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Oaxaca's oversized blistered tortilla spread with asiento and black beans, piled with cecina enchilada rubbed red with guajillo and ancho, pulled quesillo, fresh chepiche, and sliced chile de agua from the Valles Centrales.
This is Oaxacan street food at its most complete. The tlayuda, that oversized, leathery corn tortilla blistered on a comal until it cracks when you fold it, is the foundation. Everything else is architecture built on top of it: the asiento, the black beans, the quesillo, the cecina enchilada. Remove one layer and the structure falls apart.
Cecina enchilada is pork sliced thin as paper and rubbed with a paste of chile guajillo and chile ancho until the meat turns the color of Oaxacan clay. In the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, the women who grill these have been working the same passageway for decades. The smoke from their coals is the smell of the market itself. You walk into that corridor and the air decides what you're eating. There is no menu. There is cecina, tasajo, chorizo, and the senora pointing at the grill.
The ingredients that make this dish Oaxacan and not merely Mexican are the ones most people outside the state have never heard of. Asiento: the dark, toasty sediment that settles at the bottom of a vat of rendered pork lard, with a smoky depth that clean manteca cannot match. Chepiche: a pungent, resinous herb that grows in the Valles Centrales and tastes like nothing else in the Mexican herb lexicon, somewhere between cilantro and rue but belongingto neither. Chile de agua: a fresh, bright green chile grown almost exclusively in Oaxaca's central valleys, with a clean, direct heat that doesn't linger or overwhelm. Remove any one of these three and you've made a large tostada with pork. You haven't made a tlayuda.
I first ate a proper tlayuda con cecina in the passageway of the 20 de Noviembre in 2008. The senora who served it did not ask what I wanted on it. She built it the way she builds every one: asiento, frijol, quesillo, cecina, chepiche. When I asked about the chepiche, she looked at me like I'd asked what salt was. That herb is so woven into Oaxacan cooking that naming it feels like naming air. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
The tlayuda takes its name from the Zapotec tradition of large, partially dehydrated corn tortillas that have served as both plate and utensil in the Valles Centrales de Oaxaca since pre-Columbian times. Unlike a standard tortilla, the tlayuda is cooked on a clay comal and then dried further over low embers until it develops a leathery resilience that gives way to crispness at the edges, a preservation technique suited to Oaxaca's warm climate. Cecina enchilada, pork preserved with dried chile paste, reflects the colonial adaptation of Spanish cecina (air-cured meat) refashioned with indigenous chiles and techniques: the Spanish brought the practice of salting and drying meat, and Oaxacan cooks replaced the salt cure with a guajillo-ancho paste that both preserved and flavored. The Mercado 20 de Noviembre, established in Oaxaca city in 1978, codified the tlayuda as a market-stall format, but the dish had been assembled and sold along roadsides and in smaller tianguis markets across the Valles Centrales for generations before it had a permanent address.
Quantity
1 1/2 pounds
sliced 1/8-inch thin
Quantity
6
stemmed and seeded
Quantity
3
stemmed and seeded
Quantity
4
Quantity
3 tablespoons
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
Quantity
2 cups beans with 1/2 cup broth
Quantity
1
Quantity
6 tablespoons
divided
Quantity
4
Quantity
8 ounces
pulled into long strings
Quantity
2 to 3
sliced into thin rings
Quantity
1/4 cup
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| boneless pork legsliced 1/8-inch thin | 1 1/2 pounds |
| dried chile guajillostemmed and seeded | 6 |
| dried chile anchostemmed and seeded | 3 |
| garlic cloves | 4 |
| white vinegar | 3 tablespoons |
| cumin seeds | 1 teaspoon |
| dried Mexican oregano | 1 teaspoon |
| kosher salt | 1 tablespoon, plus more to taste |
| black peppercorns | 1/2 teaspoon |
| cooked black beans with broth | 2 cups beans with 1/2 cup broth |
| dried avocado leaf (hoja de aguacate) | 1 |
| asiento (unrefined pork lard sediment)divided | 6 tablespoons |
| large tlayudas (12- to 14-inch Oaxacan tortillas) | 4 |
| quesillo (Oaxacan string cheese)pulled into long strings | 8 ounces |
| fresh chiles de aguasliced into thin rings | 2 to 3 |
| fresh chepiche leaves | 1/4 cup |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
Heat a dry comal or cast iron skillet over medium. Toast the guajillo and ancho chiles separately, about 30 seconds per side, pressing them flat with a spatula. They should puff, darken slightly, and release an aroma that fills the kitchen. That smell is the oils opening up. Transfer to a heatproof bowl, cover with hot tap water, not boiling, and soak for 20 minutes until the flesh is soft and pliable. Reserve a quarter cup of the soaking liquid and drain the rest.
Transfer the soaked chiles to a blender with the garlic, vinegar, cumin seeds, oregano, black peppercorns, salt, and the reserved quarter cup of soaking liquid. Blend until you have a thick, smooth paste the color of Oaxacan clay. It should coat the back of a spoon without running. If the blender struggles, add soaking liquid a tablespoon at a time, just enough to get the blade moving. You want a paste, not a sauce. This is what makes the cecina enchilada.
Lay the pork slices flat on a cutting board or sheet pan. Spread the chile paste over every surface of every slice, both sides, working it into the meat with your hands. The pork should be completely coated, red from edge to edge, no pale spots. If you have the night, and you should, lay the slices in a single layer on a wire rack set over a sheet pan, cover loosely with plastic, and refrigerate overnight. The surface will dry slightly, the chile will penetrate deeper, and the flavor will be twice what it is after two hours. If you cannot give it the night, give it at least two hours. Less than that and you are seasoning, not curing.
Toast the dried avocado leaf on a dry comal for about ten seconds per side. It will release a faint anise scent. Crumble it between your fingers. In a heavy skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of asiento over medium heat until it melts and begins to shimmer. Add the black beans and their broth. Mash with a bean masher or the back of a large wooden spoon until you have a thick, spreadable paste. Some chunks are fine. Stir in the crumbled avocado leaf and cook, stirring, for three to four minutes until the paste pulls away from the sides of the skillet. It should be thick enough to spread on the tlayuda without sliding off. If it's too loose, keep cooking it down. If it's too stiff, add a splash of bean broth or water.
Heat a grill, grill pan, or comal over high heat until it is smoking. Lay the chile-rubbed pork slices flat on the surface. They will sizzle hard and the paste will char in spots. Cook for one to two minutes per side. The edges will curl and the chile crust will darken where it hits the metal. Do not overcook. Cecina enchilada is thin meat and it dries out fast. You want it just cooked through with dark blistered spots where the paste caught the heat. Transfer to a cutting board and chop into rough strips about an inch wide.
Place a tlayuda directly on a comal or large dry skillet over medium heat. Warm it for one to two minutes per side until the edges begin to stiffen and the surface develops light brown spots. The center should remain pliable enough to fold if you want to fold it. While the tlayuda is still on the heat, spread one tablespoon of asiento across the entire surface. The asiento will melt into the tortilla immediately, darkening it slightly and giving it that smoky, porky depth that separates a tlayuda from every other large tortilla in Mexico. This step is the soul of the dish. Do not skip it. Do not substitute butter or oil.
Spread a generous layer of the refried black beans across the asiento-coated tlayuda, leaving a half-inch border at the edge. Scatter the pulled quesillo strings over the beans. Pile the chopped grilled cecina on top of the cheese. Finish with chepiche leaves torn by hand and the sliced chile de agua scattered across. Serve open-faced, the way they do it in the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, or fold the tlayuda in half and press it on the comal for another minute until the quesillo begins to melt and pull. Either way is correct. On the street they fold it so you can eat it walking. At a table you serve it open so every layer shows. Set lime wedges alongside and let each person squeeze their own. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
1 serving (about 485g)
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