Rajas Poblanas con Crema y Elote

This dish is from Puebla. The chile is in the name. Chile poblano, the broad, deep-green chile of the Valle de Puebla, roasted black, sweated under a cloth, peeled by hand, and cut into the long strips that give the dish its identity. Rajas means strips. Cut them any other way and you have made something else.

This is comfort food in the truest sense. Not Sunday-feast food, not occasion food, weeknight food. The kind of dish a poblana cook makes when the chiles are good at the mercado and there is corn on the cob in the bin next to them. The crema is what finishes it. Crema mexicana, not sour cream. The difference is not snobbery, it is chemistry. Sour cream breaks the moment it touches heat. Crema mexicana stays silky, slightly sweet, slightly tangy, and it clings to the rajas the way it is supposed to.

My mother made these often. She wrote in the margin of her notebook: "no escatimes en la manteca," do not skimp on the lard. She was right. The poblano carries smoke from the char, the onion carries sweetness from the slow sweat, the corn carries summer from the cob, and the lard carries all of them across the tongue. Substitute olive oil and you will taste the absence. La manteca es el sabor.

A note on season. This dish is at its best when corn is in the mercado and the poblanos are still firm and shiny. In late summer and early fall, in central Mexico, this is the dish on the table. In January, when the corn is starchy and the poblanos are tired, cook something else. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and every dish, its own season.