Rajas de Chile de Agua

This is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Valles Centrales, the broad valley around Oaxaca city where the chile de agua grows and almost nowhere else does. The chile gives the dish its name and its identity. Without chile de agua, you do not have rajas de chile de agua. You have rajas of something else.

Chile de agua is light green, conical, with thin walls and a clean, grassy heat that fades fast. It is one of the few fresh chiles in Mexico that is genuinely regional. You will not find it in Mexico City unless someone trucked it up that morning, and you will not find it outside Mexico unless someone is importing it specifically for the diaspora. When the season is on, from late spring through early fall, the chile vendors at the Mercado de Abastos and the Mercado 20 de Noviembre stack them in pyramids and you buy them by the kilo and you eat them all week.

The technique is simple, which is why everything depends on the chile and the roast. You blister the skin over open flame, sweat them under a cloth, peel them with your fingers, cut them into strips, and dress them with onion, lime, and salt. Some cooks add a spoon of melted manteca. Some sprinkle sal de gusano on top. The senoras at the comedores in Tlacolula will tell you they have been doing it this way for as long as they can remember and that is the only authority this recipe needs.

This is what you eat next to tasajo. The thin-sliced beef gets grilled over charcoal, the rajas go in a clay dish in the middle of the table, the tortillas come off the comal one by one, and you build your taco with whatever salsa is already on the table. My mother never made rajas de chile de agua because she was from Jalisco and you cannot get the chile there. The first time I ate it was in a comedor in Tlacolula on a Sunday, and I understood within two bites why the dish does not need anything else. Cada estado, su propia cocina.