Chistorra con Queso a la Plancha

This is from the north. Chihuahua, Sonora, the borderlands where the cattle ranches taught Mexico how to make flour tortillas and where the sausage tradition came down through Basque and Navarrese settlers who brought chistorra with them from the old country. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the north has its own.

Chistorra is not chorizo. People in the south of Mexico confuse the two and they should not. Chorizo is fatter, looser, seasoned with vinegar and a heavier hand of chile. Chistorra is thin, firm, smoked or air-cured, the color comes from pimenton more than from chile ancho. It cooks in minutes. You sear it on a hot plancha and the orange fat that comes out is half the recipe.

The cheese is queso asadero, made in Chihuahua, a stretching cheese that pulls into strands when it melts. Not cheddar. Not pepper jack. Not whatever the supermarket calls Mexican blend. If you cannot find asadero, queso Oaxaca is its cousin and it will do. The flour tortillas have to be made with manteca and they have to be soft enough that you can fold them around hot sausage without cracking. The corn tortillas of the south have no place at this table. La cocina del norte es la cocina del trigo.

My mother was from Jalisco and she did not cook this. I learned it in Chihuahua, at a cantina in Cuauhtemoc, from a senora who slid the plancha across the bar and told me to eat with my hands. She watched me fold the first taco wrong and corrected it. The chiltepin salsa was in a small molcajete and it was the hottest thing I had eaten that year. La manteca es el sabor and the chiltepin is the punctuation. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.