Pozol de Cacao en Jícara

Chiapas, the Central Depression, Chiapa de Corzo before the sun gets hard. This is where pozol de cacao belongs: in a jícara of carved gourd, thick enough to eat with a spoon, cold enough to wake the mouth, made from nixtamal and cacao that the women of the house already know how to judge by smell.

Pozol is not pozole. Don't confuse them because English spelling gets lazy. Pozole is a hominy stew. Pozol is a drinkable, spoonable masa preparation of the Maya south, made from cooked corn ground into dough and beaten with water. Add toasted cacao and you have the Chiapas breakfast that feeds workers, students, market women, and anyone who knows that corn is not a side dish here. Corn is the structure.

The cacao must be toasted on a comal until the skins loosen and the kitchen smells dark and bitter. The nixtamal must be rinsed clean, ground fine, and kneaded with the cacao until the mass turns the color of wet clay. If you buy fresh nixtamal masa from a tortillería, fine. If you use instant masa harina and cocoa powder, you've made a drink, not this one. No me vengas con atajos.

My mother was from Jalisco, so pozol was not hers. I learned this one in Chiapa de Corzo from a señora who sold jícaras at dawn beside a basket of pan coleto. She beat the pozol with her hand and told me, 'si se asienta, lo vuelves a mover.' If it settles, you stir it again. That is the whole lesson. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.