Papadzules

As tradition built it

Papadzules

Serves 6. About 1 hour.

Ingredients

The chiltomate

• 500g ripe tomatoes, roasted until blackened and peeled
• 50g white onion, roasted
• 1 small clove garlic
• 1 chile habanero, roasted
• ½ tsp salt

The papadzules

• 30 leaves epazote
• 1080ml water
• 12 eggs, hard-boiled and chopped
• ¾ tsp salt, for the egg
• 600g green pumpkin seeds, hulled, toasted and ground
• 1½ tsp salt, for the sauce
• 18 corn tortillas, 12cm, freshly made

Method

1. Blend the roasted tomato with the onion and garlic to a thick sauce. Strain it and set it on the heat with the whole habanero. Simmer 10 minutes over a low heat, then taste for salt. Keep the habanero whole and lift it out before serving. Set the chiltomate aside.
2. Boil the epazote in the water for 5 minutes. Let it cool, blend it, and set it aside.
3. Mix the chopped egg with ¾ teaspoon of salt.
4. Blend the ground seed with the epazote water to a smooth sauce and add 1½ teaspoons of salt. Heat it without letting it boil.
5. Fill the tortillas with the egg and roll them.
6. Serve 3 to a plate, bathed in the seed sauce with a little chiltomate. Papadzules are eaten warm, close to room temperature, not hot.

Notes

The recipe is Ricardo Muñoz Zurita's, taught to him by Silvio Campos in Tixkokob, from Verde, blanco y rojo en la cocina mexicana. Campos rubs the seed sauce into each tortilla by hand so it soaks in. Alicia Gironella kneads the ground seed with drops of hot water until it gives up 5 or 6 tablespoons of green oil, and drips the oil over the finished plate; Muñoz Zurita says most cooks on the peninsula now skip it. Por Esto! warns the seed sauce splits over direct heat and keeps it warm in a bain marie.

What a modern chef changes

Double-strained pumpkin sauce, sous vide egg, smoked tomato

Method

1. Toast the pumpkin seed carefully in a dry pan just to the edge of colour, then blend in a high-power blender and pass through a chinois twice for a genuinely silky sauce with none of the grainy seed-skin texture a single blend leaves behind.
2. Cook the eggs sous vide to a soft, still-jammy set rather than a fully hard boil, folding the warm, barely-set yolk through the filling.
3. Reduce the tomato component separately and finish it with a light pass of smoke from the Big Green Egg, a nod toward recado negro's own char.