Sopa de Hongos con Epazote

This soup belongs to the central highlands, to Tlaxcala and the high pine country around the slopes of La Malinche, and to the mushroom foragers of Morelos and the Estado de Mexico who walk the wet forest floor every morning of the rainy season. From late June through October, when the rains break the dry season, the mercados of Tlaxcala fill with baskets of hongos de pino, clavitos, pancitas, and a dozen other wild varieties that have no English names and need none.

The dish is plain on paper. Sear the mushrooms in lard with onion and garlic. Add a few strips of toasted guajillo. Loosen with chicken caldo. Finish with epazote. That is the whole recipe. But every step has to be done right because there is nowhere to hide. If your mushrooms are wet, your soup is wet. If your caldo is weak, your soup is weak. If your epazote is dried, throw it away and start over.

Epazote is the ingredient that locates this soup on the map. The mineral, slightly bitter, almost gasoline-green note of fresh epazote is the central Mexican kitchen. You cannot substitute it. Not with cilantro, not with parsley, not with anything. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado in Tlaxcala. They will tell you the same. Without epazote, you have a mushroom soup. With epazote, you have a sopa de hongos.

My mother kept a pot of epazote on the patio in Colonia Roma year-round. She wrote in the margin of her notebook, next to a sopa de hongos recipe she copied from a woman she met at the Mercado de Jamaica: 'no escatimes el epazote.' Do not skimp on the epazote. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.