Tabasco Amashito Chile Salsa (Salsa de Chile Amashito)

Tabasco, especially the Chontalpa and the lowlands around Villahermosa, Nacajuca, Jalpa de Mendez, and Centla, keeps chile amashito on the table the way other regions keep salt. Tiny, green, wild or semi-wild, picked around milpas and acahuales, sold in little piles at Mercado Jose Maria Pino Suarez. This is not chile piquin. Say that twice before you cook.

The salsa is not complicated, but it is exact. Fresh chile amashito, coarse salt, lime, a roasted garlic clove, and sometimes a tomato charred on the comal until the skin blackens in patches. You crush it in a molcajete because the stone breaks the chile and tomato differently than a blender. A blender gives you foam and speed. The molcajete gives you a salsa that tastes like somebody worked for it.

My mother was from Jalisco, so this was not in her notebook. I learned it from a woman in Nacajuca who served it beside frijoles de la olla and grilled fish, with momo, hoja santa, folded near the plate for another dish on the table. She watched my hand on the tejolote and told me, stronger, hija, the chile has to break. She was right. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo.

Use what the Tabasco market gives you. If the tomatoes are weak, make the raw version with only chile, salt, and lime. If the amashito is red instead of green, use it, but understand the flavor will be fruitier and sharper. Recetas probadas y garantizadas, but the mercado speaks first.