Moradoras / Chile en nogada
How a chile en nogada is made
Three things have to coincide for the dish to exist. When one is missing, there is no chile en nogada.
What the dish asks for
Three 
When one is missing, there is no chile en nogada. That is why the season is short, and why it is not there the rest of the year.
The season decides
The dish's clock
The nuez de Castilla — the Castilian walnut — is harvested fresh at the end of summer, and fresh it is soft, sweet and pale. Dried, it makes a darker, more bitter, heavier nogada. That is the dish's clock: not a date on the calendar but how long the young walnut lasts.
The fruit belongs to those same weeks and to no other: manzana panochera, pera lechera, durazno criollo. They are not the supermarket varieties and they do not behave like them — smaller, firmer and less sweet, which is exactly what the filling needs if it is not to cloy.
And the pomegranate, which arrives at the same time. It is the last thing to go on and the only thing not cooked: red seeds, raw and firm, over the nogada.
The steps
From the fire to the table
The chile
Poblano, charred straight over the flame until the skin blisters and blackens. It sweats under cover for a few minutes, is peeled, opened along one side only, and stripped of veins and seeds without tearing. Whole, because it has to hold the filling afterwards.
The picadillo
Cooked meat — beef, pork or both — with the season's fruit in cubes, almond, pine nut, raisins and spices. It cooks slowly, until the fruit begins to break down and releases its sugar over the meat. That point, where sweet and savoury stop being fully separable, is the dish.
Acitrón, and its absence
The old recipe calls for acitrón, a candied biznaga cactus. The biznaga is a protected species in Mexico, so many kitchens have replaced it with other candied fruit, or with more pear and peach. Where it is missing, that is not an oversight: it is a decision about a cactus that takes decades to grow.
The walnuts, one by one
This is the long step, and the one nobody sees. The fresh walnuts are soaked and skinned by hand, half by half, one at a time. Any skin left behind turns the nogada bitter and grey.
This is where the morning goes
And it is why the dish costs what it costs.
The nogada
The cleaned walnut is ground with fresh cheese or requesón and milk, sometimes with a little sherry and cinnamon. It ends up neither quite sweet nor quite savoury: what you want is the point where it argues with the picadillo instead of covering it. Served cold or at room temperature, never hot.
Putting it together
The filled chile, battered or bare; the nogada over it, generously; pomegranate and parsley last.
It is eaten as soon as it is assembled: the nogada will not wait, and a battered chile waits even less.
What Puebla argues about
Two schools and a legend
Battered or bare?
The capeado — the chile passed through beaten egg and fried before it is sauced — is traditional across much of Puebla and gives a golden coat that holds the nogada. Serving it bare leaves the chile visible, lightens the plate and makes the poblano taste cleaner. Both versions have serious defenders, and neither is the false one.
Here it is served bareThe flag
The story goes that the Augustinian nuns of Santa Mónica invented it in Puebla in 1821 for Agustín de Iturbide, and that the green of the parsley, the white of the nogada and the red of the pomegranate are the colours of the Trigarante army. It is a beautiful story and probably younger than the dish: the printed recipes turn up considerably later, and the flag reading seems to have been added afterwards.
What is certain: August and SeptemberAnd the order
Before the chile comes the chileatole: young corn, poblano chile and epazote, made from what reaches the market a few weeks earlier. In many houses it is the sign that the season has started.
Chileatole firstFor as long as the season allows
Ours is served bare: the chile in plain sight, the nogada over it, pomegranate and parsley last.
The rest — which walnut, which fruit, how much cinnamon — is better told with the plate in front of you. That is what the table is for.
July to September
Nogada ice cream, made in house
Chileatole, when it starts
Questions
About the chile en nogada
What is nogada?
The white sauce that covers the chile. It is made by grinding fresh, skinned Castilian walnuts with fresh cheese or requesón and milk, sometimes with sherry and cinnamon. It is served cold or at room temperature, and it is what gives the dish its name.
Why is it only available a few months a year?
Because it depends on three things that coincide only briefly: fresh Castilian walnut, harvested at the end of summer; that season's fruit; and pomegranate. It can be made year-round with dried walnut, but then it is a different dish — darker and more bitter. At Moradoras we have it from July to September.
Is it spicy?
The poblano is one of the mild chiles, and here it is roasted, peeled and stripped of veins and seeds, which is where nearly all the heat lives. With sweet nogada over it, the dish does not eat as a spicy one. That said, the poblano is a chile, and some come out hotter than others.
Does it contain meat?
Yes. The traditional filling is a picadillo of beef, pork or both, with fruit, almond, pine nut and raisins. The nogada also contains cheese and milk.
Why does it cost more than other dishes?
The walnut. Fresh Castilian walnut is expensive and available only a few weeks, and it has to be skinned by hand, half by half, because any skin left behind turns the sauce bitter. It is the dish that takes the most kitchen time per plate served.