Burro de Machaca Sonorense

This is from Sonora. Cattle country, the open desert north, the land of vaqueros and mesquite fires and tortillas de harina that the rest of Mexico still does not fully understand. The burro de machaca is one of Sonora's foundational dishes and it has nothing to do with the foil-wrapped monsters served in California.

Machaca is dried beef. Before refrigeration, the ranchers of Sonora and Chihuahua salted and air-dried lean cuts of beef in the desert sun so the meat would survive the long rides between ranches. To eat it, you pound it. The word comes from machacar, to pound. Pounded machaca, rehydrated in a sofrito of onion, tomato, garlic, fresh chile verde del norte, and chile colorado, becomes one of the most flavorful guisos in northern Mexico.

The tortilla is the other half of the story. The Sonoran flour tortilla, the tortilla de harina sonorense, is paper-thin, soft, and large. Made with manteca, never shortening. Hand-stretched, never pressed. The sobaquera version, draped over the cook's forearm to thin it, is the highest expression of the form. The flour tortilla is a Noroeste birthright, not a Tex-Mex shortcut. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not eaten in Hermosillo.

My mother was from Jalisco and her flour tortillas were small and thick. The first time I ate a real burro de machaca was at a roadside carreta outside Ciudad Obregon, sitting on a plastic stool watching a senora stretch tortillas the size of dinner plates over her forearm. I asked her what she put in the dough. She said: harina, manteca, sal, agua caliente. Nothing else. The technique is the recipe. Cada estado, su propia cocina.