Pellizcadas Tlaxcaltecas

Pellizcadas are from Tlaxcala. The smallest state in Mexico, often forgotten by people who can only name Oaxaca and Puebla, but a state with a deep masa tradition that predates the conquest. This is the snack of the markets in Apizaco, of Sunday lunches in Huamantla, of the women who set up comales on the sidewalk and pinch these by hand for school children walking home in the afternoon.

The name comes from pellizcar, to pinch. After the masa cake cooks on the comal, you pinch the edges up while it is still hot to form a small lip that holds the toppings. Without that pinch, you have a sope, which is from somewhere else and shaped by hand differently. With the pinch, you have a pellizcada, and you have Tlaxcala on your plate. Esto no es comida de un solo Mexico.

The fat is what separates this dish from imitations. Asiento, the dark, savory residue from the bottom of a carnitas pot, is smeared onto the hot masa right after it comes off the comal. It is briny, smoky, almost anchovy-like in how it deepens flavor. If you cannot find asiento, use good lard, and know that you are making a compromise. La manteca es el sabor and in Tlaxcala that is not negotiable.

My mother did not make pellizcadas. She was from Jalisco and she made sopes. But I learned these in 2011, in a market stall in Huamantla, from a woman named Dona Reyna who had been pinching them on the same comal for forty-one years. She told me the pinch is what makes the dish. The pinch is what your fingers remember after the recipe is gone. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.