Entomatadas

The tomato cooked down hard in oil until it darkens and will sit on a tortilla instead of soaking into it.

Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

the sauce

• 900 g ripe tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic, unpeeled
• ½ small white onion, in one thick slice
• 1 chile de árbol, or ½ teaspoon chilli flakes
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon sugar, only if the tomatoes are poor

to assemble

• 12 corn tortillas, as on their own page
• 200 g crumbly white cheese
• 1 small white onion, sliced in thin rings
• soured cream, to serve
• a handful of coriander, chopped

Method

1. THE TOMATO IS COOKED DOWN HARD IN OIL UNTIL IT DARKENS, and that is how this dish protects its tortilla. A blended raw tomato sauce is thin, bright red and about ninety per cent water, and a tortilla put into it drinks until it falls apart. Poured into three tablespoons of hot oil and cooked fifteen or twenty minutes, stirred, the water leaves, the colour goes from scarlet to brick, and what is left is thick enough to coat a tortilla and stay on its surface. There is no oil-dipping step here and none is needed: the sauce has had the water taken out of it instead.
2. IT IS A FRIED SAUCE AND THE OIL IS NOT OPTIONAL. Reduced in a dry pan the same tomato goes stringy and tastes stewed. Fried, the sugars catch on the base of the pan and get scraped back in, and that is most of the flavour. The sauce is ready when a spoon drawn across the pan leaves a channel that does not close up.
3. THE TOMATOES ARE CHARRED FIRST AND BLENDED UNPEELED. Blackened in patches on a dry griddle, skins and all into the blender. The skin carries colour and a trace of smoke; peeled, the sauce is paler and flatter, and peeling nine hundred grams of tomato is twenty minutes spent making the dish worse.
4. THEY ARE ROLLED AND NOT BAKED. Dipped, rolled loosely, laid on a warm plate, and finished with cream and cheese off the heat. The oven would only reheat something already hot and would dry the sauce to a skin.
5. THE ONION GOES ON RAW AND IN RINGS. Thin rings of white onion straight from the board, scattered over at the end: the sauce is sweet and rich and the raw onion is the only sharp thing on the plate. Cooked into the sauce it disappears and the dish tastes of nothing but tomato.
6. The tomatoes, unpeeled garlic, onion slice and chilli charred on a dry griddle over a high heat 12 to 15 minutes, turned, until BLACKENED in patches. The garlic taken out early.
7. The garlic squeezed from its papers; everything blended UNPEELED with the salt until smooth.
8. The 3 tablespoons of oil heated in a wide pan until it shimmers, and the blended tomato poured in -- it will spit.
9. Cooked 15 to 20 MINUTES over a medium heat, stirred and the base scraped, until it has gone from SCARLET TO BRICK and thickened.
10. TESTED: a spoon drawn across the pan should leave a channel that does not close up. Sugar added only if it tastes sharp.
11. The tortillas warmed 20 seconds a side on a dry griddle and kept in a cloth.
12. Each warm tortilla laid in the sauce, turned to coat, lifted out and ROLLED loosely.
13. Three per warm plate, more sauce spooned over.
14. Finished with soured cream, the cheese, the RAW onion rings and coriander. Not baked.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes