An easy recipe for the classic seasonal dish.

Last Christmas I was seized out of the blue by homesickness. It felt like a dormant instinct had lit up. It was as if all my molecules had decided, cult-like, to line up with their own version of true north. In this case, true north was about 400 miles south and 1,000 miles east of here, right about where New Mexico is. I was yearning for a place I hadn’t lived in 12 years.

Lacking any other way to hook up with the homeland, I cooked. I cooked things I had never bothered to learn to cook while living there in the Land of Enchantment, the Land of Numerous Inexpensive But Delicious Restaurants.

Using two cups of frozen green chile hoarded from an autumn pilgrimage to the Southwest, I made a stew and served it with misshapen, oddly crispy flour tortillas. I made red chile sauce out of dried New Mexican chile powder and tried the tortillas again. I tracked down lard in the grocery store and used it to make biscochitos, tasty Christmas shortbread cookies flavored with anise and cinnamon sugar. It was the first time in my cookie-baking life that I did not eat any of the dough.

These were moderate culinary successes. But the posole—that worked. That, I realized, I’ll be doing again, not only because it’s basically idiot-proof, but because it’s the perfect holiday season food for friends dropping in.

These are some busy weeks coming up, but a pot of posole—hearty, simple and exotic enough to be festive—feels like special party food minus the intense labor. Eureka! You can see why generations of shrewd, overextended women throughout the Latin world have endorsed posole as a holiday dish, typically served on Christmas or New Year’s Eve.