Chef Lupita
Enchiladas de Valladolid
Valladolid's enchiladas, corn tortillas bathed in a chile ancho and Mexican chocolate sauce, stuffed with smoked longaniza, crowned with a fried egg and a tangle of habanero-pickled red onion.
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Mestizas con Queso de Bola
Created by
Campeche's bicolor mestiza bread, half refined wheat and half bran, split open and stuffed with shaved queso de bola Edam. The handheld market snack of the Peninsula, eaten warm with pickled red onion and a habanero on the side.
Sandwiches & Wraps
Mexican
Quick Meal
Picnic
Budget Friendly
5 min
Active Time
3 min cook•8 min total
Yield4 sandwiches
This is from Campeche. Not Yucatan, not Quintana Roo. Campeche. The Peninsula shares a grammar of sour orange, achiote, banana leaf, and habanero, but each state inside it has its own dishes and the mestiza belongs to the campechano panaderias. You will find it at the Mercado Pedro Sainz de Baranda, wrapped in brown paper, sold by the half dozen, eaten on the seawall in the late afternoon.
The bread is the dish. A mestiza is bicolor by design: one half made from refined wheat flour, the other half from whole bran. The two doughs are pressed together before baking, and when the bread comes out of the oven it carries both worlds in one crumb. Mestiza, mixed, two-blooded. The campechanos named it for the same reason the country was named what it was named. It is sweet on one side and savory on the other, and the only filling that makes sense in it is queso de bola.
Queso de bola is Dutch Edam, the red-wax wheel, and it arrived in Campeche through the trade routes that ran between the Peninsula and the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries. The campechanos took the foreign cheese and made it their own. They pair it with the mestiza, they shave it into relleno negro at Christmas, they stuff it whole and call it queso relleno. In this sandwich the cheese does not melt. It yields. It softens against the warm bread, against the thin layer of lard the cocinera spreads on the cut side, and that is the whole dish.
My mother did not make mestizas. She was from Jalisco and the Peninsula was a foreign country to her kitchen. I learned this sandwich the first time I went to Campeche, sitting on a stool at a panaderia near the old city wall, watching a senora wrap them in paper for the schoolchildren who came in at noon. She told me: la mestiza takes lard, not butter, and the queso de bola takes a sharp knife, not a grater. I wrote it down. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Queso de bola arrived in the Yucatan Peninsula through 17th and 18th century maritime trade between the port of Campeche and the Dutch Caribbean colonies, particularly Curacao, where Edam was a staple of provisioning ships. The Peninsula adopted the cheese so thoroughly that by the 19th century it had become the defining ingredient of several signature dishes, including queso relleno and the relleno negro filling, despite being entirely European in origin. The mestiza bread itself reflects the Peninsula's colonial-era panaderia tradition, in which Spanish wheat baking was adapted with local Mayan attention to bicolor presentation, and the word mestiza carries the same racial and cultural meaning in this context that it carries in Mexican national identity broadly: a deliberate, named mixing of two inheritances.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
mestizas (Campeche's bicolor sweet-salty bread)
Quantity
4
half refined wheat and half bran, fresh from the panaderia
queso de bola (Dutch Edam, aged red-wax wheel)
Quantity
8 ounces
at cool room temperature
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
softened
small red onion
Quantity
1
sliced into paper-thin half-moons
naranja agria juice (Seville sour orange)
Quantity
1/2 cup
or 1/4 cup fresh orange juice mixed with 1/4 cup white vinegar
kosher salt
Quantity
1 teaspoon
dried Mexican oregano
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
crumbled
fresh chile habanero (optional)
Quantity
1
stemmed and sliced into thin rings (for the table)
lime wedges (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| mestizas (Campeche's bicolor sweet-salty bread)half refined wheat and half bran, fresh from the panaderia | 4 |
| queso de bola (Dutch Edam, aged red-wax wheel)at cool room temperature | 8 ounces |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard)softened | 2 tablespoons |
| small red onionsliced into paper-thin half-moons | 1 |
| naranja agria juice (Seville sour orange)or 1/4 cup fresh orange juice mixed with 1/4 cup white vinegar | 1/2 cup |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon |
| dried Mexican oreganocrumbled | 1/2 teaspoon |
| fresh chile habanero (optional)stemmed and sliced into thin rings (for the table) | 1 |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet
- •Sharp serrated knife for the bread
- •Sharp paring knife or vegetable peeler for shaving the cheese
- •Small glass bowl for the pickled onion
Instructions
- 1
Pickle the onion
Place the sliced red onion in a small glass bowl. Pour the naranja agria juice over the top. Add the salt and oregano. Press the onion down so the juice covers it. Let it sit for at least 20 minutes while you do everything else. The onion will turn from purple to bright pink. That color is the signal that the acid has done its work. The Peninsula has its own grammar and this pickle is part of it.
If you cannot find naranja agria, the mix of regular orange juice and white vinegar is the standard Peninsula substitution. Do not use only lime juice. Lime is too bright and lacks the bitter edge of the sour orange. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade. - 2
Shave the queso de bola
Cut the wax off the Edam if it is still on. Using a sharp knife or a vegetable peeler, shave the cheese into thin curls. Not grated. Not cubed. Shaved into ribbons the way the cheese vendors do it at the Mercado Pedro Sainz de Baranda. The thin shavings let the cheese yield to the bite of the bread without overwhelming it. Set the shaved cheese aside at cool room temperature so it is not stiff when it goes into the sandwich.
- 3
Warm the mestizas
Heat a dry comal or cast iron skillet over medium. Split each mestiza horizontally with a serrated knife, leaving a hinge if you can. Place the breads cut-side down on the hot comal for about 30 seconds. You want them warm and lightly toasted on the inside, not crisp. The mestiza is meant to stay soft. The dark bran half and the pale wheat half should both warm through. That bicolor crumb is the signature of the bread and the reason these sandwiches are called mestizas, mixed, two-blooded.
- 4
Spread the lard
While the bread is still warm, spread a thin layer of softened lard on the cut side of each half. Not butter. Not mayonnaise. Manteca de cerdo. La manteca es el sabor. The lard sinks into the warm crumb and carries the flavor of the cheese into the bread itself. This is how the cocineras at the panaderias in Campeche do it. Asi se hace y punto.
If your lard is hard from the refrigerator, leave it at room temperature for 20 minutes before you start. Cold lard tears the bread. - 5
Build the sandwich
Pile a generous handful of shaved queso de bola onto the bottom half of each mestiza. Be generous. The cheese is the filling and the only filling. Lift a few rings of the pickled onion out of the juice, let them drain for a second, and lay them across the cheese. Close the sandwich and press gently with the heel of your hand so the cheese settles into the lard-warmed crumb.
- 6
Serve right away
Cut each mestiza in half on the diagonal or leave whole, however your hand prefers. Set the habanero rings and lime wedges on the side for the person eating to add at their own risk. The sandwich is meant to be eaten immediately, while the bread is still warm and the cheese is still soft against it. This is market food, picnic food, lunch-from-a-paper-bag food. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
Chef Tips
- •The mestiza bread is hard to find outside Campeche and the Peninsula. If you cannot source it, a soft bolillo or a pan frances split lengthwise is the closest stand-in, but it will not have the bicolor crumb. Tell your panadero what you are trying to make and they may be able to bake a version. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
- •Buy the real queso de bola, the aged Dutch Edam in the red wax. Not pre-shredded cheese. Not American Edam. The red-wax wheel from the Netherlands or its faithful Mexican equivalent is what the campechanos use. Pregunten a las senoras del mercado.
- •The pickled onion can be made up to three days ahead and kept in its juice in the refrigerator. It only gets better. The naranja agria pickle is the same one that dresses cochinita pibil and panuchos, and a jar of it in your fridge will save you on many weeknights.
- •Do not skip the lard. Butter on a mestiza is a tourist's mistake. Manteca de cerdo is the regional fat of the Peninsula and it carries the flavor in a way no dairy fat can. No me vengas con atajos.
Advance Preparation
- •The pickled red onion can be made up to three days ahead and kept in its naranja agria juice in the refrigerator. The flavor deepens overnight.
- •The queso de bola can be shaved up to four hours ahead and kept covered at cool room temperature so it does not stiffen.
- •Do not assemble the sandwiches in advance. The bread softens and the dish loses its character. Build them to order, the way they do it at the panaderias.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 155g)
Calories
475 calories
Total Fat
26 g
Saturated Fat
13 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
11 g
Cholesterol
55 mg
Sodium
1135 mg
Total Carbohydrates
39 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
3 g
Protein
21 g
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