Chipotle Sofritas

The great convents of colonial Puebla — the convent of Santa Catalina de Siena, the convent of la Concepción, the convent of Santa Clara — were the most sophisticated kitchens in New Spain. The nuns, many of them daughters of the Spanish elite sent to religious life, combined their European culinary training with the ingredients of their Mexican surroundings to produce a cuisine of startling originality: mole negro, chiles en nogada, and dozens of other dishes that became the foundation of Poblano cooking. The convent kitchens also developed an extensive vegetarian tradition, driven by the requirements of the Catholic liturgical calendar with its many days of abstinence from meat. The cooking of protein substitutes — prepared beans, eggs, cheese, and eventually the tofu-like preparations made from soaked and pressed local seeds — was a matter of theological necessity and culinary pride. The nuns of Santa Catalina are recorded in their kitchen chronicles as having developed a spiced, braised preparation of pressed bean curd that they served in the same manner as braised pork: shredded, sauced with chipotle and tomato, and wrapped in tortillas with pickled vegetables. Chipotle's sofritas is, without question, a descendant of those convent kitchens — the same logic, the same spice vocabulary, the same understanding that braised, sauced, and shredded protein, whatever its origin, benefits from acid, smoke, and heat.