Pozontle de la Sierra Norte

Pozontle is from the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca. Specifically from the Mixe highlands, the towns of Ayutla, Tlahuitoltepec, Tamazulapam, where the Ayuujk people have been preparing this drink for centuries as ceremony, not refreshment. If you have heard of tejate, the foaming Zapotec drink from the Valles Centrales, pozontle is its mountain cousin. Cousins, not the same. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and inside Oaxaca alone there are dozens of cocinas, each one its own.

Three ingredients carry this drink: nixtamalized corn, cacao toasted on a comal, and cocolmeca, a foraged root the Mixe women pull from the cloud forest. The cocolmeca is what makes pozontle pozontle. Without that root, the masa and the cacao stay in the bottom of the cup. With it, the drink rises into a foam so dense you scoop the top with a spoon before you drink what is below. That foam is the entire point. It is not garnish. It is the dish.

I traveled to Tlahuitoltepec in 2014 to learn this drink from a senora named Dona Florencia, who had been making pozontle for weddings and harvest festivals for fifty-two years. She ground the masa on a metate her mother had used. She whipped the foam in a jicara the size of a small bucket, palms moving so fast on the molinillo I could not see the wood. When I asked her how she knew when the foam was ready, she said: 'Cuando se queda parada,' when it stands up on its own. That is the only test. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and the Mixe have known how to live for a long time.