Refried Black Beans

Alejandro was hospitalized in Juárez. Heart failure. Eduardo found him on the kitchen floor — collapsed, conscious but confused, unable to stand. The heart that has been beating for sixty-seven years under the weight of a dead son and a dead wife and a bottle of tequila that promised relief and delivered ruin has finally said: enough. The heart said enough, and Alejandro fell, and the kitchen floor caught him the way the kitchen has always caught everything in the Delgado family — meals, tears, deaths, falls.

I crossed the bridge on Thursday. Left the bakery with Sofia and Graciela. Drove to the hospital in Juárez with Carmen. He was in a room with three other men, on a bed that looked too small for his frame, with an IV in his arm and a monitor beeping beside him. He looked at me and said: "I thought I told you not to come." I said: "And I thought I told you I don't listen." He almost smiled. Almost. The almost was enough.

The doctors said: heart failure, advanced. Compounded by years of drinking. Compounded by a diet of beans and tortillas and nothing else for eighteen months. Compounded by grief, which is not a medical diagnosis but which every doctor in Juárez recognizes because grief kills more people in this city than the cartels ever have, it just kills them slowly, privately, in kitchens and bedrooms and hospitals where old men lie on small beds and refuse to admit they are dying.

I stayed two days. I cleaned the house in Anapra — Rosa's kitchen, which was dirty for the first time in its existence, because Rosa kept that kitchen spotless and Alejandro does not know how to keep anything spotless, he only knows how to build things and drive buses and grieve. I scrubbed the counters. I organized the spices — cumin on the left, oregano next to it, the dried chiles in the basket, exactly how Rosa had them. I opened the cupboard and it was wrong — everything out of place, the cinnamon where the cumin should be, the oregano behind the chiles — and I put it right. I put Rosa's kitchen right. Because someone has to, and Rosa is not here, and Alejandro cannot, and the spice shelf is the smallest thing I can fix and the biggest thing I can control.

I did not cook this week. Not at home. Not at the bakery. I crossed the bridge and I cleaned my mother's kitchen and I held my father's hand and I came home and I was empty. Empty the way a pot is empty after the soup has been served — not broken, not damaged, just empty, waiting to be filled again, knowing it will be filled again, trusting that the filling will come because it always does. It always does.

When I finally got back across the bridge and walked into my own kitchen, I stood there for a long time without moving. The week had taken everything I had — the hospital, the cleaning, the spice shelf, the almost-smile — and I was the empty pot I wrote about, just standing there. What I made, the first night back, was beans. Not because I was hungry exactly, but because Alejandro had been living on beans and tortillas for eighteen months and somehow that felt like the right place to start: with the thing he had, with the food that had kept him alive, with the simplest act of the kitchen. I cooked a pot of refried black beans with the cumin and oregano I had just put back in their right places in Rosa’s cupboard, and I ate them with tortillas, and it was enough.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cans (15 oz each) black beans, drained, liquid reserved separately
2 tablespoons lard or neutral oil
1/2 white onion, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (Mexican oregano if you have it)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 dried chile de arbol or ancho (optional, for depth)
1/2 cup reserved bean liquid or water, as needed
Juice of 1/2 lime

Instructions

Soften the aromatics. Heat the lard or oil in a heavy skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 6 to 8 minutes until soft and beginning to turn golden at the edges. Add the garlic and cook another 90 seconds until fragrant.
Toast the spices. Add the cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and the dried chile if using. Stir everything together and let it cook for 30 seconds in the fat — this wakes up the spices and gives the beans a deeper, more rounded flavor.
Add the beans. Pour in the drained black beans and stir to coat them in the spiced onion mixture. Add 1/4 cup of the reserved bean liquid. Let everything simmer together over medium-low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the beans are very tender and the liquid has reduced slightly. Remove and discard the dried chile.
Mash to your texture. Use a potato masher, a fork, or the back of a wooden spoon to mash the beans to the consistency you want — fully smooth, mostly mashed with some texture, or anywhere in between. Add more bean liquid a tablespoon at a time if they seem too thick; they will tighten up as they cool.
Finish and taste. Stir in the lime juice. Taste for salt and adjust. Serve hot with warm tortillas, as a side, or as a base for eggs, tacos, or anything else that needs something simple and sustaining underneath it.

Nutrition (per serving)

Refried Black Beans — The Pot I Made When I Finally Came Home