To make chiles en nogada (chiles in walnut sauce), a hallmark of Puebla and widely considered to be Mexico’s national dish, you start by blistering the poblanos. The idea is to char and loosen the skins so that they can be peeled away, leaving the bottle-green flesh tender but firm enough to be stuffed full of the dish’s signature late-summer picadillo.
That filling is seasoned with not just a typical picadillo’s savory-sweet mix of garlic, raisins, olives, and warm spices but also with tomato and a bounty of seasonal fruits and nuts. You stuff the picadillo into each chile so that they brim like little cornucopias and then blanket them with velvety nogada—an ivory, delicately sweet walnut sauce that’s further enriched with tangy Mexican crema and maybe some fresh cheese. The stuffed, sauced chiles, which are served at room temperature to ease the assembly process, get a last-minute scatter of pomegranate arils and whole
