Tortitas de Camaron en Mole Poblano

Puebla, the Valle de Puebla, the city of Talavera tiles and convent kitchens, is where this dish belongs. Tortitas de camaron en mole poblano is food for Cuaresma, the Friday table when meat was forbidden and the cloister still had to feed bodies that worked, prayed, cleaned, sewed, and cooked all day.

The fritters are not croquettes. They are beaten egg, dried shrimp ground fine, and a little toasted bread to hold the foam together. The women who perfected this knew how to make absence into architecture. No meat, no chicken broth, no pork in the pot for this version. The dried shrimp gives salt and depth. The nopales give green bite. The mole gives Puebla its signature: chile ancho, chile mulato, chile pasilla, sesame, almond, raisin, cinnamon, clove, and chocolate, all handled with discipline.

Most people say mole and think chocolate sauce. No. Mole poblano is a chile sauce with Old World spices and seeds folded into it until it becomes something larger than any one ingredient. The chocolate is a note, not the song. If the sauce tastes like candy, you lost the path.

I learned a version of this from a señora near the Mercado de la Acocota who had cooked for parish Lenten meals since she was a girl. She served it in a clay cazuela set over Talavera at the table, the tortitas softening but not falling apart in the dark sauce. Cada estado, su propia cocina. Puebla knows this one.