Espelón Guisado Yucateco

This is from Yucatán. Not the Yucatán of cochinita pibil postcards. The other Yucatán, the everyday one, where families eat potajes of beans and verduras on the days that are not feast days. Espelón is the cowpea of the peninsula, smaller and thinner-skinned than the black beans of the central states, with a fresh, almost grassy flavor that sets it apart the moment you taste it. If you have only cooked frijol negro from Veracruz or Oaxaca, espelón will surprise you. It is its own bean.

The technique is what makes this a Yucatecan dish and not just a bean stew. The sofrito is built on tomate, garlic, and chile dulce, the small sweet pepper that grows in the peninsula and that no other state cooks with the same way. Then comes the recado rojo, achiote paste dissolved in bitter orange, bloomed in lard until the broth turns the color of terracotta. That achiote is not decoration. It is the regional signature, the same paste that goes into cochinita and pollo pibil, used here to anchor a humble pot of beans in the Yucatecan tradition. The calabaza, the chayote, the papa, and the repollo go in last, in order, because each one cooks in its own time. A Yucatecan cook does not throw everything in the pot at once.

I learned this potaje from a woman named Chichí Lupe in a small kitchen in Valladolid, in 2008. She kept a recetario, a recipe book, in a school notebook tied with a rubber band. She wrote the proportions in pencil and adjusted them every year. She told me: in Yucatán we are poor in many things but we are rich in epazote and we are rich in achiote, and a woman who knows how to use both can feed a family on what the milpa gives her. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo. This is that lesson on the table.