griddle

Oct

13

Gorditas

family recipes / main dishes  Posted by / 2 comments

I haven’t made gorditas in years and I’m not quite sure why.  I always loved them as a kid and their open faced counterpart, the sope or sopito.  Thick corn tortillas cooked on a griddle, then sliced open, deep fried and stuffed full of meat, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa and cheese was heaven on a plate.  Hearty and delicious fare that filled me up and made me sleepy afterwards.  I love all the textures and flavors of them, the crispy thickness of the dense corn tortilla, the chewiness of meat, the soft beans and the freshness of the cold vegetables.  My mouth is watering writing this and I’ve just finished one!  And yes, I am laughing at myself…

Gorditas can be filled with just about anything.  Beans, meat, chicharrones in green chile – the possibilities and variations are endless.  Today I am making them stuffed with ground pork, refried beans with cheese and the chopped tomato, onion and cilantro mix I love so much.  I made salsa de molcajete too and I know my son Phillip will add a dollop of crema and sprinkle his with a little queso cotija like he always does.  Any way you have them, they are so good.  Decadent good.
Some of that decadence comes from LARD.  Yes, that’s right I said LARD.  Look, you can add vegetable shortening or olive oil or whatever you like to try and make a healthier alternative and it will work, even be good but there is no substitute for the piggy taste of lard.  You don’t make gorditas every day, heck I haven’t made them in years so my philosophy is this: if you’re gonna do it – do it up right.  Use the lard!  It’s just a bit and sure, it will clog  your arteries a bit but add a bit more chile to burn it out.  Live a little and then put away the recipe for a year or two.

My grandmother made gorditas like no one else could.  Her swift hands made fast work of forming them while some of us used a tortilla press to get them perfectly round and of equal thickness.  Her hands worked gracefully, almost in musical rhythm and she never missed a beat.  Her gorditas were perfectly round, all uniform in size and all of the same thickness.  I still can’t do that, though I get the taste just right.  Watching her was like watching a magician and I would sit on my little red chair with my elbows on the table, chin in hands just admiring and daydreaming of the day I’d be standing at that stove making perfect bits of delicious roundness.

Well, I never could get them as perfect as hers anymore than I can get all the peel off an orange in one long curl like she did but they sure taste like hers and eating them again makes me all the more determined to get it right next time without using a tortilla press.  Some things never change though and when I see my grandchildren watching me at the stove, I know they are daydreaming of being the one at the stove making magic.

Gorditas

For the masa:
2 cups Maseca (corn flour)
1/4 cup white flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/3 tsp of salt
1 1/2 cup of warm water
1/4 cup of lard (or vegetable shortening)

Mix the maseca, the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl.  Add the lard or shortening and the warm water.  Mix until the dough is smooth and can be formed into a ball.  Divide into balls and keep covered with a damp cloth.

Either using a tortilla press or shaping with your hands, make the gorditas in about a 4 inch diameter about 1/4 inch thick.

Heat the gorditas on a hot griddle or comal until cooked on each side.

Slice each cooked gordita almost to the end but keeping it together, forming a kind of pocket.  Some people don’t make the cut until it’s fried, but I like the insides crispy too.

Deep fry the gorditas in oil  until golden brown and drain on paper towels.

Stuff the pockets with any filling you like.  Beans, shredded beef, carnitas, chicharonnes in green salsa,  queso fresco, scrambled eggs with nopales, etc.

Mar

08

The Sopes at the Fair

history / stories  Posted by / 0 comments

My grandparents were avidly religious, devout Catholics which meant that my grandmother spent a lot of time working for the little church down the street, Christo Rey.  When I was little, they’d have little tardeadas or late afternoon celebrations.  There were booths where food was sold to make money for the programs at the church, etc.  My grandmother tended a booth and hers was one of the busiest there.  She sold sopes, those wonderful cripsy corn tortillas with the pinched up sides filled with meat, beans and other toppings.

I remember helping make the sopes.  My job was to pinch up the sides of the tortilla, not such an easy job given it was a hot little thing.  My grandmother was make the masa, shape it into little balls and my Auntie Jessie would press them in the tortilla press.  She’d then had a fat little tortilla to my grandmother who would toast it on the griddle or comal till it was well cooked.  The hot sopes would land in a plate near me and my grandfather and we had the job of making the sides.

To create the sides on a sope it has to be hot or it just doesn’t hold up the side very well so you take it and pinch into the hot dough and pinch all the way around till you end up with about a 1/4 inch rim around the tortilla.  I always felt very brave and grown up pinching sopes because the tips of my little fingers would burn with the heat of them.  We kept a little bowl of cold water nearby and I’d dip my fingers into it when I felt them growing too hot.

Over the years, my fingers grew more and more accustomed to it and rather desensitized.  I pinch the sides of a sope without even thinking about it now, but when I was a kid in my grandmother’s kitchen it seemed a very grown up, big girl job that I was very proud to be able to do.

My grandmother and aunts made 100′s of sopes, chopped massive piles of tomatoes, onion and cilantro, shredded head after head of lettuce, cooked enormous pots of beans and meat.  They’d then schlep all that stuff to the church, set up the booth and using a little camping type fire, would immediately start heating the oil to fry the sopes in.

Soon enough there’d be a long line and the tias and my grandma would fry and fill, fry and fill.  I never remember a time when my grandmother’s booth didn’t sell out completely and then we were free to enjoy the event.  Once, there were even voladores that came and sent us all to gasping as they flew round and round the pole tied by just what appeared to be a ribbon.  I remember holding my grandpa’s hand thinking that they would fall and I still remember how he squeezed my hand and smiled down at me with that special smile that always made me feel safe and warm.  He was proud of the voladores, proud of being Mexican and proud of his heritage.

It’s been many, many years since those days of church fairs, sopes, cracked confetti eggs on the heads of my cousins and the music of boleros drifting in and out of the crowds of people in the transformed church parking lot, but the smells, sounds and memories are still as sharp as that first sting of hot dough on my fingers.