Queso relleno

As tradition built it

Queso relleno

Serves 9. About 1 hour 30 minutes, with the hollowed cheese aired up to 2 days ahead.

Ingredients

The cheese

• 1 (1.75kg) Edam, a whole ball, 14cm across
• 4 eggs, hard-boiled and sliced
• 2 tbsp lard or oil
• 2 large squares banana leaf, 40 to 50cm, toasted
• 12cm deep water

Recado de especia

• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 3cm cinnamon stick
• 3 cloves
• 3 cloves garlic
• ½ tbsp oregano, Yucatecan if you can
• a pinch saffron

The picadillo

• 2 tbsp sour orange juice
• 2kg pork, minced
• 4 litres water
• 300ml lard
• 480ml white onion, chopped
• 4 tsp garlic, finely chopped
• 4 chiles dulces, or 2 green peppers, chopped
• 2 chiles xcatik, seeded and chopped
• 320ml olives, pitted and halved
• 80ml capers, rinsed
• 160ml raisins
• 3kg tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
• to taste salt

The kol

• about 2 litres the picadillo's broth
• a pinch saffron
• 120ml lard or corn oil
• 240ml plain flour
• to taste salt

Picadillo de jitomate

• 2 tbsp lard
• 60ml lard
• 120ml white onion, chopped
• 2 chiles dulces, or 1 green pepper, chopped
• 1 chile xcatik, chopped
• 2 tbsp capers
• 60ml olives, chopped
• 3 tbsp raisins
• 1kg tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
• to taste salt

Chiltomate

• 4 large tomatoes, roasted
• 4 chiles habaneros, roasted
• ½ onion, roasted
• to taste salt

Method

The cheese shell

1. Peel off the cellophane and the red wax. Cut a 3cm slice off the top for a lid.
2. Hollow the cheese with a short curved knife, then a spoon, until it is a shell with walls about 1cm thick. Thinner and it breaks; thicker and little filling fits. Hollow the lid a little too. Keep the cheese you take out for something else; there will be about a kilo.
3. Leave the shell to air for several hours, better 2 days. If the cheese is very old, soak the shell in water for an hour first. It should be firm and a little hard.

The picadillo

4. Grind the recado ingredients in a molcajete, no more than 3 days ahead. Dissolve 2 tablespoons of it in the sour orange juice and mix it into the pork.
5. Put the pork and water in a large pot over a high heat, cover and bring to the boil. Lower to medium and cook 10 minutes. The meat clumps; that is normal. Strain it, and keep the broth for the kol.
6. Heat 4 tablespoons of the lard until it barely smokes. Fry the onion and garlic, add the chiles and let them cook a little. Add the olives, capers and raisins, salt it, and take it off the heat.
7. In another pot heat 160ml of lard until it smokes, add the tomato and cook it. Add the onion mixture and cook a couple of minutes more.
8. Heat 120ml of lard until it smokes a little, add the cooked pork and fry it brown, breaking up the lumps. Add the tomato mixture, check the salt, and cook 5 minutes more.

The kol

9. Reduce the broth to 2 litres and keep it hot. Chop the saffron lightly and soak it in 2 tablespoons of hot water.
10. Cook the lard and flour together in a deep pan until they fry lightly without colouring. Add the hot broth a little at a time, stirring. Add the saffron, lower the heat, salt it, and cook it down to a sauce as loose as a light béchamel.

The sauces

11. For the picadillo de jitomate, heat the 2 tablespoons of lard until lightly smoking and fry the onion. Add the chiles for a few minutes, then the capers, olives, raisins and salt. In a wide pot heat the 60ml of lard, add the tomato, and when it boils lower the heat, cook a moment more and stir in the onion mixture.
12. For the chiltomate, blend everything together.

Filling and cooking

13. Fill the cheese halfway with picadillo, about 1½ cups, pressing it down. Lay in the sliced egg, then about another cup of picadillo. Pack the lid with half a cup and close it. Keep the rest of the picadillo to serve.
14. Wet and wring a piece of cheesecloth and grease it well with lard. Lay a banana leaf on it, brush the leaf with lard and set the cheese in the middle. Gather the corners of the cloth over the top, twist and tie it so the cheese cannot move.
15. Put 12cm of water in a pot about 25cm across and bring it to the barest simmer. Lower in the cheese, keeping the water below the lid so it cannot get into the filling.
16. Hold it there for about 3 minutes, until it feels soft. Any longer and it melts. Lift it out and rest it 3 minutes.
17. Slice it like a cake. Each person adds kol, picadillo de jitomate, more picadillo and chiltomate. Serve with white rice and corn tortillas.

Notes

The recipe is Ricardo Muñoz Zurita's, given to him by his friend Fernando Escalante of Yucatán, from Los clásicos de la cocina mexicana; the chiltomate is Alicia Gironella's. The picadillo recipe makes enough to fill the cheese and serve more on the side. Yucatán Today, photographing chef Wilson Alonzo in Halachó, steams the wrapped cheese until it softens and makes the kol from stock with epazote, olives and capers thickened with flour.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide picadillo, clarified k'óol, direct-heat finish

Method

1. Cook the picadillo filling sous vide in its own fat before it goes into the cheese, holding it properly moist through the second, longer bake the whole stuffed cheese needs.
2. Clarify the k'óol sauce's base stock through a chinois for genuine smoothness rather than the slightly grainy result a home-thickened white sauce can give.
3. Finish the whole stuffed cheese briefly under a Big Green Egg run for direct high heat, for real, fast browning on the exterior.