El Salvador: Pupusas

Juan Carlos Colon                                                                                                                      

Pupusas: El Salvador

El Salvadoran cuisine is a mix of Mayan, Lenca and Pipil culture which are all indigenous to the zone region which surrounds our country. Most of our traditional food has something to do with corn. Corn is very abundant in that climatic zone. In El Salvador, the taste of corn is very different. Over there the taste is bitter, but it contains much more nutritive value like calcium. In the 1950’s the pupusa wasn’t well known in the country. The recipe kept itself in the central towns. In the 1980’s a civil war started
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that made close to a million citizens leave their country to immigrate to the United States, Canada and other surrounding countries.  As we were taught in class usually the one of the last things an immigrant population looses is their dishes. El Salvadorian immigrants brought the pupusa recipe with them which introduced their new country to the tradition of eating pupusas with curtido (pickled cabbage relish) and tomato sauce. The pupusa is close to a Mexican tortilla. But the pupusa can contain foods like cheese and loroco (a flower bud native to the Salvadorian zone). Loroco is my favorite pupusa filling. There are many others like pupusa de chicharon (dried pork skin, tastes better than beef jerky), chicken and refried beans. The pupusa is usually made with corn flour (can be made with rice flour), warm water and added fillings of your choice.

THE RECIPE

·         Tools needed

§  A large bowl

§  Measuring cup

·         Ingredients

§  Corn flour Mazeca (can be found in Latin American markets.)

§  Water

§  Your filling. In this case mozzarella and ricotta cheese divided equally.

§  Loroco (can be found in Latin American markets.)

§  Salt

·         Procedure

Today’s recipe will be for cheese and loroco.

1.      Take 1¼ cup and of shredded cheese,  1 tablespoon of hard cream cheese and ¼ of a cup of loroco then salt to taste. Mix the ingredients together until made into a paste.

2.      In a large bowl mix 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of water. Knead it until it is a firm yet moist dough. When done cover it and set it aside for 10 minutes.

3.      Make a ball of flour the size a bit smaller than a baseball, and then use your thumb to make a hole in the middle. Make sure the sides of the small “flour bowl” aren’t thicker than 1 cm.

4.      Put in about 1 tablespoon of cheese and loroco filling then fold the dough over until it is completely closed.

5.      Carefully press on the dough to make a disk about 1 centimeter thick and make sure there isn’t any filling escaping through any cracks.

6.      Heat a skillet to a medium-high setting, add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, then add the pupusa. Let it cook on it for 1 to 2 minutes or until it is lightly brown and blistered.

7.      Then add the cooked pupusa to a plate and serve it with curtido and tomato sauce. Get ready to taste a bit of heaven!

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