Verduras Asadas al Carbón Sonorenses

This is from Sonora. Specifically from the backyard parrilladas that anchor every Saturday night from Hermosillo to Ciudad Obregón to the cattle ranches of the sierra. The carne asada gets the headline. The vegetables share the same fire and they are not an afterthought.

Northern Mexico is wheat country and cattle country and mesquite country. The mesquite is what makes Sonoran asada taste like Sonora and not like a generic grilled steak. That same mesquite smoke perfumes the calabacitas, the cebollitas cambray, the chiles güeros, the corn, the whole pile of vegetables that comes off the grates and lands on the wooden board next to the meat. You dress them with lime, coarse salt, a pinch of chiltepín, and a few drops of Maggi sauce. That is the seasoning. The smoke did the rest.

The chiltepín is the chile of Sonora. Tiny, round, wild-harvested in the sierra, hot in a clean fast way that disappears as quickly as it arrives. A little jar of crushed chiltepín lives on every Sonoran table the way salt lives on every other Mexican table. Do not substitute crushed red pepper. Do not substitute cayenne. If you cannot find chiltepín, leave it off and serve a salsa de chile de árbol on the side. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.

The tortilla is flour, not corn. Sobaquera, the giant thin flour tortilla pressed and stretched over the cook's forearm and slapped onto a hot disco. Corn tortillas belong to central and southern Mexico. In the north, where the wheat grows and the cattle ranches feed people who work in the sun all day, the flour tortilla is the bread. Cada estado, su propia cocina.