Tortitas de Huauzontle en Caldillo

Huauzontle is a plant of the Mexican altiplano. Tlaxcala, Puebla, the Estado de México, the chinampas of Xochimilco. It grows tall as a person, with green spikes of tiny buds that look like a wild cousin of broccoli, because it is one. The plant is a chenopodium, a relative of quinoa and epazote, and it has been cultivated in this part of central Mexico since long before the Spanish arrived. The Mexica ate it. Their grandmothers' grandmothers ate it. We still eat it, mostly during Lent, when meat is set aside and the markets pile high with huauzontle, nopales, romeritos, and capulín.

This is the classic preparation. You bundle the buds, hide a strip of queso Oaxaca inside, dip them in capeado, and fry them. Then you drop them into a caldillo of charred tomato, guajillo, and ancho and let them drink it in. The technique is the same one Puebla uses for chiles rellenos. The vegetable changes. The principle does not. Capeado is one of the great gifts of central Mexican cooking and once you understand it, half the Lenten repertoire opens up to you.

My mother did not grow up with huauzontle. She was jalisciense and the plant does not really travel west. She learned it from a neighbor in Colonia Roma during her first Lent in Ciudad de México, a señora poblana who knocked on the door with a bundle and said, you cannot live in this city and not know how to make these. My mother wrote it in her notebook that same afternoon. The note in the margin says: bind tight, fry hot, do not crowd the pan. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.