Recado de Toda Clase Oaxaqueño

This is Oaxacan. Not Yucatecan. The recados of Yucatan are wet pastes built on achiote and sour orange. The recado de toda clase from Oaxaca is dry: a ground spice base of canela, peppercorns, cloves, allspice, and oregano de monte, toasted on a comal and stored in a glass jar on the cook's shelf. It is the seasoning that lives behind the seven moles, the adobos, the guisados, the meats braised in clay. You do not eat it on its own. You build with it.

Diana Kennedy documented this base in the senoras' kitchens of the Valles Centrales decades ago, and the cooks she sat with had been making it the same way for generations before that. The proportions shift slightly from house to house, more clove here, more oregano there, but the structure is constant. Every Oaxacan kitchen has a small jar of it within arm's reach of the comal. When the cook starts a mole amarillo or an adobo for pollo, she does not start from zero. She starts from the recado.

The oregano makes the difference. Oaxacan oregano de monte is not the Mediterranean oregano you find in supermarkets. It is wilder, more resinous, with notes of pine and earth. If you cannot get it, use Mexican oregano. If you cannot get Mexican oregano, do not make this recipe yet. Go to a Mexican grocery, find what you need, and come back. Si no conoces el mercado, no conoces la cocina.

My mother kept three jars on her shelf: a recado for moles, a polvo for adobos, and one she labeled simply 'Oaxaca' that she had brought back from a trip to Tlacolula in 1979. She used it sparingly, a teaspoon at a time, like medicine. When the jar emptied she made another batch from her notes and labeled it the same way. That is what this powder is. A pantry inheritance. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo.