Chiapas Simojovel Chile Paste (Salsa de Chile Simojovel)

Chiapas, the northern highlands around Simojovel de Allende, gives you this salsa. It is not a loose table salsa. It is a paste, red-brown, smoky, and thick from toasted pepita, the way the Tzotzil women who sell chiles by the handful know it should be.

The chile simojovel is the point. Small, smoke-dried, red, and direct. It is not chile pasilla, not morita, not the beginning of a Yucatecan recado rojo. In the markets near San Cristóbal and in the smaller highland towns, the vendors keep it in sacks and the smell comes up before the color does. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado. Ask the women at the market. They will correct you faster than I can.

The pepita gives the paste its body and its fat. No oil bottle. No tomato to stretch it. Toast the pumpkin seed until it smells like the inside of a roasted squash, then grind it with the softened chiles, roasted garlic, salt, and vinagre de caña. Too much water and you lose the character. This salsa should cling to a tortilla.

Serve it in a rough Chiapas highland clay bowl or a black clay vessel from Amatenango del Valle. Put it beside beans, eggs, tamales de chipilín, or chicharrón. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This is a 32-state cuisine, and Chiapas does not need to borrow anyone else's chile paste.