Pátzcuaro Bean Soup (Sopa Tarasca)

Michoacán, the lake region of Pátzcuaro, is where this soup belongs. Not a generic bean soup. Sopa Tarasca carries the taste of frijoles from the olla, tomato roasted until the skin blisters, and chile pasilla toasted just enough to darken the broth without turning it bitter.

The Purépecha country around Pátzcuaro has always known what beans can do. A pot of frijoles is not poverty food when the cook understands it. It is body, flavor, supper, breakfast tomorrow, and the base for a soup elegant enough to serve guests. The restaurant version came later. The intelligence was already in the kitchens.

Use manteca de cerdo to fry the tomato sauce and tortillas. Use chicken broth if you have it, bean broth if that is what the olla gives you. The soup should be smooth but not thin, creamy from the beans, not from a quart of cream. Crema goes on top. The beans do the work underneath.

I learned a version of this from a señora near the Pátzcuaro market who told me, very calmly, that people ruin it by treating the tortilla strips like decoration. No. They are structure. They soften at the edges and stay crisp in the middle. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo. Cada estado, su propia cocina.