Pupusas

Before you start

• the curtido is better made a day ahead
• a bowl of water beside you for wet hands

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 150gmasarepa — pre-cooked maize flour — masa harina does the same job here
• 110gqueso fresco or mozzarella
• 80grefried black beans — or any thick cooked bean, mashed
• 1 tbspoil
• 200gwhite cabbage and carrot
• 3 tbspcane vinegar
• 1 tspdried oregano
• to tastesalt

Method

7 steps

1. chop · 12m

   Cabbage and carrot shredded fine, scalded with boiling water for a minute and drained, then packed into a jar with the vinegar, oregano and salt. That is the curtido.

2. rest · 1 hour walk away

   Curtido in the fridge. An hour is enough, overnight is better, and it keeps a week.

3. fold · 5m

   Warm salted water worked into the masarepa with a hand until it is the texture of soft modelling clay and no longer sticks. Too dry and it will crack; add water a spoon at a time.

4. rest · 5m walk away

   Five minutes for the flour to drink. This is the step people skip, and skipping it is why the edges split when they are patted out.

5. fold · 15m

   Dough into balls, a hole pressed into each with a wet thumb, cheese and beans pushed in, then closed over and patted flat between wet palms to about a centimetre. Any filling showing at the edge will weld itself to the pan.

6. fry · 14m

   Onto a medium dry pan with the barest smear of oil, turned once each side has set into a spotted crust. They puff slightly and may leak a little cheese, which crisps and is the best part.

7. finish · 2m

   Eaten straight off the pan with a fistful of the cold curtido on top.