Papusas! I have featured papusas in Las Vegas Salvadoran restaurant reviews in this blog and those articles receive a lot of views. I finally got around to posting a papusa recipe today. Papusas can be served plain, but most papusas are stuffed with a small amount of filling. Ensalada de repollo (fermented cabbage salad) usually accompanies papusas along with a mild tomato sauce or hot sauce. Papusas are like gorditas, but they are smaller and flatter. Loroco has become one of the most popular papusa stuffings in recent years. Loroco is the flower buds of a Central American vine. Loroco tastes like barley, malt and hops put together. Loroco basically tastes like the ingredients that are used to make beer, with a green bean flavor in the mix. Vegetarians really like the flavor of loroco papusas. I prefer unbleached light yellow masa harina for my cooking, but bleached white masa harina is what most cooks use when making papusas. Either way, masa harina has been nixtamalized with ash, so the corn flour is easily digested and more nutrients are made available. Nearly all pan frying and most cooking in Mexico and Central America is done with lard and not oil. Home made rendered pork fat lard is easy and cheap to make. Store bought lard does not have as good of a flavor, unless it is handcrafted lard from a Mexican market. I pan fried the papusas in the photographs with pork lard. Pork lard does add flavor! Cooking with animal fats became taboo according to health experts about 35 years ago. Nobody contested those old dietary studies for honesty. As it turns out, recent studies show that animal fats are beneficial to a healthy diet and cooking with animal fats is less harmful than cooking with hydrogenated vegetable oils. Keep in mind that moderation is the key to health, when cooking with lard. Too much of a good thing, is not always a good thing.
Curtido de Repollo Recipe: Place 1 cup of very thin sliced cabbage into a mixing bowl. Add a few thin carrot strips for color. Add a few thin strips of seeded green jalapeno. Add 1/2 tablespoon of chopped roasted red bell pepper or pimiento. Add 1/2 tablespoon of minced onion. Add 1 pinch of coriander. Add Kosher salt and black pepper. Add 1 small squeeze of lime juice. Add 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar. Toss the ingredients together. Set the curtido aside for 20 minutes, so the flavors meld. Refrigerate for 24 hours, if you want the curtido to lightly ferment.
Loroco Preparation: Fresh loroco is illegal to import to most countries, because of a small beetle pest that is hard to control. Frozen loroco is a good choice. Some people also like canned loroco that is lightly pickled in brine. I used frozen loroco for this recipe. Blanch about 3/4 cup of frozen loroco buds in boiling salted water for 1 minute, till they start to become tender. Cool the loroco under cold running water. Drain the water off of the loroco. Squeeze any excess water out of the loroco. Set the blanched loroco aside.
Papusa Dough: This recipe makes enough dough for 4 to 5 papusas! Place 1 1/2 cups of masa harina in a mixing bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of flour. Add 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder. Add sea salt and 1 pinch of black pepper. Add 1/2 cup of water, while stirring. Stir till the ingredients start to turn into small dry clump. Add 1 ounce of water at a time, while kneading, till a soft dough is formed. The dough should be soft and it should be able to hold its shape when squeezed. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes. Papusas de Loroco: Roll portions of the papusa dough into smooth ball shapes that are about 2 1/2" in diameter. (Larger than a golf ball and smaller than a tennis ball!) Press a thumb size hole a little bit deeper than half way into a papusa dough ball. Stuff the hole in the dough ball with some of the loroco. Press the dough over the hole with the stuffing, to sea it shut. Press the stuffed dough ball between two palms, to create a flat round pancake shape. Do not worry if a little bit of the stuffing pokes through the dough. Each flat round papusa should be about 3/8" thick. Repeat these steps till 4 or 5 papusas are made. Heat a griddle or large cast iron skillet over medium/medium low heat. Place 1 tablespoon of lard on the hot pan. Place as many papusas on the cooking surface as you can. Grill the papusas, till golden brown highlights appear on both sides and till the dough becomes cooked to a griddle cake texture. Keep the papusas de loroco warm, till all of the papusas are cooked.
Papusas de Loroco con Curtido: Overlap the warm papusas de loroco across a plate. Place a small mound of the curtido de repollo on the plate. Place a ramekin of Mexican style hot sauce on the plate. No garnish is necessary!
Salvadoran papusas are easy tortilla snack cakes to make and they are quite filling. Yum! ... Shawna
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