan in October and you will see fields of agave pulquero stretching in straight rows to the horizon, the way other countries plant wheat. The juice scraped from the heart of those plants, fermented for a few days in a tinacal, is pulque. It has been drunk and cooked with on this altiplano for more than a thousand years.

This is a hacienda dish. The big estates of Hidalgo and Tlaxcala that grew rich on pulque in the 19th century employed cooks who made grand pots like this one for Sunday meals: chicken seared in lard, a sauce of toasted pasilla and tomato, the pulque poured in by the liter because it cost the hacienda nothing. The pulque does two things in the pot. It tenderizes the meat the way a brine does, and it leaves behind an earthy, slightly sour weight that no wine or beer can mimic. Do not come at me with beer. No me vengas con atajos.

The chile is pasilla. Not ancho, not guajillo alone. Pasilla is the dried chilaca, dark almost black, with a flavor closer to dried fruit than to fire. Combined with a smaller amount of guajillo for color and a careful hand with canela and clove, it makes a sauce the color of wet earth after rain. My mother had a recipe for pollo al pulque clipped from a magazine in 1979, taped into her notebook. The first time I cooked it in a tinacal kitchen outside Apan, the senora who taught me corrected three things at once: more pasilla, less cumin, and pour the pulque with respect. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This one belongs to the maguey country.