The Story Behind the Dish

Mexican cuisines have inherited a tradition of preparing and eating Old World legumes for Lent from the Spanish, our colonizers and our ancestors. My mother, however, despises them all: chickpeas, fava beans and lentils. She never cooked any of them; she still makes a face when she tells of my grandmother cooking them for her and her nine siblings. I can’t imagine that they were terrible as my grandmother is a good cook to this day; I can, however, imagine my ten-year-old mother being sick of another bowl of lentils on a rainy February day. 

Out in the great wide world away from my mother’s kitchen, I have discovered that I love lentils. Many Mexicans love them too, especially when Lent--that turning of the seasons--comes around. Mexico is of course known for its New World bean recipes: refried beans in any number of styles, hearty bean soups, the Charro or Cowboy beans of Northern Mexico. But there are almost as many soups and stews and other dishes with chickpeas, fava beans and lentils and they all play a role in the cooking of many parts of Mexico, just not in my mother’s kitchen. 

This a fairly simple lentil soup, inspired by a soup by Dianna Kennedy who is the Julia Child of Mexican cooking, and a soup by Pati Jinich. It doesn’t contain any exotic spices unless you count cilantro as exotic. It is inspired by a soup from Central Mexico and it combines the earthy starchiness of brown or green lentils with fruit. The echoes of North African cuisine are unmistakable in its fascinating combination of sweet and savory; this is of course no accident of history, but the legacy of Spanish colonialism which has enriched Mexican cuisine. My mother who is from the Bajío (the west-central part of Mexico) would find this dish strange, but it is very Mexican. The dish is easily adapted to make it vegan, or more Lenten: just omit the bacon and use water or vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.