Salsa de Gusanos de Maguey

This is from Oaxaca. Not from a generic Mexico, not from some idea of what Mexican food is supposed to be. From the Valles Centrales and the Sierra Mixe, where the agave grows and where the gusano rojo, the red worm that feeds on the maguey, has been ground into salsa for as long as anyone has been making mezcal. If your first reaction is to flinch at the worm, that is the wrong reaction. Sit with it. The Mexica ate insects. The Mixe people eat insects. The protein and the flavor are reasons that have nothing to do with novelty.

The chile is what defines the version. Chile pasilla oaxaqueño, also called pasilla mixe, is smoke-dried over wood in the Sierra Mixe. It is not the pasilla mexicano you find in most US markets and you cannot substitute one for the other. If your salsa is going to taste like Oaxaca, you need the smoke from that specific chile. Pair the smoke of the chile with the toasted gusano and the agave the worm fed on, and you understand why this salsa exists alongside mezcal and not alongside anything else. They are talking to each other.

My mother never made this. She was from Jalisco and gusanos were not part of her vocabulary. The first time I had this salsa was in a small mezcaleria in the Centro of Oaxaca de Juárez, in 1998, with a senora who had been grinding it in the same molcajete for thirty years. She watched me eat it and asked what I tasted. I said earth, smoke, salt, agave. She nodded and said, that is Oaxaca. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Oaxaca is a world inside that.