Pipián Verde de Pepita

Pipián verde is from Puebla. It is also from Tlaxcala and parts of the State of Mexico, and the Yucatecos have their own version with achiote that they call sikil pak when it is a dip and pipián when it is a sauce. But the green pipián you are making here, the one bound with pepitas and brightened with tomatillo, lives in the Sierra Norte and the valleys around the city of Puebla. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one is Poblana.

People call it a mole, and it is, but it is not a mole poblano. There is no chocolate, no cinnamon, no dried chile, no two-day commitment. Pipián is the older, lighter cousin. The pepita, the pumpkin seed, was here before the Spanish arrived. Pre-Columbian Mexico ate sauces bound with ground seeds and chiles long before anyone in Europe had ever seen a tomato. When you toast and grind pepitas and stretch them with broth, you are cooking something that predates the conquest by centuries.

The technique is short but unforgiving. Toast the pepitas too long and the sauce turns brown and bitter. Boil it hard and the seed oil breaks out and ruins the texture. The greens, hoja santa, epazote, cilantro, and a few leaves of romaine, are what hold the color. Without the romaine, the pipián turns gray within the hour. That is a trick I learned from a señora in the Mercado El Carmen in Puebla who has been making this sauce for forty years. She taught me without writing anything down. I went home and wrote it in my mother's notebook on a page she had left blank.

The sign that pipián verde is finished is the bead of golden oil that rises to the surface, the natural fat from the seed releasing once the sauce has cooked just enough. La señora called it 'el aceite que indica que ya está.' The oil that tells you it is ready. When you see it, you turn off the heat. No me vengas con atajos.