Tlacoyos

Name: Tlacoyos
Total time: 8 h 45 min
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Valley of Mexico, Puebla and Oaxaca
Ingredients: 500g nixtamalized corn flour; ½ tsp salt; 360ml warm water; ¼ white onion, chopped; 1 clove garlic, chopped; 480ml cooked beans; a little oil; 150g dried favas; to taste salt and pepper; 300g requesón; ¼ white onion, chopped; 2 tbsp epazote, chopped; 1 chile serrano, finely chopped; to taste salt; to serve nopal salad, cooked; to serve salsa; to serve queso fresco

Puebla, Tlaxcala and the Valley of Mexico

Tlacoyos, a stuffed oval masa cake with beans and nopal: a thick, oval, hand shaped blue-flecked corn masa cake, split slightly open along its ridge to reveal a dark bean filling.

Illustration

Time: 8 hours 45

Researched: Researched from 103 sources in the brief

by Puebla, Tlaxcala and the Valley of Mexico

The richest single account of the pre-conquest Valley of Mexico's food economy is Bernal Díaz del Castillo's description of the Tlatelolco market, adjoining Tenochtitlan, which he says overwhelmed the Spanish on first sight: "Cuando llegamos a la gran plaza que se dice de Tlatelulco, como no habíamos visto tal cosa, quedamos admirados de la multitud de gente y mercadería que en ella había." Díaz records maize and cacao atole, roasted and boiled fish, tortillas, tamales of every filling, tlacoyos, and ahuauhtli, small cakes made from an insect-egg foam skimmed off the lake surface, which he says tasted rather like cheese. The market was so large and so various that a conquistador who had seen Seville reached for the only comparison he had, and found it wanting.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Tlacoyos

Serves 4. About 45 minutes, plus soaking the favas overnight.

Ingredients

The masa

500g nixtamalized corn flour
½ tsp salt
360ml warm water

Bean filling

¼ white onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
480ml cooked beans
a little oil

Fava filling

150g dried favas
to taste salt and pepper

Requesón filling

300g requesón
¼ white onion, chopped
2 tbsp epazote, chopped
1 chile serrano, finely chopped
to taste salt

To serve

to serve nopal salad, cooked
to serve salsa
to serve queso fresco

Method

For the bean filling, soften the onion and garlic in a little oil in a frying pan. Add the beans, mash them to a paste and cook for 10 minutes.
For the fava filling, soak the favas overnight. Cook them in plenty of water over a medium heat until soft, drain, and mash or process them. Season with salt and pepper.
For the requesón filling, mix the requesón with the onion, epazote and chile serrano. Taste and add salt if it needs it.
Mix the corn flour with the salt. Add the warm water a little at a time, kneading, until the dough is soft and does not stick to your hands. If it sticks, add flour; if it cracks, add water.
Roll it into balls and press each into a thick tortilla between two sheets of plastic, in a tortilla press or under a plate.
Put 1 to 1½ tablespoons of one filling in the middle and fold the tortilla over it. Overfill it and the masa breaks. Keep the fillings dry.
Shape it into an oval and press it so the filling spreads through the inside.
Heat a comal over a medium low heat. Cook the tlacoyos 3 to 5 minutes a side, depending on thickness. Turn them when the masa lifts off the comal without effort and has golden spots, and check the middle is cooked before you take them off.
Serve with nopal salad, salsa and queso fresco.

Notes

The recipe is Marisela Valencia's, for Cocina Delirante. MINSA, the maize flour company, cooks its bean tlacoyos with a little oil on the comal over a medium heat, cooks the bean filling 15 to 20 minutes until slightly dry, and serves them with crema.

What a modern chef changes

From-scratch nixtamal, confit filling, live-fire comal

Method

Nixtamalize the maize specifically for this dish rather than relying on shop-bought masa harina, since a tlacoyo's thicker, hand-formed shape carries more of the raw dough's own flavour per mouthful than a thin tortilla does.
Confit the bean filling gently in lard at a low, held temperature rather than the usual quick fry, for a smoother, less grainy paste.
Finish on a Big Green Egg's comal-equivalent hot zone for the same even, dry, high heat a wood-fired comal gives, rather than a domestic frying pan's more moderate, wetter heat.

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