Verdolagas Guisadas con Tomate

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for charring the vegetables
• •Wide 10-inch clay cazuela or heavy skillet for the guisado
• •High-powered blender
• •Large bowl or sink for washing the verdolagas in cold water

Instructions

1. 1

   Clean the verdolagas

   Verdolagas come from the ground and they come dirty. Fill the sink with cold water and submerge the bunches. Lift them out, drain the sink, and do it again. Twice, sometimes three times, until the water runs clear. Pinch off the tender top stems and the leaves. The thick lower stalks are stringy and you do not want them in the pot. You should have about 8 to 10 cups of cleaned verdolagas, loosely packed. They will cook down to a quarter of that.

   If you find verdolagas at the mercado after the rains, in late June through September in central Mexico, that is the time to make this. Out of season the leaves get woody and the flavor turns flat. Cook what the market is selling today.
2. 2

   Toast and char the tomatoes, garlic, and chile

   Heat a dry comal or heavy skillet over medium-high. Place the whole tomatoes, the half-piece of onion, the garlic cloves, and the chile serrano on the comal. Turn them as the skin blackens in patches. The garlic takes about three minutes and should soften and turn spotty brown. The chile takes about five. The tomatoes need eight to ten minutes, until the skins split and char and the flesh starts to collapse. This char is the foundation of the salsa. Without it the guisado tastes like raw tomato water.

3. 3

   Blend the salsa

   Put the charred tomatoes (skins, char, and all), the charred onion piece, the garlic, and the chile serrano into the blender with the salt. Blend until smooth, about 30 seconds. You want a loose, bright red salsa with flecks of black from the char. Do not strain it. The skin is part of the body.

4. 4

   Sweat the sliced onion in lard

   In a wide cazuela or heavy skillet, melt the manteca over medium heat. La manteca es el sabor and this is a dish where you can taste the difference if you skip it. Add the thinly sliced half-onion. Cook for about four minutes, stirring, until soft and just beginning to turn gold at the edges.

5. 5

   Fry the salsa

   Pour the blended salsa into the pan with the onion. It will sputter the moment it hits the hot fat. Stand back. Let it cook over medium heat for six to eight minutes, stirring now and then, until the salsa darkens from bright red to a deeper brick color and the fat shows along the edges. This step is the recipe. A salsa that has not been fried tastes raw and acidic. A salsa that has been fried tastes like a guisado.

   Crumble the dried oregano between your palms before you add it. Whole leaves taste muted. Crumbled leaves release the oils. My mother wrote in the margin of her notebook: 'always between the hands.'
6. 6

   Add the verdolagas

   Add the cleaned verdolagas to the pan in two or three handfuls, stirring after each batch so they wilt down and make room for the next. Add the crumbled oregano. The greens will release their own water and shrink dramatically. If the pan looks dry after the verdolagas have wilted, add the water or broth, a little at a time. You want a stewed consistency, not a soup, not dry. The salsa should cling to the leaves.

7. 7

   Simmer until the verdolagas are tender

   Lower the heat to medium-low. Cover partially and cook for ten to twelve minutes, stirring occasionally. The verdolagas are ready when the stems bend without snapping and the leaves have gone deep green and a little slippery, the way spinach goes when it surrenders. Taste for salt now. The tomato will have sweetened and the chile will have rounded out. If it tastes flat, it needs salt, not sugar.

8. 8

   Serve from the cazuela

   Bring the cazuela to the table. Serve with warm corn tortillas for scooping and a wedge of lime if anyone at the table wants it. A handful of crumbled queso fresco on top is welcome but not required. Eat it as a side with rice and beans, or fold it into a tortilla as a taco de guisado. Asi se hace y punto.

Chef Tips

• •If you cannot find verdolagas, the closest substitute is young spinach with a squeeze of extra lime at the end. It is a compromise, not an upgrade. Verdolagas have a slight tang and a soft mucilage that spinach does not, and that is the texture the dish is built around.
• •Tomate guaje, the small elongated tomato sold in Mexican markets, gives the most concentrated salsa. If you only have roma, use ripe ones with give. A pale, hard tomato will make a pale, thin guisado.
• •This dish stretches into a one-pot meal with the addition of pork ribs or a piece of pork shoulder simmered in the salsa for an hour before the verdolagas go in. That version, costillas con verdolagas, is what you find on the comida corrida menus in Oaxaca on rainy Tuesdays.

Advance Preparation

• •The salsa de tomate can be charred, blended, and fried up to two days ahead and refrigerated. The verdolagas should be cleaned the day you cook them, since the leaves bruise and turn limp in the refrigerator after about a day.
• •Leftovers keep three days refrigerated and reheat well in a covered pan over low heat with a splash of water. The flavor deepens overnight.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 220g)