Tzanchak (Yucatecan Waiting Stew)

Tzanchak is from the Yucatan Peninsula. From the Maya kitchens of Valladolid, Espita, and the small towns of the interior where Hanal Pixan, the Maya Day of the Dead, is observed for three days at the end of October and the beginning of November. The name is Maya, not Spanish. Tzanchak, from tzan, meaning broth or watery, and chak, meaning red or cooked. The dish that holds the family at the table while the pib does its slow work in the ground.

This is the waiting stew. When the pib is dug, the stones are heated, the pollo or pavo en relleno negro is wrapped in banana leaf and lowered into the earth, the men cover the pit with palm fronds and dirt and then there is nothing to do for hours. So the women cook tzanchak. Beef shank with bone, corn cut into rounds, chayote, calabaza, green beans, a generous bundle of hierbabuena, a small one of epazote, and a chile xkatik charred on the comal until it perfumes the broth. The vegetables go in the order of their cooking time. The herbs go in at the end. The lard goes in at the very end and that is what makes it Yucateco and not the caldo of any other state. La manteca es el sabor.

My mother never made tzanchak. She was from Jalisco and Yucatan was as foreign to her as France. I learned this dish from a senora named Dona Marbella in a kitchen in Espita in the year I spent crossing the peninsula for my Yucatan book. She made it the morning of November first while her husband and her two sons were outside tending the pib for the cochinita and the pollo en relleno negro. She told me the stew is not the main dish. The stew is the patience. The stew is what you eat for hours while you wait for the earth to give you back what you buried in it. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and in Yucatan, saber esperar is part of saber cocinar.

The salpicon on the side is not optional. Radish, red onion, cilantro, naranja agria, a little habanero for the brave. It is the bright, raw, citrus-sharp counterpoint to the long-simmered broth, and it goes on every spoonful. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Yucatan's kitchen carries a Maya inheritance that the rest of Mexico does not have. Treat it as such.