Tlayuda Vegetariana de Hongos y Flor de Calabaza

This is Oaxaca. Valles Centrales. The Central de Abastos, the 20 de Noviembre market, every mercado in the city where the tlayuderas sit behind their comales and build these to order. The tlayuda is a tortilla the size of a dinner plate, cooked twice on clay until the edges dry and crack and the center stays just pliable enough to fold. It is the architecture of Oaxacan street food, and everything else is what you build on top.

The foundation is asiento, the dark, smoky sediment left at the bottom of the cazo after rendering lard. In Oaxaca they spread it on the tlayuda the way the French spread butter on bread, and with the same conviction. Yes, this is a vegetarian tlayuda. No, the asiento is not negotiable. At every tlayuda stall in Oaxaca, vegetariana means no tasajo, no cecina, no chorizo on top. The asiento and the lard in the beans are the floor you stand on, not the furniture. If you want to make this without any pork fat at all, you can, but you will be making a different dish from a different tradition, and I won't be the one to teach it to you.

The hongos silvestres come down from the Sierra Norte during the rainy season, June through October, piled in baskets at the market by women who know every mushroom by name and by smell. If you are making this in January, use what your market sells: cremini, oyster, a mix. The flor de calabaza is best in summer when the squash plants are producing freely and the flowers are fat and fragrant. Out of season, they shrink, and some markets won't carry them. Cook what the season gives you. That is how the senoras at the market have always cooked.

I learned this combination from a tlayudera at the Central de Abastos who had been cooking on the same comal for thirty-two years. She sautéed the hongos with chile de agua, a fresh green chile that grows only in Oaxaca, and tore epazote straight from the stem into the pan. Her beans were black, cooked with hoja de aguacate, the toasted avocado leaf that gives Oaxacan frijoles their faint anise perfume. She folded the tlayuda in half, pressed it on the comal until the quesillo melted, and handed it to me on a piece of wax paper. No plate. No garnish. Perfection. Cada estado, su propia cocina.