Lentejas de Convento Poblanas

Puebla, in the Angelopolis convent belt of the Centro Historico, is where these lentils live: Santa Rosa, the Dominicas, the refectorio, the portera counting what came in from the market. This is not the lentil soup from any generic Mexican menu. It is a conventual pot from a city that made cloister kitchens into serious archives of technique.

The lineage is institutional before it is regional, but the ground under it is Puebla. The chile is ancho poblano, the dried form of the poblano chile, used for raisin-dark sweetness, not for bragging about heat. The thickening comes from almendras de Castilla and pan de agua fried in olive oil, then passed through a colador with roasted jitomate and clavo. That is the convent hand: Old World pantry, New World market, one disciplined cazuela.

Since this is vigilia, there is no carnero and no manteca de cerdo. Provision notes sometimes put mutton beside lentils for ordinary refectorio meals. Not here. The fat is aceite de oliva, the old manteca de aceite. If someone serves you Lenten lentils with mutton, ask what calendar they are cooking from.

I first copied notes for this kind of pot while reading Angelopolitan convent material, then tested it the way the senoras at La Acocota would judge it: lentils whole, broth thick but not muddy, clavo present but not bullying, chayote and ejote still themselves. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Puebla's convent kitchen has its own discipline.