Salvadoran Filled Tortillas: Pupusas

If you've never had "pupusas," please give them a try. They are easy to make and they don't require any difficult to find ingredients or accompaniments. You can fill pupusas with meat, cheese, beans, vegetables or a little of each. For this article, I used refried beans and cheese to fill the pupusas. Salvadorans serve pupusas with "curtido," a type of pickled cabbage.* They are also often accompanied by hot sauce and crema, which is a kind of mild sour cream.** Besides making the actual pupusas, you can also make the refried beans yourself,*** or you can buy your favorite brand at local supermarkets or any Latino market, along with some "masa harina," a white corn flour.
   
Ingredients:

refried beans (homemade or 1 can)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese 
2 cups masa flour (masa harina)
1 2/3 cups hot water
1 tablespoon salt

Combine the flour, water and salt into a dough. The dough should not be loose, so if you need to adjust either the amount of flour or water, do so. Roll pieces of dough in your hands into rounds slightly larger than golf balls. Let the rounds sit while you make the filling for the pupusas. For the filling: This is tough now.... Mix the shredded cheese into the refried beans. Okay... maybe it's not so tough. You might want to put a little oil on your hands, then flatten and pat the dough rounds into about 4 to 5 inch diameter cakes. These are not supposed to be the thin tortillas most people likely think of, but rather they are thicker. Put a heaping tablespoon or two of the bean/cheese mixture in the center of the cake, then pull up the edges of the dough around the filling to close it off. I rolled the cakes back into rounds, then carefully flattened them again. I had a small amount of dough left over, which came in handy to "patch" a place or two in some of the pupusas  where the filling tried to come out. Add a little oil to a skillet (cast iron is great for this) or to a griddle, over medium heat. Cook the pupusas for "about" 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until they develop a little browning. You can serve them Salvadoran style with "curtido," as well as with crema or sour cream, and hot sauce.


* "Curtido" is also easy to make. Here is the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/03/salvadoran-spicy-pickled-cabbage-curtido.html

** You can find "crema," probably more as "Mexican Crema," in many supermarkets or Latino grocery stores. The tartness may differ slightly between Mexican crema and some other countries, but "creme fraiche" is essentially the same thing, and you can easily make it yourself, if you can't find "crema" near you, or just use some sour cream. Here is the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2017/07/make-your-own-creme-fraiche.html 

*** For the article on refried beans, here's the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2018/11/refried-beans-frijoles-refritos.html

The hot sauce is Mexican, but I'm sure Salvadorans won't mind ... and that's also some "curtido"

I pulled the pupusa apart ...

And with some crema ...

WORD HISTORY: 
Actual-This word is closely related to "act," a word of Latin derivation borrowed by English. It goes back to Indo European "ag/ak," which had the notion of "drive, move;" thus, "do some motion or process." This gave Latin "agere," meaning, "to act, to do an action," which spawned the noun "actus," meaning, "an act, an action, a deed;" thus also, "a performance." This provided Latin with the adjective "actualis," meaning, "relating to an action, pertaining to an ongoing action." This passed into Latin-based French as "actuel," meaning, "current, ongoing, up to date, in the present." This was borrowed by English in the first half of the 1300s, and the meaning extended from "ongoing, current," to "real." German, too, borrowed the word from French in the 1700s as "aktuell," also meaning, "current, in the present, real (presently, currently, as an adverb)."

Honduran Tortillas: Las Baleadas Hondureñas

Honduras is a country in Central America. It has a population of more than 9 million, with Spanish as its official language, and it was conquered by Spain in the 1500s, but gained independence from Spain in 1821, and Honduras became a truly separate country in the 1830s. The nation's capital is Tegucigalpa (pretty much pronounced like, "tay-goose-see-galpa").  

There is the basic baleadas, "baleadas sencillas" (simple baleadas), but then Hondurans often add other toppings, one of the most common of which is scrambled eggs, but perhaps also avocado and fried or grilled meat. I looked at 20 to 25 recipes and all were very similar in the basic ingredients, but some made the tortillas very thin, while others made them much thicker (see photos, below). This recipe is so you can make your own fresh flour tortillas, but you can certainly just buy some flour tortillas, heat them, and then fill them. Shhh .... I didn't tell you that! Perhaps you could double the tortillas when assembling the finished product to make the thicker type?  

Ingredients:

3 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup warm water
refried beans*
crema or sour cream **
crumbled queso fresco (cotija cheese is good for this)
avocado

Mix together the flour, the salt and the baking powder; then, mix the oil into the dry ingredients. Add the warm water and mix until a dough forms. Knead the dough until it is smooth. Divide the dough and roll the pieces into golf ball size rounds. Coat the rounds very lightly with some oil, cover them and let them sit for about a half hour. Heat a griddle or skillet (a cast iron skillet is good for this) on medium heat. Form the rounds into flattened circular shapes and place on the griddle or into the skillet. Cook for "about" 45 seconds per side. Some brown spots may develop on the tortillas, and that's okay. Spread a layer of refried beans on each tortilla, then add some crema or sour cream and crumbled queso fresco, and other toppings, if you so desire.

* For my article on "refried beans," this is the link: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2018/11/refried-beans-frijoles-refritos.html 

** I have not had Honduran sour cream, "mantequilla (blanco)," but just reading about it, I noticed some Hondurans who have moved to the United States say they buy sour cream, add varying amounts of heavy cream and a little salt, and they have "Honduran mantequilla." It is also my understanding that "mantequilla" generally means "butter" in Spanish, but in Honduras (perhaps elsewhere too???), it means butter, but also their style of sour cream. Mexican "crema" is available in many supermarkets in the U.S., but from what I understand, the Mexican variety is not quite like the Honduran. 

The thicker baleadas, left unfolded to show the topping

The thin, folded baleada

WORD HISTORY:
Grill-This word, coming in both noun and verb forms, is related to "griddle," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English. "Grill" "seems" to have originated from Indo European "kert," which meant, "to turn," which gave the idea of "braiding, twisting, weaving, entwining." This gave its Latin offspring the noun "cratis," meaning, "wickerwork;" that is, "products made by weaving twigs or small branches together." This then produced "craticula," meaning, "grill, grating, gridiron." This passed into Latin-based Old French as "graille," meaning, "grill, gridiron, fence railings." This then became "greil," then "gril." It was borrowed by English in the mid 1600s, by which time its main meaning was "gridiron, metal grid for cooking over a fire." The verb developed from the noun immediately thereafter. Old French "gril" later developed an alternative spelling of "grille," which meant, "grid, grating," which seemingly was used more in reference to "gates, fencing." This too was borrowed into English in the mid 1600s, with the distinction, but over time that distinction has become murky, as some restaurants use the spelling "grille" in their names; at least, in the U.S.       

Refried Beans: Frijoles Refritos

The term "refried beans" is used in English for a common Mexican cooked bean dish (see "Word History," below), although in modern times, the beans and other ingredients are most often simply cooked in water, and only sometimes are the beans cooked and then fried with other ingredients. "Refried beans" is also a dish common in other Latino cultures, including in heavily Latino influenced Texas and in all of the American Southwest, stretching to California. You can buy dried beans and then soak them for several hours, rinse them and then cook them for awhile, before proceeding with the recipe, but to be quite honest, it is far easier to buy cans of beans, rinse them and go from there. To be clear, you open the cans of beans and then rinse the beans. It took me some time to figure that out, because I bought cans of beans and I was told to "rinse them," and so I did; I rinsed the cans, but when I opened cans, the damned beans still had all that yucky liquid on them.   

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon regular olive oil
2 cans (14.5 to 16 ounce each) pinto beans, or red kidney beans, rinsed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
good pinch of ancho chili powder
good pinch of salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup water

Heat the oil in a pan or skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for about a minute, then add the garlic. Stir in the cumin, ancho chili powder and salt. Add 1/4 cup water and the beans, mix well. When the beans are well heated, use a masher to mash the beans. If the mixture is too thick, add more water, mixed in a tablespoon at a time, until you reach the consistency you desire. I don't mash every bean, as a few whole beans gives the mixture a nice texture.   

WORD HISTORY:
Refried-This word is partially a bad translation of Spanish "refritos," which is used in "frijoles refritos;" translated into English as "refried beans." The second part of the word is, of course, closely related to "fry," a word of Latin derivation, borrowed by English. ^ The "re-" prefix, often denoting, "to repeat, to redo, to do over again," also is used in some Latin derived words to add emphasis, rather than adding a more specific or detailed meaning; thus, in this case, it is more aptly translated as, "thoroughly (fried)," "completely (fried)," or, "well (fried)." Initially, the beans of the dish were likely always "fried," although the ancestor of "fry" once was a broader cooking term that also meant, "to roast." As time passed, even though many people no longer "fried" the beans, the term was too fixed in Mexican culture, and it remained, even when frying was not the method used to cook the beans.

^ For the history of the word "fry," and the base of the word "refried," here is the link to the article with the "Word History:"  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2017/12/mexican-egg-sandwich-torta.html