Mesoamerica · Volume 01, The Highland Mole and Maize World
Tlayudas
San Antonio de la Cal, Central Valleys, Oaxaca
Illustration
- Time
- 35 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 103 sources in the brief
As tradition built it
Tlayudas
Serves 2. About 35 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2 tlayudas (large, hardened tortillas)
- 100g asiento de chicharrón (unrefined pork lard)
- 150g frijoles refritos (refried black beans)
- 500g quesillo
- 500g tasajo
- 2 tomatoes, sliced into rounds
- 100g white onion, sliced into rounds
- 2 avocados, sliced
- 50g chapulines
- to taste salt
- to serve hot salsa, homemade
Method
- Warm the refried beans slowly over a low heat until they start to bubble. Take them off and let them cool a little.
- Grill the tasajo on both sides until it is soft enough to chew, not hard. Set it aside.
- Slice the tomatoes and onion into rounds and slice the avocado. Pull the quesillo into strands.
- Spread the asiento over one tlayuda with a spoon, right to the edge. Spread half the beans over it, then cover with quesillo.
- Lay on 3 or 4 slices of tomato, some onion rounds and avocado, then the chapulines. Salt it lightly.
- Wait until the coals have stopped flaming and the embers no longer burn. Set the tlayuda on the grill over them and leave it until the beans bubble again and the quesillo melts.
- Top with a piece of the tasajo and fold it if you like, which makes it easier to eat. Make the second the same way and serve with hot salsa.
Notes
The recipe is Ollin Velasco's, for Directo al Paladar México. Alma Aguilar Funes, for Gastrolab, fries the tasajo with onion, adds chorizo and shredded cabbage, warms the bare tlayuda for about 20 seconds on a comal and assembles it off the heat, open.
What a modern chef changes
Dehydrated crispness, clarified asiento, live-fire finish
Rung 03
Method
- Dry the tortilla partially in a dehydrator before its final comal cook, for a more even, controllable crispness than relying on the comal alone to drive off all the remaining moisture.
- Render and clarify the asiento through a chinois for a cleaner pork fat with the same savoury base note but none of the sediment a rendered-at-home version usually carries.
- Finish the assembled tlayuda under a Big Green Egg's direct, very hot zone rather than a stovetop comal, closer to the wood-fired heat San Antonio de la Cal's stalls actually use than a home gas ring can manage.