What does Mixtec cuisine taste like?

I will hardly forget that day. Across the Maza family's estate, drums and accordions set the rhythm for traditional dancers. Around them, cooks from all over the region showcased their skills through moles of every color, thick marinades, and spicy broths. Mezcal made its way between the tables. Such a scene could only mean one thing: celebration. Just minutes earlier, the sacrifice of goats had taken place at La Tradicional Matanza, Huajuapan de León, as part of the Cofradía Mixteca festival. With this first fair, the hip bone mole season was also inaugurated, a tradition from the Mixtec regions of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Guerrero. The organizers –Alejandro Ruiz (chef of Casa Oaxaca and president of CANIRAC in Oaxaca), Rodolfo Castellanos (chef of Origen), José Manuel Baños (chef of Pitiona), and Israel Loyola (chef of Restaurante Sin Nombre)–, for the second consecutive year, gathered traditional cooks and chefs from Mexico's most emblematic restaurants in Oaxaca. During the four days of the festival, we were invited to a parade of knowledge and culture reflected on the plate to taste one of the seven most relevant Oaxacan cuisines: the Mixtec. At Doña Chonita's restaurant, we welcomed the sun with a cup of white atole in hand and her Mixtec breakfast. At Obispo restaurant, we wandered through a tasting menu with stops for barbacoa, cracked corn, and offal. One night we toasted with traceable mezcals from Archivo Maguey and ate tetelas filled with amarillito at Maguey and Maíz. But perhaps the pinnacle occurred at the closing on Sunday. The thirty-five invited cooks made use of the region's ingredients, techniques, and dishes to inspire their own flavors. We ate all sorts of Oaxacan delights and others with world touches: mole with curry (by Oscar Torres), stew of unborn goat (by Chuy Villarreal), mole de luto (by Celia Florián), jocoque with mushrooms (by Alfredo Villanueva), and pepián with hoja Santa and cauliflower (by Daniel Nates).It takes many days and dozens of hands to showcase Mixtec cuisine as it deserves. The region is highlighted by the poverty of its soils, which grow few ingredients; instead, the creativity of the communities has borne multiple fruits. (If each family has a way to cook a certain dish, the variety of dishes is infinite.) Among the local culinary traditions is the raising of goats – a relevant activity since the arrival of the Spanish – the use of guaje and costeño chili, as well as the cultivation of various corn species.The hip bone moleChef Olga Cabrera Oropeza is Mixtec. She learned everything she knows about cooking from her grandmother – Doña Chonita – her mother, and her mother-in-law. At Tierra del Sol restaurant, located in Oaxaca's capital, she recovers the flavors of her community in an idyllic context.For her, “the hip bone mole is one of the dishes with the most identity because it is prepared with local ingredients, like costeño chili, which adds spiciness to all our Mixtec cuisine. And it also has guaje. It is so important that, in fact, Huajuapan means ‘guajes by the river.’” The goats are naturally fed with herbs, such as pepicha, which grow only in the region. This gives the hip bone mole a unique and penetrating flavor. When the season ends, the party continues. Locals prepare a barbacoa mole, with a similar flavor, made from goat bones.The other Mixtec dishesOlga explained to me that Mixtec cuisine has five culinary standards: chileajo, Mixtec pozole, huachimole, party mole, and other moles made with guaje seeds. The most common chileajos are red and yellow. And as their name indicates, they are prepared with roasted garlic, cloves, yellow costeño chiles, and sesame seeds.I confess that I had never tried Mixtec pozole. Under the care of Doña Chonita and Olga, I will hardly forget it. Unlike others, it is made with a native corn, harder than the pozolero, so the firewood must be stirred all night long. The broth, made with hoja Santa, has a neutral color. When a spiced mole is added, with a strong clove flavor, it takes on that particular reddish color. Besides Mixtec pozole, during the pozole season in September, a green pozole and coastal pozole are prepared.The Mixtec party mole is considered black, although its color leans more towards red. It is slightly sweet. Spicy, just enough. “The Mixtec party mole is a mole thickened with many seeds: lots of almond, sesame seeds; the seeds of the chili are not burned. They only go through a toasting. The chiles must remain crunchy, but they must not be burned because this is not a bitter mole,” Olga confirms.In Mixtec cuisine, you can find pulque fermented breads that are generally baked at floor level in stone ovens. “We have pumpkin sweets, stuffed pumpkin breads, encaladas, or regañadas.” Encaladas are sweet tortillas made from wheat flour, covered with a whitish layer resembling frosting. They are adorned with splashes of pink. Meanwhile, regañadas are a type of cookie with the flavor of lard and rolled in sugar and cinnamon.There is so much more. In five days, I tried everything I could, but the recipes slipped through my fingers. It would be necessary to sit at the table of each house and discover unique preparations like the one that traditional cook and owner of Obispo, Uveira Cruz, let me try on the first day: a stew made with olives and chicken that she assured me I wouldn't taste anywhere else. It doesn't leave my mind. Such is the Mixtec. Each family is a book of stories and heritage, and each dish is a language as unique as its own seasoning.