Sincronizadas Norteñas

Sincronizadas belong to the north. To Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, Nuevo León, the states where the flour tortilla is not a Tex-Mex shortcut but a regional birthright. The wheat grew where the corn struggled. The tortilla de harina is what the Noroeste cooks built instead, and the sincronizada is what they made when they wanted something fast, hot, and filling on a weeknight or after a long day.

This is not a quesadilla. A quesadilla is one tortilla folded over cheese. A sincronizada is two tortillas pressed flat with ham and cheese between them, synchronized, which is where the name comes from. The order of the layers matters. Beans on the bottom tortilla so the cheese has something to anchor to. Ham next. Queso asadero on top, because asadero is the cheese that melts the way this dish needs it to melt: long strings, no graininess, a clean pull when you lift a wedge off the plate. Chihuahua cheese works. Oaxaca string cheese works in a pinch. Cheddar does not. I will say it once and not apologize: there is no yellow cheese in northern Mexican cooking.

The lard is not optional. The flour tortilla browns differently in manteca than it does in oil or butter. It blisters. It develops the dark spots that tell you the comal was hot enough. My mother did not make sincronizadas. She was from Jalisco and we ate corn tortillas in our house. I learned this dish from a senora in Hermosillo who fed her grandchildren on a cast iron comal balanced over a propane burner in her courtyard, with a small clay pot of lard beside her and a jar of pickled chiles within reach. Asi se hace y punto.