Frijoles Refritos Oaxaqueños (Colados)

These beans are Oaxacan. Not the chunky frijoles refritos of central Mexico, not the soupy charros of the north, not the black beans of Yucatán cooked with chaya. These are colados, strained, blended smooth, and refried in asiento until they hold the line of a spoon. They are the foundation of a tlayuda. They are the beans that show up at every comida in Oaxaca, in every market fonda, in every house from the Valles Centrales to the Sierra Norte.

Two things make them Oaxacan. The first is the hoja de aguacate, the avocado leaf, toasted on a comal until it gives up its anise-and-hazelnut perfume and crumbled into the blender with the cooked beans. No other state uses it the way Oaxaca does. The second is the asiento, the dark, unrefined lard that settles at the bottom of the cazo when carnitas are made. Asiento has the cracklings in it. It has the depth that pure manteca cannot match. If you can get your hands on a jar of real asiento at a Oaxacan mercado or a good carnicería, do it. La manteca es el sabor, and this is the most flavorful manteca there is.

My mother did not cook Oaxacan. She was from Jalisco. But on one of my first trips to the Mercado de Abastos in Oaxaca City, a señora at a fonda showed me la prueba del jalón, the pull test, dragging her wooden spoon across the bottom of a clay cazuela and showing me the line that held for a full second before the beans closed over it. That is how you know. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Oaxaca's beans are colados.