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Ciudad de Mexico's open-face bolillo, split lengthwise, mounted with hot frijoles refritos and queso manchego, broiled until bubbling, crowned with bright pico de gallo. The breakfast of a city that runs on bread and beans.
Molletes are capitalinos. This is a Ciudad de Mexico dish, born in the cafeterias and fondas of the Centro Histórico where office workers, students, and grandmothers all order the same thing for breakfast or for a late merienda. There are mollete-like dishes in other parts of Mexico, but the version with bolillo, refried beans, melted cheese, and salsa mexicana on top is ours. The chilangos own this one.
The whole dish rests on the bolillo. Not a baguette. Not a hoagie roll. A bolillo, that crusty oval roll with a soft white crumb that you find at any panadería in the country and at every corner panadería in the capital. Day-old bread is better than fresh. The dryness gives the bread structure under the weight of the beans. The beans must be hot and spreadable, fried in lard the way frijoles refritos are supposed to be made, not the canned brick that someone scoops out of a tin. The cheese is queso manchego mexicano, which has nothing to do with Spanish manchego, or queso Chihuahua from the north. Both melt into the bubbling golden sheet that gives the mollete its identity. Yellow cheddar is a Tex-Mex error. Do not make it.
My mother kept a paper bag of bolillos on top of the refrigerator and when they went stale, she would split them open, smear the cut side with manteca, pile on whatever beans were left from the night before, and run them under the broiler. The pico de gallo was whatever the mercado had that morning. That is the soul of the dish. It is a way of using bread that has begun to harden and beans that have begun to thicken, and turning them into something that tastes like the city you live in. Cada estado, su propia cocina, y los molletes son del DF.
The bolillo itself arrived with the French during the Second Mexican Empire in the 1860s, when Maximilian's court brought European baking traditions that local panaderos adapted into the smaller, crustier roll Mexico would adopt as its everyday bread. The mollete as a hot open-face preparation took shape in Mexico City during the 20th century, particularly in the cafeterias and lunch counters that proliferated in the Centro and Roma neighborhoods through the 1940s and 1950s, where workers needed a hot, cheap, filling breakfast that the cook could assemble in minutes from leftover beans and yesterday's bread. The dish should not be confused with the Andalusian mollete, a soft flat bread that shares only the name; the Mexico City version is a distinct dish whose closest culinary cousins are the molletes of Antequera in Spain only by accident of vocabulary.
Quantity
4
day-old preferred, halved lengthwise
Quantity
3 tablespoons
softened
Quantity
2 cups
hot and spreadable
Quantity
2 cups
shredded
Quantity
3 medium
finely diced
Quantity
1/2 medium
finely diced
Quantity
2
finely chopped, seeds in
Quantity
1/3 cup
chopped
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
3/4 teaspoon, divided
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| bolillosday-old preferred, halved lengthwise | 4 |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard)softened | 3 tablespoons |
| frijoles refritoshot and spreadable | 2 cups |
| queso manchego mexicano or queso Chihuahuashredded | 2 cups |
| Roma tomatoesfinely diced | 3 medium |
| white onionfinely diced | 1/2 medium |
| fresh chile serranofinely chopped, seeds in | 2 |
| fresh cilantro leaveschopped | 1/3 cup |
| fresh lime juice | 2 tablespoons |
| kosher salt | 3/4 teaspoon, divided |
| pickled jalapeños en escabeche (optional) | for serving |
| salsa verde or salsa roja (optional) | for serving |
Heat the broiler with a rack positioned about six inches below the element. Split each bolillo lengthwise without cutting all the way through. With your fingers, pull out some of the soft crumb from the center of each half. You want a shallow trough that will hold the beans, not a hollow boat. Save the crumb for breadcrumbs another day. A bolillo that is one or two days old works better than a fresh one. Fresh bread goes soggy under the beans. Slightly stale bread holds its structure.
Spread the softened manteca generously on the cut side of each bolillo half, edge to edge. Arrange them cut side up on a sheet pan and slide under the broiler for two to three minutes, until the edges turn golden and the bread crisps up. Watch them. Bread under a broiler turns from gold to black in fifteen seconds. La manteca es el sabor. Butter will work but it tastes like a different sandwich. Lard tastes like a mollete.
While the bread toasts, combine the diced tomato, white onion, chopped serrano, cilantro, lime juice, and half a teaspoon of salt in a bowl. Stir with a spoon. Taste it. The salt should sharpen the tomato, the lime should lift the onion, the serrano should sit at the back of your throat. Adjust. Let it rest while you build the molletes so the flavors come together. This is salsa mexicana, the same red-white-green that flies on the flag. No me vengas con atajos. Do not use canned diced tomatoes for this. The water content is wrong and the flavor is dead.
Pull the toasted bolillos out of the oven. The beans need to be hot and spreadable, not stiff from the refrigerator. If they have firmed up, loosen them in a small skillet with a tablespoon of lard or bean broth over medium heat until they move like soft mashed potatoes. Spread a thick layer over each bolillo half, filling the trough and going right to the edges. A thin layer of beans makes a thin mollete. Mound them. This is comfort food. Stinginess has no place here.
Cover the beans completely with shredded manchego or Chihuahua. The cheese should hide the beans. Return the sheet pan to the broiler for three to four minutes, until the cheese melts into a single bubbling sheet with golden brown spots on top. Listen for the sizzle. Watch for the first browned blister and pull the pan. Manchego mexicano melts beautifully, stretches, and tastes like Mexico. Do not use yellow cheddar. Cheddar on a mollete is a Tex-Mex mistake.
Transfer the molletes to a wooden board or a wide plate. Spoon a generous mound of the pico de gallo across the top of each one, letting the lime juice run down into the melted cheese. Set the salsa verde and the jalapeños en escabeche on the table. Eat immediately with your hands. Molletes go cold fast and the bread loses its crisp. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
1 serving (about 335g)
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