Budín de Verduras con Hierba Santa

This is a Oaxacan dish. Hierba santa is what makes it Oaxacan, not the vegetables, not the eggs. The leaf, called hoja santa in some places and acuyo on the Veracruz side of the border, grows wild in the milpas of southern Mexico and tastes like nothing else: anise, sassafras, a faint shadow of black pepper. You cannot substitute it. If you cannot find it, make a different dish today.

In the markets of Oaxaca, the women who sell hierba santa stack the leaves in piles the size of dinner plates, the dark green undersides facing up, the stems still beaded from the last rinse. They will tell you to use it for tamales, for mole amarillo, for the broth of a fish wrapped in the leaf and steamed. And they will tell you, if you ask, that the budín is what you make when the calabacitas are firm, the acelgas are crisp, and the flores de calabaza are bright orange and not yet wilting from the morning sun. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This one belongs to the Valles Centrales.

My mother did not make this. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco does not cook with hierba santa. I learned it from a woman named Doña Aurelia in Tlacolula on a Sunday afternoon in 2009, and her version had no flour and no breadcrumbs. Just vegetables, eggs, crema, queso, and the leaf that holds it all together. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo. The work here is in the chopping and in the patience of the baño maría. Get those right and the budín takes care of itself.