Enfrijoladas Capitalinas con Chorizo

Enfrijoladas are a Ciudad de Mexico breakfast. Not a fancy one. A weekday one, the kind a cook makes when the pot of beans from Sunday is still in the refrigerator and the family needs to eat before they leave the house. The dish lives in the working-class fondas of Colonia Roma, Colonia Doctores, La Merced, where a plate of three folded tortillas under crema and queso fresco costs less than a coffee and feeds you until lunch.

The bean has to be black and it has to be cooked from scratch with epazote in the pot. Canned beans will make you a thin, vegetal puree that tastes like a can. A pot of beans cooked slow with onion, a sprig of epazote, and a knob of lard will make you a puree with body, with the herbaceous bitterness epazote gives to anything it touches. The chile pasilla in the puree is what makes this version capitalina. It is dark, smoky, slightly sweet, and it gives the beans a depth that plain black beans cannot reach on their own. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one is from the kitchens of the capital.

My mother made these on Mondays. The pot of frijoles de la olla from Sunday's comida went into the blender, the chorizo went into the comal, and we ate before school. She would tell me that enfrijoladas were proof you could feed a family well on almost nothing if you knew what you were doing. Saber cocinar es saber vivir. That was her line and she meant it literally.

One rule. The tortilla goes through warm lard before it goes through the beans. Skip that step and you will fight the tortillas the whole time and tear half of them. Do it the way the senoras at the fondas do it and the dish comes together in minutes.