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Puebla's August soup of squash blossoms wilted in butter with white onion and fresh elote, blended with caldo de pollo and crema mexicana. Whole petals saved back as garnish. Not sweet, not fussy, and only as good as the flowers you bring home from the mercado.
This is a Puebla soup, and more broadly a soup of the central highlands: Tlaxcala, the State of Mexico, parts of Hidalgo and Morelos where calabaza grows in summer and the blossoms come into the mercados by the bunch starting in late July. By August they are everywhere. By September they are gone. The calendar dictates this dish, not the cook.
Flor de calabaza is delicate. The petals are the color of melted butter and the flavor is something between cucumber, baby zucchini, and clean grass. People who have never cooked them assume the soup will be sweet. It is not. There is no sugar here, no cream of corn nonsense, no condensed milk. The blossoms wilt down in butter with white onion and fresh elote, then everything gets blended with a clean caldo de pollo and finished with crema mexicana. That is the dish. The trick is restraint. Anything more and you bury the flower.
Epazote is what locks this soup to its region. Pueblan and Tlaxcalan cooks reach for epazote the way other cooks reach for bay leaves, and in this soup it gives the broth a faint mineral edge that keeps the cream honest. Do not use cilantro. Cilantro is a different herb for a different dish.
My mother did not make this. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco does not have this tradition. I learned crema de flor de calabaza from a senora named Dona Refugio who ran a fonda near the mercado in Cholula. She taught me to save the prettiest blossoms whole and lay them on the surface of the soup at the table, opened like a small flag of the season. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo, but a whole blossom floating on the surface of the soup is the kind of small honesty that tells the diner what they are about to eat. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Squash blossoms have been eaten in Mesoamerica for at least seven thousand years, predating the domestication of the squash itself; archaeological evidence from caves in Tehuacan, Puebla, shows that pre-Columbian peoples consumed every part of the cucurbit plant, including the flowers, vines, seeds, and immature fruit. The blossom was considered a humble ingredient through the colonial period and only entered the formal cookbooks of the central highlands in the 19th century, when Pueblan convent cooks codified the cream-based blended soup as a refined first course for criollo households. Today, flor de calabaza is grown commercially in Xochimilco, Morelos, and the Valle de Puebla, with peak season running from late July through early September, after which the soup disappears from menus until the following summer.
Quantity
2 large bunches (about 40 to 50 blossoms)
stems and sepals removed, pistils pinched out
Quantity
3 tablespoons
Quantity
1 medium
finely chopped
Quantity
3
finely minced
Quantity
2 ears (about 2 cups kernels)
kernels cut off the cob
Quantity
1 sprig
leaves only
Quantity
4 cups
warm
Quantity
3/4 cup, plus more for finishing
Quantity
1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste
Quantity
to taste
Quantity
1
charred, peeled, seeded, and cut into thin rajas
Quantity
1/4 cup
crumbled
Quantity
6 to 8
Quantity
for serving
warmed
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh squash blossoms (flor de calabaza)stems and sepals removed, pistils pinched out | 2 large bunches (about 40 to 50 blossoms) |
| unsalted butter | 3 tablespoons |
| white onionfinely chopped | 1 medium |
| garlic clovesfinely minced | 3 |
| fresh white cornkernels cut off the cob | 2 ears (about 2 cups kernels) |
| fresh epazoteleaves only | 1 sprig |
| caldo de pollo casero (homemade chicken broth)warm | 4 cups |
| crema mexicana | 3/4 cup, plus more for finishing |
| kosher salt | 1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste |
| freshly cracked black pepper | to taste |
| fresh chile poblanocharred, peeled, seeded, and cut into thin rajas | 1 |
| queso fresco (optional)crumbled | 1/4 cup |
| reserved whole blossoms (for garnish) (optional) | 6 to 8 |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
Work over a wide bowl. Pull the green stem off each flower at the base. Snip the pointed green sepals at the bottom of the petals with kitchen scissors. Open each blossom and pinch out the pistil, the orange stamen in the center, which turns bitter if you leave it. Tear any blossoms that have ants or wilted petals. Set aside six to eight of the most beautiful whole blossoms for garnish. Roughly chop the rest. This is the work. Do not skip it.
Lay the poblano directly on a gas flame or under the broiler. Turn it with tongs until the skin is blistered black on every side, about six minutes. Drop it in a paper bag or covered bowl for ten minutes. The trapped warmth loosens the skin. Rub the skin off with your fingers, never under water. Pull out the stem, scrape the seeds, and slice into thin strips. These are your rajas.
Melt the butter in a heavy 4-quart pot over medium heat. Add the chopped white onion with a pinch of salt and cook until translucent and soft, about six minutes. Do not let it brown. Brown onion gives the soup the wrong color and a sweetness the dish does not want. Add the garlic and cook for thirty seconds, just until you can smell it.
Stir in the corn kernels and cook for four minutes, until the kernels turn from chalky white to bright and tender. Add the chopped squash blossoms and the epazote leaves. The blossoms collapse fast. Stir them in and watch them wilt down into a tangle of soft orange ribbons in about two minutes. The mixture will smell green and faintly grassy, like a garden after rain. That smell is the flower telling you it is ready.
Pour in the warm chicken broth and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for ten minutes, just enough for the flavors to settle into each other. Taste the broth. It should taste of corn and flower, with the onion in the background. Season with the salt and black pepper. Pull the pot off the heat.
Reserve about a cup of the corn and blossom solids with a slotted spoon. This goes back into the soup whole for texture. Transfer the rest to a blender in batches, no more than half full at a time. Hold the lid down with a folded towel and start on the lowest speed. Hot liquid in a blender will lift the lid and burn you. Blend each batch until completely smooth, about a minute. Return everything to the pot, including the reserved whole pieces.
Set the pot back over low heat. Stir in the crema mexicana. Do not let it boil after the crema goes in. Boiling crema breaks and the soup turns grainy. Warm it through, two or three minutes. Taste again for salt. The soup should be the pale gold-green of late summer, smooth on the spoon, and tasting clearly of the flower, not of dairy. Crema rounds, it does not lead. Así se hace y punto.
Ladle into warm clay cazuelitas or shallow bowls. Drape a few rajas of poblano across the surface of each. Set a reserved whole blossom in the center of each bowl, opened gently so the petals lay flat on the soup. Crumble queso fresco around the blossom and drizzle a thin spiral of cold crema on top. Serve with warm tortillas. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
1 serving (about 300g)
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