Memelas Oaxaqueñas con Tasajo y Quesillo

This is Oaxaca. The Valles Centrales, specifically. The memela lives on every comal in every market from the Central de Abastos to the Sunday tianguis in Tlacolula de Matamoros. It is not a tortilla. Thicker, oval, pinched at the edges to hold what goes on top. And what goes on top tells you exactly where you are on the map.

In the Valles Centrales, it starts with asiento. Not manteca, not butter, not oil. Asiento: the dark, grainy sediment left at the bottom of the cazuela after rendering pork lard. It tastes like smoke and pork and everything a clean fat does not. You spread it across the surface of the memela while the masa is still on the comal, and it soaks into the warm dough and becomes part of it. If someone tells you to substitute with vegetable oil, find someone else to cook with.

Doña Vale sold memelas outside the Mercado 20 de Noviembre in Oaxaca City for over thirty years. I sat on a plastic stool at her comal in 2014 and watched her hands work: masa pressed into ovals by feel, not measurement. Flipped once, pinched, painted with asiento from a clay jar she kept at the edge of the fire. A smear of black bean paste cooked with avocado leaf. Strings of quesillo pulled from the ball and draped so the heat from the memela softened them just enough. Strips of tasajo, grilled on the hottest part of the comal until the salt-cured edges darkened. A spoonful of her salsa de pasilla oaxaqueño on top. She handed it to me on a square of brown paper and said nothing. The memela said everything. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Tasajo is salt-cured dried beef, a preservation tradition born from the dry air of the Valles Centrales, where the climate does half the work. Quesillo is Oaxaca's string cheese, pulled and wound into balls at the market, tangy and supple in a way that mozzarella only approximates. These ingredients are not interchangeable with their substitutes. They are the reason this memela belongs to Oaxaca and nowhere else. Cada estado, su propia cocina.