Sopa tarasca

As tradition built it

Sopa tarasca

Created 1966, La Hostería de San Felipe, Pátzcuaro

Ingredients

• 4 medium tomatoes
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 cups (black beans) cooked beans
• 1/2 tsp epazote
• 4 cups chicken stock or water
• 3 ancho chiles, deseeded dried pasilla or ancho chile, fried into strips
• 2 tortillas, cut into strips tortilla strips, fried
• to taste cream
• to taste cotija cheese
• 1, diced avocado

Method

1. Roast the tomatoes, onion and garlic on a comal, then blend and cook briefly in a cazuela.
2. Blend cooked beans with epazote and the chicken stock or water to make a bean sauce, and add it to the tomato base.
3. Fry the dried pasilla or ancho chile into strips, and fry tortilla strips separately; add both only at serving.
4. Finish with cream, cotija cheese and avocado.

Notes

Sopa tarasca is a twentieth century restaurant creation, though it draws on genuinely ancestral milpa and lakeshore staples: tomatoes, onion, garlic, beans and chile.

What a modern chef changes

Egg-Roasted Base, Blended Beans, Dehydrated Chile

Method

1. Roast the tomatoes, onion and garlic in a Big Green Egg run hot and direct rather than on a stovetop comal, a closer approximation of the original comal's own smoky, blistered result than an indoor pan gives.
2. Blend the bean sauce in a high-power blender, then pass through a chinois for a genuinely silkier finished soup than the traditional blend-and-serve method leaves.
3. Fry the tortilla strips in small batches at a precisely controlled temperature for an evenly crisp result, rather than the unevenly browned strips a single large batch tends to give.
4. Dehydrate a portion of the fried pasilla before crumbling it over the top for a more concentrated, less greasy final garnish.