Chochoyotes en Mole Amarillo

Mole amarillo is from Oaxaca. One of the seven, and the most underestimated of them all. People outside the state hear mole and think dark, sweet, chocolate. Mole amarillo has none of that. No chocolate, no fruit, no sugar. It is bright, herbaceous, brick-orange from the chilhuacle amarillo, and built on chiles, charred tomatillos, and the green muscle of hierba santa. The cooks of the Valles Centrales call it caldoso, soupy, because it is meant to be ladled, not spooned thick onto a plate.

The chochoyotes are the soul of the dish. Small masa dumplings, each one pressed with the thumb to make the ombligo, the belly button. That dimple is not decoration and it is not optional. It catches the broth, it cooks the masa from the inside out, and it is how an Oaxacan cook signs her work. The masa needs lard. La manteca es el sabor and a chochoyote made with oil tastes like nothing. The masa also needs to rest before you shape it, or it will crack in the broth and ruin the pot.

This is a vegetable mole. Chayote, green beans, potato, whatever the mercado is selling on the day you cook. In Oaxaca it is also made with pork or chicken, but the version with chochoyotes and verduras is the one I learned from a senora in Tlacolula who has been selling caldos at the Sunday market for forty years. She told me the ombligo had to be deep enough to hold a tear of hierba santa. Anything less and the dumpling would not drink the broth.

My mother never made this. She was from Jalisco. But I have a page in her notebook where she copied a mole amarillo recipe from a friend who had spent a summer in Oaxaca, with a margin note in pencil: "el chile chilhuacle no se sustituye." The chilhuacle does not get substituted. She was right, and forty years later I am still trying to track down enough of it to teach with. Cada estado, su propia cocina.