Empanadas Oaxaqueñas de Mole Verde

Oaxaca has seven moles. Mole verde is the most herbaceous, the brightest, the one that tastes like the garden behind the kitchen and the herb stalls at the Mercado de Abastos. It is not a green salsa. It is not tomatillos with cilantro. The ingredient that makes it Oaxacan is hoja santa, a large heart-shaped leaf with an anise perfume that has no real substitute. Without hoja santa, you can make a green sauce. You cannot make mole verde oaxaqueño. I will not pretend otherwise.

The empanada itself is pure corn masa pressed thin, filled with shredded chicken dressed in the mole and a thread of quesillo, folded by hand, and toasted on a hot comal until the surface gets those dark spots and the edges firm up. These are not fried. They are not baked. They are comal-cooked, the way the women at the Mercado 20 de Noviembre in Oaxaca city have been making them for decades, one at a time, pressed between their palms or on a tortilla press lined with plastic. Some of those women lay a small piece of hoja santa directly on the masa before adding the filling. That detail, the leaf pressed into the dough by the heat, is the kind of thing you only learn by watching.

My mother did not make Oaxacan empanadas. Hers were from Jalisco, wheat flour, fried in oil. The first time I ate empanadas de mole verde at a market stall in Oaxaca de Juarez, I understood that the word empanada means different things in different states. Cada estado, su propia cocina. The Oaxacan version is lighter, more fragrant, and built on a corn tradition that goes back thousands of years. I copied the senora's method in my notebook that afternoon and have made them this way ever since. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.