Tlacoyos de Requesón con Salsa Verde

The tlacoyo is from Tlaxcala and the central altiplano, the high valleys where blue corn has grown since before the Spanish arrived. The word comes from the Nahuatl 'tlahtlaoyo,' and the dish predates the conquest by centuries. This is not a taco. This is not a sope. The tlacoyo is its own thing, a pinched oval of masa with the filling sealed inside before it ever hits the comal. The filling cooks with the masa. The shell chars. The cheese inside melts into the corn. That structure is the dish.

Blue corn is what you want. Yellow or white masa will work, but the tlacoyos at the Mercado de Sonora and along the streets of Tlaxcala City are made with blue corn because that is what the altiplano grows. The masa is darker, earthier, and sweeter, and when it chars on the comal you get that purple-black crust that says immediately what this is and where it comes from. If your mercado doesn't carry blue corn masa harina, find one that does. Masienda ships nixtamalized blue corn flour and it is the closest you will get outside of grinding your own.

Requesón is the filling that signals home cooking, the cheap and brilliant choice of the women who set up their comales at five in the morning on the streets of CDMX. It's fresh, mild, and a little tart, like a Mexican ricotta. Mix it with chopped epazote, that wild anise-and-petroleum herb that grows in cracks in the sidewalk all over Mexico, and a little onion, and you have a filling that costs almost nothing and tastes like ten generations of practice. The first time I made tlacoyos was in the kitchen of a señora named Doña Aurelia in Tepetlaoxtoc. She watched my hands while I pinched the masa closed and said, 'Más apretado, mija. Si se abre en el comal, ya no es tlacoyo, es disgrace.' I have never forgotten it. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.