Salsa de los Piltes con Hoja Santa

This salsa belongs to the Papaloapan, the river basin that runs through southern Veracruz and crosses into northern Oaxaca. Cosamaloapan, Tlacotalpan, Tuxtepec. This is humid, lowland, banana-leaf country, not the highland kitchens of Xalapa or Coatepec. The salsa is a working salsa, not a table salsa. It goes inside the piltes, the meat parcels wrapped in banana leaf and steamed over wood fire until the leaf perfumes the meat and the salsa soaks into everything.

The leaf that makes this dish is hoja santa, called acuyo by the women in Tlacotalpan who guard this recipe. Its flavor has no English equivalent and any cook who tells you to substitute basil or anise has not eaten the real thing. Anise, sassafras, black pepper, the ghost of root beer. The leaf goes into the salsa twice: blended in for body, stirred in at the end for brightness. If the leaf is not in your market this week, do not make this salsa. Cook what the mercado is selling today.

The chile combination is ancho and guajillo. Not chipotle. Not pasilla. The Papaloapan version stays away from smoke because the banana leaf and the wood fire bring smoke of their own when the piltes go to steam. The ancho gives sweetness and dark body, the guajillo gives the red note and a little heat. They are toasted on a comal, soaked in hot water, blended with charred tomato, and fried in pork lard until the salsa darkens from red to brick and the fat beads at the edges.

My mother's notebook does not have this recipe. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco has no hoja santa. I learned this salsa in a kitchen in Tlacotalpan from a senora named Dona Concha who ran a comedor by the river and would not let me leave until I had ground the spices in her molcajete and tasted the salsa at three different stages so I could tell the difference. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and learning takes the time it takes.