Pancita Capitalina (Menudo Blanco CDMX)

This is from Ciudad de Mexico. The capital's menudo is blanco, not rojo. No guajillo, no ancho, no chile in the pot at all. The caldo is clear, the panza is white, and the heat comes at the table from a small dish of chile piquin that each diner shakes into their own bowl. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the north can keep its red menudo. The capital does it like this.

The two ingredients that make this version capitalina are epazote and arroz. The epazote, sharp and almost medicinal, cuts through the richness of the tripe the way no other herb does. The rice, added in the last half hour, loosens its starch into the broth and gives the caldo a body that the northern versions do not have. Skip either one and you have made some other menudo. You have not made pancita capitalina.

My mother made this on Sunday mornings when I was small, in a tall olla on the back burner of our kitchen in Colonia Roma. She started it Saturday night, scrubbing the panza with lime and vinegar at the sink while my father drank coffee at the table. The smell on Sunday morning, epazote and slow tripe and warm tortillas, is what Sunday in Ciudad de Mexico smells like to anyone who grew up there. The senoras at La Merced sell pancita by the kilo on Sunday mornings for a reason. It is what the city eats to start the week. Asi se hace y punto.