Quesadillas de Hongos Silvestres con Epazote

This is a dish from central Mexico, from the markets of Mexico City and the Estado de Mexico, from the months when the rains come and the mountains send their mushrooms down to the city. June through October, the stalls at La Merced and Mercado de San Juan and the tianguis across the Valle de Mexico fill with baskets of hongos silvestres: clavitos, patas de pajaro, escobetillas, cazahuates, duraznillos. Women who have been foraging the Sierra Norte and the forests around Amecameca and Rio Frio since before you were born carry them in huacales, sorted by type, still damp with mountain air. That is the season. If you are making this dish in February, you are making it with cultivated mushrooms and you should know the difference.

The quesadilla here is not a tortilla folded in half. In Mexico City, a quesadilla is a hand-formed masa pocket, pressed from fresh nixtamalized corn masa, filled, folded shut, and cooked on a comal or a plancha until the outside crisps. And yes, in Mexico City, a quesadilla does not necessarily have cheese. That argument has been running for decades and I am not settling it today. This version has quesillo because the mushrooms and the cheese and the epazote together are one of the great combinations in Mexican cooking and I will not apologize for it.

The filling is simple because the mushrooms do the work. Lard in the pan, garlic, white onion, a chile serrano or two for heat, the mushrooms, and a generous handful of fresh epazote thrown in at the end. Epazote is not optional. It is the herb that makes this filling taste like what it is supposed to taste like: earthy, slightly medicinal, irreplaceable. My mother used to say that any cook who leaves out the epazote is a cook who has never eaten this dish made right. She kept a pot of it growing on the balcony in Colonia Roma, and she put it in everything from beans to quesadillas to caldo de hongos. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.