Pashakua Guisada con Yerbabuena

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Comal de barro set over leña
• •Medium clay cazuela, black barro from Tzintzuntzan for cooking or Capula barro for serving
• •Wooden cuchara
• •Woven tray or basket for sorting foraged mushrooms

Instructions

1. 1

   Sort the mushrooms

   Spread the pashakua on a woven tray and sort them before you touch the fire. Remove pine needles, soil, tough stem ends, and any damaged pieces. Wipe with a damp cloth or brush lightly. Do not soak them. These mushrooms already carry the rain. If you drown them in water, they will cook gray and limp instead of browning at the edges.

   Only use pashakua identified by a skilled local forager or cocinera tradicional. Do not identify wild mushrooms from photos. The forest feeds you only when you respect it.
2. 2

   Toast the chiles

   Set a comal de barro over leña until it is hot enough that a drop of water jumps. Toast the guajillo and pasilla strips for a few seconds per side, just until they darken slightly and smell deep. Do not blacken them. Burned chile turns bitter and there is no fixing it later. Move the toasted strips to a small clay bowl.

3. 3

   Warm the lard

   Place a clay cazuela on the hot comal where the heat is steady, not raging. Add the manteca de cerdo and let it melt until it shines across the bottom. This is not the moment for vegetable oil. La manteca es el sabor, and in this dish it carries the chile and mint into the mushroom.

4. 4

   Cook the aromatics

   Add the sliced onion to the lard and cook until it softens and turns translucent at the edges, about 3 minutes. Stir with a wooden cuchara. Add the garlic, grated chile perón, and toasted chile strips. Cook for 1 minute more. The chile perón should smell green and sharp, not raw and grassy.

5. 5

   Guisar the pashakua

   Add the cleaned pashakua and the salt. Spread the mushrooms across the cazuela so they touch the hot clay. Let them sit for a full minute before stirring. They will release liquid, then take it back in as the heat works. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, stirring only enough to keep them from catching, until the edges deepen in color and the lard glosses the surface. Do not add water. This is a guisado, not soup.

6. 6

   Fold in yerbabuena

   Lower the cazuela to a gentler spot on the comal. Add the torn yerbabuena and the cooked epazote if using. Fold them through the mushrooms for 1 to 2 minutes, just until the leaves darken and perfume the lard. The herbs are cooked, never scattered raw like decoration. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.

7. 7

   Serve from barro

   Taste for salt and take the cazuela to the table while the mushrooms still shine with chile-stained manteca. Serve family-style in rough red barro with warm hand-pressed corn tortillas. No flour tortillas, no cheese blanket, no sour cream. This is Michoacán's Meseta P'urhépecha, and the plate should say so before anyone takes a bite. Así se hace y punto.

Chef Tips

• •The season is July and August. If the rains are late, the pashakua is late. Outside the rainy-season terekuecha plate, make something else. A good cook follows the market and the monte, not a calendar printed in another country.
• •Do not replace pashakua with cultivated champiñón. Champiñón has water and softness, but not the forest depth, mineral edge, or texture of the foraged mushroom. That substitution is not a compromise. It is a different dish.
• •Do not flatten the Meseta's mushroom names into 'mixed mushrooms.' Charámakua, shakuá, chilke, pashakua, and pata de pájaro each cook differently. Cherán K'eri has its chilke rojo; Comachuén and Nahuatzen are known for pata de pájaro; Cocucho's foraged plates carry the name of María Elena Reyes for a reason.
• •Chile perón, also called poncho perón in local speech, belongs to Michoacán cooking. It has a fresh, fruit-like bite. If your chile vendor only offers jalapeño and serrano, ask again at a Michoacán market stall before you change the recipe.
• •Quelites served alongside this dish should be cooked. Wilt them in a little manteca or pass them over the comal. Raw leaves on top are a restaurant habit, not the kitchen logic of this plate.

Advance Preparation

• •Sort and clean the pashakua up to 4 hours before cooking. Keep them spread on a towel in a cool place, never sealed in plastic.
• •The dried chiles can be stemmed, seeded, and torn earlier in the day, but toast them just before cooking so their aroma stays alive.
• •This guisado is best eaten the day it is made. Reheating is possible in a clay cazuela over low heat with a spoonful of lard, but the yerbabuena will lose its clean edge.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 180g)