Tacos de Chanfaina Chiapacorceña

Chiapas, Chiapa de Corzo, January. That is where this dish lives. During the Fiesta Grande, when the parachicos fill the streets and the kitchens start before the sun is useful, chanfaina is one of the foods that reminds you celebration is work before it is music.

This is not a clean little taco for people afraid of the animal. Chanfaina uses the asadura: liver, heart, and lung, sometimes with a little pork shoulder to soften the texture for guests. The chile pasilla gives the stew its dark color and quiet bitterness. Tomato, garlic, clove, cinnamon, thyme, and bay leaf build the fondo. Manteca de cerdo carries it. La manteca es el sabor.

I learned this version from women in Chiapa de Corzo who cooked in wide cazuelas and served from clay, not from stainless trays. They rinsed the offal with salt and sour orange, boiled it first so the flavor stayed clean, then fried the recado until the fat separated. No me vengas con atajos. If you throw raw liver into thin chile sauce, the taco will taste tired and metallic. Do the work correctly and it becomes festival food.

The tortilla must be corn, hand-pressed if you can manage it, warmed on a comal until it puffs and takes small brown spots. Flour tortillas belong to other parts of Mexico. Cada estado, su propia cocina.