Chorizo Verde Tlaxcalteca con Huevo

This is Tlaxcala. Specifically the highland towns around Huamantla, San Pablo del Monte, and the central valley villages where the green chorizo has been made for generations and where it shows up on the breakfast table the way red chorizo shows up everywhere else in Mexico.

What makes it green is not food coloring. It is a thick paste of cilantro, perejil, spinach, hierba santa, chile poblano, chile serrano, and toasted pepitas, blended tight and worked into ground pork until the meat turns an almost shocking color. The first time I saw it being made, in a kitchen in Huamantla in 2009, I thought the woman had spilled something. Then she handed me a taco and I understood. This is not red chorizo with herbs added. This is a separate animal entirely. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

The pepita is the detail that tells you this is Tlaxcala and not Puebla or Mexico state. Pre-Hispanic central highlands cooks ground pepitas into nearly everything, and the Tlaxcalan chorizo carries that lineage straight through the colonial pork into the modern skillet. Toast the pepitas. Do not skip them. They thicken the paste, they cling to the meat, and they bring the dish back to its real origin.

My mother did not make this. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco does not make green chorizo. But I found a recipe in her notebook copied from a Tlaxcalan friend, in pencil, with a single note in the margin: 'reposar mínimo una noche.' Rest it at least one night. She underlined it twice. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.