Pan de cazón

As tradition built it

Pan de cazón

Serves 6. About 1 hour 5 minutes.

Ingredients

The cazón

• 500g cazón (dogfish)
• ½ onion
• 1 sprig epazote
• 80ml sour orange juice
• to taste salt
• 1 tbsp epazote leaves, chopped

Chiltomate, a double batch

• 8 large tomatoes, roasted
• 8 chiles habaneros, roasted
• 1 onion, roasted
• to taste salt

To build

• 18 corn tortillas
• 720ml frijoles colados (strained, fried black beans)
• 24 leaves epazote
• 2, optional eggs, hard-boiled

Method

1. Put the cazón in a pot with water to cover, the onion, the epazote sprig, 3 tablespoons of the sour orange juice and salt. Cover and boil 15 minutes. Lift out the fish and let it cool.
2. Take out the bones and skin. Flake the flesh and mix in the chopped epazote and the rest of the sour orange juice. Salt it if it needs it.
3. Blend the chiltomate ingredients. It should give about 4 cups.
4. Heat the chiltomate and pass each tortilla quickly through it. Lay one on a plate, cover it with 2 tablespoons of beans, a tablespoon of cazón and a tablespoon of chiltomate, and set another tortilla on top. Keep stacking until everything is used, and finish with a little more sauce.
5. Garnish with epazote leaves, and sliced egg if you like.

Notes

The recipe is Alicia Gironella's, from Larousse de la cocina mexicana, and it is built on the plate. No in tradition recipe read fries the tortillas or bakes the stack. Gironella's more traditional way puffs a thicker tortilla on the comal and fills its pocket with beans, cazón and chiltomate. Laura B. de Caraza Campos, for México Desconocido, stews the cazón with tomato and epazote in lard and keeps the habanero apart as a tamulada.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide cazón, chinois-smoothed beans, dehydrated tortilla layer

Method

1. Poach the cazón sous vide in a light court-bouillon rather than boiling it directly, holding the flesh properly moist through the shredding that follows.
2. Blend and pass the black bean layer through a chinois for a genuinely smooth base rather than a coarser home-mashed one.
3. Dehydrate a portion of the tortillas' masa before frying for a crisper layer that holds its structure through the stack and the bake.