Flautas Doradas de Pollo con Crema y Queso

Flautas live in the fondas of Ciudad de México. Every neighborhood has one, the small family-run comedor with three tables and a menu chalked on the wall, where the cook fries flautas to order between eleven and four and the diners eat them standing if the tables are full. This is comida corrida food. Working food. The midday plate that holds the city together.

The flauta is not the taco dorado. A taco dorado is a single round tortilla folded and fried. A flauta is long and thin, rolled from a long oval tortilla or from two regular tortillas overlapped, and it has to be skinny or it does not crisp properly. The name means flute. It should look like one. Fat flautas with too much filling are a beginner's mistake and you will see them on every Pinterest board claiming to be Mexican food. They are not what the fondas serve.

The filling is shredded poached chicken with a quick guisado of tomato and onion. Not raw chicken breast cubed and seasoned. Not rotisserie chicken pulled apart in chunks. Poached, shredded fine, cooked with the tomato until the moisture is gone. Wet filling steams the tortilla from the inside and you cannot fry your way out of that mistake. The dressing is what makes them flautas de fonda: salsa verde that is tart and hot, crema that cools it down, queso fresco that adds salt and a little crumble, lettuce that adds crunch, raw onion for bite. Five things. Five things in balance. My mother served them this way every time my cousins came over from Guadalajara, on the Talavera platters she brought from Puebla one summer, and she would tell us to eat them before the crema soaked through. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.