Empanaditas de Quesillo y Flor de Calabaza

This is Oaxacan market food. You find these at the Central de Abastos in Oaxaca de Juarez, sold by senoras who press each one by hand on a sheet of plastic, fill it, fold it, and lay it on a comal that has not cooled down since five in the morning. The line does not stop. The comal does not rest. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and in Oaxaca, empanaditas de quesillo are as common as breathing.

The masa is corn. Not wheat flour. Oaxacan empanaditas are made from nixtamalized corn dough pressed thin enough to fold without cracking, enriched with a little manteca de cerdo so the edges crisp instead of drying out. The filling is three ingredients doing exactly what they are supposed to do: quesillo pulls in long threads when it melts, flor de calabaza gives the filling a vegetal sweetness that keeps the cheese honest, and hoja santa, that enormous anise-scented leaf you cannot find anywhere else in Mexican cooking at this scale, wraps itself around both and perfumes everything.

I collected this recipe from a woman named Dona Catalina at the Mercado de la Merced in Oaxaca, not the one in Mexico City. She made sixty empanaditas an hour and did not look up while she talked. She told me the masa has to be soft, softer than tortilla masa, because it needs to fold without breaking. She told me the quesillo goes in cold so it melts slowly on the comal instead of running out. She told me to stop writing and start pressing. My mother would have liked her.

Flor de calabaza is seasonal, tied to the rainy months from June through September when the squash vines flower across Oaxaca's milpas. If you are making these outside that window, the blossoms at your market should be firm, bright, and tightly closed. If they are wilted, wait. Cook what the market is selling today, not what is on a Pinterest board.