Name: Totonac-Style Beans with Pumpkin Seeds (Frijoles en Achulchut)
Yield: Makes 6–8 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 ounces (about ½ cup) hulled pumpkin seeds; ½ small white onion, coarsely chopped; 2 jalapeño chiles, stemmed and sliced; 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste; 6 scallions, green part only, finely chopped (about ½ cup); 1 pound black beans, picked over and rinsed; 8 ounces meaty fresh pork cracklings, chopped into ½-inch pieces (about 1½ cups); 2 ripe plum tomatoes or small globe tomatoes, coarsely chopped; 6 fresh epazote sprigs, leaves only, finely chopped, or 1 tablespoon crumbled dried epazote; 12 cilantro sprigs, leaves only, finely chopped

Preparation info

Makes
6–8
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Zarela's Veracruz

By Zarela Martínez

Published 2001

About

Soledad Gómez Atzín, the eighty-seven-year-old matriarch of the family who run the House of Masks museum in Papantla, taught me this simple version of a traditional dish of the Totonac Indians. It features toasted pumpkin seeds lightly crushed in a mortar rather than ground to a paste as in most versions.

Good pork cracklings (chicharrones) are essential to the dish. If you don’t make your own — the best way — then buy them fresh from a Latin American butcher. Avoid the facto