Pambazo Xalapeño

This is Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, up in the cloud forest where the mountain air stays cool and the volcano watches over the city. The pambazo is from here. I know Mexico City sells something it calls a pambazo, a roll dipped in red chile, fried, stuffed with potato. That is a fine antojito. It is not the original. The original is xalapeño, and it never touches a fryer.

Look at the bread. It is dusted white with flour, the flour sitting on a pale, soft crust, and that flour is not an accident. It is the snow on the Cofre de Perote and the Pico de Orizaba, the peaks you see from the city on a clear morning. The bread itself is soft, a little sweet, enriched with manteca and egg. You cannot buy a real pambazo xalapeño outside of Veracruz, so I am going to teach you to make the bread. The bread is the dish. Everything else is filling.

And the filling starts with beans. Frijoles negros, not pinto. In Veracruz the black bean rules the pot, cooked soft with a branch of epazote, then fried in manteca until it is thick enough to hold inside the bread. La manteca es el sabor. From there you choose: chorizo, sliced jamón, or a folded egg. This is Veracruz, La Tercera Raíz, the Spanish wheat and the Mesoamerican bean on one plate, and the cooks here do not need to dress it up.

My mother was from Jalisco, not Veracruz, so the pambazo was never hers. I learned it on the road, three mornings in a row at the same stand near the Mercado Jáuregui, watching a señora split the rolls and warm them on the comal before she filled them. She told me the whole secret was to never let the bread brown in the oven. Keep it pale, keep it floury, keep the snow on the mountain. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Veracruz.