pozole

Yesterday I went to a mexican restaurant in Poland Street with some friends. There was pozole on the menu and I said we had to share it. Pozole is a stew, made with pork and maize and anything else. It’s a Michoacan speciality. When Willy and I stayed in Santa Fe, whenever there was a communal event, there would be a vast cauldron of pozole on the go. It was considered a great treat. Something struck me, on the bus on the way home. It went without saying that there would be a plate of pozole for us too. Even on the very first night we arrived, one of the strangest nights I’ve ever known, when we found ourselves in a large courtyard garden, with over a hundred strangers, whose language we didn’t speak, having followed the band around the town for an hour and a half. Willy was filming, I was drifting around in my aimless fashion. People smiled at us. There was never any questioning of why we were there. After what seemed like an hour of recitative prayer, and then the unusual dancing, the pozole was handed out on small paper plates. This generosity was repeated on many occasions during my short stay there. The action of sharing was their normality. So it came instinctively to me, in the restaurant, to order the dish, so that we too could share a bowl of pozole between us.