Vegetarian Stuffed Chiles

This recipe is connected with memories of an idyll: my first visit to the sleepy fishing town of Puerto Escondido on the coast about two hundred miles southeast of Acapulco. That was in 1985. We reached it in an ancient DC-8 by way of an airport that then consisted of one palm-thatched structure and a dirt road and, because of the surrounding steep Oaxaca mountains, could not be flown into except in the evening or early morning. We prayed all the way—but once there had a glorious time.