Amongst the queso and the pollo, we found spinach and eggplant and hoja de santa and red peppers and jiotilla and tomatillos and pasilla de Oaxaca and jelly beans and …. well we came back to Casa de El Refugio ready to try any number of things. Lourdes showed us how she made her chicken rolls stuffed with spinach and quesillo de Oaxaca. We made a fresca from the jiotilla fruit. We practiced wrapping things in banana leaves. She showed us her quick red tomato sauce which was merely some onion, some garlic, and 3 beautiful Roma tomatoes quartered, cooking for 15 minutes or so, thrown into a blender, pureed, and then sieved unto the chicken. The chicken rolls had been sautéed with a generous sprig of rosemary and were so waiting for the sauce.

As the sauce heated and informed the chicken, Bonnie asked a question about packages of pre cooked pozole she had seen at queso merchants, which she had first though where little quesillo, ready for appetizer presentation. Lourdes in Spanish described a completely different thing to Bonnie and what I understood of what she was saying made it sound like dumplings to me. I eventually understood that the dumpling was chochoyotes and was prepared from masa harina while pozole are actually large whole corn kernels, cooked for 3 hours and then dropped into gruels, soaps and sauces.