Mole de Olla con Xoconostle

Mole de olla belongs to the central highlands. Ciudad de Mexico, Puebla, Tlaxcala, the altiplano where the markets sell xoconostle by the kilo and every cocinera has her own balance of guajillo and pasilla. This is not a mole the way poblano or oaxaqueno is a mole. The word here means something older: molli, sauce, concoction. A pot built around a chile puree thinned with beef broth and weighted down with whatever the milpa is giving up that week.

The xoconostle is what makes it. People outside the central highlands have never heard of it and it has no real substitute. Xoconostle is the sour wild prickly pear, harvested green, with a flesh that runs from pale jade to deep magenta and a flavor that is somewhere between tamarind and unripe gooseberry. It does not need lime. It is the lime. It builds the acid into the broth itself, balancing the chile and the fat in a way no citrus squeezed over the top ever could. If your mercado does not carry it, the dish is not in season for you. Cook something else.

My mother did not grow up with mole de olla, she was from Jalisco, but she learned it from a vecina in Colonia Roma named Dona Refugio who was from Tehuacan and made it every Wednesday in the summer when the corn and chayote and ejotes were all good at the same time. The pot would simmer all morning and the apartment would smell like guajillo and beef bone, and Dona Refugio would tell my mother that this is what poor people eat when they are not poor. One animal, the garden, a handful of chiles, and a few xoconostles. A feast assembled out of patience. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

This is a summer dish, when the corn is fresh and the calabacitas are small and tender and the xoconostle is at the markets. Do not make it in February with frozen corn. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this stew respects its season.