Cemitas Poblanas

As tradition built it

Cemitas poblanas

Serves 4.

Ingredients

The milanesas

• 8 beef or pork steaks, thin
• 360ml milk
• 2 eggs
• to taste garlic powder
• to taste salt
• to taste black pepper
• 200g breadcrumbs
• 480ml oil, for frying

The cemitas

• 4 cemitas (sesame-studded rolls), halved
• 2 avocados, sliced
• 400g quesillo, pulled into strands
• 240ml papalo leaves
• ½ onion, sliced
• 240ml chipotles in adobo, chopped

Method

1. Mix the milk, eggs, garlic powder, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Lay the steaks in it and leave them for 30 minutes.
2. Drain the steaks and coat them in the breadcrumbs, pressing so the crumb holds.
3. Heat the oil and brown the steaks on each side. Drain them on paper.
4. Lay avocado slices on the base of each cemita. Add two steaks and cover them with quesillo.
5. Add onion, papalo and the chipotles, close the roll and serve it cut in half.

Notes

The recipe is Alfredo Guzmán Tadeo's, for Cocina Vital. Gastrolab and El Universal both drizzle olive oil over the filling and put the cheese straight on the meat, with the avocado above. El Universal also gives the cemita de pata: half a kilo of precooked beef trotter with a sliced onion, a cup of vinegar and two tablespoons of oregano, an hour in the fridge, then olive oil, in place of the milanesa.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide pickle, live-fire toast, concentrated herb

Method

1. Pickle the chipotle in a controlled sous vide bath at a low, steady temperature, for a more even absorption of the piloncillo syrup than a simmered stovetop pickle gives in the time most home cooks allow it.
2. Toast the sesame-studded cemita roll itself briefly on a Big Green Egg's hot zone rather than under a grill, for a genuinely drier, more even crust.
3. Dehydrate a portion of the papalo to a coarse powder in the spice grinder and dust it over the finished sandwich alongside the fresh leaf, doubling the herb's presence without doubling its raw sharpness.