Bocoles Huastecos con Cecina Enchilada

This is from the Huasteca Hidalguense, the eastern stretch of Hidalgo that bleeds into Veracruz, San Luis Potosi, and Tamaulipas. Not Pachuca, not the central highlands of the state. The Huasteca. The land of zacahuil, of enchiladas huastecas, of bocoles that come off a wood-fired comal before the roosters finish arguing. If you have only eaten Hidalgo through its pastes and its barbacoa de Actopan, you have not eaten Hidalgo. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Hidalgo has at least three.

The bocol is masa thickened by frijoles negros and enriched with manteca de cerdo. Not a thin tortilla. A thick disc, almost half an inch, that toasts dark on a comal and stays soft inside. The bean is not a filling. The bean is in the dough. That is the trick. The masa, the lard, and the bean cook together into something with the weight to hold cecina enchilada without falling apart, and the flavor to stand up to it. La manteca es el sabor, and in the Huasteca, manteca is not optional.

The cecina enchilada is the other half of this dish. Thin sheets of beef rubbed with a paste of guajillo, ancho, and morita, then seared fast on a hot comal until the chile darkens and the edges curl. In Huejutla and Tantoyuca, the carnicerias hang the cecina in long curtains and the women buy it by the meter on Saturday mornings. If you can find a Mexican butcher who already sells cecina enchilada, buy it. If you cannot, you make the rub yourself, and the recipe below tells you exactly how.

My mother did not cook Huasteco food. She was from Jalisco. But she had a friend from Huejutla who came to Colonia Roma once a month with a basket of bocoles wrapped in a cloth, still warm from her morning comal. I copied the recipe into my mother's notebook when I was nineteen, after I made my first batch with that friend looking over my shoulder, telling me my masa was too dry and my comal was not hot enough. She was right on both counts. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.