Sopa de Habas Tlaxcalteca

This soup is from Tlaxcala. From the small towns of the altiplano where the volcanic soil grows fava beans the color of old gold, and where the women dry them for the months when nothing else is in the field. It crosses into Puebla, into Tlaxco, into the rural cocinas of the central highlands, but Tlaxcala is where it lives most stubbornly. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

The habas have to be the yellow peeled ones. Habas peladas amarillas. Not green, not skin-on. The yellow ones are what collapse into the broth and give the soup its color. If you use the skin-on kind, you will spend an hour peeling each bean before you can start, and the soup will still look wrong. Ask the vendor at the mercado specifically. They will know what you want.

The chile is pasilla. Not ancho, not guajillo. Pasilla is the long, dark, wrinkled chile with the smoky-raisin perfume, and it is the chile of the central highlands. The cooks of Tlaxcala have used it in their bean pots since long before tomate arrived from the south to lighten the broth. The hierbabuena is what carries the soup into Lent, into Holy Week, into the weekday dinners of a region that has never needed meat to eat well.

My mother kept a page in her notebook for this soup, copied from a señora she met at a pilgrimage to the Basilica de Ocotlan in Tlaxcala in 1979. The note in the margin reads: 'mas hierbabuena de lo que crees, menos sal de lo que crees.' More hierbabuena than you think, less salt than you think. The señora was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.