Huaraches! Gesundheit.

Back to Rick's this week for "Sandal-Shaped Corn Masa Cakes with Black Beans, Salsa and Aged Cheese" - or I guess as they're known in less verbose regions, 'Huaraches'.  We ended up making a few substitutions in this one as some of Rick's recipes are a little difficult to make north of the Mason-Dixon line, let alone, in Ontario.  I mean, you could probably come up with most of the ingredients given enough lead time and searching effort, but this is "Friday Night" Mexican, not "I spent a month on it" Mexican.   Enough editorializing, onto dinner!

Some of the lovely ingredients we picked up at the local grocery store.  Nothing too out of the ordinary there - fresh radishes being the stand out ingredient in this one.  And as always, our personal favourite, a huge bowl of fresh cilantro.

Ina Garten's guacamole seems to be our stock recipe for the stuff.  Easy to make and tasty as hell, you really can't go wrong.  The huarache recipe doesn't call for guacamole, but we pretty much think it just makes everything better.

So in the recipe, Rick wants you to use "Seasoned cooked black beans" in the huaraches.  I tell you, I looked at every single can of beans in Loblaws, and not one of them were seasoned.  Huh.  So my better half took the can of black beans, threw it into the food processor with a chipotle pepper in adobo sauce (which do come in cans) and some garlic.  I don't know what seasoned beans are supposed to taste like, but we've got a winner with these ones.

After the beans were done, we pulled out our trusty bag of Maseca and made what amounted to just shy of a full batch of dough for corn tortillas, but divided the dough into 8 instead of the usual 16 portions.  With that completed, we embarked on what would be the lion's share of the work.  You have to turn the dough balls into eggs, jam your thumb in to make a little pocket, spoon some beans it, close up the egg, and then roll it out.  Our first one looked about as appetizing as it sounds.  Then we realized that they're all getting pressed out anyway, and that anyone who expects to get two perfectly thin layers of dough around a layer of beans is fooling themselves.

So this is what you get.  And maybe they shouldn't look exactly like that, but we're not fussy.  After pressing, into the hot skillet they go.  One minute on the first side, and about two on the second.  We frequently find that cooking the corn tortillas becomes the bottle neck in our pursuit of dinner so this time I decided to dual-wield our frying pans.  

We're completely off of PTFE frying pans, so it's the trusty cast iron on the left, and our Green Pan which still seems to be in good condition, on the right.   Once each of your modified tortillas has seen the frying pan, you essentially shallow fry them to obtain a crispy golden texture.  

We were forced to make a few more substitutions in the following steps as well, but being first time huarache eaters, we really didn't notice the difference.  You give your huarache a flip, and give it a coating of salsa.  Rick suggests you use some of the salsas he has recipes for in the book, but sometimes you'd rather open a jar.  He lists "Roasted Tomatillo Salsa"  or "Three Chile Salsa" so you can't just throw your run of the mill PC salsa on top (as good a product as it is).  So we found the only thing that was exciting on the salsa shelf, a bottle of Herdez salsa that's actually made in Mexico.  I mean, someone has to give this meal some credibility.    After the layer of salsa, we sprinkled on some parmesan; Rick said to!  The alternative was Mexican queso anejo, which wasn't exactly leaping out at us from the sea of cheese.

Out of the pan, and onto the plate.  Top with onion and radish and some cilantro and bam! That's the tastiest Sandal-Shaped Corn Masa Cakes with Black Beans, Salsa and Aged Cheese that I've seen all night.  And now, the low angle of high heeled Mexican.

Huaraches! At least the depth of field is getting close to Rick's.