Huevos a la Oaxaqueña

This is Oaxacan breakfast. Not the mole negro that takes two days or the tamales de rajas that come out for fiestas. This is what a woman in the Valles Centrales makes on a Tuesday morning when the kitchen is already warm and the comal is already hot from the tortillas.

The salsa comes first. You roast tomatoes, a quarter onion, a clove of garlic, and a few chiles de arbol on the comal until the skins blister and char. Then you crush them in the molcajete. Not the blender. The molcajete gives you texture: rough, chunky, uneven. A blender salsa is smooth and polite. A molcajete salsa has character. Preguntale a las senoras del mercado. They will tell you the same thing.

The eggs cook in asiento, the dark, sediment-rich lard left at the bottom of the chicharron pot. Asiento is Oaxaca's cooking fat the way butter is to Normandy. It is smoky, porky, and it gives the eggs a depth that vegetable oil or even clean manteca cannot touch. If you cannot find asiento, use manteca de cerdo and accept the compromise. But know what you are missing.

I collected this version from a senora who runs a comedor in Etla, just outside the city of Oaxaca. She served it on a green-glazed Atzompa plate with a stack of tortillas de maiz, black beans from the olla, and a cup of chocolate de agua beaten with a molinillo. She didn't write anything down. She watched me write it down and told me I was using too many words. She was probably right. Asi se hace y punto.