Queso Relleno Yucateco

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large pot with a steamer rack big enough to hold the cheese round
• •Cheesecloth and kitchen twine
• •Wide clay cazuela or heavy Dutch oven
• •Cast iron comal for charring the k'uut vegetables
• •High-powered blender
• •Fine-mesh sieve for the egg yolks in the kol

Instructions

1. 1

   Hollow the queso de bola

   Peel the red wax off the Edam. Cut a wide cap off the top, the way you would open a pumpkin. Hollow out the interior with a spoon, leaving a wall about half an inch thick all the way around. Save every gram of the cheese you scoop out, it goes into other dishes during the week. Submerge the hollowed ball and its cap in cold water for one hour to soften the rind and pull out some of the salt. The cheese sweats salt aggressively. Skip this soak and your queso relleno will taste like a salt lick.

   Use a true Dutch Edam, queso de bola. Not Gouda, not cheddar, not mozzarella. The wax-coated round Edam is the dish. This is not a regional curiosity, it is the architecture of queso relleno. The Mayan and Spanish cooks of the peninsula adopted this Dutch cheese because the port of Sisal received it by the crate, and they built a recipe around what arrived.
2. 2

   Build the picadillo base

   Melt the lard in a wide cazuela over medium heat. Add the onion and chile xcatic, cook until the onion turns translucent, about five minutes. Add the garlic and cook one more minute, until the kitchen smells sweet. Add the tomato and cook until the tomato breaks down and the mixture looks jammy, eight to ten minutes. La manteca es el sabor. Do not substitute oil here. The lard is what carries the recados.

3. 3

   Dissolve the recados

   Whisk the recado rojo and the recado de especia into the vinegar in a small bowl until you have a smooth red-brown slurry. Pour this into the cazuela with the sofrito. Stir and cook for two minutes. The kitchen will smell like the markets of Mérida on a Sunday morning, achiote, clove, allspice, and a memory of orange. That smell is the peninsula.

   If you cannot find ready-made recado de especia, grind your own: 1/2 teaspoon each of clove, allspice berries, cinnamon, and black pepper, plus a pinch of cumin. Toast the spices first on a comal until fragrant. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado, they will tell you the same.
4. 4

   Cook the meat

   Add the pork and beef to the cazuela. Break it up with a wooden spoon and cook over medium-high heat until the meat releases its liquid and then reabsorbs it, about fifteen minutes. You want the meat fully cooked but still moist, not dry. Salt to taste, generously but not aggressively, remembering the cheese is still salty even after the soak.

5. 5

   Fold in the picadillo treasures

   Off the heat, fold in the olives, capers, raisins, chopped almonds, and chopped hard-boiled eggs. This is where the picadillo becomes Yucatecan and not just any ground meat. The sweet of the raisins, the briny snap of the olive and caper, the crunch of the almond, all of it carried in achiote and clove. Taste again. Adjust salt. Let it cool to room temperature before you stuff. Hot picadillo will weep into the cheese walls and the queso will collapse.

6. 6

   Stuff and wrap the cheese

   Drain the soaked Edam and pat it dry. Pack the cooled picadillo firmly into the cavity, mounding it slightly. Place the reserved cap back on top. Wrap the whole stuffed cheese tightly in a double layer of cheesecloth and tie the top with kitchen twine, leaving a loop you can grab. The cloth holds the round together while it warms through and the cheese softens.

   Some cooks in Mérida wrap the cheese in banana leaves before the cheesecloth. The leaves add a faint green grassiness that suits the dish. If you can find them at a Latino market, do this. If not, the cheesecloth alone is fine.
7. 7

   Steam the queso relleno

   Set up a large pot with a steamer rack and two inches of water. Lower the wrapped cheese onto the rack, cover, and steam over medium heat for 35 to 45 minutes. The cheese should soften and just begin to slump but never collapse. The interior wants to be molten at the rind and the picadillo wants to be hot through. Lift it carefully by the twine loop. The work the cloth is doing right now is the only thing holding the dish together. Treat it accordingly.

8. 8

   Make the kol blanco

   While the cheese steams, make the white sauce. Melt the lard in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour or masa harina and cook for two minutes, stirring constantly, until the raw flour smell is gone but the roux has not taken color. Slowly whisk in the pork broth. Simmer for ten minutes, whisking often, until the kol thickens to the body of a light gravy. Press the hard-boiled egg yolks through a fine sieve and whisk them in. Salt to taste. Kol is the sauce that built peninsular cooking long before béchamel arrived. Do not turn it into béchamel. It should taste of pork and corn, not milk.

9. 9

   Make the k'uut

   While the kol simmers, char the tomatoes, onion, and garlic directly on a hot comal until the skins blister and blacken in patches and the flesh underneath softens. This takes about ten minutes, turning often. Peel the garlic. Drop the charred vegetables into a blender with the whole habanero (do not break it, you want its perfume, not its fire) and blend until smooth. Heat the lard in a saucepan, pour in the puree, it will splatter, and fry the salsa for eight to ten minutes, until it darkens and the fat separates. Fish out the whole habanero and discard. Salt to taste.

10. 10

    Assemble and serve at the table

    Lift the steamed cheese onto a wide white porcelain platter. Cut away the twine and peel back the cheesecloth carefully. Slice the cheese in wedges like a melon, so each piece has rind, soft inner cheese, and a generous load of picadillo. Ladle the warm kol blanco over each portion first. Then drizzle the red k'uut across the white. The plate should look like the flag, white pooling around the wedge with bright red ribbons across it. Serve with pickled red onion, warm tortillas, and a whole roasted habanero on the side for the brave. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •The cheese must be a true Dutch Edam round with red wax. Not Gouda, not American Edam loaf. The wax-coated ball is what the dish is built around. Latino markets and well-stocked supermarkets carry it, usually labeled queso de bola or simply Edam ball. Buy it a week ahead so you are not scrambling.
• •Recado rojo and recado de especia are the soul of Yucatecan cooking. If you live near a Mexican market, buy them ready-made from a Yucatecan brand like La Anita or El Yucateco. If not, you can make recado rojo from achiote seeds, garlic, sour orange, and spices, but do not skip the recado de especia. The clove, allspice, and cinnamon are what separate this dish from any other picadillo in Mexico.
• •Kol is not béchamel. It is pre-Hispanic in spirit. Use masa harina if you have it, the corn flavor anchors the sauce to the peninsula. Flour works in a pinch but the dish loses a layer of identity. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado, they will tell you the same.
• •The habanero in the k'uut stays whole and unbroken. Its job is to perfume the salsa, not to set it on fire. Yucatecan food is not blanket spicy. Heat goes on the table in a separate dish for the eater to choose. Treat the habanero with the respect it deserves and your guests will thank you.

Advance Preparation

• •The picadillo can be made up to two days ahead and refrigerated. The flavors deepen and the achiote settles into the meat. Bring to room temperature before stuffing.
• •The kol blanco and the k'uut can both be made one day ahead and refrigerated separately. Reheat gently. The kol will thicken in the fridge, thin it with a splash of pork broth when you warm it.
• •The cheese can be soaked and hollowed the morning of, kept refrigerated, and stuffed and steamed just before serving. Do not stuff and refrigerate, the cheese sweats and the picadillo gets soggy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 550g)