Recado de Escabeche Yucateco

This recado is from Yucatán. Specifically from Valladolid, the colonial town in the east of the peninsula where escabeche oriental, the dish this paste was built for, is the dinner that anchors a Sunday family meal and the wedding-night supper for couples married in the cathedral on the plaza.

The recados of Yucatán are not seasonings. They are the foundation grammar of the cuisine. Recado rojo, the brick-red achiote paste, is the one most people outside Mexico have heard of. There is also recado negro, the burnt-chile black paste that stains tamales the color of charcoal. There is recado blanco, recado verde, recado para bistec. And there is this one: recado de escabeche, the peppercorn-forward paste that is the soul of the eastern Yucatan kitchen. Each one is a different language. A senora from Merida can taste the difference between a recado from Valladolid and one from Tizimin in a single spoonful. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the Yucatan has more dialects within its own borders than most countries have cuisines.

The technique is simple, the discipline is not. You char the whole heads of garlic on the comal until the skins blacken. You toast the whole spices until they bloom. You grind everything together with naranja agria and a splash of vinegar into a dark, sharp paste. If you skip the char on the garlic, you have a spice mix. If you blend it smooth in a food processor with water, you have a marinade. The recado is ground, not blended into a smoothie. It is a paste built to coat poultry, to perfume a sopa, to give pavo en escabeche oriental that sharp, peppery, lightly smoky character that no other Mexican dish has.

My mother was not from Yucatan. She was from Jalisco. But there was a page in her notebook with the heading 'recados de la peninsula,' copied in her handwriting from a woman she met on a trip to Merida in 1991. The page lists three recados. This one has a note in the margin: 'mucha pimienta, no le tengas miedo.' Lots of pepper, do not be afraid of it. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.