COSTILLITAS
of boiling water, simultaneously tossing the next chile onto the comal. The repetition of each movement, knowing when the chile has toasted just enough to wake it up, removing it seconds before it blackens and becomes bitter, is such a meditative, intuitive process for me, one that I’ve been practicing for years.
As the chiles hung out in their hot water bath, a thick slice of onion, a deep-red Roma tomato and a fat clove of garlic left in its skin replaced the chiles on the comal. I rotated, flipped and kept an eye on the veggies as they lightly charred, blackening in places. The garlic was ready first, so I pulled it off and set it on the chopping board to cool slightly. A few minutes later, I tossed the charred tomato into my blender just as the skin started to burst. The onion came next, once its color had changed from white to deep brown with flecks of black. I then carefully tore off the blackened garlic skin, revealing the sweetened, golden garlic flesh, and tossed the clove into the blender. I added the rehydrated chiles and some soaking liquid, then blended until my
salsa roja was thick and smooth, like ketchup.
Next, I placed a deep-sided skillet on the stove and warmed it on medium for a few minutes. I poured in some oil and waited for it to shimmer, indicating it was hot. I held the skillet’s lid vertically with one hand like a shield between my favorite gray T-shirt and the hot oil while the other held the blender filled with the salsa. In one fluid movement, I poured the salsa into the hot oil. Immediately, it jumped and sputtered, trying its hardest to escape the skillet. I covered the skillet before it made too much of a mess all over Sophia (my stove, yes, she has a name). I added a cup of water to the blender, swirled it roughly to incorporate any sauce left behind, lifted the lid and added it to the less angry but still bubbling salsa. I added the seasonings and left it to simmer.
Frying sauce in hot oil is the last step in making many Mexican salsas. It provides two things: It helps the ingredients meld, creating a more pronounced and well-rounded flavor, plus salsas fried in a bit of oil will last a few days longer in the refrigerator than fresh or uncooked ones.
A hands-on kitchen task involving sight, smell, touch and taste, working with dried chiles is an essential component of many Mexican kitchens. Whether frying, dry toasting or merely rehydrating before blending into moles, simmering sauces or a simple table salsa, homemade sauces prepared from dried chiles are bolder and more balanced than anything you’d get in a can or jar.
Costillitas con nopales are ingredients that go just as well with either red or green sauce. Costilla means rib in Spanish, while costillitas refers to ribs butchered into 1- to 2-inch pieces.
Nopales, meaning cactus, come from the paddles of prickly pear cactus.
Salsa roja translates to red sauce. Each cook determines which dried chiles to use and how many of them, which usually depends on the salsa’s ultimate use or protein pairing. Chile combinations might also depend on geography or familial recipes passed down from an abuela (grandmother) or
tia (auntie).
Today’s simple sauce, made from guajillo chiles, pairs perfectly with my version of costillitas con nopales. The astringent yet earthy and mildly spicy guajillos cut through pork’s richness for a perfectly balanced bite (to be sure, the lemony undertones and fresh green chile of a salsa verde — green sauce — pair just as well with pork).
This recipe reminds me of a dish I grew up eating, my Dad’s calabacitas (squash). He would take full-size pork spare ribs and use his ginormous cleaver to cut the ribs into 1-inch pieces. His red sauce was brothy, and after the ribs were fork-tender, he’d add large chunks of zucchini to the pot and lots of chopped cilantro. It’s a childhood favorite.
I have neither a cleaver large enough nor the strength to break down ribs myself. Instead, I buy either rib tips (pictured today) or, my preference, pork spareribs (riblets) already butchered into 1- or 2-inch pieces (Northgate Market sells them inexpensively, as do some Asian markets).
As for the cactus, unfortunately, its slowly oozing viscous fluid in both its raw and cooked forms turns many people off this nutritious vegetable. Please don’t be one of those people! There are ways around the slime! Let me explain.
Most cooks boil their cactus with onion, garlic and jalapeño, which is how my grandma taught me. But boiled cactus still requires a bit of a rinse to rid it of any remaining sticky residue before adding the cactus to recipes.
These days, I no longer use water for cooking cactus. I simply use heat to force out the sap — which eventually evaporates — and a little oil to keep the cactus from sticking to the pan. The result is tender bites of lemony cactus. After many hours of digging deeper into regional Mexican cooking, I discovered this technique. Once I tried this method, I never looked back. Cactus cooked this way requires no rinsing, thus retaining all the savoriness from any aromatics used in the cooking process. Plus, you don’t lose nearly as much of the vegetable’s nutrients as you do when boiling.
Now that you know the secret to cook perfectly tender, slime-free cactus, there are no excuses to keep you from cooking, eating and enjoying this nutritional powerhouse. And paired with these little bites of ribs and earthy, mildly spiced sauce, it’s a fantastic introduction to this pre-Columbian staple of Mesoamerica.