Chilaquiles en Mole Coloradito

This is Oaxacan food. Not Mexican food in the generic sense. Oaxacan. Specifically, this is a breakfast from the Valles Centrales, the broad highland valley around the city of Oaxaca where the seven moles were codified and where mole coloradito is what you make when you have leftover mole from Sunday and a stack of yesterday's tortillas going stale on the counter.

Coloradito means 'the little red one.' It is the gentlest of Oaxaca's seven moles, but gentle does not mean simple. Chile ancho gives it that brick-red depth. Ripe plantain gives it sweetness. Chocolate de metate, the stone-ground kind you find in the Mercado de Abastos in blocks the size of your fist, gives it that bitter, grainy finish that separates Oaxacan chocolate from anything that comes in a foil wrapper. Sesame seeds, tomato, a piece of stale bread fried in asiento, canela, clove, black pepper. Each ingredient earns its place.

Childhood mornings in my mother's kitchen in Colonia Roma did not include this dish. She was from Jalisco and made her chilaquiles in salsa verde. But I ate mole coloradito for the first time in a fonda near Santo Domingo in Oaxaca city, spooned over tortillas so crisp they crackled when the mole hit them, and I understood immediately why Oaxaca guards its seven moles the way other states guard nothing. I went back three times that week. The senora who ran that fonda told me: 'The tortilla has to be from yesterday. Today's tortilla is too soft. It falls apart.' She was right. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

The tortillas fry in asiento, the dark sediment left at the bottom of the pot after rendering manteca de cerdo. It tastes like lard with a deeper, smokier character. If you cannot find asiento, use manteca. If you cannot find manteca, I need you to look harder. La manteca es el sabor. The egg on top is fried in the same fat, edges lacy and crisp, yolk still running. The quesillo goes on while everything is hot so it softens into long, salty threads across the mole. This is breakfast. Not nachos. Not a snack. Breakfast.